Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research 2025, 26 (1): 12-34 | DOI: 10.13060/gav.2025.005  

Polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, is a common condition that combines such symptoms as absent or irregular menstruation, elevated levels of ‘male’ hormones, excess facial and body hair, and problems with glucose metabolism. Receiving a PCOS diagnosis can be a disorienting experience. This article focuses on this medical condition to explore the role of different digital technologies in managing women’s health across public and private domains. Relying on seventeen semi-structured interviews with Danish women, I  suggest that self-tracking mobile applications and social media provide PCOS patients with different modes of caring...

Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research 2025, 26 (1): 35-58 | DOI: 10.13060/gav.2025.006  

Mass media such as radio blurs the distinction between the public and the private. This article explores the gendered soundscape of a participatory radio campaign in Northern Uganda, which aimed to empower women and initiate debates on gender norms, including gender-based violence, teenage pregnancy, and women’s entrepreneurship. Draw-ing on feminist critiques of the public and private spheres, we explore the impact of radio on women’s empowerment. Ethnographic research found that participatory radio has the capacity to create a sense of community, an ‘intimate public sphere’, and critical consciousness about denied choices...

Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research 2025, 26 (1): 59-84 | DOI: 10.13060/gav.2025.007  

This study explores the developments of digital feminist activism in Slovakia and Czechia amidst rising anti-gender rhetoric and anti-NGOism. In the climate of polit-ical change over the past five years, women in both countries began using Instagram to raise awareness of gender-based violence, harassment, and sexism. Through interviews with digital activists, this research examines the online dynamics of these networked publics. It analyses activists’ strategies for navigating public/private boundaries and balancing individual and collective efforts in a corporate-controlled online space. Despite the challenges posed by Instagram’s influencer-driven...

Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research 2025, 26 (1): 85-109 | DOI: 10.13060/gav.2025.009  

This article explores how feminist actors in Slovakia use Instagram to sustain po-litically engaged digital practices in a national context marked by institutional neglect and rising anti-gender discourse. While much scholarship on digital feminism has centred on An-glophone contexts and high-profile influencers, this study focuses on users operating outside mainstream visibility, who maintain a feminist presence not through spectacle but through careful negotiation with the platform’s emotional, aesthetic, and algorithmic demands. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the analysis shows how these users adapt to Instagram’s infrastructural pressures...

Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research 2025, 26 (1): 110-126 | DOI: 10.13060/gav.2025.008  

Studies of the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and surveillance have increased in the past ten years. I am overall wondering what we fear and feel about AI and surveillance? Yet, fears and feelings are complicated research questions. To address those complications and contribute an affective analysis to existing research on surveillance, I analyse two horror films – Child’s Play (Klevberg 2019) and M3GAN (Johnstone 2023) – that directly criticise the relationship between mothering, surveillance, and panoptic control. Child’s Play and M3GAN are also important cultural productions for exploring panoptic affects in...