Female Subordination Research Articles

The double-edged sword of helping behavior in leader-follower dyads

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine potential consequences of helping behaviors on leader and follower relationship satisfaction and transformational leadership (TFL) ratings. It is argued that follower helping behaviors can violate leaders’ and followers’ expectations of each other, and especially disadvantage male leaders because of gender-role stereotypes.Design/methodology/approach– Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, data were collected from 61 dyads (25 male and 34 female supervisors, 23 male and 38 female subordinates, two participants did not disclose their gender;Mage=35.56 years, SD=10.41). In Study 2, data were collected from 125 participants (66 female and 58 male subordinates, 22 female and 25 male supervisors; 79 respondents did not disclose their gender;Mage=39.21 years, SD=11.25).Findings– Helping behaviors were positively associated with relationship satisfaction suggesting that leaders were amenable to receiving help from followers (Study 1). However, follower helping behaviors were negatively related to TFL ratings for male but not female leaders (Study 2).Research limitations/implications– While leaders may be amenable to increased follower involvement in leadership, future research is needed to investigate followers’ openness to, and intentions behind increasing their involvement in leadership, as well as strategies for leaders to mitigate unintended consequences.Practical implications– For the sake of their TFL ratings, leaders should minimize any direct benefit from follower helping behaviors, and emphasize how follower helping behaviors aid follower development and/or benefit the organization.Originality/value– The findings illustrate the dual-nature of follower helping behaviors: they have the potential to enhance leader relationship satisfaction, and also compromise perceptions of TFL.

From Single to Married: Feminist Teachers' Response to Family/Work Conflict in Early Twentieth-Century New York City

In 1914, Henrietta Rodman, a high school English teacher and president of the newly formed Feminist Alliance in New York City, announced her group's plan to develop a twelve-story cooperative apartment house, based on the ideas of feminist philosopher Charlotte Perkins Gilman, that would meet the needs of professional working women like her, married with children. This research illustrates strategic activities teachers used in their attempts to reconceptualize wage-earning as the legitimate province of women, regardless of their marital or maternal status, and highlights the Feminist Alliance's contention that women's lack of economic self-determination lay at the root of female subordination.

Gender Differences in the Impact of Empowering Leadership on Subordinate Outcomes

Over the past two decades, researchers have called for studies on how, why, and when empowering leadership is effective. Based on social role theory, we examined the moderating roles of leader gender and subordinate gender and the mediating role of identification with the leader in effectiveness of empowering leadership. We collected multi-source data from 53 leaders and 266 subordinates. Result suggested that the positive relationship between empowering leadership and subordinate’s leader identification was stronger for female leaders than for male leaders but weaker for female subordinates than for male subordinates. Among the four types of gender composition dyads, the positive relationship was the weakest for male leader-female subordinate dyad. In addition, subordinates showed higher in-role performance and more extra-role voice behavior when they were highly identified with the empowering leader. Contributions and limitation are discussed.

Clan Governance and State Stability: The Relationship between Female Subordination and Political Order

We propose that the relative influence of clans is an important explanatory factor producing significant variation in state stability and security across societies. We explore the micro-level processes that link clan predominance with dysfunctional syndromes of state behavior. Clans typically privilege agnatic descent from the patriline and are characterized by extreme subordination of women effected through marriage practices. Particular types of marriage practices give rise to particular types of political orders and may be fiercely guarded for just this reason. We construct and validate a Clan Governance Index to investigate which variables related to women's subordination to the patriline in marriage are useful to include in such an index. We then show that clan governance is a useful predictor of indicators of state stability and security, and we probe the value added by its inclusion with other conventional explanatory variables often linked to state stability and security.“I against my brothers; my brothers and I against my cousins; my cousins, my brothers, and I against the world” (Bedouin saying)“At the heart of tribes, to varying levels, is a severe patriarchy” (Jacobson 2013, 58).

Patriarchal Hierarchies of Power and the Subordination of Women: Real Doll as a Replacement of Woman Figure

The social structure of the family has always been in the state of transformation. In the past centuries, the nuclear family was replaced with a Patriarchal Family which lasted for only two centuries from 16th to the beginning of 18th century. In this new structure of the family, men were privileged to play the role of the master and the women were marginalized and subordinated. Recent years, however, has witnessed a re-adjustment of this order towards a more equal distribution of power relations. These changes in family structure has ever since initiated new conflicts leading to establishment of the physical and psychological bonds between men and dolls. The present study aims to find out the major socio-psychological reasons behind this conflict. In a qualitative library based study, the researchers attempt to analyse the video interview of some of the doll-owners. In the survey conducted in this study, the video of “Guys and Dolls”, BBC Video Documentary, has been shown to 10 participants, five male and five female. Then, a questionnaire was distributed to ask for their opinion based on their gender. The findings of this analysis reveal that women can hardly accept the notion of using dolls as replacement to real partners in comparison with men. On the contrary, the male participants advocated the employment of dolls as sexual replacement for the real woman figure. Keywords: Patriarchy, Real Doll, Oedipus complex, Female Subordination, Family

Impact of Wife Battering on the Family

Wife battering is a common phenomenon in developing countries especially in South Asia. Pakistan is no exception to this social phenomenon and especially in rural areas wife battering is common and accepted as norm to legitimize the domination of masculinity. To explore this social phenomenon, a study was conducted in the rural areas of District Toba Tek Singh of Province Punjab. Data was collected from the married women through a pre-designed interview schedule. More than half of the respondents were illiterate and married to blood relatives, mostly with first cousin. Low participation in decision making, female subordination and wife battering was a common phenomenon. Husband desire to dominate, instigation of in-laws, and husband addiction appeared to be the major reasons behind wife battering in the study area. Battering caused many psychological problems such as psychological stress, fear and humiliation in the entire family. The children who experienced the beating of their mother developed aggressive attitude and also turned into delinquents. Establishment of family counseling centers, involvement of print and electronic media to highlight influence of family violence against women through panel discussion involving victims, sociologist, psychologists and community leader will be fruitful to change the attitude towards spousal violence and violence against women. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s1p344

María Rosa Oliver (1898-1977), de la historia a la autobiografía

I n thi s pape r I conside r ce r tai n theoretica l pro b lem s tha t ar e lin k e d t o autobi o g raphical writing based on the analysis of the autobiography of the Argentinean writer Mar??a Rosa Oli- ver (1898-1977). The author weaves a very specific identity for herself ???as a feminist and an anti-fascist??? through the very process of writing her memoirs. In particular, I analyze the way her stories about her struggle against both Spanish and German fascism intersect with those about her struggle against female subordination, these being the specific modes she used to enact a broader challenge against the hegemonic ideology that naturalizes both class and gender inequality. However, there are also limits to this resistance, which are connected to autobiographical writing itself.

Conflict Management Styles of Female Androgynous Supervisor and Subordinate

The recent trends and challenges have brought dramatic changes in terms of creating virtual workplaces for both men and women. The present study aims to investigate feminine androgynous supervisors and subordinates who belong to rural and urban area and their differences in conflict management styles in work setting, research was conducted on the differences between status, residential area and preferred conflict management strategies. Identify the differences between androgynous female supervisor and subordinates and their adopted to resolve interpersonal conflict. The sample consisted of 220 Organizational androgynous female employees selected randomly from various branches of Rajkot districts. The Bem‟s Sex Role Orientation (BSRO) inventory adapted in Indian setting by Rao, Gupta and Murthy was used to measure gender role. Rahim‟s Organization Conflict Inventory (ROCI-II) was used to measure Conflict management style. The study reflects that significant effect between supervisor and subordinates conflict management styles and there was significant interactional effect of status and residential area.

Beyond Phallic Domain: Female Otherness as a Resource for Liberation: Some Notes From Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Poststructuralist Feminism.

The article explores the political derivations of psychoanalytical discourse on femininity, starting from the impact of Lacanian positions on feminist thought. The consideration of a dimension of absolute otherness of female sexuality, irreducible to masculinity and to a phallic domain--not-all phallic--theorized by Lacan in the 1970s, opens up many complex issues for the politics of women's liberation. It is a matter of living the absolute difference without either radically excluding it from the speakable or letting it be part of a romantic imagery of the otherness that perpetuates sexual hierarchy and, consequently, female subordination. Taking up the proposal of such authors as Julia Kristeva or Silvia Tubert, we suggest that the Lacanian theory offers the conceptual tools to shift from exclusion to re-volt, from the place of the Other as a pedestal for the Same to a political function of female otherness and of the "not-all" that it represents: a part of the Kultur and its difficulties, but not entangled in it to the point that it cannot bring any innovation.

WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT: EXAMINING LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION OF WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS IN INDONESIA AND THE USA

This article analyses cases of women entrepreneurs’ discourses about their life experiences of empowerment and their leadership communication acts that empower their female subordinates. Compilation of qualitative data fieldwork findings from Bandung, Indonesia were compared with two existing similar studies on women’s entrepreneurship in the US. Despite the cultural and geographic differences of the cases, research findings were generally uniform. Most of the entrepreneurs adopted two primary empowerment approaches related to leadership communications acts: transferring social awareness to encourage self-worth and transferring skills. We generally conclude that women entrepreneurs tend to create open communication, focus on the processes of “listening and persuading,” and show care for others.

“A Kiss is But a Kiss”: Cultural Mores, Ethical Relativism, and Sexual Harassment Liability

Sexual harassment legal liability has been one of the momentous legal outcomes of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This seminal civil rights law in Title VII governing employment expressly prohibits discrimination based on sex (that is, gender). Two areas the courts have defined as sexual harassment have been quid pro quo (meaning “this for that”) and hostile working environment. Quid pro quo claims take the form of “broken promises”, “favors”, or “threats” promised by male superiors to female subordinates in exchange for sexual favors or relationships. Hostile environment means any hostile, offensive, or intimidating action or environmental factor that would lead to the inability of the employee to work in a non-threatening atmosphere. This article examines the second type of sexual harassment cases – hostile environment. This article specifically focuses on certain physical aspects of perceived sexual harassment conduct, such as kissing, hugging, and touching, which in some cultures can be deemed as culturally and ethically appropriate but nonetheless can be perceived as hostile, offensive, abusive, intimidating, and threatening under the law. The authors present examples of socially acceptable behaviors around the world, analyze the legal ramifications, ethical implications, and cultural nuances, and then provide appropriate recommendations for business managers.

Popular culture and moral panics about ‘children at risk’: revisiting the sexualisation-of-young-girls debate

In an attempt to resist moral panics over children's media consumption, and especially girls' consumption of hyper-sexualised popular media, this paper aims to offer a more positive account of popular culture and young children's, especially girls', engagement with it. By adopting a historical approach to modern childhood and the moral panics associated with it, I argue that the consumption of entertainment media and popular culture is a leisure activity which, rather than facilitating or reinforcing female subordination and youth vulnerability, can be seen as a possible source of knowledge about sexuality, about the self and the social world. I draw on findings from qualitative research conducted in Athens with young schoolgirls aged 10–12 years about their favourite popular icons in order to examine the variety of their engagements with, readings and practices of popular culture. Their discursive accounts reveal the intricate ways in which pre-teenage girls make sense of fandom and stardom, discuss taste, fashion and body aesthetics, and construct notions of attractiveness and ethical selfhood.

Cultural Collision and Women Victimization in Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood

Buchi Emecheta is one of the most important female writers to emerge from Nigeria. She is distinguished for her vivid description of female subordination and conflicting cultural values in modern Africa. In Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood Nnu Ego, the protagonist, has to suffer as a wife both in the tribal environment in which she was born and the urban community in which she is compelled to live the rest of her life. Nnu Ego has to suffer because these two environments have different cultures. She falls a victim of the tension of the collision of these two conflicting cultures. This collision occurs between the institutions of the traditional Ibo society and the institution of Western Europe. The hardships that Nnu Ego experiences are the result of the clash between the Ibo traditions and the colonized Lagos. It is a clash of traditions, values and priorities. Nnu Ego is victimzed because of what the village (Ibuza) community demands her to do, on the one hand, and what the rules of a European political regime requires her to be. She finds herself in a predicament as she has to assume different roles in accordance with the values of the surrounding communities in which she has to live. She escapes from Ibuza because she is not accepted as a wife who cannot produce children. She flees to the distant city of Lagos to start a new life with another husband with the hope of fulfilling her dream of carrying children. This dream is rooted in the cultural values of the Ibo society where motherhood is the primary source of female self- esteem and public status. In Lagos Nnu Ego fulfills her dream of motherhood and begets a lot of children but the pleasures associated with motherhood are negated by the difficult economic conditions of her new urban community and its norms and values. She has to work day in and day out as a street-side peddler to sustain her children because her husband is away working for the colonizers most of the time. Nnu Egos has to adapt to the system that is devastating to maintain her role as a traditional wife and mother regardless of the fact that this system works against the success of that role and ends up with contributing to her subjugation.

The Meanings of Independence in the Oral Autobiographies of Rural Women in Twentieth-Century New York

This essay explores what rural women called “independence” when they were growing up in New York State during the early twentieth century. They wanted to get an education and a job, but most saw nothing wrong with the prospect of farming except for the poverty it often entailed. They were most concerned about what, in retrospect, they called “male domination” and “female subordination,” which, at the time, was epitomized by the saying: “The man is the boss; the father is the head of the house.” In their eyes, working for wages before they married, contributing their savings to the down payment for the land they bought with their husband and, later on, sharing the farm work and earning money to support the family all put them in a better position in their marriage, helping to ensure that their opinions were listened to and that they provided for their children’s future.

Reduce Ourselves to Zero?: Sabina Lovibond, Iris Murdoch, and Feminism

In her book Iris Murdoch, Gender and Philosophy, Sabina Lovibond argues that Iris Murdoch's philosophical and literary work is covertly dedicated to an ideology of female subordination. The most central and interesting aspect of her multifaceted argument concerns Murdoch's focus on the individual person's moral self‐scrutiny and transformation of consciousness. Lovibond suggests that this focus is antithetical to the kind of communal and structural criticism of society that has been essential for the advance of feminism. She further reads Murdoch's dismissal of “structuralism” as proof of Murdoch's alleged conservatism and neglect of feminist concerns. In this article I will argue that this line of argument—though not completely off‐base concerning the awkwardness of Murdoch's relation to feminism—(1) gives a misleading picture of Murdoch's philosophical and ideological position, and (2) establishes a problematic (though not unusual) antagonism between moral self‐scrutiny and social criticism, which a closer look at Murdoch's work can help us overcome.

The Politics of Love: Sexuality, Gender, and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama by Rebecca Joubin

<i>The Politics of Love: Sexuality, Gender, and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama</i> by Rebecca Joubin

Group composition, relatedness, and dispersal in the cooperatively breeding cichlid Neolamprologus obscurus

Cooperative breeding has been studied intensively in many species of birds and mammals but remain less well studied in fish. We report a remarkable new example of a cooperatively breeding cichlid from Lake Tanganyika, Neolamprologus obscurus. Using field observations and microsatellite DNA analyses, we studied group structure, helping behavior, relatedness, and dispersal of this species. We present four major observations. First, large territorial breeding males mated with one to eight breeding females, each of which was territorial and unrelated to another. Second, one to ten smaller fish (“subordinates”) of both sexes were allowed to stay inside the breeding females’ territories. Subordinates were often highly related to both the respective breeding male and female and performed territory defense and shelter maintenance, which is regarded as helping behaviors. Third, one to three subordinate males, similar in size to breeding females, were allowed to stay inside a breeding male’s territory but were not tolerated in the breeding females’ territories. Pairwise relatedness suggests these individuals are usually sons of the respective breeding male. Fourth, pairwise relatedness estimates suggest that juveniles delay dispersal and assist their mothers in raising offspring. As female subordinates grow up, they leave the father’s territory and disperse into other groups. In contrast, male subordinates leave their mother’s territory but remain within the territory of their father. The described social system makes N. obscurus a promising new model species to study the evolution of cooperative breeding.

When Accomplishments Come Back to Haunt You: The Negative Effect of Competence Signals on Women's Performance Evaluations

This research explores the possibility that the very accomplishments that are critical to success during the hiring process (e.g., educational attainment, promotion history) can lead to a drop in future performance evaluations for women. We theorized that evaluators may see such competence signals as a threat to the traditional gender hierarchy, which leads to a negative bias when evaluating women's on‐the‐job performance. In Study 1, we examined this hypothesis among commanding officers in the U.S. military, who gave lower performance ratings to female subordinates whose pay grade approached their own. The same was not true for male subordinates. Studies 2, 3a, and 3b experimentally tested the boundary conditions of this effect using two additional competence signals (educational attainment and past career successes) and 2 different populations. Across these studies, we replicated the negative relationship between competence signal strength and performance evaluations for female subordinates but only under conditions in which the evaluator would be particularly likely to experience gender hierarchy threat. Specifically, it emerged when the evaluator was male and high social‐dominance oriented and when the female subordinate's objective on‐the‐job performance was high. Finally, Study 3a demonstrated how organizations can mitigate this negative bias by using objective (rather than subjective) performance evaluations.

Adulterio femenino, divorcio y honor en la escena decimonónica española. El debate social en la recepción de &lt;em&gt;El nudo gordiano,&lt;/em&gt; de Eugenio Sellés (1842-1926)

In the second half of 19th century Spain, discourse on social stability and female subordination —also referred to as «domesticity»— found its place in the theater through the representation of such themes as honor, female adultery, virtue and death. At the same time, theatrical discourse reinforced the current ideology and morality —even psychological and legislative discourse— and sanctioned behavioral models that sought to undermine the prevailing bourgeois social order. As a methodological example, we refer to the work entitled El nudo gordiano, by Eugenio Selles y Angel, one of a generation of playwrights born around the decade of the 1840s. The ending proposed by this author, namely, the death of the adulterous wife, occupied the center of all the possible immediate reactions, including responses from spectators, critics and analysts, authors and jurists, etc. For this reason we also discuss the critical reception of this work, taking note of its social and literary repercussions.

Gender differences in the impact of leadership styles on subordinate embeddedness and job satisfaction

It is not surprising that subordinates generally prefer high-quality relationships with their supervisors. However, gender may influence the specific characteristics subordinates use to make this judgment, thereby impacting important downstream workplace processes and outcomes. Drawing from Social Role Theory, we use moderated mediation analyses across two independent samples to show that communally oriented leader–member exchange (LMX) dimensions (i.e., Affect and Loyalty) positively influence the job embeddedness of female (but not male) subordinates, whereas agentically oriented LMX dimensions (i.e., Professional Respect and Contribution) influence both genders equally. We found these effects despite strong LMX facet intercorrelations (ranging from r=.68 to .81), thereby highlighting the utility of testing theoretically driven dimensional effects, even when facets overlap significantly.