Women's Gender Identity Research Articles

Good Muslims and "Bad Muslims," "Good" Women and Feminists: Negotiating Identities in Northern Cyprus (Or, the Condom Story)

This article examines the intersection of a "good/bad Muslim" identity with national, cultural, and gender categories in northern Cyprus. It analyzes the cultural and historical articulation of a modern, Western "bad Muslim" identity, and describes "the condom story," an event where some Turkish Cypriot women attempted to transgress the social boundaries around gender roles. It is argued that the complex negotiations over a national identity (Cypriot and/or Turkish), a modern identity (Eastern and/or Western), and a religious identity (Muslim and/or secular) result in contradictory messages about gender and sexuality for Turkish Cypriot women. This examination of identity negotiations‐principally a bad Muslim identity, and of women's various attempts to subvert societal pressures‐ultimately reveals some of the cultural controls over women's gender identity, particularly their sexuality, in Turkish Cypriot society.

“RESPECTING YOUR HOME”: ECONOMIC CHANGE AND GENDER IDEOLOGY IN A NATIVE COMMUNITY IN SOUTHERN VERACRUZ, MEXICO

ABSTRACT Research on gender and household dynamics in the Third World has shown us that women make an important contribution to the domestic economy. However, few studies have explored the relationship between women's income-generating activities, gender identities and decision-making power within the household. This paper explores these issues in Pajapan, a native community of southern Veracruz, Mexico. The analysis is based on the different options for income-generating activities available to women and the changing gender identities and household dynamics of first and second wives of polygamous men.

Leisure, Work and Gender

In this article, I address the question of the relationship between women's labour market position and their `objective' and `subjective' experience of leisure. With reference to a small-scale empirical study of the social time use of mothers in France, I argue that it is misleading to consider women's leisure experience as being determined by their labour market position. I attempt to show that it could prove more fruitful to examine the complex relationship between women's class and gender identities and their simultaneous experience of work, family and leisure.

Female circumcision and gender identity: A questionable alliance?

At least 87% of Somali women are infibulated at the age of 7 or 8. Infibulation, also known as Pharaonic circumcision, is the most drastic form of female circumcision. The article examines the rationale for and the consequences of this practice, in particular in Somalia. Contrasting points of view can be identified in the attitudes towards female circumcision; for example, while it increases women's value in Somali eyes, it often degrades them in the eyes of the outside world. It is argued that the incidence of the practice should be reduced and that policies directed towards this aim should be an integral part of other development policies. Since women's gender identity is at stake, women should be actively involved in formulating and implementing the necessary policies. Their involvement is one of the main prerequisites for progress in the abolition of infibulation.

By your attributions you shall be known: Consequences of attributional accounts for professional and gender identities

We demonstrate the power of a situated identity perspective for understanding the different attributional patterns of women and men in an academic setting and their differential experiences in the workplace. Two explanations for the gender difference found in attributions of success are considered. This difference may be due either to different identities being attributed to men and women employing the same explanations for success and failure, or to the inconsistency between actions that confirm a professional (academic) identity and women's gender identity. The results of this survey of senior social science faculty men support the latter explanation but not the former. An editorial acceptance was seen as more professional but less feminine than a rejection. In the eyes of senior colleagues, the modest account of success, typical of women academics, enhances femininity but detracts from professionalism. The self-serving account typical of men makes the offerer appear less feminine but more professional. Thus in their situated identity claims, successful academic women, but not men, must choose between their professional and gender identities. Despite the movement of women into university social science positions, the role of academic has a masculine face.

The Influence of Sphincter Control and Genital Sensation on Body Image and Gender Identity in Women

The development of one aspect of feeling female is hypothesized to account for certain phenomena in the treatment of young women patients. Fear of loss of genital pleasure experienced as contractions of the anal and genital-urinary sphincters is seen as the central issue in conflicts manifested in genital, oral, and anal modalities. It is suggested that the female's awareness of her genital arises from the generalization of sphincter sensation in the little girl, which is then represented in the body image. The body image is postulated as a link between genital pleasure and the valuing of femininity.

Leisure and Women's Identity in Late Adolescence: Constraints and Opportunities

Abstract Current research suggests that leisure is yet another site of female subordination. Nevertheless, discourses on leisure which take into account post-structuralist feminist analyses and the spontaneity of the “I” in identity construction, enable leisure to be perceived as a potential site for the construction of identities which resist male definitions and control of feminine identities and make way for individuality in leisure experience for women and in their construction of identity. This paper examines the relationship between leisure experiences and the subjective construction of gender identity for women in late adolescence. A small sample of first year university students who attended two Sydney universities were interviewed. Diaries of leisure activities and experiences were kept for a week. The results show both the constraints of women's leisure experiences in the construction of “feminine” identity, but also the opportunity through leisure to challenge traditional stereotypes and create...

Women watching television: gender, class, and generation in the American television experience

Few issues are more important to feminist scholars than that of gender identity, especially women's gender identity. Of particular concern are the ways in which culture shapes this identity. The author of this study focuses on one of the most powerful image-shaping forces within American culture - television - and examines the relationship between the representations television presents to women of themselves and their own self-images. She asks how women's self-conceptions correspond to television images, whether women identify with the female characters they see on television, and whether women use television images in forming their own self-images. The answers to these questions depend on several factors, the most important being the social class of the women studied. The author contends that women's inclinations to identify with television characters varies with their assessment of the realism of these characters and their social world. She finds that working-class women are much more likely to find television characters and situations real than are middle-class women, but that their evaluations of realism reflect their wishes about reality - especially material reality - rather than any objective assessment of the accuracy of television's depiction of their own experience. In her exploration of this and other complexities, Andrea Press draws on feminist analyses of traditional theories of identification, Marxist and socialist analyses of class, and mainstream social scientific studies of the mass media audience.