Digital platforms increasingly shape how migrant women form communities and make sense of transnational lives. Although women's and migrants’ engagement with social media have been extensively studied, less attention has been paid to how digital communities of migrant women can operate as counterspaces, understood as responses to distress caused by experiences of marginalization. In this study, Migrant Women , a public Instagram page created by and for migrant women from Turkey living abroad with over 20,000 followers, is examined. The aim is to understand how multiple subject positions become grounds for a digital counterspace and how care and solidarity are enacted here. Drawing on counterspace scholarship, reflexive thematic analysis is adopted, examining multimodal content shared on Migrant Women between 2019 and 2024, including posts, captions, hashtags, co-posts with members, and curated story highlights. The findings identify three interrelated themes whereby Migrant Women can be defined as a counterspace: (1) making migrant womanhood a shared subject position, (2) community care as gendered psychosocial infrastructure, and (3) belonging through solidarity and the selectiveness of “we.” This study highlights the possibilities of this counterspace for and beyond the community, especially regarding the reconfiguration of community through the digital mediation and transnational reimagination of a counterspace.
This study aimed to explore the lived experience of psychological birth trauma using an intersectional feminist trauma lens and interpretive phenomenological analysis. Eleven participants from the Outaouais region in Canada, who self-identified as having experienced a psychologically traumatic birth and have healed from it, participated in in-depth interviews and an optional focus group. The study identified four key themes related to the experience of birth trauma: (a) unexpected and unprepared for traumatic birth, (b) trauma-inducing care and interactions with healthcare, (c) silence: alone in shame and guilt and (d) navigating postpartum mental health while wearing a snowsuit. The intersection of participants' identities, such as race, gender, sexual orientation and ability, contributed to their experiences of birth trauma. The findings highlight the importance of applying an intersectional lens to understand the role of systemic oppression in birth trauma experiences and the need for healthcare providers to provide trauma-informed, compassionate care that acknowledge the diversity of birthing individuals' identities and experiences.
Gynecological violence (GV) is a public health issue with serious consequences for the sexual and reproductive health of women and other individuals assigned female at birth. Social and behavioral science research has focused on how individuals at different axes of oppression (e.g., gender and indigeneity or socioeconomic status) experience GV. However, substantial gaps exist in the understanding of the role of interlocked systems of oppression (sexism, colonialism, and classism) in GV, and the extent to which women's privilege and oppression at different intersectional positions are associated with GV. Using secondary data from the Chilean National Survey on Health, Sexuality and Gender ( N = 20,392), we explored the differential experiences of GV (including psychological, sexual, and physical) on women at the intersections of indigeneity and poverty. Results showed that these multiple systems of oppression are intertwined, and that privileged positions (high access to healthcare) protect women from GV only when combined with another privileged position (White/mestiza). As interest in this area continues to expand, our findings offer valuable insights that stress the need for an intersectional descriptive analysis to: (a) explore how GV is reinforced by sexism, and racism, and classism; and (b) inform intersectionally specific interventions to eradicate GV.
In this article, we reflect on the processes of engaging with participatory visual methods in the context of two feminist research projects on gender-based violence (GBV): a digital storytelling project with migrant survivors in Norway and a photovoice project on sexual violence prevention with emerging adults in T & uuml;rkiye. Despite the previously highlighted benefits of participatory visual methods as accessible, inclusive, empowering, and transformative approaches with the potential to bridge the gap between research and intervention, our engagement with these methods revealed significant challenges, risks, and barriers to this potential. Our journeys with these methods led us to reflexively think through the ethical issues associated with voice, visibility, representation, aesthetics, and their emotional impacts. The struggles we encountered raised doubts about the applicability of participatory visual methods to feminist GBV research and led us to argue for a more situated understanding of how, when, and with whom these methodologies work effectively and fulfill their promise. While we believe that participatory visual methods offer powerful strategies for mobilizing change and exposing the lived aspects of gender-based oppression and inequalities, we advocate for a contextualized understanding of their risks and limitations in feminist research, and for making adjustments accordingly.
Mammography is central to early breast cancer detection, yet its embodied and affective dimensions remain underexamined. This study explored how women experience mammography as a sociomaterial encounter between body, machine, and clinical practice. Seventeen women in Israel who had undergone a mammography examination within the previous year participated in open-ended, experience-focused qualitative interviews guided by eight broad questions. The data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three interrelated themes were developed. Making the body fit the machine captured uneven discomfort arising from whole-body positioning, compression, bodily variability, and technologist-mediated adjustments. Making the breast visible, making the woman recede described how diagnostic isolation could produce fragmentation, exposure, and relational vulnerability, although not all participants experienced objectification. Endurance without endorsement showed that participants strongly affirmed mammography while simultaneously questioning its current embodied form and proposing improvements grounded in experiential knowledge. The findings conceptualize mammography discomfort not as a uniform response or merely a barrier to attendance, but as an outcome of a technologically and relationally structured interface. Continued participation should not be interpreted as satisfaction with existing design. Attending to women's embodied design knowledge may help improve comfort, dignity, and accessibility without diminishing the clinical importance of mammography in breast cancer detection.
