Existing Gender Relations Research Articles

Noken, Women's Identity Space and Strategy In Power Contestation

Asmat women have undergone a process of transformation due to contact with the agents present and changing the pattern of existing gender relations. This intersection has given birth to a new process of creation regarding women's space and identity. This paper will discuss the impact of the transformation of gender relations experienced by Asmat Women. The impact that occurs then needs to be seen in relation to the current context of the new conditions that occur in it, especially in the space of women's cultural identity which is now embedded and as if produced as a cultural identity for Asmat women, namely noken. Bourdieu's perspective is used to look at agents who fall into the scale of gender relations transformation, namely investors, traders, buyers and the many economic spaces that are also present in it. Noken as part of the results of the process of gender relations transformation occurred in Papua, especially in Asmat. The research method used is qualitative method of analysis The results of the study show that Asmat Tribe Women find themselves in the process of identity reconstruction that they begin to interpret with actions and efforts on the awareness they have. The transformation process that occurs due to the intervention of agents is seen as part of a change that they cannot control but can manage for the benefit they are trying to achieve as "key players" in gender relations both reproductive roles, productive roles and social roles, through the production of noken

The COVID‐19 pandemic and caring masculinity: New prospects or a wasted opportunity?

AbstractThe early data regarding gender implications of COVID‐19 suggest that men are more likely to die as an effect of infection while women are those who suffer the social consequences of pandemic as they dominate in care‐oriented professions and bear the consequences of increased caring needs at home. The latter includes caring for children, who, in many (European) countries have been subjected to homeschooling. However, the lockdown resulted in the fact that also men (usually white‐collar workers from middle class) changed their work organization and habits and have started working from home. Some studies suggest that this specific situation results in the increase of involvement of fathers into caring activities at home. Hence, the main goal of our paper is an attempt to answer the question if pandemic opened new opportunities for larger involvement of men in caring activities. The study will locate research outcomes in the context of gender regime in Poland in order to investigate if lockdown, online work and care responsibilities enabled to challenge or to reproduce existing gender relations, with a special focus on masculinities patterns. It will be done by analyzing data from Poland, namely, semi‐structured qualitative interviews collected in two waves – during spring lockdown 2020 and during late autumn and winter 2020/2021 with men and women working online at home and caring for underage children. By doing so, we expect to add more nuanced, crisis‐related theoretical understandings of caring masculinity concept.

“Africa's First Woman Press Photographer”: Mabel Cetu's Photographs in Zonk!

“Africa's First Woman Press Photographer”: Mabel Cetu's Photographs in <i>Zonk!</i>

Who cares? How care practices uphold the decentralised energy order

This paper represents the decentralised energy order as a matter of care: so as to make visible the unequal burden of care and to encourage active caring. It extends an emerging overlap that exists in studies of repair and maintenance of material objects from science and technology studies (STS) and an increasing interest in the creation and maintenance of relationships of care in energy systems. Inspiration is drawn from feminist STS work that calls attention to the continuous labour of repair and maintenance necessary to enact and sustain a socio-technical order. Fieldwork involved virtual interviews and small focus groups with 55 Australian householders who purchased decentralised energy technologies (solar, batteries and electric vehicles) and 18 intermediaries from industry and civil society. The analysis exposes how invisible care practices not only underpin householders’ material engagement with the energy system, but also how they are inextricably entangled with making a decentralised energy ‘order’ work in practice. Relying on ‘good hearted’ intermediaries is unlikely to be a workable basis for a functioning and fair energy system. An alternative approach is called for: an exploration of what a caring decentralised energy system might look like. <em><strong>Policy relevance</strong></em> Care is significant for making energy systems work, and care has a role in building new energy orders and liveable futures. This research reveals that decentralised energy is enabled and made workable by the care people have for the future and their ability to take responsibility and action. It highlights those excluded from care-giving and -receiving, gaps that hamper the flow of care, and ways in which existing gender relations are reinforced by and reinforce these gaps and exclusions. Policymakers can recognise the importance, but also the limitations, of bureaucratic and market care in the energy system, and the need for policies and projects to recognise, support, and empower diverse abilities and care practices. This could be achieved through meaningful co-creation of policies, rules and processes. Energy businesses and intermediaries are encouraged to go beyond a transactional approach to installing technologies.

Obstacles to Birth Surname Retention Upon Marriage: How Do Hostile Sexism and System Justification Predict Support for Marital Surname Change Among Women?

Despite the ongoing shift in societal norms and gender-discriminatory practices toward more equality, many heterosexual women worldwide, including in many Western societies, choose to replace their birth surname with the family name of their spouse upon marriage. Previous research has demonstrated that the adherence to sexist ideologies (i.e., a system of discriminatory gender-based beliefs) among women is associated with their greater endorsement of practices and policies that maintain gender inequality. By integrating the ideas from the system justification theory and the ambivalent sexism theory, we proposed that the more women adhere to hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs, the more likely they would be to justify existing gender relations in society, which in turn, would positively predict their support for traditional, husband-centered marital surname change. We further argued that hostile (as compared to benevolent) sexism could act as a particularly strong direct predictor of the support for marital surname change among women. We tested these possibilities across three cross-sectional studies conducted among women in Turkey (Study 1, N=118, self-identified feminist women; Study 2, N=131, female students) and the United States (Study 3, N=140, female students). Results of Studies 1 and 3 revealed that higher adherence to hostile (but not benevolent) sexism was associated with higher support for marital surname change indirectly through higher gender-based system justification. In Study 2, the hypothesized full mediation was not observed. Consistent with our predictions, in all three studies, hostile (but not benevolent) sexism was found to be a direct positive predictor of the support for marital surname change among women. We discuss the role of dominant ideologies surrounding marriage and inegalitarian naming conventions in different cultures as obstacles to women’s birth surname retention upon marriage.

Gender and intergenerational challenges to Women’s economic empowerment initiatives in Rwanda

Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) based approaches to social justice have attracted increasing attention among scholars and development-based organisations as a means of improving women’s access to economic resources and increasing women’s empowerment. A growing literature discusses the degree to which women’s economic empowerment initiatives have been successful. Most of these studies have tended to rely on the use of economic proxies that capture the level of income earned by women. Based on qualitative information collected in five rural districts of Rwanda between July 2016 and January 2017, this paper explores how existing gender relations at the household level in rural Rwanda stimulate, promote/impede robust participation in WEE initiatives and explores the strategies used by rural women involved in WEE to challenge power relations at the household level. The research used a social justice and transformative approach, employing an interpretivist methodology and qualitative methods. Overall 126 women and 48 men participated in the research. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the information collected and three main themes were identified: cultural norms, expectations and women’s participation; women’s voice and agency from their engagement in economic activities; and the different generations of women who use different coping mechanisms and strategies to deal with adverse gender power relations. The research shows that if WEE initiatives are to reach their full potential, they must address cultural and structural norms that underpin gender inequality at the household and community levels. Thus WEE initiatives, as well as providing economic opportunities for women (and also men) must also address social justice issues that are harmful and affect women’s participation in such initiatives and should support a transformative environment with respect to gender power relationships in rural households and communities.

Laboring for the State: Women, Family, and Work in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959–1971

Laboring for the State: Women, Family, and Work in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959–1971

Women’s Leadership in New Religions and the Question of Gender Equality in Post-Communist Lithuania

This article discusses features of women’s religious leadership, social innovations, and transmission of existing gender relations patterns within diverse new religions in post-communist society in Lithuania. The article is based on participant observation in Pagan and Hindu-origin religious groups and interviews with women leaders of these groups. The narratives of women leading Pagan and Hindu religious groups in Lithuania reflected their agency, features of their leadership, and the basis for the construction of their religious authority. Research data showed that the women interviewed took leadership of their respective religious groups after gaining professional experience in their careers. Their agency was not permeated by feminist ideas, but instead the importance of men in their life choices was emphasized throughout their narratives. The three case studies indicate that female religious leadership in these new religions follows the tendency toward a return to patriarchal values in post-communist society in Lithuania, rather than moving towards an ideal of gender equality.

The role of women in the management of Family Hope Program fund in Surabaya

This study examines the role of women in the utilization and management of the Family Hope Program fund and describes the process of gender relations constructed in beneficiary families in Surabaya. This qualitative study has two objectives, namely: (1) identifying the role of women in the utilization and management of Family Hope Program funds in Surabaya; and (2) describing the process of gender relations constructed in the beneficiary families. The results indicate that the role of women in managing Family Hope Program funds in Surabaya remains stagnant. Women benefiting from the fund plays a dual role of working in formal and informal sectors and carrying out domestic functions such as caring for babies, cooking, and the likes. These women do not carry out the role in managing the Family Hope Program fund as they are supposed to, such as managing finances and planning needs and spending. This indicates that men still dominate the role of determining the amount of allocation, whereas women are only executors. In addition, the Family Hope Program still cannot restructure the existing gender relations among the people of Surabaya. The program also does not change the pattern of gender relations in decision making in the household. This can be seen from family planning participation. Women benefiting from the fund are reluctant to use family planning contraception due to the husband’s prohibition.

Elder care allowances in action: missed opportunities for gender transformation

This article analyses the formulation, adoption, implementation and evaluation of the Elder Care Allowance (APA) since 2001 at the national and departmental levels, with a fine-grained case study of implementation in one department. We show that despite elder care being highly feminized, this policy instrument was gender blind when it was put on the agenda and adopted. When it was implemented at the departmental level, the room for manoeuvre has not been used to reduce gender inequality, and at the national level, a recent movement to gender policy evaluation has not yet produced significant effects with regard to elder care. Thus, rather than transforming gender norms, it has led to a kind of gender accommodation that reflects existing gender relations.

Educating men about vaginal microbicides: considerations from Kenya

Men desire to be involved in their partner’s decision-making about vaginal microbicide use. This coincides with women’s desire to inform male partners about their microbicide use. Educating men about microbicides may enhance acceptability and generate critical support for the female participants of microbicide trials. In this multiphase mixed-methods study, we adapted an educational intervention on vaginal microbicides and tested it among men (n = 45) to determine its effect on men’s knowledge regarding HIV/STI, vaginal microbicides and microbicide trials. We also conducted focus group discussions (FGDs) with the female partners (K = 3, n = 43) of the study participants and community representatives (K = 2, n = 24) to obtain their views on male partner microbicide education. We analysed FGD data for key themes using content analysis. HIV and vaginal microbicide knowledge scores increased significantly among men after the educational intervention. Both women and men highly supported male partner microbicide education, in the context of existing gender relations, to increase men’s understanding about microbicides, promote adherence and help women gain their partners’ trust. Complex gender dynamics should be considered when designing male partner educational interventions to improve acceptability and the use of microbicides and other female-initiated HIV prevention methods.

Mapping the Trail of Violence: The Memorialization of Public Space as a Counter-Geography of Violence in Ciudad Juárez

Feminicide scholars have traditionally depicted Ciudad Juárez as a femicide machine—"an apparatus that didn't just create the conditions for the murders of dozens of women and little girls, but developed the institutions that guaranteed impunity for those crimes and even legalized them" (González Rodríguez, 2012, p. 7). This article uses critical Latin American geography and modernity/coloniality frameworks to offer a different interpretation, by depicting the landscape of Ciudad Juárez as a counter-geography of violence assembled through the memorialization of feminicide and forced disappearance victims. A close analysis of protest objects such as monuments, memorial sites, black and pink crosses, graffiti, murals, and anti-feminicide protests—which I photographed during two field trips to Juárez—reveals that protest objects and bodies assembled throughout the city recreate an agonizing landscape to expose the effects of an inherited colonial gender structure that normalizes extreme gender violence. Based on this analysis, I argue that the memorialization of Ciudad Juárez's landscape constitutes an attempt to decolonize existing gender relations that produce zones of female death by fostering spaces of care and solidarity.

Zwischen Tradition und Emanzipation

Summary This paper analyses the criticism of the position of women, the existing gender relations and marriage in women’s literature at the end of the 19th century, taking the examples of the novel Plein air (1897) by Croatian author Jagoda Truhelka (1864–1957) and of the short story Wieder die Alte (1886) by Austrian writer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916). These authors, from the area of the then Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in spite of different ethnicity, but also of different social status, published stories in the late 19th century where they discussed a similar topic. Both authors are concerned with the issue of women’s work and existence outside or inside civil marriage, but the endings of their works are completely different. While Truhelka’s heroine manages to realize a marriage of love, the heroine of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach becomes a victim of existing social relationships. Despite the sharp critique of patriarchy and the disruption of the stereotype of a woman as an angel in the home in Plein air, at the end of the novel there is a harmonization of interpersonal relations and the resolution of all existing conflicts, both at a personal and socio-political level. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach does not show such optimism in Wieder die Alte and her emancipated women are left alone to build their moral integrity into a life without male love. However, we can conclude Truhelka’s, as well as Ebner-Eschenbach’s heroine remain trapped between tradition and emancipation because of, or despite the fact that love shows (no) power in the tyranny of society.

Older Persons’ Views on Using Cash‐for‐Care Allowances at the Crossroads of Gender, Socio‐economic Status and Care Needs in Vienna

AbstractThe article aims to contribute to understanding social inequalities resulting from familization (or de‐familization) tendencies among cash‐for‐care beneficiaries in a Conservative welfare state. It highlights justifications for choices in accessing and using care in a cash‐for‐care scheme from the perspective of care recipients aged 80 years and older in Vienna. Along key dimensions characterizing care recipients’ experiences, we identify four different user groups, which reflect recipients’ individual characteristics, particularly gender, socio‐economic status (SES), and care needs, and the respective care arrangement. The groups are dubbed: (1) the self‐confident; (2) the illiterate; (3) the dependent; and (4) the lonely. Narrative interviews with 15 frail older people were held in 2014 and analyzed using the framework analysis method. Results show that familiarity with support structures associates with higher SES, while those who depend on others for acquiring information or organizing care express ambivalence in choosing between formal and informal care. Engagement in deciding which care type to use is limited among people of lower SES or with complex care needs, but own experience as informal caregiver for a family member increases care recipients’ long‐term care (LTC) system literacy. Gender differences among care recipients were limited, yet middle‐class female recipients often expressed normative claims for family care from female relatives. We conclude that unconditional care allowance schemes may reinforce existing gender relations, particularly among informal caregivers, as well as underpin socio‐economic differences among LTC users in old‐age. Results also partly question the assumptions of choice and empowerment implicit in many cash‐for‐care schemes.

Good mothers and responsible citizens: Analysis of public support for the extension of paid parental leave

Debates about parental leave and the negotiation of work and childrearing are shaped by the discursive production of caregiver and worker subjectivities. This paper analyses online comments that support extending paid parental leave in New Zealand to 26weeks. Treating these comments as texts, a feminist poststructural lens is employed to investigate how they produce ‘good mother’ and ‘responsible citizen’ subject positions, and how they allocate responsibility for the care of infants. It finds that the comments are framed by gendered discourses that valorise motherhood and economic discourses that construct the primary role of citizens as engagement in paid work, and they construct a version of the social contract that both enables and resists dominant citizen-worker subjectivities. The comments do not substantially contest existing gender relations, and this paper argues that a gender equity discourse is needed to address this inequality.

EDIBLE WILD FRUITS BUSINESS IN SONGEA DISTRICT, TANZANIA: AN ANALYSIS OF THE EXISTING GENDER RELATIONS

Wild fruits constitute an important natural resource which lays underexploited in most of the communities of Tanzania, hence deserves attention. As wild fruit business involves both women and men, the analysis of existing gender relations need to carried out for ascertaining relations. The prominent engagement of people of one sex category in the sector would partly signify gender bias; hence demanding for detailed explanation. Under circumstances of gender bias, diverse socio-economic roles in wild fruits sector could be liable to dictating the gender patterns. Existing vast literatures have failed to depict and document the reasons for the observed gender bias; thus this study was to be undertaken. A qualitative study was conducted in four localities of Songea District aimed at digging down the origin of the differential gender roles in wild fruits business sector, thus unveiling the causes of the lopsided gender relations, In-depth Interviews (IDIs) were conducted using interview guides. Women were found to be the main actors in wild fruits business mainly due to socio-economic and cultural reasons which places women at the centre of small scale, “unrecognized,†business activities, characterized by low but dependable household incomes. Since women are traditionally denied from land ownership, they are forced to plunge into “free†small scale businesses requiring no capital except labour power, i.e. their ability to walk to the forest to collect wild fruits. Therefore, no wonder, that wild fruits business remains to persistently be localized and concretely placed under women’s domain mainly due to the interplay of the above socio-cultural and economic factors. Raising gender awareness among people of the area concerning importance and the potential of wild fruits business is critical for people of both sexes to actively engage in the sector. Active engagement culminates into improved production, standardized processing and expanded market from local to national and international levels.

Enhancing choices through collective capability: a study of invisible home-based cashew processors in Kerala, India

This article is an attempt to understand the heterogeneous nature of home-based cashew workers in Kerala. The article uses narrative approach to illustrate the lived experiences of the home-based workers. The evidence from the field study in Kollam district reveals that the majority of the workers engaged in the home-based processing, voluntarily or involuntarily, are women. The home-based processing is considered as an additional option to earn income by these workers. As a result, despite the ban on cottage processing of cashew, it is operating in a clandestine manner. The study shows that the enhancement of individual and collective capabilities of the women in the informal sector requires an understanding of their multiple identities, as well as an acknowledgement of the existing gender relations and social structure.

Queer matters: family-building processes of lesbian couples using donor insemination

This paper focuses on lesbian couples using donor insemination to become parents. A number of international researchers have already investigated how their ways of family building change perceptions and practices of family, parenting, and kinship, and how that affects gender relations. Three strands of empirical scholarship can be distinguished. First, there are papers that identify a trend towards the reproduction of existing gender relations and the associated images of desire and parenthood. Second, there are studies that focus on new arrangements of sexuality, gender, and parenthood in lesbian families. And third, there is a strand of literature which tries to avoid problems and shortcomings of a polarized debate and which questions a nature/culture dichotomy and heteronormative concepts of reproduction. Following the insights of empirical works of the third strand, I will first argue that a dichotomous perspective only provides simplistic and one-sided answers. Research rather has to deal with complex simultaneities of renegotiation and normalization. Secondly, the paper demonstrates that Queer Studies and Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) provide a convincing interpretation of the empirical findings in this field. I will illustrate their analytical productivity by the use of interview material from a research project on family-building processes of lesbian couples using donor insemination in Germany. The conclusion shows that a more complex concept of (biological) reproduction is needed that draws attention to the role of techniques, materiality, and artefacts and takes queer, non-medically assisted ways of reproduction into account.

Negotiating Women’s Agency through ICTs: A Comparative Study of Uganda and India

In the early wave of optimism surrounding “ICTs and development” beginning 2000, much attention was paid to the potential of ICTs for empowering women. It was suggested that new technologies could help marginalized women in developing countries in areas ranging from agriculture to education, empowering women both economically and socially. However, subsequent research illustrated that such a straight outcome was not always the case. ICT interventions could equally result in a negligible or even negative impact on existing gender relations. This research argues a third point: In many cases women decide the extent to which they will adopt a particular technology on the basis of how they think it will affect the gender equilibrium. Based on our respective doctoral fieldwork on the use of mobile phones by female street traders in urban Uganda and an IT center and community radio in rural India, we ask: How strategically do women in developing countries negotiate agency through ICTs? Through these two case studies, we apply two concepts of agency, namely, “adaptive preference” and “patriarchal bargain” to understand how women decide to adopt ICTs. Empowerment through ICTs is not unproblematic, nor is it impossible; it is, however, illustrative of contextual, situated agency.

Irony as Discipline: Self-Help and Gender in the Knowledge Economy

In this article, we explore the role of self-help literature within the knowledge economy. We point to the recent growth of ironic humour within such texts, and examine how this operates to construct gendered and embodied subjectivities that position women according to a masculine gaze. Drawing on empirical data from self-help books for career women published between 1997 and 2007, we analyse the styles of embodiment that these texts promote. We find that career women are encouraged to maintain a stance of constant attention to themselves and their bodily presentations, a position that is in line with wider cultural features of contemporary knowledge economy working. We note that ironic humour is deployed in ways that subtly reinforce existing gender relations within contemporary organizations. Our article contributes to debates on subjectivity within the knowledge economy; while scholars have pointed to an increasing normative emphasis on embodied performances, we provide insights into the mechanisms by which this occurs, with a specific focus upon the growing genre of self-help literature and its recent shift to ironic humour.