Feminist Poststructuralist Approach Research Articles

‘Creamy and seductive’: Gender surveillance in flight attendant work

Despite attempts by airlines and the wider tourism industry to cultivate more diverse working environments, gendered practices and pressures persist. A feminist poststructuralist approach involving interviews with flight attendants from three airlines is used to examine how airlines attempt to construct the ideal aesthetic flight attendant, and how individual workers may resist these gendered practices through their work. The findings demonstrate that airlines consistently shape and discipline flight attendants' gendered grooming performances through rules, peer-surveillance and engendering self-regulation. While flight attendants occasionally employ subtle forms of resistance, they primarily adhere to traditional gender norms. The paper provides a conceptual shift from binary perspectives on surveillance in tourism work to a relational understanding that reveals circulatory force.

Gendered Instagram representations in the aviation industry

Air transport and tourism are interdependent systems wherein idealized gender performances are shaped by organizational cultures and particular commercial interests that have implications for gendered representations. Organizations use social media spaces to influence public perceptions, yet in doing so they may (re)construct hegemonic notions pertaining to images of masculinity and femininity. This paper utilizes a feminist poststructuralist approach to deconstruct normative gendered assumptions that exist within the aviation sector’s use of Instagram. Netnography is used to uncover the dominant discourses, as well as the complex representations of gender as represented by airlines on Instagram. Findings reveal that despite a minority of images that defy stereotypes, the airlines consistently construct and distribute playful imagery that objectifies female staff and hyper-feminizes the cabin space. In uncovering how airline organizational images may portray employees in gendered ways, this paper contributes to the achievement of SDG 5 i.e. gender equality in tourism. The paper recommends that the industry incorporates more diverse performances across all aviation occupational roles so that images that challenge stereotypes become part of the everyday.

Reshaping gender in airline employment

Air transport and tourism are interdependent systems wherein representations of gender are shaped by organisational cultures. Although airlines have progressed their gender balance, cabin crew work remains archetypically feminine. Taking a feminist poststructuralist approach, this paper uses thematic document analysis to examine how gendered discourses are constituted within airline organisational narratives through text, gestures and symbolic signs. Findings reveal that while airlines work to increase gender equality in employment practices, their efforts predominantly focus on the cockpit, neglecting roles beyond the flight deck. The paper recommends airlines broaden their gender equity focus to all roles and provides a basis for reshaping airlines' gender policies and practices.

Second Opinions: Negotiating Agency in Online Mothering Forums.

Online forums and other virtual communities are an increasing source of postpartum support and information for first-time mothers. However, there is little evidence about how new mothers in Canada access and use online resources. The purpose of this study was to examine how first-time mothers accessed information and support both online and off-line during the first six months postpartum and how their experiences were constructed through social and institutional discourses. A qualitative feminist poststructuralist approach was used to analyze an online discussion board with first-time mothers in Nova Scotia. Mothers who used the online discussion board experienced a sense of community with other mothers where empathy and encouragement were integral to the ways in which information and support were shared. "Weak ties" (with strangers) were important and led to the following themes: (a) empathy, encouragement, and information; (b) socialization; (c) blurring the boundaries of online and off-line networks; and (d) Developing community. These online forums offer insight for health professionals looking to improve mothers' care postpartum and point to a need to foster spaces for new mothers to talk to each other.

Drawing Fear of Difference: Race, Gender, and National Identity in Ms. Marvel Comics

Feminist scholars have provided important analyses of the gendered and racialised discourses used to justify the Global War on Terror. They show how post-9/11 policies were made possible through particular binary constructions of race, gender, and national identity in official discourse. Turning to popular culture, this article uses a Queer feminist poststructuralist approach to look at the ways that Ms. Marvel comics destabilise and contest those racialised and gendered discourses. Specifically, it explores how Ms. Marvel provides a reading of race, gender, and national identity in post-9/11 USA that challenges gendered-racialised stereotypes. Providing a Queer reading of Ms. Marvel that undermines the coherence of Self/Other binaries, the article concludes that to write, draw, and circulate comics and the politics they depict is a way of intervening in international relations that imbues comics with the power to engage in dialogue with and (re)shape systems of racialised-gendered domination and counter discriminatory legislation. Dibujando miedo a la diferencia: raza, género e identidad nacional en Ms. Marvel Comics

‘I don’t want to play with the Barbie boy’: Understanding Gender-Based Bullying in a Kindergarten in Indonesia

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of gender-based bullying in a kindergarten. Such places are often depicted as innocent spaces, and hence, teachers often overlook the fact that bullying could also take place. This paper is based on an ethnographic study, conducted in a kindergarten in Indonesia. Twenty-eight children and four teachers participated in this study. Drawing from feminist poststructuralist approaches, this paper illuminates the kindergarten as a site where heteronormativity is promoted. Using the experiences of young boys who do not conform to the dominant and traditional gender values in the school, the findings demonstrate how gender-based bullying takes place. The findings also reflect how increasing homophobia in Indonesia is channelled in kindergarten. The paper shows how larger socio-political discourses in Indonesia influence the school. Finally, it is suggested that teachers in early childhood education (ECE) should have a gendered lens in understanding children’s play to tackle gender-based bullying in the school context.

Carefree conferences? Academics with caring responsibilities performing mobile academic subjectivities

ABSTRACTThis article explores how academics with caring responsibilities negotiate the mobility imperative, with specific reference to attending conferences. We argue that, in the neoliberal and ‘careless’ context of higher education, negotiating conflicting identities of academic and carer are fraught with tensions for carers as they try to reconcile the mobility imperative with their caring responsibilities. We acknowledge and also challenge the naturalised relationship between care and femininity, and use a feminist poststructuralist approach to analyse the competing discourses surrounding academic and care work. We draw on two distinct, but related, research projects with predominantly UK-based participants. Moreau’s project (‘Carers and Careers’, 2015–2017) explored how academic carers negotiate academic cultures which tend to render care work invisible, using interviews with academic carers and policy staff. Henderson’s project (‘In Two Places at Once’, 2017–2018) focused on the impact of caring responsibilities on academics’ conference participation, using diary-interview method.

EHealth versus equity: Using a feminist poststructural framework to explore the influence of perinatal eHealth resources on health equity.

To explore whether and how eHealth resources targeted to families during the perinatal period effectively reach a diverse population or further oppress marginalised groups. eHealth is often intended to reach a broad population, thus health content must be relatively generalised which limits the ability to tailor health education and interventions to individual needs. Generalisation of health information has historically represented a hegemonic depiction of the health consumer, especially within the perinatal period, often disregarding the diversity that exists in the world and perpetuating heteronormative constructs within healthcare systems as a result. A critical review of the literature regarding perinatal eHealth resources was conducted using a feminist poststructuralist approach for analysis. Included literature addresses the development, implementation and/or evaluation of perinatal eHealth resources. This approach uncovered hegemonic discourses related to the current state of perinatal eHealth resources. Nurses and midwives have the unique advantage of interacting and understanding diverse populations. Thus, nurses and midwives are integral to the development, implementation and evaluation of eHealth resources to reduce social health inequity. This paper acts as an exemplar on how to apply feminist poststructuralism to highlight inequities that exist and identifies strategies for nurses and midwives to become involved in the development of eHealth resources or advocate for greater visibility within current resources.

Young feminists, feminism and digital media

Over recent years, young feminist activism has assumed prominence in mainstream media where news headlines herald the efforts of schoolgirls in fighting sexism, sexual violence and inequity. Less visible in the public eye, girls’ activism plays out in social media where they can speak out about gender-based injustices experienced and witnessed. Yet we know relatively little about this significant social moment wherein an increasing visibility of young feminism cohabits a stubbornly persistent postfeminist culture. Acknowledging the hiatus, this paper draws on a qualitative project with teenage feminists to explore how girls are using and producing digital feminist media, what it means for them to do so and how their online practice connects with their offline feminism. Using a feminist poststructuralist approach, analyses identified three key constructions of digital media as a tool for feminist practice: online feminism as precarious and as knowledge sharing; and feminism as “doing something” on/offline. Discussing these findings, I argue that there is marked continuity between girls’ practices in “safe” digital spaces and feminisms practised in other historical and geographical locations. But crucially, and perhaps distinctly, digital media are a key tool to connect girls with feminism and with other feminists in local and global contexts.

‘My [asexuality] is playing hell with my dating life’: Romantic identified asexuals negotiate the dating game

While academic attention to asexuality has increased in recent years, there is still relatively little research into the relational lives of romantic identified asexuals, and less still on the gendered dimensions of these. This article aims to address these research gaps by examining the ways in which 13 self-identified romantic asexuals living in New Zealand experience and navigate dating practices/finding somebody. I employ a feminist poststructuralist approach to explore the ways in which the pervasiveness of hook up culture and gendered discourses of sexuality both constrain and enable possibilities for developing partnered relationships with non-asexuals.

‘Can we have a child exchange?’ Constructing and subverting the ‘good mother’ through play in Mumsnet Talk

This article uses a feminist poststructuralist approach to explore how contributors to a single thread from the discussion forum of a popular British parenting website, Mumsnet Talk, position themselves as ‘good mothers’. The qualitative analysis that is presented here, which draws on both the concept of indexicality and Goffman’s ‘frame analysis’, shows that Mumsnet users are able to negotiate the discursive forces that merge to produce the good mother subject position in innovative ways. They are able to position themselves as good mothers in a way that is both normative and transformative – to both legitimise and subvert the discourses that work to position them in this way. This exploration leads me to suggest that the Mumsnet Talk forum can be seen as a space in which dominant discourses continue to position individuals in restricted gendered subjectivities, but is also a fruitful site for the negotiation, resistance and subversion of cultural norms.

Power and resistance within the hospital's hierarchical system: the experiences of chronically ill patients.

To explore experiences of chronically ill patients and registered nurses when they negotiate patient care in hospital settings. Specifically, we explored how social and institutional discourses shape power relations during the negotiation process. The hospital system is embedded in a hierarchical structure where the voice of the healthcare provider as expert is often given more importance than the patient. This system has been criticised as being oppressive to patients who are perceived to be lower in the hierarchy. In this study, we illustrate how the hospital's hierarchical system is not always oppressing but can also create moments of empowerment for patients. A feminist poststructuralist approach informed by the teaching of Foucault was used to explore power relations between nurses and patients when negotiating patient care in hospital settings. Eight individuals who suffered from chronic illness shared their stories about how they negotiated their care with nurses in hospital settings. The interviews were tape-recorded. Discourse analysis was used to analyse the data. Patients recounted various experiences when their voices were not heard because the current hospital system privileged the healthcare provider experts' advice over the patients' voice. The hierarchical structure of hospital supported these dynamics by privileging nurses as gatekeepers of service, by excluding the patients' input in the nursing notes and through a process of self-regulation. However, patients in this study were not passive recipients of care and used their agency creatively to resist these discourses. Nurses need to be mindful of how the hospital's hierarchical system tends to place nurses in a position of power, and how their authoritative position may positively or adversely affect the negotiation of patient care.

Women as leaders of higher education institutions: a British–German comparison

Across the vast majority of countries women are a significant minority in senior academic positions, and as of 2013 only 17% of vice chancellors (VCs) of UK universities and 12% of German Universities were women. This paper discusses findings from a study consisting of interviews with eight female VCs of British and German higher education institutions. The paper takes a feminist poststructuralist approach to look at the ways in which characteristics of ‘ideal’ leaders in academia are discursively produced in a myriad of gendered ways, and looks at the influence of dominant academic cultures, status of institutions and national policy landscapes. From an analysis of the findings we argue that in addition to increasing the numerical proportion of women leaders in academia, work also crucially needs to be done to challenge academic cultural practices and dominant gendered conceptualisations of the ‘leader’.

Embodied women in the work context: The case of Portuguese businesswomen and their female subordinates

Synopsis Drawing on a feminist poststructuralist approach, this exploratory research studies the embodied construction of female workers produced in two focus groups of Portuguese businesswomen when they discuss their female subordinates. We sought to understand the positioning ascribed by the businesswomen to the female body in relation to an ideal professional body and its implications for the relations between the businesswomen and their subordinate female coworkers. An analysis of the group interactions shows that the embodied constructions of female workers entail two opposing interpretative repertoires through which the businesswomen participate in the discipline and/or resistance of the female employees' bodies to a professional masculine and heteronormative discourse. We also reflect upon the implications of the power relations between women in the conception and perceived adequacy of the female body in the work context.

A case study of gendered play in preschools: how early childhood educators’ perceptions of gender influence children's play

ABSTRACTThis research aimed to explore children's play in relation to gender stereotypes and beliefs and practices of educators in preschool settings. A feminist poststructuralist approach framed the design of the research and data were collected in two settings through predetermined categories of play during periods of spontaneous free play. The question asked in this research was, do early childhood educators’ perceptions of gender influence children's play? Findings suggest that there were differences between these two settings and these differences are explained through individual beliefs and practices of the educators.

Taking Up the Vitality Message

Currently, in Canada and elsewhere in the West, government spending, media, and health activities focus heavily on “lifestyles” and the “obesity epidemic.” In the last decade, many health and education professionals in Canada have adopted policies to improve health and fitness among youth, seeing them particularly “at risk” for engaging in unhealthy practices. Canada’s Vitality message of learning how to eat well, be active, and feel good about one’s self serves as the health promotion framework guiding our analysis of children’s constructions of health. Adults and youth readily identify with dominant health messages related to eating and being physically active but only rarely acknowledge any sense of embodiment or feeling good. Research with adults, embodiment, and health suggests that feeling good about one’s health and body is an impossible proposition as learning to care for the body is a constant and obligatory individual responsibility with limited possibilities of contentment. Health must be consistently and continuously worked at, making body-related projects a health imperative. We argue that learning how youth feel and experience health in relation to feeling good and pleasure is also imperative given the complex and contested relationships individuals have with health. Based on focus groups with 123 Grade 2 and Grade 4 students in Newfoundland, we use a feminist poststructuralist approach to examine how children understand healthy practices and messages about the ideal “healthy” body. A thematic and performance analysis combining talk, drawings, and talking about the artistic productions reveals children’s complicated relation to health and the body, where pleasure figures centrally and opens up possibilities for alternative conceptions of self and embodiment. We propose a serious investigation of children’s sense of pleasure and “having fun” as a fruitful avenue of research for critical scholars who aim to challenge dominant discourses of health and the body.

Preteen girls, magazines, and the negotiation of young sexual femininity

The focus on, and concern about, young girls and preteens or ‘tweens’ relates to the ‘sexualisation’ of girlhood and the notion that girls are ‘growing up too fast’ and becoming ‘too sexy too soon’. In both popular and academic accounts, ‘tween’ magazines and the increasingly ‘sexualised’ images in teen magazines have been framed as significant contributors to this process. Yet, research on the ways in which preteen girls read these magazines has been notably absent. In this paper, we examine the magazine consumption and reading practices of 71 preteen girls in a New Zealand study. We employ a feminist poststructuralist approach to explore the ways in which participants employ the interpretative repertoires of ‘too young’, ‘too old', and ‘just right’ to categorise ‘tween’ and ‘teen’ magazines based on their sexual content and mark belonging to and/or distance from the categories of child, ‘tween', and teenager.

‘If you grow them, know them’: Discursive constructions of the pink ribbon culture of breast cancer in the Australian context

The ‘pink ribbon culture’ dominates understandings of breast cancer in Western societies. We describe this as an ‘illness culture’, consisting of neoliberal discourses and practices, which construct the breast cancer experience. We take a feminist post-structuralist approach to review current breast cancer lay materials available to women in Australia, to examine how breast cancer is discursively constructed within this context. Further, we consider how women with breast cancer are positioned and what the implications are for women’s lives. We discuss neoliberal discourses of ‘individual responsibility and empowerment’ and ‘optimism’, and the central practices that focus on individual health behaviours and survivorship. This illness culture has productive and restrictive effects for women’s subjectivity. Whilst women are positioned as ‘empowered’ regarding their health, this comes at the price of self-regulation and responsibility. Support and information additionally reposition women in feminine, heteronormative ways, whilst excluding women who do not fit narrow cultural stereotypes.

Preschool teachers' approaches to care and gender differences within a child-centred pedagogy: findings from an Indonesian kindergarten

Globally, the child-centred approach to education has influenced practitioners' views of young children as having democratic rights. A key principle of this concept is the belief that each child is unique and can only be compared in relation to their own performance. Here we employ a feminist poststructuralist approach to critique the child-centred discourse which normalises children's behaviour, situating children's different and non-normal behaviour as the other – including children's gendered behaviour. Drawing on data from the first author's ethnography of gender relations in Kopo kindergarten in Bandung Indonesia, we attempt to explore how the concepts of ‘care’ and ‘difference’ were used and negotiated by staff. Findings suggest that a visible surveillance of children is maintained in settings and is used by teachers as a form of social control. Teachers interpret their caring role in ways that perpetuate traditional gendered behaviour. It is concluded that there is a need to expand the notion of care by respecting differences, including gender differences, in children's behaviour.

Policing femininity, affirming masculinity: relationship violence, control and spatial limitation

In this article, a feminist poststructuralist approach to discourse analysis is applied to examine the accounts of 35 Vincentian women and men on men's enactment of a range of violent, controlling and coercive acts in heterosexual relationships. The social languages participants employ in their explanations of men's abusive practices, and how these implicate particular gendered subject positions are discussed. Nested within this discussion is an exploration of how women's personal autonomy is regulated and contested in the context of violent intimate unions. Acts of violence by men, coupled with the threat of violence and other forms of control, serve to limit women's ability to navigate between the so-called private/domestic and other social spaces. Similar limits do not exist for men in these unions. This double standard is often presented as an effect of traditional and/or transcendental arrangements of gender in men's narratives, while women range between subverting and affirming dominant scripts of womanhood and manhood in speech.