Gender Lines Research Articles

Queer, Migrant Non-Parenthood in Désorientale by Négar Djavadi and Gabrielle by Agnès Vannouvong

Abstract Désorientale (2016) by Franco-Iranian author Négar Djavadi and Gabrielle (2015) by Franco-Lao-Thai author Agnès Vannouvong both emerge at a moment when queer people have some rights (marriage and adoption) but no access to assisted reproductive technology (ART). They take up the issue of what I term “political infertility,” rebuking the notion of queerness as an unproductive sexuality. These novels’ queer (migrant) characters experience compounded forms of exclusion, along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, and cultural difference. I explore how the queer (migrant) nonparent speaks to a particular precarity within a system of power, revealing the complex way in which the nonparent is entrapped by competing modes of legitimatization, visibility, and access to full and fulfilled subjecthood.

Involuntary singlehood, gender equality and mental health in contemporary Sweden

Abstract In recent years, acts of violence against women have been tied to online communities of men who self-identify as involuntary celibates or ‘incels’. These men experience an inability to enter intimate relationships with women, attributing the issue to a gynocentric order in which women hold power and men are victims. This is while evidence suggests that in contemporary societies at large, growing numbers of men live without, or face difficulties in forming, intimate relationships with women, and while many men in Sweden, particularly young ones, report loneliness. At the same time, in Sweden we see a growing polarization between men and women regarding views on gender equality, especially among youth, as young men express gender conservative values and the notion that feminism is to blame for some men’s feelings of societal marginalization. Increased knowledge about these issues, and how they may be connected, is of strong importance for public mental health. In an ongoing research project, we take the incels phenomenon as our starting-point and as one area of attention, while also directing focus toward involuntary singlehood and celibacy among men and women in Sweden more broadly. The latter is investigated through a survey, which is the focus of this presentation. The survey explores the prevalence of short- and long-term experiences of involuntary singlehood and celibacy among men and women in the general population (n = 5000), and how such experiences are made sense of. Any correlations between such experiences and self-rated mental health and satisfaction with life, and attitudes towards gender equality and violence against women, are investigated, including any noteworthy differences along lines of gender, age and socioeconomic background. Experienced loneliness, irrespective of relationship status, is also assessed. The presentation will discuss preliminary results of the survey study and discuss their implications for public mental health. Key messages • Involuntary singlehood among men is a public health issue warranting further investigation. • Correlations between involuntary singlehood and mental health as well as attitudes towards gender equality will be discussed.

Governing poverty and migration in European nation-states – keywords revisited

This article introduces a collaborative publication exploring the intricate interplay between poverty governance, migration control, and welfare provision. Adopting a ‘keywords’ approach, we investigate the terminology and concepts around which academic discussions revolve when addressing poverty and migration. Central to this examination is the figure of the ‘poor migrant’, whose experiences of inclusion and exclusion intersect along lines of race, gender, and legal status. Using an intersectional lens, the publication dissects key terms and concepts : Welfare State, Welfare Governance, Citizenship, Solidarity and Deservingness, Suspicion and Surveillance, Discipline, and Banishment. We thus aim to conceptualise and critically discuss the constant renegotiation of state power and the nation-state induced in ex/inclusionary aspects of welfare and migration policies and law. The contribution reveals how notions of belonging shape access to rights and services, particularly along racialized and classist lines. Moreover, it explores how migration policies exacerbate scrutiny and exclusion faced by non-citizen populations within contemporary welfare systems.

Humanizing Different Archetypal Expressions of Gender Expansiveness.

This article explores the concept of gender expansiveness. This term refers to a person's self-identifying as gender fluid, genderqueer, transgender, non-binary, gender diverse, or gender nonconforming. Young people, including older children and adolescents, increasingly are experimenting with crossing gender lines. This trend can be understood as a sociocultural process for humanizing more terrifying archetypal forms of gender diversity. Using Henderson's (1988) concept of the cultural unconscious, the author posits that current social developments among youth are attempting to bring gender expansiveness more into collective consciousness. This issue has occasioned a strong counterreaction with panicked appeals to upholding traditional gender norms and needing restrictions on gender-affirming care. Examples from myth, literature and clinical practice help to contextualize the intense emotions aroused by gender diversity. A case example shows how gender fantasies are worked through within an empathic analytic relationship. The author makes an appeal for updating and humanizing older psychological theories that have relied heavily on splits, polarities, and oppositions, all of which are more characteristic of a 20th century way of thinking about the psyche. A potential approach to incorporate gender expansiveness is through a model of the psyche as a mosaic.

Juxtaposing Gender Differentials in Credit Assessment of Farmers in Nigeria: A Hybridized Credit-Scoring Approach

Using data from 360 smallholder farmers in Southeast Nigeria, the study creates the architecture for a new farmer's hybrid credit rating system used in classifying farmers who applied for microfinance loans based on their creditworthiness. We discovered new evidence that the hybridized credit scoring algorithm demonstrated unprecedented concordance in assessing the financial viability of farmers along gender lines. The discriminant analysis, in particular, closely aligned with the credit score model, with 34.4% and 46.7% of male and female farmers grouped as creditworthy, reflecting the model's estimates of 33.3% and 45.5%, indicating gaps of 12.3% and 12.2%, respectively, to the advantage of the female farmers. Our findings further suggest that annual income, marital status, and farm size strongly influence the separation between creditworthy and non-creditworthy farmers. While age, loan term, and a history of defaults had a negative impact on discrimination, in light of the findings, we recommend a collaboration between authorities, financial institutions, and extension workers in offering tailored trainings to both male and female farmers, assisting them in meeting up-to-date credit prerequisites, adopting modified farming techniques, and improving their general preparedness to be accepted for loans in this changing credit evaluation landscape so as to bridge the disparity and promote financial inclusion for farmers irrespective of gender affiliations.

Re/Thinking Bioethics: Reproduction and Non-Reproduction in an Intersectional Bioethics’ Perspective

The article begins by reconstructing the main feminist bioethics perspective as a “new discourse” within the official bioethical discussion. It illustrates how the moral discussion and juridification have contributed to remove reproduction and non-reproduction from the personal and intimate context, reinventing them as a “states business”. This process framed these issues in terms of “duties”, “rights”, “family planning”, “demography”, and “population policy”. In this manner, law and morality have helped to reinforce a specific construct of fertility, motherhood, and family. By comparing two interrelated forms of Cross Border Reproductive Care (CBRC), concerning abortion and surrogacy, the article analyses how bioethical and legal frameworks – through their polarized and dichotomic discussion between law and morality – confirm and strengthen gender injustice in reproductive life. That comparison of cross-border travels highlights that surrogacy and abortion restrictions stem from a shared social and legal paradigm that relies on traditional gender roles and reveals how the stratification of reproduction is based on multiple discrimination along the lines of gender, race, and class. Finally, the article introduces an intersectional bioethics point of view on reproductive health to re-read the phenomena of non-reproductive and reproductive tourism and to propose a critique of the main global Northern feminist bioethical discourses and ethical-philosophical paradigms.

How to deliver gender diversity education to men: Training algorithms to the rescue

AbstractGender diversity training is typically provided to mix‐gender audiences. This one‐size‐fits‐all approach may be suboptimal because information about gender bias and inequity is often received differently along gender lines: men are less likely than women to believe it. We argue for tailoring gender diversity training via implementing segmentation and tailoring algorithms in training systems. To develop our theorizing, we integrate a learner‐centric approach to diversity training with principles of jiu jitsu persuasion theory. This leads us to test a new approach to diversity training that involves dynamic adaptation and tailoring the training to learners. Specifically, we first identify two distinct segments of men—believers and skeptics—and develop a user‐friendly segmentation algorithm that segments men, in real time, using only five items (Study 1). We then use the algorithm to assign segments of men trainees to tailored or non‐tailored training and show that presenting skeptic men with a tailored message improves training reactions and increases intentions to support gender diversity efforts (Study 2). Thus, we show that dynamic adaptation and tailoring successfully explain training outcomes, particularly for trainees who are skeptical of the diversity message. Practically, our study demonstrates the functionality and value of segmentation algorithms for organizations' training systems.

Public comment and public policy

AbstractIs public policy responsive to demographically and ideologically unrepresentative comments given at public meetings? I investigate this possibility using a novel data set of over 40,000 comments made at the San Francisco Planning Commission between 1998 and 2021, matched to information about proposed developments discussed in hearings and administrative data on commenters. I document four stylized facts: First, commenters at public meetings are unrepresentative of the public along racial, gender, age, and homeownership lines; second, distance to the proposed development predicts commenting behavior, but only among those in opposition; third, commission votes are correlated with commenters’ preferences; finally, the alignment of White commenters (vs. other racial groups) and neighborhood group representatives and the general public (vs. other interest groups) better predict project approvals.

More similar than different: Characterizing special interests in autistic boys and girls based on caregiver report.

Almost all autistic youths have special interests (SIs), which are focused, intense areas of passion and interest in a particular topic. Emerging research suggests that there are gender differences in SIs among autistic youth; however, commonly used measures that assess for the presence of SIs may not fully capture the granular nature of those differences between autistic boys and girls. Characterizing these differences is important for autism identification in girls, as SIs in autistic girls may often be overlooked by caregivers, teachers, and clinicians due to their more "typical" and more socially oriented content areas compared to autistic boys. This study therefore aimed to more fully characterize gender differences in SIs using a newly developed caregiver-report measure of SIs (the Special Interests Survey; SIS). Caregivers of 1921 autistic youth completed the SIS. Analyses revealed many similarities between boys and girls; there were no gender differences in mean age SI onset, caregivers' perceptions of uniqueness or interferences of endorsed SIs, or duration of previous SIs. There were gender differences in endorsement of less than half (39%) of the SI categories measured, and there were minor differences in the number of endorsed current and past SIs. Categories with significant gender differences fell along typical gender lines (e.g., more boys interested in math and construction, more girls interested in animals and arts/crafts). This study extends the growing literature on SIs and gender differences in autism and has important implications for supporting autistic youth and their families.

Balkrishna as a Hindu Reformist in Narayan Dhakal's Pretkalpa (The Age of the Dead): A Critique of New Traditionalism

This paper examines reformation in the Nepali society as represented in Narayan Dhakal's novel Pretkalpa (The Age of the Dead). The novel advocates social reform in the Hindu society as modernity in Nepal during the early decades of the twentieth century. The paper hinges on the following research questions: How are modernity and reformation connected? To what extent does social/religious reformation contribute to modernity? Under the influence of reformist ideas from Dayanand Saraswati's Satyārtha Prakāś (The Light of Truth), Balkrishna, the protagonist of Dhakal’s novel – a Kashi educated Brahmin pundit – leads a series of reformation initiatives to change discriminatory practices across the lines of caste, gender, and class. To examine his reformist initiatives based on the Vedic knowledge, this paper recontextualizes Subir Sinha et al.'s critique of the discourse of new traditionalism in relation to the politics of development and environmentalism in India. Threatened by the reformation efforts of Balkrishna, the state – under the leadership of Chandra Shamsher – does everything it can do to retain the orthodox Hinduism, casteism, and feudalism. Eventually, the feudal Rana system based on the practices like cākarī and caplusī (sycophancy and flattery) prevails, exposing the vulnerability of new traditionalism and thereby of the conservative modernity as well. Discussing modernity, reformation, and new traditionalism, and their connections between and among them to analyze the novel, the paper foregrounds new traditionalism as a significant concept to examine modernity in Nepal.

School for sedition? Climate justice, citizenship and education

ABSTRACT This paper expands the political liberal case for ‘education for justice’ to include climate justice education. It begins with the case for empowering and motivating learners to promote institutions for basic global and institutional justice. Beyond this, three challenges emerge. Firstly, the political liberal model is premised on free and equal citizens cooperating for mutual advantage. In fact, the flourishing of some has long been enabled by systematic disadvantaging of others, along race, gender, class and other lines. Thus, climate education must include critical, historically informed climate justice. Secondly, philosophers increasingly include duties to non-humans within climate justice. This poses a dilemma: must any ‘reasonable’ citizen accept this expanded view? Two ways forward are outlined, though the practical difference between them may be comparatively small. Finally, climate justice education, as outlined here, necessitates motivating learners to challenge political institutions. This makes it implausible that the current school system will provide it.

Witnessing transgenerational trauma in teacher education: decoloniality of time, rupture of developmentalism, and settler resistance

ABSTRACT How can educators and students from settler backgrounds engage with and acknowledge the experiences and representation of transgenerational trauma among Indigenous peoples in educational environments, while remaining cognisant of the ethical and political implications? This challenge arises within the context of societal structures still influenced by colonial legacies, where systems of power are ingrained along lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender, disability, and sexuality. What would be some of the necessary conditions that educational environments would need to meet in order to ethically and politically respond to transgenerational traumatic encounters? This paper addresses these questions and suggests three conditions that educational environments would need to meet, when educators and students are invited to become witnesses of transgenerational trauma: decoloniality of time, rupture of developmentalism, and an ethic of non-innocence. Both these conditions and their pedagogical implications are discussed and analysed through the lens of a decolonial ethic.

Emotional labor in decision making: Gender, race, and relational practices in the White House

AbstractRelational and emotional practices intensive in emotional labor play an essential role for high‐level decision making, even though this labor is often devalued or unseen. United States presidents can often present themselves as rational and emotionally detached because they delegate emotional work to other members of their team. The burden of such work is unequally distributed along gender and racial lines. It involves expressing empathic concern, repairing relations, anticipating others' emotional responses, protecting marginalized colleagues, speaking hard truths, and providing emotional support to help others regulate their emotions. This article contributes to research on emotions in decision making, public administration, and presidency studies. Case studies of Nancy Reagan and Valerie Jarrett—who played important roles in the Reagan and Obama administrations, respectively—illustrate the article's main argument.

Race and ethnic inequalities

Abstract This article considers inequalities across racial and ethnic groups in the UK and finds that there is no single story of advantage or disadvantage. Racial and ethnic inequalities are complex and characterized simultaneously by continuity rooted in historical origins and conditions and rapid change fuelled by new and changing populations and opportunities. Continuity and change are also reflected in very different patterns of inequality across (and within) minority groups, generations and outcomes. Some groups are characterized by high levels of average qualifications, income and wealth, while others are persistently disadvantaged, faced with elevated levels of poverty and unemployment. Alongside different levels in outcomes are varied trajectories, both within and across generations. Within groups, there are less-explored, intersectional contours of difference, along the lines of gender, geography and class. Research and policy must acknowledge this diversity and complexity to inform effective policy prescriptions going forwards.

Addressing Child Maltreatment by Infusing Multicultural, Feminist Tenets to Standard Clinical Approaches: The Cases of “Bashiir” and “Jaquann”

Multicultural psychology emphasizes the role of social, cultural, and gender forces in creating an individual’s identity; the social and cultural world in which they live; and the psychological strengths that different cultures have to offer. In a complementary way, feminist psychology highlights the importance of collectivist alternatives to mainstream, individualistic thinking in the U.S.; and the identification and dismantling of patriarchal power structures that oppress women. Combining these two in a multicultural, feminist approach to psychotherapy highlights the importance of relating to clients with an understanding of, sensitivity to, respect for, and responsiveness to their cultural identities and life situations. This also involves the therapist building on strengths that come from some cultures bringing a collectivist rather than an individualist orientation to life’s challenges, such as combating child maltreatment. To illustrate the potential of a multicultural, feminist approach to psychotherapy in cases of child maltreatment among minority individuals, the present article offers two highly successful case studies. The first involves “Bashiir,” a 16-year-old African, first-generation immigrant young man from Somalia; and the second involves “Jaquaan,” a 15-year-old African American young man. Both clients were referred to therapy because of poor school attendance and academic difficulties, and associated symptoms consistent with a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) diagnosis. These symptoms derived from the clients having lived in poor, dangerous, high crime communities. A crucial component in both cases was the process by which the therapist employed the multicultural feminist approach to cross age, racial, gender, and socioeconomic-class lines to establish a very strong, trusting relationship between the therapist and the client; and between the therapist and the clients’ families.

440 Sex Workers Cannot Be Wrong: Engaging and Negotiating Online Platform Power

Online platforms shape and facilitate our social, economic, and political activities. Sex workers have long pioneered their use for advertising, providing services, screening clients, collecting payments, and peer-interaction, among other activities. To learn more about the platforms sex workers use and how they engage and resist platforms’ power, we consider the following questions: How and to what extent do sex workers engage with online platforms? How do these platforms’ policies and practices shape the conditions of their work? And, how do sex workers negotiate these platforms’ power? Drawing on data from a national survey of 440 sex workers, developed in partnership with sex workers across the United States, we found that sex workers use a range of online platforms for their work. However, platform policies and practices often remove and/or limit sex workers’ access, thereby restricting their ability to earn income and also compromising their safety, and these effects stratify along the lines of race, gender, and ability. Sex workers respond to and resist platforms’ policies through various pre-emptive and pro-active actions. Our study expands the existing research on sex work and online platforms, particularly to illuminate the consequences of corporate-led platform policy development and implementation for marginalized workers.

An unplugged remix of culturally responsive computing for early childhood education

AbstractDespite a growing movement towards expanding computer science education in PreK‐12, gaps in computing opportunities along lines of race, ethnicity, class, and gender have widened. Emergent theories and practices related to culturally responsive computing show promise in addressing this gap; however, little is known about engaging Black, Latinx, and Indigenous preschoolers in computer science. In this paper, we utilized qualitative content analyses to explore how an early childhood computer science curriculum created opportunities for young Black and Latinx preschoolers to develop computational thinking skills while engaging in culturally responsive computing. Overwhelmingly, we found the curriculum, co‐developed with educators and caregivers, emphasized unplugged tools and coding activities to support computational thinking. These unplugged opportunities positioned children as innovators with technology and technosocial change agents, in developmentally‐appropriate, play‐based ways. Findings demonstrate a need to emphasize the value of unplugged tools and coding activities in order to support computational thinking and align the goals of culturally responsive computing with the unique needs of young children. We discuss implications for a theory of culturally responsive computing specifically for early childhood education.

Places to be young: The dispossession of public space in Old Havana

The touristification of Old Havana is resulting in unique patterns of gentrification that rely on a new spatial imaginary, the enforcement of which is resulting in the loss of places for residents to be young. The Cuban state’s preservation of significant proportions of social housing as part of its investments in the heritage tourism industry is disrupting common housing-led displacement in the city. The neighbourhood’s economic transition is concentrated instead in public spaces, as squares and streets are taken over by new tourist-serving businesses. This process of enclosure dispossesses locals of both public and private leisure spaces, as the cost of consumption in said businesses is beyond the purchasing power afforded by Cuban salaries. The dispossession of public space is particularly problematic for local youth who, given the persistence and pervasiveness of Havana’s housing crisis, spend the majority of their free time in streets and squares. This displacement of youth reinforces existing patterns of exclusion and discrimination along lines of race, class and gender. Given the particular value of public space for youth development in communities like Old Havana, this article documents the three main processes through which young people are being displaced from or dispossessed of urban public space in their neighbourhood, enclosure, sanitisation and temporary appropriation, and discusses the impacts on young peoples’ place-related identity.

Men of Color, Linked Fate, and Support for Women of Color Candidates

Abstract Scholars are increasingly interested in “of color” identities. Yet, studies of “of color” identities have neglected attention to the gendered identities of men who could be categorized as “of color.” Meanwhile, women of color are playing a growing role in US politics as candidates and elected officials but are underrepresented in comparison with their presence in the population. We investigate whether Black and Latino men express a “men of color” linked fate and whether it has implications for support for women candidates of color. We seek to understand how Black and Latino men’s gender, race, and “of color” identities impact their evaluations of women candidates who are Black, Latina, and “of color” to better understand coalitional possibilities across gender and race lines. We find that Black and Latino men subscribe to “men of color” linked fate, with political consequences.

Network Fairness Ambivalence: When does social network capital mitigate or amplify unfairness?

Social networks inherit societal biases present across lines of gender, race, socioeconomic status, and other factors. Networks can structurally perpetuate unequal access to information and opportunities through homophilous dynamics. While there is substantial knowledge about inequity in the diffusion of opportunities in a network where nodes seek them from their immediate neighbors, much less is known when considering beyond that first hop. In this paper, we leverage recent mathematical analysis of network fairness to prove that enabling simple multi-hop dissemination can reduce inequity towards a minority group in the network as long as homophily is sufficiently weak. Otherwise, our necessary and sufficient condition proves that multi-hop dissemination strategies amplify the bias already found amongst considering direct neighbors. We empirically validate these results on four social network datasets as well as present an example of a key application of our findings with a scenario of individuals who leverage their personal network to seek job referrals. Our results suggest that online platforms designing algorithms to promote opportunities to multi-hop connections must carefully take into account network metrics measuring group size and homophily in order to avoid amplifying bias against marginalized groups on their platforms.