Construction Of Gender Roles Research Articles

“Girls Are Retarded When They're Stoned.” Marijuana and the Construction of Gender Roles Among Adolescent Females

This paper examines why adolescent femalescontinue to use less marijuana than do adolescent males,with a particular emphasis on the normative boundariesthat restrict females in their access to and use of marijuana. The results are based on theanalysis of the transcripts of 42 focus groups, with 122male and 110 female participants. Focus groups wereconducted in nine separate high schools, three of which included sizeable numbers of students ofnon-European ancestry. The results suggest thattraditional gender roles continue to limit females intheir access to this particular form of leisure andsociability, and that these roles are in part enforced bymale peers in their capacity as dealers anddistributors.

Homesteading in New York City, 1978-1993: The Divided Heart of Loisaida.

List of Plates and Figures Introduction Housing, Urban Homesteading, and Community Land Trusts in Historical and Theoretical Context Past and Present of the Lower East Side Sweat and Debris The Day the Wall Fell Down Conflicting Constructions of Work, Gender Roles, Ownership, and Community Social Movements, Community Organizations, and Private Lives Conclusion Sources Index

'And They Think I'm Just a Nice Old Lady' Women and War in Belfast, Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT This article examines the spatial construction of gender roles in a time of war. During a period of armed conflict both women and men are perceived as beings who exemplify gender-specific virtues. The relationship of gender and identity in this case is a paradoxical one: war-usually a catalyst of change-can often become an agent of conservatism as regards gender identities. This conservatism can be seen in the wartime spatial relegation of women to the private/domestic realm. When a society is in armed conflict there is a predisposition to perceive men as violent and action-oriented and women as compassionate and supportive to the male warrior. These gender tropes do not denote the actions of women and men in a time of war, but function instead to re-create and secure women's position as non-combatants and that of men as warriors. Thus, women have historically been marginalized in the consciousness of those who have researched the events of war. This article is largely based on interviews I conducted in the fall of 1993, in an Irish Catholic community in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I will offer both female and male interpretations of what women did and how they were affected by the upheavals of the Irish Nationalist struggle in Northern Ireland.

Homophobia and Heterosexism in Women’s Sport and Physical Education: A Review

This review of the extant literature suggests that the examination of homophobia, heterosexism and gay/lesbian identities in sport remains a topic of analysis for very few scholars. In addition, there may be debate whether articles relative to masculinity and femininity, traditional gender role constructions, gender relations and the social construction of sport and sport as masculine culture should be included. Despite the narrowness or breadth of topics considered, homophobia, a weapon of sexism and hegemonic masculinity (and femininity) becomes a powerful resistance to patriarchy and male domination. The review begins with definitions of homophobia and moves to research and discussions that focus more directly on homophobia in sport and physical education. To present the breadth of topics that could be considered, additional sections include articles dealing with lesbianism in sport, heterosexism in sport, and a brief overview of homophobia in the popular press. Lack of theoretical frameworks, applications of theory and insufficient impirical evidence contribute to an uneveness in the literature and make it difficult to draw specific conclusions.

Conflicting norms in modern British kinship: Case studies of domestic violence and competition for care in North Wales, 1920–1996

Sociologists have characterized the norms of British kinship as weakly encoded, with kin defining their mutual obligations in an ad hoc way on the basis of very general principles. This article draws a distinction between the articulation of norms and the non-verbal enactment of norms. Weak verbal encoding need not imply weak standardization or weak emotional commitment to internalized norms. The examples discussed concern the link between care of the elderly and expectations of inheritance. The study uncovered strong but unverbalized norms in five case studies from North Wales. In each case the invocation of unarticulated norms proved emotionally potent enough to undermine self-esteem as based on more conventional constructions of gender and family roles. It is argued that the conflicting norms derived from different streams in British culture and that more attention should be given to understanding the different sources of the varieties of ‘family values’, even in societies where ethnic and other ‘sub-cultural’ differences are not obvious.

Agoraphobia and interpersonal relationships

The gender role constructs, interpersonal behaviors, and marital relationships of agoraphobic support group members were compared to those of controls of similar gender. Agoraphobic subjects scored significantly higher on measures of marital conflict and interpersonal dependency, and lower in self-confidence and self-agency/masculinity than controls. Agoraphobics viewed their marital relationships as significantly less satisfactory than controls in terms of level of support, depth of relationship, and characteristic level of conflict.

Language, gender, and Chinese culture

The analysis of Chinese characters, idioms, and semantic placements provides the context for understanding the historical construction of gender roles, images, and ideas that inform the oppression of women in Chinese society. We have seen that language was crucial in the creation and perpetuation of the Chinese patriarchal system. The physical structure of the Chinese language testified to the continuing inequalities of gender within Chinese society, the roots of which revert to antiquity. The Chinese writing system that is by and for men serves to maintain patterns of behavior that reflect as well as reinforce gender inequality. We should recognize that social change creates linguistic and behavioral changes. Linguistic disparties reflect real and sustained social inequalities that can and should be changed. There is no other alternative for Chinese women seeking equality but to change the language and its usages. Once Chinese women expose the falseness of existing male meanings and encode their own language, a more objective social reality can be envisaged and perhaps ultimately achieved.

Sons and Mothers: Agrippina, Semiramis, and the Philological Construction of Gender Roles in Early Modern Germany (Lohenstein'sAgrippina, 1665)

Trois ou quatre heures du Regne de Neron ont esté plus funestes à l'Empire Romain que toute la vie d'Agrippine sa Mere. (Three or four hours of Nero's reign were more deadly to the Roman Empire than the entire life of Agrippina, his mother.)Pierre de Moyne,La Galerie des Femmes Fortes(1647,1660)Gentes tamen esse feruntur,/in quibus et nato genetrix et nato parenti/iungitur. (And yet, they say that there are tribes among whom mother and son, daughter with father mates.)Ovid,Metamorphoses, 10: 331-33Act three of Daniel Casper von Lohenstein's 1665 German language play about Nero's assassination of his mother and erst-while co-regent Agrippina in A.D. 59 contains what could arguably be deemed one of the most salacious scenes produced on the early modern stage in central Europe.

The White Logic: Alcoholism and Gender in American Modernist Fiction.

There are no second acts in American lives. F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous pronouncement, an epitaph for his own foreshortened career, points to a pattern of imaginative blight common among writers of the Lost Generation. As John W. Crowley shows in this study, excessive drinking was a crucial influence on the frequently diminished fortunes of these writers. Indeed, the modernists - especially the men - were a decidedly drunken lot. Taking account of recent work by social historians on the temperance movement, this book examines the relationships between intoxication and addiction in American life and letters during the first half of the 20th century. In explaining the transition from Victorian to modern paradigms of heavy drinking, Crowley focuses on representative fictions by W.D. Howells (The Landlord at the Lion's Head), Jack London (John Barleycorn), Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tender Is the Night), John O'Hara (Appointment in Samarra), Djuna Barnes (Nightwood), and Charles Jackson (The Lost Weekend). He considers the historical formation of and earlier concepts of habitual drunkenness and their bearing on the social construction of gender roles. He also looks at the drunk narratives, a mode of fiction that expresses the conjunction of modernism and alcoholism in a pervasive ideology of despair - the White Logic of John Barleycorn, London's nihilistic lord of the spirits.

Nurse-midwifery as it reinforces and transforms the american ideology of gendered roles

Nurse-midwives both reinforce and subvert American constructs of gender roles. They do this both within the context of their relationship with the medical establishment and within the context of their relationship with women and families they serve. The authors explore this paradox through an examination of American society's historical and present constructs of gender role, the ways in which the medical profession has absorbed and prescribed these constructs, the effect of these constructs on medical and nurse-midwifery childbirth management of care, and, within the contextual framework thus established, the role of nurse-midwives in reinforcing and subverting traditional gender role constructs. Finally, the impact of this paradox on the provision of nurse-midwifery care to women and families is explored.

Gender bias and the availability of business loans

Social structure, values, and gender socialization have undoubtedly disadvantaged women in the process of preparing for a career in business, and there is a widely held view that women are subject to discrimination by financial institutions. However, the “evidence” to verify this belief has largely been from studies where women have claimed that they were subject to discrimination in the loan situation, without either supporting evidence, or control data from a sample of male loan applicants. Two experiments were carried out, using a Goldberg type procedure, to test the belief that women are unfairly discriminated against when seeking a loan to establish a business venture. Carefully constructed scenarios of an application for loan finance to purchase a commercial enterprise were mailed to loan officers of major trading bank branches. The scenarios were identical in all respects except for the sex and education level of applicants. Loan officers were asked whether or not they would approve loan finance for the proposed business purchase and to indicate factors that contributed to their decisions. Significant differences in response to female and male applicants were observed in both experiments. In Experiment I (University education) both sexes were equally likely to obtain a loan, but “education” was considered a more important factor for the female applicant than for the male. In Experiment II (High school education) the female applicant was less likely to obtain a loan than the male applicant. The results support the widely held perception that women can experience gender discrimination when seeking start-up capital. Such discriminatory behavior by loan officers may not be, and probably is not, intentional. Rather, the pervasiveness of the social construction of differential gender roles in western culture is such that it is more likely that discrimination is unconscious, and consequently more difficult to change.

The Appalachian Social Context and the Battering of Women

The battering of women by their partners is a common occurrence around the world, and historical records show that the abuse of women has been legitimized through the ages. In the United States battering is to be found in all social classes and across all racial and ethnic groups. However, the experience of being battered is structured by the social contexts in which it occurs. How victims perceive and react to that experience is influenced by their social world, the construction of gender and family roles and interpersonal relationships in their community, and the response of local people to male violence. These social context variables must be considered as well in programs designed to assist battered women and to prevent further battering.

Comments from the Special Issue Editor: The Emerging Dialogue on Environmental Justice

This special issue of Problems provides an interdisciplinary look at the relationship of class, ethnicity, gender, and race to community and workplace environmental problems. Drawing upon case studies, interviews, textual analysis, survey research, and household, community, labor force, and policy data, these articles represent a methodologically eclectic approach to the interpretation of environmental issues as problems of justice in a stratified society. While the disparate impact of social problems on minorities, women, and the poor has long been a central concern in sociology, few sociologists have focused their attention on the environment. A growing public awareness of pollution, toxic exposures, and resource limits has produced new social movements with implications for social theory and practice. A dialogue on environmental justice is emerging in community groups and in the network of national and international organizations which support them. This suggests the need for a parallel dialogue within the community of academics. Concept of Environmental Justice In the first article, The 'Environmental Justice' Frame: A Conceptual Discussion and an Application, Stella Capek locates the concept of environmental justice at the intersection of resource mobilization and social constructionist theories. Arising from the experiences of local grass-roots groups confronting contamination in their communities, the concept of environmental justice frames the claims of groups who perceive themselves as unjustly exposed to environmental risks. concept is transmitted to those in similar circumstances by an emerging network of national and international organizations. Edward Walsh, Rex Warland, and D. Clayton Smith propose an analytic distinction between what they call equity and technology movements. In Backyards, NIMBYs, and Incinerator Sitings: Implications for Movement Theory, they compare two protest movements for which success or failure depended upon protesters' ability to ground their claims in scientific arguments about threats to health and safety. As shown in Capek's analysis of the Carver Terrace neighborhood of Texarkana, and in Suzanna Smith and Michael Jepson's analysis Big Fish, Little Fish: Politics and Power in the Regulation of Florida's Marine Resources, movements based on social justice claims must also engage in political struggles to define objective, scientific assessments of their problems. Indeed, as Loren Lutzenhiser and Bruce Hackett show in Social Stratification and Environmental Degradation: Understanding Household CO2 Production, policies based on apparently rational scientific and economic assessments of such problems as global warming have the effect of unequally distributing the costs of solutions by social class. environmental justice perspective increases our understanding of the role of gender, race, and class in the social construction of work. In Psychosocial Effects of Workplace Hazardous Exposure: Theoretical Synthesis and Preliminary Findings, J. Timmons Roberts

Gender differences in health perceptions and their predictors

This study explored the degree to which risks embedded in the social construction of gender roles and personality traits explained gender differences in health perceptions and reporting among mild hypertensive patients (134 women and 104 men) under the same treatment regime. Compared with men, women were less educated, less likely to be employed, less happy, more distressed, less satisfied with family functioning, and had a weaker sense of coherence. Twice as many women as men evaluated their health as ‘poor’, and on average reported 2.6 more symptoms than men. These gender differences largely disappeared when unhappiness, distress, and sense of coherence were controlled. While education attainment, employment, and satisfaction with family functioning decreased gender differences in some half of the symptoms, multivariate analysis suggested that unhappiness, distress, and the sense of coherence are far better predictors of gender differential health perceptions. It is suggested that beyond biological predispositions, women's health is in double jeopardy by gender role related risks, which affect morbidity both directly through immunology system and indirectly through health perceptions.

AIDS, sex and condoms: African healers and the reinvention of tradition in Zaire.

Condoms offer considerable protection against sexual transmission of AIDS. Yet many Africans who are at risk of infection reject condoms as "unnatural." Data from Zaire have been used to examine this culturally constructed category in relation to sexuality, procreation, gender roles, class formation and international health and development policy. Much more than a simple transfer of biomedical technology is involved. Condom use with regular partners raises issues of cultural politics at many levels. "Traditional" African healers represent important social networks with considerable authority in poor urban communities. They are able to reinterpret cultural categories and endow behavior with new meanings. Action-research in Kinshasa was used to explore roles that healers might play in promoting change to safer sex practices.

Alcohol Use Among Latino Adolescents:

This paper reviews current information on alcohol use among adolescents. The author emphasizes research which details prevalence rates, alcohol use patterns and correlates of drinking among specific subpopulations. Problems inherent in the available data on drinking among youth are discussed, particularly those related to the interpretation of data categorized under the aggregate labels Hispanic and Latino and the reliability of data acquired from school-based samples. Note is taken of cultural and regional variations in the drinking behavior of youth. The need for research which will generate information on the integration of alcohol use in the construction of gender roles over life cycle transitions is discussed, as is the need for information on alcohol-related socialization practices in a bicultural context. In the interest of providing helping professionals with data on which to base culturally relevant prevention and intervention programs for adolescents, the a...

SOCIAL THEORY AND THE FUTURE OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY

Three themes that seem likely to be influential in the near future have recently characterized the work of geographers using social theories as the basis of their explanations of urban phenomena. They are (1) the debates about structure and human agency. (2) the claims of feminists about the analytical significance of the social construction of gender roles, and (3) the demand that we now use our social theories more actively to explain experienced reality. In continuing our use of social theory in urban geography, we must prevent its marginalization as one specific substantive topic; the alternative epistemologies of this type of work can guide new interpretations of every substantive issue in urban geography.