Cultural Gender Research Articles

Spaces of change: Everyday gender activism through near‐peer gender and sexuality workshops with young people in the UK

AbstractThis paper explores ‘near‐peer’ gender and sexuality workshops taking place in UK secondary schools in support of the nationally required relationships and sex education curriculum. In line with UK law, these workshops promote respect, kindness and communication in a framework that explicitly validates LGBTQI+ identities, relationships and family structures. Based on interviews with 24 gender workshop facilitators, we explore the kind of practices that are needed to create spaces in which young people can openly reflect on their views about gender and sexuality, and advance the above‐noted goals of promoting respect, kindness and empathy for people of all genders and sexualities. We argue that gender workshops constitute an important and under‐explored space of ‘everyday’ activism. We further argue that through practices of atmosphere curation and the near‐peer relational dynamic between facilitators and participants, these workshops create valuable spaces for young people to critically reflect on their views and attitudes about gender and sexuality in a way that does not exist elsewhere. This work extends understanding about the kinds of spatial practices that might be needed to bring forth more positive gender cultures, and deepens our understanding about the experiences and functioning of ‘everyday’ work for social change that takes place outside of ‘high profile’ activist sites such as marches, demonstrations and protests.

Gender, Body and Subjectivity: A Study of Ballroom Gender Culture from the Perspective of Post-Modern Gender Theory

With the in-depth discussion of individual independence and self-consciousness in the post-modern social context, the construction of social identity has increasingly become an important part of individuals seeking their own interests and the legitimacy of existence. The problem of social identity essentially points to social stratification and the flow of social structure, and it is social culture and mass culture that play a key role in it. Corresponding to the mainstream mass culture, the minority culture and subculture accommodate the marginalized groups. Among them, ballroom culture is an important foundation for homosexual and other sexual minorities and vulnerable groups to resist the mainstream cultural discipline. Ballroom provides certain material and spiritual support for the marginalized vulnerable groups in society, which is the cultural space for the survival of sexual minorities. This article attempts to start from the theoretical writings of Foucault, Butler and other scholars in postmodern gender theories, and explore the corresponding issues of gender, body symbols and subject identity involved in ballroom culture.

대학생의 성인지 감수성, 성 태도, 성 의사소통이 성적 자율성에 미치는 영향

This study aimed to provide basic data for developing a program to improve sexual autonomy and create desirable gender culture. As gender-related problems have emerged as an important issue in college students, the importance of education and practice to protect oneself from sexual problems and cultivate the ability to maintain sexual health is emphasized. Reflecting these changes, this study attempted to examine the degree of gender sensitivity, sexual attitude, sexual communication, and sexual autonomy and then identify the correlation between gender sensitivity, sexual attitude, sexual communication, and sexual autonomy. Also, it attempted to identify factors affecting sexual autonomy in college students. The study subjects were unmarried men and women, with 230 attending a university in D city. The collected data were analyzed frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, Pearson's Correlation Coefficients, and Multiple Regression using the SPSS Win 28.0 statistical program. As a result of the study, the subject's gender sensitivity was an average of 4.18 points out of 5 points, sexual attitude was 3.38 points, sexual communication was 3.07 points, and sexual autonomy was 4.23 points. And it analyzed the difference in gender sensitivity, sexual attitude, sexual communication, and sexual autonomy according to the general characteristics of the subject. There was a significant difference in gender sensitivity by gender (t=-4.77, p<.001), grade (F=3.39, p=.019), and dating experience (t=-5.24, p<.001). And there was a significant difference in sexual communication by gender (t=-3.08, p=.001) and grade (F=3.84, p=.010), and there was a significant difference in sexual autonomy by gender (t=-2.02, p=.023) and interpersonal satisfaction (F=8.64, p<.001). Sexual autonomy was positively related to gender sensitivity (r=.216, p=.004), sexual attitude (r=.301, p<.001), and sexual communication(r=.336, p<.001). Sexual attitude was positively related to sexual communication (r=.424, p<.001) and gender sensitivity (r=.260, p<.001). The influencing factors in college students' sexual autonomy were sexual communication (β=0.306, p<.001), gender (β=.231, p<.001), interpersonal satisfaction (β=0.182, p=.003), gender sensitivity (β=0.155, p=.015), and sexual attitude (β=0.136, p=.043) and the explanatory power was 26.7%. In other words, the higher sexual communication and sexual attitude, interpersonal satisfaction, and gender sensitivity, the higher sexual autonomy. It was also confirmed that female students had higher sexual autonomy than male students. The results suggested the need to develop an integrated and systematic intervention program that can enhance the sexual autonomy of college students so that they can develop the ability to prevent sexual problems on their own. Through this, it is expected that one will not only take the initiative in one's sexuality but also contribute to forming a proper sexual value that can protect the rights of the other person and create a desirable sexual culture.

Culture and Gender Differences in Willingness to Compete

Abstract We investigate how culture affects gender differences in willingness to compete in a large pre-registered experiment using an epidemiological approach. Our sample of 1,943 Norwegians with parents born in 59 different countries shows a smaller gender gap in willingness to compete among individuals of more gender-equal ancestries. The difference is driven by women with parents from more gender-equal countries wanting to compete more and men with the same ancestry wanting to compete less. The results are robust to controlling for a large set of factors at the individual, parental and ancestral country levels, indicating that gendered culture shapes competitive preferences.

Technologies for the Development of Gender Culture in Cooperation With the Family and Educational Institutions

In this article, technologies for the development of high gender culture in cooperation between families and educational institutions, as well as training and retraining of pedagogical specialists in conducting training sessions on the formation of gender culture of students in this regard, do not play a decisive role. On the contrary, the article discusses with the worldview of the teacher, his personal example as a person in the development of girls and boys at school, as well as the desire to clarify and confirm the stereotype of the gender role and gender inequality. Gender equality is consistent not only with the roles, tasks and needs of women and men, but also with the interdependence between them. Gender equality is the process of being fair for women and men. Gender equality requires the same use of socially important financial and spiritual resources, opportunities, conditions, abilities and intellect by women and men. When there is gender inequality in this regard, women's interests are usually limited. Therefore, an important feature of ensuring gender equality is to provide the balance of forces, that is, to create conditions for both men and women to manage their lives, to expand their abilities and potential.

Chaucer's gender‐oriented philosophy in The Canterbury Tales

AbstractThe manipulation of gender in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is utterly opaque. While “The Knight's Tale” potentially entices readers to think that Chaucer defines a woman regarding her relationship to man, “The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale” suggests that the poet views a woman as an independent figure whose identity has nothing to do with man. This apparently controversial portrait of gender causes some critics to read Chaucer as a pro‐woman individual; simultaneously, it inspires other critics to view the poet as anti‐feminist. Such debate may cause readers to misjudge Chaucer's multifaceted approach towards gender as well as other hypersensitive topics, thus adding to the atmosphere of complexity and lack of clarity that dominates The Tales. Accordingly, this paper revisits Chaucer's gender‐oriented philosophy in The Tales sieving what is conjectured by the poem’s critics from what is said by the poet himself regarding gender. The paper concludes that Chaucer has never had the choice to overtly be or not to be the friend of woman but has always adopted a fence‐sitting strategy concerning the question of gender due to his sociopolitical status. The paper confirms that Chaucer's viewpoint of women is neither feminist nor anti‐feminist but a realistic amalgamation that mirrors the opaque gender culture of England in the fourteenth century.

Marketing in the digital age: cultural values as agents of socially responsible marketing in the digital economy

The purpose of the article is to determine the relationship between the characteristics of social marketing stakeholders and the degree of development of marketing systems in the digital economy. The results of the study are based on a critical analysis of the tools and processes of functioning of marketing systems in the context of digitalisation, and the changes it causes in marketing systems at basic and extended levels due to specific features inherent in the digital economy. The concept of cultural dimensions by Hofstede (2010) is applied to determine the collective behavioural characteristics of the most numerous stakeholders of social marketing, which are members of society in selected countries. A positive statistically significant correlation between the share of online shoppers against the indulgence index (R=.77) and the individualism index (R=.73) was found. There is a negative statistically significant correlation between the share of online shoppers against uncertainty avoidance (R=-.76), power distance (R=-.67), gender culture type (R=-.27) and long-term orientation (R=-.27). In general, a significant part of the expected impact of uncertainty avoidance is taken over by mechanisms that guarantee the protection of personal data from unauthorised use and security from fraud and crime committed in cyberspace.

:Women’s Patronage and Gendered Cultural Networks in Early Modern Europe: Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsWomen’s Patronage and Gendered Cultural Networks in Early Modern Europe: Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Adelina Modesti. London: Routledge, 2020. 297 pp. $128.00. ISBN 9781315200125.Maria Galli StampinoMaria Galli StampinoUniversity of Miami Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal Volume 17, Number 2Spring 2023 Published for the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/721864 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Cultural Roots of Violence against Women: Individual and Institutional Gender Norms in 12 Countries

To discuss the cultural roots of violence against women (VAW), this study focuses on individual gender norms, prescriptive gender role expectations, moral justification of VAW, and institutional gender norms that define gender cultures, that provide opportunities for VAW, and legitimize roles and behaviors. We used indicators of gender norms related to VAW from different sources to provide an overview of 12 countries (Armenia, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey, and Ukraine). The indicators include individual gender role attitudes and justification of wife beating from the World Values Survey; information on national legislation and institutional discrimination from the Social Institution Gender Index from the OECD; and each country’s position on the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence—a transnational platform with relevant transformative power that has been opposed by anti-Europeanists. Although situations vary significantly in the different countries, this explorative study suggests that eradicating the cultural roots of VAW is more difficult in societies in which rigid traditional gender roles and a strongly patriarchal culture in legislation and institutions are supported by moral views legitimizing violence as a form of punishment for challenging prescribed gender roles.

Retention over Attraction: A Review of Women’s Experiences in the Australian Construction Industry; Challenges and Solutions

Despite substantial investments and efforts by governments, construction organisations, and researchers, the construction industry remains one of the most male-dominated industries in Australia, with women being underrepresented numerically and hierarchically. Efforts to attract and retain women in construction have been implemented inconsistently on an ad hoc basis. As part of a larger research project that focuses on retaining women in the Australian construction industry, this research conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. The objective is to explore the factors that influence women’s careers and their experiences in the Australian construction industry that have been identified in the literature over the past three decades. Additionally, the findings are anticipated to inform future efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of current initiatives to retain women and develop a framework for enhancing women’s experiences and retaining them in this profession. This SLR revealed that excessive and rigid work hours, gendered culture and informal rules, limited career development opportunities, and negative perceptions of women’s abilities are the main factors and issues that cause women to leave the industry. Among these, rigid and long work hours seem to be the foremost factor to be prioritised. Understanding the roles of key variables in driving this cultural change is important to ensure that concrete progress is made. The paper draws three major aspects from the literature in which solutions and policies can be researched, designed and implemented.

Working From Home and the Triple Role of Women in the Context of COVID-19-Induced Lockdowns in Zimbabwe

Based on the analysis of 20 in-depth interviews held with employed women in Zimbabwe, this paper uses Moser’s ‘triple role framework’ to make sense of how they juggled production, reproduction and community roles while working from home during the COVID-19-induced lockdowns. It finds that although the enmeshing of the domestic and work spaces yielded different gendered dynamics for women, like ‘role overload’ and the ‘confusion of priorities’, destabilised gender relations and other challenges they faced were primarily perpetuated by patriarchy, hegemony and other dominant gender cultures. Men and women are, therefore, each differently associated with and differently valued in space.

Challenges in family policy research

In the third millennium, family policies have become the most dynamic part of welfare state policies in developed countries and the forerunners of welfare state development in developing countries. They remain, however, an important dimension of social policy diversification, among both developed and developing countries. Degree and patterns of overall welfare state development, labour market conditions, demographic characteristics, family and gender cultures, political legacies and political cultures – all these factors contribute to shaping which and how family issues are framed as policy-relevant issues. The author addresses some of the research challenges that lie ahead in family policy research, namely: (1) the conceptual and methodological challenges deriving from the enlargement of research, both national and comparative, across an increasingly diversified spectrum of countries; (2) the dual challenge of the diversification of family forms and of international mobility; (3) the interaction between the labour market and family policies and their impact on social class differences; (4) the differential impact of social policies across the social spectrum and diversified family forms; and (5) the multilevel making and governance of family policies and the impact on intra-country differences. According to the author, these challenges are also the consequence of the intersectional character of family policies.

A new feminist materialist analysis of girls and the sexual violence assemblage

Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari's (1988) concept of assemblage, in this paper we address 12-13-y ear-old girls' experience of sexual violence as a materially embedded, relational, and affective event. In doing so, we contribute to the understanding of how girls are both constrained by violent gendered cultures in school and of their capacity to resist such violence. We give attention to sexual violence as an assemblage of materialities in the form of bodies, objects, expressions, spaces, and ideas that connect in ways that affect what girls can and cannot do within a specific place and moment in time. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, we show how the assemblage creates the potential to challenge dominant gendered scripts that structure girls' experience in schools but also point to the disabling environments that curtail such potential. We argue that while the assemblage produces agentive capacities, it may simultaneously constrain them. We conclude by offering possibilities to address sexual violence through addressing gender norms while including boys in gender transformative work.

Ideals and norms related to fatherhood in Europe: A comparative perspective from the European Social Survey

Objective: This study explores cross-country similarities and differences in individuals' perceptions of the ideal age and pathways to become a father, focusing on five European countries: Germany, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Background: Empirical research analyzing family-related social norms and individuals' preferences is still scarce when compared to the abundant literature on family behavior, and especially so when focusing on men rather than women. This study attempts to mitigate this gap in the literature by focusing on ideals and norms related to fatherhood. Method: Using European Social Survey data from the most recent available round (2018/2019), descriptive and multivariate regression analyses are performed to examine: (a) the ideal age to become a father; and (b) approval of men's decision to never have children, to have a child outside marriage, and to keep working full-time when having small children. Results: Findings confirm signs of convergence across countries regarding the “normalization” of postponed fatherhood, as well as increased detachment from traditional attitudes. Differences between "forerunner" and "laggard" countries with regard to family-related norms and family change are visibly narrowing. However, the ideal age for fatherhood and the approval of non-traditional life course trajectories also reflect different incentives and possibilities for the establishment of new family models provided by the gender culture and the welfare regime in each country. Conclusion: Examining social norms regarding male reproductive decisions and the exercise of fatherhood from a comparative perspective is important for understanding men’s choices and the normative social framework potentially constraining them.

Трансформация гендерной культуры современного общества: интерсекциональный подход

In modern gender studies the rejection of the concept of binary gender oppositions in favor of studying intra-gender differences is becoming more obvious. The relevance of the stated topic is related to the need for modern humanitarian knowledge in a better analysis of gender cultural transformations in the modern society and in the more detailed study of its main components. The aim of the study is to systematize the present ideas about the intra-gender hierarchy within the intersectional and fragmentary approaches, as well as to analyze the specifics of public perception of gender variations cultural interpretation based on the empirical research conducted by the authors. Based on the obtained results, the authors interpret the gender culture of society from the point of view of its basic components, formulate and update the main conceptual issues regarding the value content of modern gender culture. According to the results of the study, it is concluded that the primary relevance of further study within the intersectional approach is the reproductive component of gender culture as one of gender inequality feature.

The Development of Contemporary Women’s Issues

With the rapid development of the world economy, human thinking and ideas are also progressing. Today’s society should break the gender dichotomy and popularize women’s right to education. Compared with the feudal society, women’s issues in today’s society have made great progress, but there are still some serious social problems. This paper discusses women’s issues in education, reproduction and gender, and how contemporary women’s issues have evolved. In order to solve the problem of women, we should first eliminate the influence of the patriarchal culture. Although gender culture has a certain lag, its development needs the joint efforts of the whole society. After the whole society generally pays attention to women’s issues, there will be more outstanding women, which is more conducive to the development of the society.

Traditions in Transition: Gendered Cultural Dynamics in Contemporary Performances by Obabes Bembube

Traditions in Transition: Gendered Cultural Dynamics in Contemporary Performances by Obabes Bembube

Gender education

The article analyzes the features of gender education. The concept, essence and social meaning of gender, the broad and narrow meaning of gender culture are considered. The specifics of the gender approach to education and its possibilities for improving the quality of education are revealed. The reasons for the difference in the progress of male and female students, due to teaching methods, are analyzed. The gender characteristics of students are given, which must be taken into account when forming the educational environment of the university.

The Orientation and Significance of Confucian Gender Culture for Women

The Orientation and Significance of Confucian Gender Culture for Women

A review of research on bullying and mental health of LGBTQ students in China

LGBTQ people have been suffering from school bullying and have higher mental health risks. In recent years, scholars around the world have focused on the phenomenon of school bullying and subsequent effects on LGBTQ people. This paper composes relevant studies by Chinese scholars and summarizes the unique psychological effects of school bullying exposure on LGBTQ students in the Chinese cultural context.The study found that gender stereotypes and heteronormative hegemonic concepts in traditional Chinese gender culture, filial culture in family culture, and the imperfection of sexuality education can negatively affect school bullying of LGBTQ students in schools, which in turn affects the psychological health of LGBTQ students. Chinese educators need to improve the system and practice of sex and gender education.