Gender Regimes Research Articles

Becoming a Third Sex?: Chinese Women and Postgraduate Education

ABSTRACTThis article explores how women's postgraduate education becomes entangled with heteronormative gender regimes enacted in public discourses that caution against women becoming too educated in China. The cultural capital of the PhD is obliterated by the loss of cultural capital resulting from gender non‐conformity. Two powerful discourses—‘leftover women’ and women with PhDs as a ‘third sex’ operate in tandem, we argue, to make the decision to study at postgraduate level challenging for women in China. Theoretically informed by neotraditionalist familialism, heteronormativity, chrononormativity and the potent affective ecology of shame, this research makes a significant contribution to scholarship on gender and higher education internationally by analysing the lived experiences of 15 Chinese postgraduate female students. The article suggests that by analysing gender and higher education in temporal terms, or culturally loaded age and gender‐appropriate decision‐making processes in China, chrononormativity effectively undoes the graduate premium and cultural capital of those Chinese women who do not marry or reproduce. We argue, however, that Chinese women are not powerless victims of patriarchal culture. Many are choosing to study for their PhDs (42% of PhDs in Mainland China in 2020 were gained by women), and in doing so are opening up options and lifestyles which disrupt, add value to or query the traditional gendered social order.

“If This Is What Working in Sports Is, I Want Absolutely No Part of It”: Women’s Experiences With Sexual Harassment in Sport Organizations

There is a plethora of recent examples from the sport industry that situate sport organizations as contributing to sexual violence against women (e.g., Phoenix Suns, Nike). Though research has shown that these issues exist in sport, little work has focused on the impacts of gender-based violence and sexual harassment. Therefore, utilizing gender regimes as our conceptual framework, we explored how experiences of gender-based violence and sexual harassment within sport organizations work to perpetuate the gender inequality in sport workplaces. Findings illustrate the influence of a multilevel relationship to the gender-based violence and sexual harassment experienced by women is impacted by the presence of gender regimes and use of containment strategies to conceal this abuse. Thus, we argue that institutional-level failures to protect women represent organizational success, which reinforces gender regimes and the purposeful containment of these incidents maintains the gender/power hierarchy.

How do institutional gender regimes affect formal reporting processes for sexual harassment? A qualitative study of UK higher education

AbstractFormal complaints and disciplinary processes constitute a mandatory aspect of organizational responses for addressing sexual harassment in many jurisdictions. However, previous research has found that reporting parties are not well served by such processes. In particular, Ahmed (Complaint!; 2021) argues that the institutional climate that enables harassment or discrimination to occur—including its gendered dynamics—also shapes how complaints about harassment are handled. Building on Ahmed's work, this article analyses how gender “gets into” formal reporting processes for sexual harassment within organizations. It draws on interviews with 18 students and staff who went through a formal institutional reporting process for gender‐based violence or harassment in UK higher education between 2016 and 2021. Using Connell's theorization of “gender regimes,” we outline how “dimensions of gender” within organizations affected different stages of formal reporting processes, including how evidence was gathered during reporting processes, as well as how it was assessed. These findings demonstrate that gender regimes—via gender relations of power, gendered “attachments and investments,” and “gender‐neutral” processes—can override formal processes and affect outcomes of sexual harassment reporting. These findings explain how gender regimes contribute to the failure of sexual harassment complaints to be upheld within organizations.

Shifting Grounds: Unveiling Female Employees’ Response to Gender Regime Dynamics in Organizations

Shifting Grounds: Unveiling Female Employees’ Response to Gender Regime Dynamics in Organizations

Being an au pair in London: Young Spanish women’s employment trajectories and strategies in regimes of gender and precariousness

The global economic crisis that began in 2008 led to major cuts to the welfare state in Spain and across Europe (Gambino, 2018), affecting key areas such as health, education, social care and youth employment. This was accompanied by drastic reductions in public spending and welfare benefits, which affected women particularly severely. Through ethnographic fieldwork with a gender and feminist perspective, this paper attempts to cast light on the trajectories of young Spanish women who emigrated to London in the ambiguous ‘au pair’ category. The figure of the au pair is interesting because it is an ad hoc, liminal, ambiguous, transient construction configured in such a way that it is ‘between’ categories, spaces and bounds, responding to the domestic care needs of English families’ offspring as part of a commodification of care brought about by a lack of regulation and resources from the state. The employment trajectories and strategies of young Spanish women are embedded in a context of precarious employment, in which young women with secondary and higher education seek financial and personal autonomy but are compelled to negotiate gender norms in order to overcome structural inequalities that increasingly devalue care work. The naturalisation of care and its attribution to women, as well as the ongoing association of women with the ‘good mother’ model, serves to reinforce gender hierarchies.

Gender and resources' role in parents' time with children in South Korea and the United States

AbstractObjectiveParental time with children varies across cultures but has mostly been studied in a European context. In this paper we estimate whether the association of work and gender with parental allocation of time is different in South Korea and the United States.BackgroundWe suggest that household level characteristics are associated with the time parents spend with their children, but that these associations are more gendered in South Korea than in the United States.MethodWe used data from the 2003–2018 American Time Use Survey (n = 38,562) and 2004–2014 Korean Time Use Survey (n = 12,828). Using ordinary least squares, we estimated the association of the intersection of gender and work in predicting parental time with children.ResultsGender is an important factor in time allocation in South Korea, where education was positively associated and working hours were negatively associated with mothers', but not fathers', time spent with their children. In the United States, resources and work have a dominant role, as both parents tend to spend more time with their children if they have higher education and income and work fewer hours.ConclusionIn South Korea, a gendered regime is associated with the allocation of parental time only; mothers are influenced by their spouses' time allocation and resources. The United States follows a trade‐off regime, where resources are associated with time spent with children, whereas gender plays a smaller role in parental time allocation.ImplicationsStudying parental time allocation should account for the intertwined relationship of culture, resources, and gender.

KADEM’s vision of gender justice and neopatriarchal masculinity in illiberal Turkey

ABSTRACT Women’s and LGBTI + rights have always been under attack in Turkey, but recent developments in AKP’s attempts to consolidate a pro-family, pro-birth, and Islamist gender regime based on the ‘moral’ regulation of women and LGBTI + creates an atmosphere that must be examined in detail. KADEM, a women’s GONGO established in 2013, plays a crucial role in this anti-gender backlash context, positioning their line of action as a challenge to the global feminist attempts to impose Western standards on Turkish society while advocating for women’s rights from a culturalist position. We analyse KADEM’s construction of men and masculinities in the materials on their website to understand their strategies of legitimisation of a form of neopatriarchal masculinity along the traditional ‘family values’ to see how KADEM serves as a transmitter of an Islamic neopatriarchal culture, with its implicit justifications of men’s patriarchal roles and duties in a neoliberal society.

“Hey, where’s my low-key sexist objectification?”: A blind woman's reflections on being banished and liberated from normative femininity and the gaze

In this autoethnographic paper, I present some personal reflections on negotiating tricky identity-related terrain as sociocultural beliefs about disability, femininity, impairment, and sexuality interact with my embodiment as a blind woman. This has primarily to do with being in some ways liberated and in other ways banished from both normative femininity and the gaze. I describe the complicated double-binds in my own experience with seeking belonging, that is, social and sexual legitimacy against the backdrop of a prohibitive gender system rooted in visual culture, which might be resonant for other blind and disabled women. I also consider the implications for blind and disabled women of being positioned as “transcenders” of visual culture and the gender regime. I suggest that, rather than liberation, this positioning might be felt by disabled women as further marginalisation, a banishment from acceptability and legitimacy.

A Comparison of the Socioeconomic and Gendered Organization of Social Reproduction in the United States and the United Kingdom, 1973–2013

Abstract Drawing on both gender regime theory and social reproduction theory, this article compares the socioeconomic and gendered organization of social reproduction in the United States and the United Kingdom from 1973 to 2013. Integrating data from the Luxembourg Income Study, the Multinational Time-Use Study, and additional sources, we examine how men and women of different socioeconomic groups contribute to social reproduction through household production, paid work, and government social benefits. Our results demonstrate that household social reproduction has not been universally refamilialized, marketized, or desocialized in either country. While there is some evidence of degendering, questions remain about its feminist implications.

Negotiating Hegemonic Masculinities and Mutual Exoticization within Grindr Tourism Interactions: “Everyone in Tel Aviv is a Muscle God”

ABSTRACT Dating apps are spaces where masculinities are communicated digitally, affecting inequalities around gender expressions. This study aims to identify the masculinities communicated within Grindr tourism interactions in Tel Aviv and analyze how masculinities shape relations among international tourists and locals. Methods consist of interviews and audio diaries with nineteen tourist, local, and immigrant Grindr users in Tel Aviv. Theories of affordances, hegemonic masculinities, and relational sociology are used to analyze the data. In discussion of the results, the concept of mutual exoticization is put forth to interpret the social dynamics valued within Grindr tourism interactions, thereby revealing oppositional fantasies tied to nationalities and masculinities. The study also explores ethnicity’s association with social and erotic capital in digital circulations of a localized Mizrahi masculinity. Findings reveal that while hegemonic masculinities are circulated on Grindr, resistance is also a part of Grindr tourism relations around masculinities. This research concludes by shedding light on masculinity inequalities within digital spaces where different nationalities co-congregate, revealing everyday negotiations of gender regimes. Grindr is the site of both reproduction of and resistance to social inequalities around masculinities.

“The loving queer gaze”: The epistemological significance of queer joy

AbstractThis article contends with queer joy as an epistemology to highlight an affective experience that grounds a basis for revising dominant approaches to sexual ethics. Drawing on findings from a mixed‐methods study with 100 2SLGBTQ+ young adults from Canada and the US, we argue that queer and trans people mobilize queer sexual joy as an epistemology of script breaking that led participants to explore freedom and play, enjoy novel forms of care and communality, and to challenge oppression. We found that 2SLGBTQ+ young adults are undermining dominant sexual cultures which perpetuate gender‐based violence through cisheteronormative logics of objectification and dominance. Rather than simply producing misery, normative sex and gender regimes produced a disorientation among 2SLGBTQ+ young adults which was fruitful for breaking sexual scripts and developing approaches to sex and relationships grounded in greater authenticity, creativity, reciprocity, play, and joy. We propose that by taking queer joy as a way of knowing, we may learn how queer and trans people negotiate the performativity of gender and sex, their own bodily knowledge, and the epistemic injustices that have precluded this knowledge from being valued. Pushing against the “joy deficit” in sociology that constrains the field to the study of the misery that minority communities face, this paper not only demonstrates what sociologists might learn from the texture of queer and trans lives, but also how these lessons can help to undermine cisheteronormativity as a root cause of gender‐based violence.

Do communist gender regimes have a lasting effect on contemporary gender role attitudes in the post-communist region?

Although studies have found a lasting negative impact of the communist legacy on political attitudes in the post-communist region, the effect of this legacy on gender attitudes is less well researched. While post-communist countries share a history of women-friendly policies under communism, their socio-political paths diverged after the transition. We ask: do communist gender regimes have a lasting effect on gender role attitudes? We answer this question by comparing the attitudes of cohorts socialised under communism with the attitudes of the post-transition generation using Life in Transition III survey data. We find a distinct legacy effect on attitudes. Non-European Union communist cohorts have more progressive attitudes than the post-transition cohort. In the European Union, the attitudinal gender egalitarianism of the post-transition cohort is indistinguishable from the attitudes of communist cohorts, likely due to this cohort also experiencing gender equality promotion during socialisation. The findings support the need to continue gender equality promotion.

Understanding "The Athletic Labour of Femininity" Through the Experiences of Turkish Female Personal Trainers

The momentum of social media in the world of sports has created a wide range of opportunities for women in sports. One of the most obvious of these opportunities is undoubtedly related to economic visibility. The current research aims to examine how female trainers in the health and fitness sector, who actively participate in the creation and consumption of sports, represent themselves on Instagram through the concept of the athletic labour of femininity in the light of Turkey's gender regime and neoliberal feminism. In this study, which applied quantitative content analysis to a total of 1100 photographs of eleven individual coaches (11), eight in-depth individual interviews were conducted, and these qualitative data were analyzed by thematic analysis method. The quantitative and qualitative findings of the research show that women trainers in the health and fitness sector construct coaching that is in line with neoliberal femininity. On the other hand, power relations based on Turkey's neoconservative, religious patriarchal norms influence the market-based decisions trainers make about their sharing. As a result, Turkey-specific dynamics are at the forefront of trainers' athletic endeavours, which they focus on building a brand image. This study offers a perspective on how personal trainers serving in the healthy living and fitness industry use Instagram as a marketing tool, what economic opportunities they get, and what they negotiate while improving their visibility on Instagram, in the context of neoliberal femininity and Turkey's gender regime.

Hegemonic masculinity and institutional betrayal: an oppressive silencing of the feminist ear in Burkina Faso secondary schools

ABSTRACT This article draws from a qualitative study that examines teachers’ responses to school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) in two secondary schools in Burkina Faso. To analyse educators’ responses, we apply the lens of hegemonic masculinity and the concept of institutional betrayal to argue that schools justify the subordination of women and perpetuate SRGBV rather than protect vulnerable individuals. We contend that despite having a strong legal framework and official reporting mechanisms, oppressive systems of gender relations (gender regimes) in secondary schools in Burkina Faso (re)traumatize victims and women teachers, or whistle-blowers. Furthermore, we find that gender regimes in schools function to exploit women teachers’ labour: women teachers are tasked with addressing SRGBV while they simultaneously experience institutional gaslighting and devaluation of their efforts. This research contributes to discussions on how social norms and gendered institutions impact SRGBV policy implementation and teachers’ abilities to make transformative change.

재난 서사에 내재된 공포 정치와 젠더 레짐

By analyzing the politics of fear in the narrative of disasters kind of infectious diseases and the gender regime that is practiced within social constructs, we can critically explore the everyday discrimination inherent in communities and the sense of place where members are separated. Furthermore, in order to create a healthy society that recognizes the value and diversity of human beings, violent discriminatory behavior within gendered organizations must be examined from a gender perspective. In this study, focusing on Jung Yoo-jung's novel “28” and Choi Jin-young's “To the Warm Horizon”, we will examine the narrative aspect of discourse on the risk of life as a threat of gender in order to have power in a disaster situation. It aims to raise a problematic awareness of the political act of creating fear by instrumentalizing the risk of infection and segregating the sex differences written on the body by dividing them into classes. In the two novels, after the spread of the epidemic, gendered women are confined to a defined sphere and marginalized in a limited role in the public sphere. However, the author attempts to deconstruct the power structure within the community that sexually exploits women's bodies by depicting the future of humanity through a system of domination and obedience. The novel point out the contradictions of the heterosexual patriarchal system by ideally portraying the restoration of relationships formed on empathy and love by rejecting masculinity in which the female body is disciplined. In the end, the novel emphasizes that the logic of power or the predominance of power in the private/public sphere is not the orientation of a positive community that sustains life. Emphasizing that the communal value, which is closer to hope than the disciplinary power that oppresses others, is the sentiment of caring to respect each other and live together as it is, the author embodies the gender regime as a social practice in the novel.

Hidden behind closed doors: Non‐standard employment, migrant women and gender regimes in Europe

AbstractNon‐standard employment (NSE) is well‐documented in the domestic sector in all European countries. The precariousness and poor working conditions of this sector reflect in a labour force composed by the most vulnerable layers of the labour market, namely, migrant women. This article analyses how and to what extent a macro‐level factor, that is, the gender regime (resulting from the interplay of gender equality and gendered social norms) interacts with micro‐level individual and occupational characteristics to shape the prevalence of NSE in the domestic sector in Europe. We use the 2019 EU‐LFS data and run a set of logistic regression analyses. Our results show that NSE is a defining feature of domestic sector, and that migrant women are at a higher risk of being in this type of employment, especially in destination countries where gender equality is relatively lower and expectations concerning care and family responsibilities are more traditional.

Institutional responses to sexual harassment and misogyny towards women teachers from boys in Australian schools in the post-#metoo era

ABSTRACT Sexual harassment and misogyny are historical experiences of the teaching workforce in Australia. While #metoo promised a moment of reckoning for all girls and women, this reckoning has been less acutely felt in Australian schools, evidenced by a persistence of sexual harassment and misogyny despite progress allegedly made in political and public discourse. In this paper, we draw on data from interviews with 30 women teachers and critically examine their reflections on responses from their school leadership to sexual harassment and misogyny from boys. We demonstrate that school-level responses to misogyny do not reflect broader attitudinal shifts initiated by #metoo, indicating that school leadership largely remains beholden to institutional norms and gender regimes that legitimate and consolidate practices of hegemonic masculinity that subordinate girls and women. We conclude by calling for a renewed focus on addressing cultures of misogyny and sexism in schools at both a policy and classroom level.

The tradition of drinking and dying: Gender, alcohol consumption, and violence in San Andrés cholula, Puebla

AbstractThis ethnographic research examines practices related to alcohol consumption in the traditional area of San Andrés Cholula, namely, in the region comprised of the eight neighborhoods participating in the “cargo system,” a religious and socio‐spatial institution responsible for organizing ecclesiastical festivities. Using anthropological fieldwork as the research methodology, it observes how male alcoholization, shielded by popular religiosity and supported by local authorities, institutionalizes gender practices that legitimize violence. These practices, veiled under the guise of “traditions,” act to the detriment of the living conditions of local women. In this context, the lens of postcolonial feminism enables the understanding of women's responses and actions in the face of impositions and demands from the local gender regime.

Shifting professional and personal identities of the cisgender scholar doing LGBT research

Background: Scholars researching the issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other sexual and gender minorities (LGBT) are being denounced as performers of ‘dirty’ work and promotors of ‘immorality’. Such scholars face obstacles in the workplace, such as difficulties in obtaining ethical approval, scarcity of funding, bullying, denial of promotion and unacknowledged scholarship, among other struggles.Objectives: This article intends to highlight the unintended, unanticipated and often overlooked impact that certain LGBT research interests have on the professional and personal identities of the scholar.Method: This exploratory qualitative study uses a reflexive dialogical single case study approach to understand how Katlego (a pseudonym), a cisgender heterosexual researcher, is affected by his interest in LGBT studies. Continuous supervision notes that enable thoughtful reflexive practice in qualitative research shaped the basis of this article.Results: This article shows how Katlego’s LGBT research interest resulted in him being policed, his professional intentions questioned, his bodily expression scrutinised and personal conflict being blamed on his allegedly ‘disgraceful’ research interest. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the conflation of Katlego’s interest in LGBT research with pervasive negative assumptions of non-heteronormative sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions has resulted in a shift in his professional and personal identities.Conclusion: This article calls for awareness of the issues faced by all researchers interested in LGBT research and support strategies for navigating the professional identity, workplace environment and social ecologies within a frowned-upon research field. Failure to do so could compromise their career trajectory, well-being and safety in compulsory heterosexual environments.Contribution: This article illustrated how gender regimes position the researcher as an active creator of knowledge; therefore, the research process experiences can neither be made invisible nor neutralised. Researchers must overtly consider and prepare for situational and unanticipated ethical issues.

Recognition at the corporate celebration of Christmas: Freezing the postsocialist gender regime

This article critically examines the perpetuation of gender regimes within postsocialist Europe by analyzing how organizational recognition is performed as part of the corporate celebration of Christmas. A critical ethnography was conducted at a male-dominated company in postsocialist Hungary. The article’s findings align with three corporate Christmas scenes: the company owner’s speech, an award ceremony for families, and an award ceremony for the best employee. This study contributes to critical organization studies by advancing an understanding of the postsocialist gender regime and those ideological forms of recognition that invisibly reproduce it through the seemingly innocent practices of Christmas celebrations. Furthermore, by providing a critical reconceptualization of workplace familism as an ideology, it is argued that it is a central and distinctive element of the gendered subtext of this particular postsocialist gender regime. Ultimately, three different and ritualized forms of pathological recognition (misrecognition, overidentification and reification) are identified, claiming to be constitutive of individual gender identity regulation and extending socioideological control beyond the boundaries of the organization.