Gender Hegemony Research Articles

Ladies and gentlemen, your implicit bias is showing: gender hegemony and its impact on HRD research and practice

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to capture and further consider remarks I made at the 2018 University Forum for Human Resource Development (UFHRD) Conference in Newcastle, England, on gender hegemony and its impact on HRD research and practice. This article will define features of oppression and facets of gender hegemony, examine how gender hegemony is perpetuated through implicit biases and microaggressions, illustrate overcoming resistance to gender hegemony through embracing gender diversity and identity, appraise and challenge gender hegemonic research in HRD, and embolden HRD to erode gender hegemony in research and practice in ways that promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.

An Intersectional Mixed Methods Approach to Understand American Indian Men's Health.

This study used a parallel convergent mixed methods design with TribalCrit theory and intersectionality as analytical frameworks to identify how American Indian men's identities intersect with broader structures and systems to shape their eating and physical activity choices and behaviors, and to elicit recommendations for a men's lifestyle intervention. AI men were recruited in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Portland, Oregon between March and December 2017 and in Phoenix, Arizona in December 2019 to participate in a survey and focus groups. The survey included demographic questions and questions about physical and cultural activities men engage in, perceived social support for lifestyle behaviors, masculine characteristics, and values important to American Indian men. The 6-item Kessler Psychological Distress Scale was used to assess psychological distress. Focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed for a phenomenological analysis. Descriptive statistics and correlations were computed for survey data. We conducted 15 focus groups with 151 adult American Indian men in three urban sites. The mean age of participants ranged from 36-51 across the sites; 7%-32% were college graduates; 13%-22% were currently married and 28%-41% were working full time. The most important values reported by participants were being: strong mentally and emotionally, a good parent, responsible, spiritual, and a good spouse or partner. On the K6 psychological distress scale, 63%-70% scored ≥5 but <13 (moderate mental distress), and 8%-15% scored ≥13 indicating severe mental distress. Younger age was significantly correlated with higher mean K6 score (p < .0001). Colonizers and missionaries that settled in the U.S. imposed cultural and gender hegemony which enforced a patriarchal capitalist system that have had long-lasting and deleterious effects on American Indians, particularly American Indian men.

Mining companies and gender(ed) policies: The women of the Congolese Copperbelt, past and present

Mining companies of the past and present have promoted specific roles for men and women through their management practices. In DR Congo, first colonial and then state-owned companies naturalised the role of men as employees and breadwinners. At the same time, women were assigned responsibility for reproduction and were understood as being financially dependent on men's salary, either that of their fathers or husbands. By contrast, some LSM (large-scale mining) companies today support gender equality programmes, mainly to improve their corporate reputation. Drawing on the literature on women in the industrial extractive sector elsewhere in the world, I show how these discourses and processes continue to produce Congolese Copperbelt mines as masculine spaces at different levels. I then move to the ethnographic component of the paper by arguing that new investors’ gender practices and equality policies are not easily implemented in the area. On the contrary, they have to confront a region marked by the paternalistic social policies of mining companies in the past, which have entrenched a certain gender hegemony. Through the biographies of different women involved in the industrial mining sector past and present, I show the effects of mining companies’ policies on gender roles in Haut-Katanga Province.

Girl power in boy love: Yaoi, online female counterculture, and digital feminism in China

ABSTRACT This article employs in-depth interviews with 64 female authors of Yaoi fiction, a popular online narrative genre among young Chinese women, to examine the discursive strategies adopted in their creation of homoerotic stories, and theorize such strategies within contemporary Chinese political, cultural, and social contexts. Three discursive constructions are distilled and discussed through analysis of Yaoi fictionists’ cultural production practices: the idealization of intimate relationship, the deconstruction of the heteropatriarchal gender norm through female gaze, and the imagination of female power in negotiation with state discourse. The article then indicates the deliberate intention incorporated in the production of the Yaoi counterculture to subvert the state-backed gender hegemony. It proposes that a comprehensive understanding of contemporary Chinese feminism can only be achieved through intersectional analysis of its interactions with China’s authoritarian state discourse, and calls for closer attention to the feminist political potential brought about by digital technology.

A Hegemonic View on Short Story Aku dan Mereka Berbeda

This study aims to determine the form of hegemony of the employer's power against the servants on short story Aku dan Mereka Berbeda. The Post-colonialism analysis was used to obtain in-depth understanding and information about the form of hegemony of the employer’s power conveyed by story. Source of data were taken from the short story entitled Aku dan Mereka Berbeda written by Abdul Latief. The short story itself was contained on a short stories collection Melihat tanpa Mata published by Gong Publishing in 2010. Based on the results of the research, it can be concluded three main characters that play a role in Abdul Latief's short story as figures reflected on colonialism. The employer figure is shown as a colonial nation, a servant figure as a colonized nation, and the author figure as a freedom fighter. The short story also conveys an ideological hegemony of white skin supremacy. The hegemonic aspect of power is also evident in this short story with the depiction of employers as the upper class and the servant as the lower class. The gender hegemony can also be seen in this short story through the depiction of women as lowly and oppressed domestic servant.

A New Kind of Monster, Cowboy, and Crusader?

Representations of boys and men in Disney films often escape notice due to presumed gender neutrality. Considering this omission, we explore masculinities in films from Disney’s lucrative subsidiary Pixar to determine how masculinities are represented and have and/or have not disrupted dominant gender norms as constructed for young boys’ viewership. Using Raewyn Connell’s theory of gender hegemony and related critiques, we suggest that while Pixar films strive to provide their male characters with a feminist spin, they also continue to reify hegemonic masculinities through sharp contrasts to femininities and by privileging heterosexuality. Using a feminist textual analysis that includes the Toy Story franchise, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Coco, we suggest that Pixar films, while offering audiences a “new man,” continue to reinforce hegemonic masculinities in subtle ways that require critical examination to move from presumed gender neutrality to an understanding of continued, though shifting, gender hegemony.

A meta-analytic review of gender composition influencing employees’ work outcomes: implications for human resource development

ABSTRACT Drawing from Kanter’s tokenism theory, the current meta-analysis provides a statistical synthesis of the research linking gender composition of the workplace to men and women’s evaluative (leadership, rewards, and performance) and affective (interpersonal relationships, stress, and attitudes towards women) outcomes. In addition, we examine the moderating effect of task gender-type on these relationships. Evidence for simple gender composition effects was weak, with only men’s interpersonal outcomes being associated with gender composition. In contrast, we found strong evidence supporting the moderating effect of task gender-type on these relationships for both sexes, across several of the outcomes. Notably, the strongest moderator effect was shown for men’s leadership, with a clear pattern demonstrating that gender composition has a stronger positive effect on this outcome for men performing gender-neutral tasks, compared to men performing masculine tasks. This underscores the importance of task gender-type as a more powerful indicator of workplace gender norms than a numerical representation of men and women. Despite progress towards gender parity in the workplace, gender hegemony remains strong in male-typed tasks as they stand impervious to the effects of gender composition. Results are discussed in light of tokenism theory and its implications on designs of HRD interventions.

Een man in het nauw maakt rare sprongen

Abstract Desperate men leed to desperate deeds. Masculinity in Arthur van Amerongen's posture To study the dynamics in the alleged ‘crisis of masculinity’ through a case-study, this contribution makes a posture analysis of columnist Arthur van Amerongen. By exploring his posture and the field that speaks from it, it becomes clear how mechanisms such as sexual nationalism, masculinnocence, and recurring anti-feminism tropes give shape to masculinity. Van Amerongen performs a victimized hegemonic white masculinity: he embodies the type of dominant masculinity, but claims to have lost the hegemonic position in the gender hierarchy. Coming from a heteronormative, phallogocentric worldview, he portrays a domination over white masculinity by third wave feminism that favours potentially dangerous cultural and religious diversity. When speaking of topics regarding boundaries, sex, gender, or other ethnicities, his posture is repeatedly ambiguous. This use of detours to attain masculinity underscores the professed shift in the gender hegemony.

Feminist Theory: A Research Agenda for HRD

The Problem Limited research representing the field of human resource development (HRD) has challenged the masculine rationality in organizational culture, processes, and discourse; questioned power or gender hegemony within organizations; or examined how oppression and hegemony are manifested in the lives of different groups of women in a variety of work contexts. This limited scope of research has resulted in a lack of consideration and application of feminist theory, a valuable framework for examining issues relating to inequity and the subjugation of women. Compared with related fields, studies applying feminist theory in HRD research are fewer in number and less robust in terms of issues explored, research design, and target groups examined. The Solution A deeper examination of (a) populations beyond White middle class women, (b) the lives and experiences of women from varying backgrounds, (c) asymmetrical power relationships, (d) opportunities for women to gain knowledge and power, (e) the use of language and power to silence women, (f) gender as a social construct and essential category of analysis, and (g) ways to promote social change are presented along with recommendations to broaden the scope of research that applies feminist theory in HRD research and practice. The Key Stakeholders The examination of feminist theory is expected to benefit HRD researchers, practitioners, scholars, and women in the workforce.

Competing gender norms and social practice in Himalayan farm management

• Gender relations in Himalayan farm management are influenced by men’s out-migration. • Competing gender norms simultaneously enable and constrain women’s social practices. • Women can decide on farm but are discouraged to engage in markets and public spheres. • Men have a role in all social spheres, but the female gender role is more restricted. • Caste, class, age influence women’s ability to negotiate and alter local gender roles. Gender relations in Himalayan farm management are influenced by differentiated social expectations of men and women. How people negotiate their gender role space and how they relate to explicit and tacit gender norms, shape gendered patterns of decision-making in agriculture. In this case study from the Nepali Middle Hills I argue that there are two competing sets of cultural gender norms at work, in contrast to Sherry Ortner’s classical theory of a gender hegemony, where she describes a hegemonic collection of cultural logics, meanings and practices related to gender. In this case, modern development ideas of women empowerment and gender equality currently challenge traditional gender norms, but there are also areas of conjunction between the two. Traditional gender norms constrain women’s decision-making power to mostly within the household and farm. While men increasingly migrate for work, women take over more of the agricultural labor, and temporarily, all farm-management decisions. When both spouses stay at the farm they often decide together, contrary to common assumptions that men mostly decide in agriculture. However, cultural conflicts arise when women engage in social spheres outside the farm and household, such as in financial, public, or political matters. How people through social practice relate to competing gender norms, and to what extent they either feel caught in a cultural conflict or have a sufficiently strong social position to take advantage of the situation and alter local gender roles depends not on gender per se , but on other markers of social prestige such as caste/ethnicity, wealth, age, and marital status. Interactions between modern development norms and traditional gender norms inspire cultural change at the local scale, which has implications for women’s participation in financial and market spheres.

Citations of Norms and Lines of Flight in One Immigrant Boy's Performances of Masculinities and Reading Identities

AbstractIn this ethnographic case study, the author examined one immigrant adolescent's performances of masculinities through reading practices. The author analyzed how Omar (pseudonym), a Muslim boy from Libya, used reading practices to produce himself as a boy in one U.S. multilingual classroom. Extending the anti‐essentialist scholarship on gender and reading, the author brought together Butler's queer feminism and Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy of becoming to further trouble gender and analyze the instability of Omar's masculinity performances in relation to reading practice. Through analyses of field notes, classroom interactions, and artifacts, this study showed that Omar discursively performed and negotiated multiple and seemingly conflicting reading identities across time and space. Although he was discursively positioned as a nonreader in classroom interactions, he also performed disengagement with reading to display a cool, nonschoolish masculinity aligned to the normative discourses of Arab masculinity to which he was subject. However, he also enacted reader identity and behaviors not traditionally associated with masculinity. Omar's identity negotiation, interactionally and socially situated, demonstrated the instability of masculinity performances, featuring repeated citation of gender norms fissured with lines of flight breaking away from normative ways of being. This analysis contributes to the anti‐essentialist research on boys and literacies by shedding light on the regulations and ruptures in masculinity performances of a gendered subject. The study highlights the importance of situating analysis of gender and reading practices within the social and power relations in the discursive and interactional space. Addressing space allows a close reading of how gender hegemonies operate and fracture in micro movements of identity performance and how space can be shaped to open up opportunities for becoming‐other.

Parental and gender hegemonic struggle in Iranian wedding invitations across (1970–1990) and (1990 to present)

There is a mutual relationship between conventional ways of discoursal practice and social changes which create new ways of thinking or ideology in a particular society. Considering the changes that Iranian society has undergone throughout two different periods of time (1970–1990 and 1990 to present), the current study aimed to show how these changes in terms of reference and person deixis, as a discourse practice in wedding invitations (WIs), introduce a marked shift in parental hegemony and small beginning of shifts in gender roles in Iran’s society. To this end, 100 WIs were divided into two corpus, one dating from 1970 to 1990 and the other from 1990 to present. Then, a pilot study was arranged to identify the linguistic features which had predominantly changed and could have mirrored the sociopolitical changes. The results of the pilot study revealed that terms of reference and personal deixis in the WIs had changed remarkably across the two groups of WIs. To analyze the frequency and percentage of reference and personal deixis in the WIs, two small corpus (one containing 1970–1990 WIs and the other containing 1990 to present) were created using Sketch Engine website. Finally, Fairclough’s [2010. Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Routledge] framework of critical discourse analysis as a form of critique of social change in terms of historical dynamics was used to account for the changes. The analysis of the data revealed that paternal, as well as gender hegemony, has been diluted in WIs published in recent times.

Doing vegetarianism to destabilize the meat-masculinity nexus in La Plata, Argentina*

In patriarchal societies where hegemonic masculinity implies an imperative to eat meat, vegetarianism disrupts food culture, raising questions about how vegetarians do, re-do, and rework gender. Analyzing 23 interviews in La Plata, Argentina, I find that the narratives of conversion and social pushback reported by women and men expose gender enactment and social reinforcement of the binary. At times, vegetarians compensate by drawing on scripts of femininities and masculinities that uphold difference, e.g. women cook meat and reassure meat-eaters; men make rationality-based claims and demonstrate strength. Yet in other moments, vegetarians defy attempts to hold them accountable to gendered social expectations. Women, for example, assert authority over their diets; men embody rejection of the meat-masculinity nexus by adopting a worldview that also rejects sexism and racism. I contend that in such a context, we cannot separate the ways people ‘do vegetarianism’ from how they ‘do gender.’ Doing vegetarianism in interactions drives social change, contributing to the de-linking of meat from gender hegemony and revealing the resisting and reworking of gender in food spaces.

“It's gym, like g-y-m not J-i-m”: Exploring the role of place in the gendering of physical activity

Physical activity is a highly gendered health behaviour, with women less likely than men to meet internationally accepted physical activity guidelines. In this article, we take up recent arguments on the potential of indoor spaces to illuminate processes shaping health, together with social theories of gender, to conceptualize the place of the gym as a window into understanding and intervening in wider gender disparities in physical activity. Using a triangulated strategy of qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews, drawing, and journaling with men and women in a mid-sized Canadian city, we examine how gender influences exercise practices and mobilities in gym environments. Results of our thematic analysis reveal three socio-spatial processes implicated in the gendering of physical activity: 1) embodying gender ideals, 2) policing gender performance, and 3) spatializing gender relations. A fourth theme illustrates the situated agency some individuals enact to disrupt gendered divisions. Although women were unduly disadvantaged, both women and men experienced significant limitations on their gym participation due to the presiding gendered social context of the gym. Gender-transformative interventions that go beyond engaging women to comprehensively contend with the place-based gender relations that sustain gender hegemony are needed. While gyms are potentially sites for health promotion, they are also places where gendered inequities in health opportunities emerge.

From Shapeshifter to Lava Monster: Gender Stereotypes in Disney’s Moana

Moana (2016) continues a tradition of Disney princess movies that perpetuate gender stereotypes. The movie contains the usual Electral undercurrent, with Moana seeking to prove her independence to her overprotective father. Moana’s partner in her adventures, Maui, is overtly hypermasculine, a trait epitomized by a phallic fishhook that is critical to his identity. Maui’s struggles with shapeshifting also reflect male anxieties about performing masculinity. Maui violates the Mother Island, first by entering her cave and then by using his fishhook to rob her of her fertility. The repercussions of this act are the basis of the plot: the Mother Island abandons her form as a nurturing, youthful female (Te Fiti) focused on creation to become a vengeful lava monster (Te Kā). At the end, Moana successfully urges Te Kā to get in touch with her true self, a brave but simple act that is sufficient to bring back Te Fiti, a passive, smiling green goddess. The association of youthful, fertile females with good and witch-like infertile females with evil implies that women’s worth and well-being are dependent upon their procreative function. Stereotypical gender tropes that also include female abuse of power and a narrow conception of masculinity merit analysis in order to further progress in recognizing and addressing patterns of gender hegemony in popular Disney films.

“Kinda Like a Man and a Woman Thing”: The Construction and Reification of Gender Hegemony in a Women’s Prison

This article examines how a hegemonic gender regime is constructed and maintained by persons with bodies marked as female. Using semistructured interviews with prisoners in a women’s prison, I demonstrate how a gender dichotomy is replicated among a population of primarily women in which certain styles of masculinity and femininity are posited as complimentary and situated within a gender hierarchy. Prisoners cocreated and maintained an ideal definition of masculinity—“studs”—that centered on status, resources, and heteronormative sexual patterns, whereas femininities—“femmes”—were subordinated and their gender practices devalued. Studs were subjected to greater levels of social control and were stigmatized for stepping out of the prescribed bounds of normative stud behavior. Although several respondents also contested or challenged hypermasculinities in the prison, this contestation often reified gender and sexual expectations for studs. The presence of such a gender regime in a women’s prison suggests that the global system of masculine dominance is an obstinate social construct.

Female Masculinities, Dissident Sexuality, and the Material Politics of Gender in Early Twentieth-Century Igboland

Colonialism, Christianity, and Western education alienated women from the dominant resources of social mobility, which resulted in the masculinization of wealth in early twentieth-century Igboland. This article examines women's individual challenges to changing practices of gendered access, sexuality, and power. By performing ogaranya (wealth-power) masculinity through trade, mediumship, and matronship, Ohafia women expanded the ideological scope of gender hegemony beyond colonial patriarchal structures. The case studies of two Ohafia women, Unyang Uka and Otuwe Agwu, who performed ogaranya masculinity and the dissident sexuality of oke-nwami (masculine female husband), bridge a gap in gender theory in African studies by reconciling the literature on West African women's power and authority with the nascent field of African masculinity studies. They show that changes in women's sociopolitical power paralleled the shifting constructions of masculinity in West Africa. Igbo women's masculinity performances simultaneously elided and reinforced changing notions of gendered power.

The ‘problem’ with single women

Despite increased acknowledgement of gender equality as a social good, there are some areas where the practice of women’s autonomy is apparently inconsistent with the normative prescriptions of a new ‘empowered’ form of femininity. Sexuality and personal relationship status are sites where women are positioned within neo-liberal and post-feminist discourse in such a way that their choices are subject to questioning. A model of gender hegemony is useful for understanding how and why choosing to be single may still constitute a ‘problem’ for women, despite the intensification of messages which also address women as autonomous, sexualized subjects. In cultures dominated by an ideology of marriage and family life, single women’s identity work resolves contradictions in the current gender order and in the process reinstates heteronormativity.

Trans* Disruptions

Abstract There are an increasing number of university students who express a fluid gender embodiment and identity, resisting binary gender categories as well as binary transgender categories. The use of gender-neutral, as well as third-person plural pronouns, disrupts linguistic gender hegemony and creates particular gendered meanings. With the increasing number of trans* people who queer the gender binary, how does language affirm or deny their personhood? This research note uses data from an online survey (N = 557) to examine teachers' recognition of trans* individuals' pronouns. Results demonstrate that trans* students who identify as genderqueer tend to use gender-neutral and third-person pronouns. However, educators are less affirming when it comes to gender-neutral pronoun recognition. Educators must resist taken-for-granted gender attribution processes and explicitly ask all students to state their pronouns. Accurate pronoun recognition supports trans* students' identity development and honors their personhood.

HEGEMONI EPISTEMOLOGI TRADISIONAL DALAM WACANA KRITIS FEMINISME KONTEMPORER

This article attempts to portray a new epistemological wave which comes into life as the true heir to postmodernism that criticizes modernism or positivism epistemology, to be more exact. It seems that there is an attempt on deletion of the border of gender hegemony. This hegemony is invisible but exquisite because it works on the form of knowledge and power or knowledge and interest. This article tries to search the basis of feminism epistemology and its critical consequences on the component of positivism epistemology, as the basic foundation of hegemonic world perspective. The analysis is begun from the description of racial phenomena which is the root of feminism problems. The next analysis is on the root of epistemic history as the foundation of gender hegemony. An analysis on western feminism is also needed before coming to the major analysis of deconstruction effort on gender hegemony of positivism. On the other hand, the root of gender bias on the perspective of normative-theology will have little portion on the analysis.