Gender Lines Research Articles

Queering Chinese Crossings in Late Twentieth Century Jamaica: Larry Chang and the Gay Freedom Movement

This essay examines the relationship between Chinese racialization and queer formation in post-independence Jamaica. Alongside its international reputation for black empowerment and homophobic exceptionalism in the late twentieth century, Jamaica also becomes home to the anglophone Caribbean’s first gay activist organization, the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM), led by Chinese-Jamaican General Secretary Larry Chang. Focusing on Chang’s life and work, this essay analyzes the relationship between Chinese-ness and local and international iterations of Jamaican gay activism. Drawing on archival research and oral history interviews, I argue that Chinese-ness was key to Chang’s politics of crossing in which he wrote as different characters in GFM’s newsletter to represent and recruit across the lines of race, class, gender, and nation in support of a broad-based gay social movement. This strategic mobilization of Chinese-ness in the service of erotic autonomy queers the racial logic that positions Chinese diasporans as “middleman minorities” in their multiracial host societies.

Understanding Ambivalent Sexism and its Relationship with Electoral Choice in Britain

AbstractWe investigate the prevalence and correlates of sexism in the British political context, using a measure of ambivalent sexism that distinguishes between hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes. Drawing on original data from two nationally representative online surveys, we find that more than half of the population hold some sexist attitudes and that these are predicted by gender, education, religiosity and authoritarian values. We demonstrate that the most significant division in sexist attitudes within the British electorate falls along political rather than gender lines, with men and women expressing more similar views about sexism than either Conservative and Labour voters, or Leave and Remain supporters. We also find that endorsing hostile sexism is associated with voting Conservative in the 2019 general election, even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and political values. Our findings reveal that sexism is important for political competition in contexts where gender is not obviously salient.

New insights into sex differences in primary biliary cholangitis. Gender difference in primary biliary cholangitis.

To highlight the clinical characteristics of primary biliary cholangitis on the basis of gender in terms of the extent of liver injury and extra-liver autoimmune expressions. The retrospective study was conducted at the Tri-Service General Hospital, Taiwan, and comprised data of patients aged >20 years diagnosed with primary biliary cholangitis between January 2000 and December 2018. Patients in the control group were randomly selected from the health examination centre. Liver injury manifestations and susceptibilities were analysed along gender lines. The gene expression microarray data from the National Centre for Biotechnology Information Gene Expression Omnibus database was also used to explore the relationship between autoimmune-induced inflammation and androgen response expression. Statistical analysis was done using Graph-Pad Prism 7.0. Of the 75 cases, 63(84%) were females with a mean age of 64.6±1.78 years, and 12(16%%) were males with a mean age of 46.6±5.6 years. Of the 66 controls, 55(83.3%) were females with a mean age of 51.67 years, and 11(16.6%) were males with a mean age of 45.9 years. There were no significant differences in terms of liver profiles related to gender in the control group (p>0.05). Among the cases, male patients showed fewer extrahepatic autoimmune disorders and more severe liver injuries before or after ursodeoxycholic acid treatment (p<0.05). There was a positive correlation between androgen receptor response and the extent of systemic inflammation (p<0.05). Conclusion: The association between androgen receptor responses and inflammation was linked to gender-related hepatic injuries, which may explain why liver inflammation in male patients is generally more severe compared to the female patients. The association between androgen receptor responses and inflammation was linked to gender-related hepatic injuries, which may explain why liver inflammation in male patients is generally more severe compared to the female patients.

Zimbabwe’s post-2000 land reform programme, inter-ethnic hierarchies among ‘Black Zimbabweans’ and the potential of resource conflict: the case of Chipinge District

ABSTRACT This article examines the inter-ethnic hierarchies among ‘Black Zimbabweans’ and the potential of tension and conflict over land in Zimbabwe. The land reform programme executed in 2000, with the intention of restoring land to its ‘rightful’ owners (read blacks/Africans), has accentuated this tension and conflict. However, ‘black Zimbabweans’, irrespective of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front’s (ZANU-PF) patriotic history and nationalist rhetoric of ‘sameness’ and ‘oneness’, are not monolithic as they are divided along class, ethnic and gender lines. This division is key in negotiating and accessing national resources such as land as it translates into ‘national cultural’ capital. Ethnic conflict and tension is rife in Zimbabwe and this makes it possible to consider the inter-ethnic dimensions of what it means to be a ‘black Zimbabwean’ and how this inter-ethnicity might have influenced or affected Zimbabwe’s land reform programme. I use the Ndau ethnic group of the Chipinge District as a case study as the majority of the Ndau feel marginalized in the allocation of redistributed A2 farms in Zimbabwe’s Natural Regions 1 and 2 chiefly characterised by dairy and agricultural farming. This marginalization disadvantaged them as it privileged ‘outsiders’ (read ‘other’ ethnic groups in Zimbabwe).

U.S. Universities Under the Microscope

Four environmental forces will influence the future trajectory of U.S. universities: federal patronage, state subsidies, new technologies, and social movements promoting greater equity across racial-ethnic and gender lines. The article describes how they will influence universities and how their impact is influenced by the positional strength of universities, the interests of departments, and the strategic assessments of senior managers. I show how these enviornmental forces can be directed to strengthen, rather than to further weaken, universities.

English

A total of 128 medicinal plant species belonging to 71 genera and 46 families were identified and used to treat 42 human ailments. Euphorbiaceae was the leading family with 14 species, followed by Rubiaceae and Leg-Caesalpiniaceae with 12 and 8 species, respectively. Seven species (Coffea stenophylla, Garcinia afzelii, Mitragyna stipulosa, Irvingia gabonensis, Milicia regia, Nauclea diderrichii and Nesogordonia papaverifera) are of conservation concern. Herbs are the highest followed by shrubs, trees, climbers and epiphytes. Leaves are the most used parts, followed by roots, fruits, stems, flowers, nuts, tubers and seeds. The highest calculated Relative Frequency of Citations Index (RFC) was for Musa sapientum, followed by Zingiber officinale, Anisophyllea laurina, Cola nitida, Nauclea latifolia, Tetracera potatoria Allophylus africanus, Cassia sieberiana and Termitomyces microcarpus. The highest Use Value index (UV) was calculated for Cola nitida (1.9) followed by Nauclea latifolia (1.56), Zingiber officinale (1.55) Ficus exasperata and Tetracera potatoria (1.44) respectively. Medicinal plants knowledge is strongly associated with the elderly in secret societies which are structured along gender lines. Plant use for medicinal reason actually addresses a significant part of the way of life and customs of the people living in this area and other rural locations in Sierra Leone. Key word: Medicinal plants, ethnobotany, indigenous technical knowledge, Sierra Leone forests.

Philosophy, education and visceral politics of the now

The essay looks into the pedagogical role of philosophy in shaping the practice of dissent. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s radical understandings of philosophy as a machinic assemblage, it redeploys philosophy as a pedagogical tool which gathers traction from social events and remains invested in a dissensual politics. As a machinic assemblage committed to a dissensual politics philosophy works alongside collective modalities of enunciation that operate outside conventional structures of the academia. Such assemblages of enunciation often inhabit a zone of critical inarticulacy brimming with the promise of new kinds of knowledge. How does philosophy critically interact with spaces of dissent along lines of gender, caste, ethnicity and nationalism to enable novel critical interventions? Deleuze and Guattari’s answer redirects us to a pragmatic engagement with philosophy which involves the manufacture of new pedagogical concepts as part of a schizoanalytic apparatus of protest. These concepts often emerge out of a visceral response to events unfolding around us. Needless to emphasize that such a philosophy which emerges out of a praxial encounter with life cannot be framed as an institutional staple, but takes shape as part of a visceral politics of the now. What then is the role of pedagogy in shaping an ethics of dissent and how can such a pedagogy mobilize plebeian acts of resistance in the sphere of the everyday?

Organizing the Home Front: The American Women’s Voluntary Services in New Jersey during World War II

During World War II (WWII), the American Women’s Voluntary Services (AWVS) became the largest service organization in the U.S. At the onset of American entry into WWII, the AWVS already included 18,000 volunteers. Within two years of its creation, the group expanded to 350 chapters nationwide, with the height of its wartime membership reaching roughly 325,000. Both on a national and local level, the AWVS proved instrumental to the success of home-front mobilization during WWII. With numerous community chapters, significant wartime initiatives, and proximity to the national AWVS in New York City, the New Jersey groups serve as a starting point for a more nuanced reflection on the AWVS during WWII. Along with considerations of gendered citizenship and volunteerism, the narrative of the AWVS presents women who both adhered to accepted forms of volunteerism and pushed social boundaries. The activities of the AWVS occupied a space somewhere in between nurturing and militaristic, blurring gendered lines of acceptable wartime participation and occupying a unique role not easily categorized. These women reimagined local activism and cooperation as encompassing more than their socially accepted supporting roles and expanded into areas of civilian defense, disaster response, emergency preparedness, and more. &#x0D;

Can Unhappy Pictures Enhance the Effect of Personas? A User Experiment

There has been little research into whether a persona's picture should portray a happy or unhappy individual. We report a user experiment with 235 participants, testing the effects of happy and unhappy image styles on user perceptions, engagement, and personality traits attributed to personas using a mixed-methods analysis. Results indicate that the participant's perceptions of the persona's realism and pain point severity increase with the use of unhappy pictures. In contrast, personas with happy pictures are perceived as more extroverted, agreeable, open, conscientious, and emotionally stable. The participants’ proposed design ideas for the personas scored more lexical empathy scores for happy personas. There were also significant perception changes along with the gender and ethnic lines regarding both empathy and perceptions of pain points. Implications are the facial expression in the persona profile can affect the perceptions of those employing the personas. Therefore, persona designers should align facial expressions with the task for which the personas will be employed. Generally, unhappy images emphasize realism and pain point severity, and happy images invoke positive perceptions.

Gender and Generational Differences in Local Knowledge and Preference for Food Trees in Central Uganda and Eastern Kenya

Food trees contribute substantially to the food and nutrition security of millions of rural households in Africa. Farming communities prioritize tree and shrub species on farms based on a combination of factors, including their knowledge of potential uses the species' economic potential and a range of constraints and opportunities that each farmer faces depending on their position within the community and the household, in cultivating, harvesting and processing tree products. Gender and age are strong determinants of such constraints and opportunities as well as ecological knowledge and use of tree resources. This study contributes to the understanding of gender and generational preferences for food tree species that determine their use, and which contribute to food and nutrition security in Central Uganda and Eastern Kenya. Sixteen gender and age segregated focus group discussions were conducted to assess food tree species preferences. A total of 61 food tree species were listed −46 in Uganda (including 16 indigenous species) and 44 in Kenya (21 indigenous species). Results showed knowledge on food tree species differed by gender and age, with differences across gender lines found more prevalently in Uganda, and across generational lines in Kenya. Age-related differences in knowledge and preferences were clear with regard to indigenous species, whereby older women and men were found to have the most knowledge in both countries. Among key challenges for food tree cultivation, farming households mentioned knowledge of tree management, the lack of planting materials, especially for improved varieties, prolonged droughts and scarcity of land. Some of these constraints were gendered and generational, with women mostly mentioning lack of knowledge about planting and management as well as cultural restrictions, such as only having access to land when married; whereas younger men indicated management challenges such as pests, limited markets, as well as scarcity and limited ownership of land. Overall findings suggest that consulting user preferences for food tree species and constraints experienced by gender and age group could be important in the design of interventions which involve a diversity of food trees.

Working the shopping mall: Labour shortages and the dualities in Japan’s labour economy

ABSTRACT The Japanese labour market has for long been sharply divided along the lines of gender and contractual status, with these attributes largely determining employment conditions. Yet, Japan’s demographic situation has led to labour shortages, and it needs to be asked whether companies can sustain current employment practices. This article seeks answers to this question by looking at the employment situation in retailing, specifically in shopping centres, places that are demanding in terms of working hours and employ high numbers of female and non-regular employees. The emergence of labour shortages led to a lively discourse among the members of the Japan Council of Shopping Centers, the industry’s association, and this discourse has been featured in the industry journal SC Japan Today. Analysing this discourse, the article argues that companies have built their business models on the assumption of a ready labour supply, and they are now becoming more flexible in employment practices. Yet, companies avoid a discussion of remuneration levels and are also looking at other solutions such as the reorganization of work processes or automation, and especially the employment of foreign employees. An increase in foreign employees may lead to new dualities based on nationality in the future.

The Home of the Dispossessed

The objects that people interact with on a daily basis speak to and of these people who acquire, display, and handle them—the relationship is one of exchange. People living among household objects come to care for their things, identify with them, and think of them as a constituent part of themselves. A meaningful problem arises, however, when people who have deep connections to the objects that populate their lived spaces are not those who possess the legal rights of ownership. These individuals and groups—usually excluded from the realm of property ownership along lines of gender, race, and ethnicity—live on an axis of property precarity, persistently subject to the anxieties as well as the realities of dispossession. This Article’s launching point to explore these dispossessions is Henry James’ novel, The Spoils of Poynton, which involves a dispute about the settlement of a father’s estate and describes the battle between mother and son over the furnishings of the family home, Poynton. On a descriptive level, The Spoils of Poynton is a novel about a wife’s dispossession and the gendered nature of inheritance. The novel is also, however, about the exclusions built into property theories of labor and personhood. Accordingly, this Article explicates tactics of dispossession inherent in traditional theories of property ownership, explores the legal claims made to property ownership by those who have been dispossessed, and analyzes the ways in which the meaning of property for these individuals and communities is reconstituted within the political imaginary. The novel therefore tells the story not only of a property conflict between mother and son but also of how individuals who straddle the fragile boundary between personhood and objecthood both experience property as liminal fragments of the rightsholder they could have been and perform their property ownership as a political declaration. In this way, the novel tells the story of what it is like to live in the home of the dispossessed.

Color Coded Intersections: Workplace Bullying, Colorism, and Its Impact Along Race and Gender Lines

Color Coded Intersections: Workplace Bullying, Colorism, and Its Impact Along Race and Gender Lines

Body and Soul: Queer Possessions in the Black Atlantic

Body and Soul: Queer Possessions in the Black Atlantic

The prevalence of thyroid nodules and risk factors of thyroid nodules with metabolic disorder in Beijing

Background: In recent years, the prevalence of thyroid nodules (TNs) has been increasing, but the relationship between metabolic abnormalities and the incidence of TNs is not well defined, and there is scant data evaluating this relationship stratified by gender. This study aims to analyze the prevalence of TNs and possible risk factors for TNs across gender lines and various metabolic states in Beijing, China. Patients and Methods: A total of 6001 subjects who underwent thyroid ultrasounds as part of a routine medical checkup at Luhe Hospital between 2017 and 2018 were enrolled in this study. Multivariate adjustment logic was used to analyze possible demographic and clinical risk factors of TN stratified by gender. Results: The prevalence of TNs was 44.1%, of which 45.9% were female and 40% were male. In general, the prevalence of TNs increased in parallel with advancing age. These findings were even starker among females, with TN prevalences of 37.5%, 46.5%, 52.9%, and 54.1%, among participants in &lt;55-, 55–65-, 65–75-, and &gt;75-year-old age groups, respectively. The prevalence of TNs was significantly higher among patients with obesity (46.8% vs. 43%, P = 0.008), central obesity (45% vs. 40.4%, P = 0.005), hypertension (47.1% vs. 42.4%, P &lt; 0.001), metabolic syndrome (MetS) (46.1% vs. 41%, P &lt; 0.001), and low TSH levels (46.5% vs. 37.1%, P &lt; 0.001). MetS and obesity were independent risk factors for the prevalence of TNs (odds ratio [OR] = 1.167, [1.002–1.277] and (OR = 0.038, [1.01–1.396]), respectively). TSH had a protective effect on the prevalence of TNs (OR = 0.664, [0.585–0.75]). Conclusions: The present study supports the existing research that contends a strong correlation between older age, MetS, and other clinical risk factors and the prevalence of TNs. This relationship only persisted among women when stratified by gender. These results set the precedent for further research on how gender influences the incidence of TNs, particularly in the setting of other clinical and demographic risk factors.

Pedro and Pita Built Peter Priesthood's Mansion and Now They Work the Grounds: Whose Masc Does “the Lamanite” Wear?

Pedro and Pita Built Peter Priesthood's Mansion and Now They Work the Grounds: Whose <i>Masc</i> Does “the Lamanite” Wear?

The Unexpected Consequences of Automation in Policing

This Article has two aims. First, it explains how automated decision-making can produce unexpected results. This is a problem long understood in the field of industrial organization, but identifying its effects in policing is no easy task. The police are a notoriously difficult institution to study. They are insular, dislike outsiders, and especially dislike critical outsiders. Fortunately, we have the benefit of a decade’s worth of experimentation in police use of automated decision-making and the resulting political backlash against some of these uses. As a result, some large urban police departments have undergone external investigations to see whether tools like predictive policing or individual criminal risk assessments are biased, ineffective, or simply too costly despite their benefits. One of these recent reports, studying the use of acoustic gunshot detection software in Chicago, provides a window into one type of police automation. This leads to the Article’s second observation. Automation is not just a set of tools that the police use; it changes the environment of policing in unexpected ways. The increasing use of automated tools in policing has generated some widely shared criticisms, but they focus primarily on the flaws of the technologies used. The training data in facial recognition algorithms may be biased along lines of race, gender, and ethnicity. Risk assessments for gun violence may, in truth, be poor guides for police intervention. These claims are singularly technology-focused. Accordingly, errors and inefficiencies merit technological improvements. Even calls for bans on technologies like facial recognition are responses to the technology itself. As Chicago’s experience with acoustic gunshot detection technology demonstrates, however, automation serves not just as a tool for the police, but also leads to changes in police behavior. These changes in police conduct are documented in a 2021 report from the Chicago Office of Inspector General, and they are noteworthy. If automation unexpectedly changes police behaviors, these changes have implications for how we understand policing through the lens of inequality and unaccountability.

Real Southern Barbecue: Constructing Authenticity in Southern Food Culture

Real Southern Barbecue: Constructing Authenticity in Southern Food Culture

Community institutions in water governance for sustainable livelihoods

Successful community institutions in the global South, which are contributing to livelihoods’ improvement while conserving water and other natural resources, can sustainably build the resilience that policy makers at different tiers are seeking. This article assesses different models of community institutions in Nepal in governing water resources from various lenses, based on Ostrom’s and others’ design principles, including bricolage. Illustrated by three empirical cases, it analyses key features of community institutions in integrated water governance, their contributions to health, nutrition, food security, and environmental conservation, and ways for empowering these institutions as viable and sustainable solutions to address various livelihood challenges. However, inequalities along gender, caste, and ethnicity lines persist. We argue that the recently established local governments under the federal system in Nepal provide new opportunities for gender and social inclusion.

Barriers to Diversity Management in Classroom: A Case of Rural Community Schools in Nepal

This paper attempts to explore and analyse the barriers for diversity management in classroom of a rural community schools in Nepal. Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural country. As the fabric of society, there is also diversity in the configuration of community schools in rural areas. It entails knowing that each student is unique and acknowledging their uniqueness in the classroom. These might be along the lines of color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic position, age, physical ability, religious views, political convictions, or other ideologies. This paper is mainly based on primary and secondary data. Purposively, head teachers, teachers, and students were selected for interviews. Interviews, field visits, classroom observation, and focus group discussion with teachers and students were conducted, and the data were analyzed thematically based on interview codes. The data shows that they were ignorant of the concept of diversity and how to manage it in the classroom. It is mainly due to the deconstruction of teachers’ attitudes regarding income, professionalism, community structure, physical infrastructure, and socioeconomic discrepancies. This paper suggests managing diversity in the classroom through both policies to integrate curricula and effective management practices in the classrooms. Thus, teachers need pedagogical skills to address the issues of diversity, marginality and oppress groups of the society and barrier of diversity management in the classroom.