Gender Regimes Research Articles

A Space of One’s Own? The Tensions of Being Visible on Instagram for Turkish Female Athletes

In this study, we seek to understand how Turkish female athletes who are active on Instagram experience cyber violence, the cultural context of that violence, and the ways in which athletes negotiate and struggle with violence via a critical feminist approach. We analyze data obtained via individual, in-depth interviews with 15 athletes using the thematic analysis method. The findings show that active use of Instagram brings with it experiences of cyber sexual harassment and online and offline stalking. Turkey’s neo-conservative, religious, and patriarchal gender regime does not allow the interviewees to post freely on Instagram. Findings also reveal the presence of digital emotional labor, which is an important part of the athletic labor of femininity, in the struggle of participants to use Instagram as their own safe and free space. Consequently, although the participants have a fear of being exposed to violence in the real world due to their cyber violence experiences, or even fear death from time to time due to their Instagram posts, they nevertheless strive to use this space freely and break the control over their bodies.

Rethinking food regime as gender regime: agrarian change and the politics of social reproduction

ABSTRACT This paper presents a synthetic reading of the food regime and gender regime concepts to consider current trends in deagrarianization. Its goal is to articulate a research agenda for studying the food regime through the lens of gender and labor relations. Combining insights from feminist scholarship and early debates on family farming, it underscores the role of social reproduction in shaping agro-food systems. It reconsiders family, kinship, and strong ties as a form of social organization in capitalist production, emphasizes the significance of ideology on the household level, and underscores the role of temporalities of social and biological reproduction in conceptualizing the food regime evolution.

Analisis Lambannya Adopsi Rencana Aksi Nasional Resolusi Dewan Keamanan PBB 1325 sebagai Implementasi Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda di Myanmar

Gender in conflict is obscured in the mainstream of conflict analysis to date. The complexity of conflict is simplified by focusing on men as the sole actor and leaves the experiences and perspectives of women behind. This dynamic has been happening in Myanmar during the civil war and under the military regime which causes insecurity among Myanmar women. Unfortunately, Myanmar has not successfully translated UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 into National Action Plan (NAP) as a policy that ensures the safety of women in conflict situations. Their adoption process has been only at the initial stage. Meanwhile, Myanmar still refers to National Strategic Plan for the Advancement of Women (NSPAW) which is irrelevant to the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda implementation. Therefore, this qualitative-explanatory research aims to understand the reasons for the slow adoption of NAP on UNSCR 1325 in Myanmar using the gender regime concept from Feminist Institutionalism and the positionality concept from Feminist Security Studies. Based on the analysis, there are two factors causing the slow adoption. First, Myanmar institution from 2011 to 2022 is not friendly to gender issues and there is a regression in Myanmar institution from feminist presence and masculinist backlash regime to masculine hegemony regime that produces gender-blind policies. Second, Myanmar government’s positionality on security is contrary to the norms contained in Resolution 1325. They reflect on NSPAW 2013-2022 implementation which encourages them to ensure their compliance with regard to women in conflict situations.

Global Care Crisis and COVID-19: The Actions of States and the Initiatives of Female Domestic Paid Workers in Latin America

Since 2020, social movements, organizations, and nation-states in Latin America have taken concrete actions in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Although contingency policies were promoted, it did not take long for inequities to become visible. The paid domestic work sector, historically feminized, was strongly affected by the COVID-19 crisis. While Latin American governments launched various assistance policies for the domestic work sector, a contemporary regional initiative of Latin American women, CONLACTRAHO, was also working with its members to help them retain their jobs while risking contracting the disease. Here, we will explore the initiatives developed by some Latin American governments and strategies from CONLACTRAHO in the context of the care crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. These examples will allow us to reflect, from a qualitative, intersectional, and decolonial approach, on commonalities and differences between the civil society agenda and the gender agenda of nation-states in the region. We understand that the unequal labor conditions of domestic workers are strongly related to the societal gender regime that historically distributes roles, opportunities, and resources among gender categories. This work is part of a broader reflection regarding the process of Latin American regional construction and its interrelation with contemporary ideas of nation.

‘Working at becoming a communist’: institutional belonging and political self-making of women in the Communist Party of India (Marxist)

ABSTRACT Gendered relations of power contribute to the signification inherent in political parties. The formal rules and informal processes through which hegemonic gender regimes are reproduced and contested in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) are subjected to Feminist Institutionalist analysis here. In addition, the institutional belonging and political self-making of women party members are also assessed in the state of West Bengal. The experiential concepts of institutional belonging and self-making can enhance Feminist institutionalist research by identifying the processes that shape gendered behaviour of actors in institutions. The idealised revolutionary communist subjectivity that represents the institutional standard of appropriateness of gendered behaviour in the CPI(M) is explored. The co-constitutive relationship between institutions and political subjectivities is elaborated. The paper argues that the institutional belonging and political self-making of women in the CPI(M) are characterised by a politics of boundary-creation from as well as horizontal solidarities with fellow women colleagues.

Gender attitudes of immigrants in Russia (on the example of concepts of equal educational opportunities)

Attitudes towards gender equality have significant differences in different countries of the world. These differences are especially felt in migratory movements, when people are faced with different gender regimes. This article is devoted to the study of ideas about gender equality of immigrants from post-Soviet countries in Russia, as well as their comparison with similar attitudes of Russians. The empirical basis of the study was a survey of immigrants from the CIS countries, Ukraine and Georgia (autumn 2020, 700 respondents). Data on Russians is taken from the seventh wave of the World Values Survey (2017, 1810 respondents). Despite the common historical past, the gender attitudes of immigrants and Russians differ — the former more often agree with the thesis that higher education is more important for a boy than for a girl. Predictors of influence on gender attitudes were identified. For Russians, gender, position in the labor market and the number of children turned out to be significant. For immigrants, predictors of patriarchal gender perceptions were older age, lower levels of education, and adherence to the Muslim religion. An extended regression model for immigrants also led to the conclusion that it is not the length of time migrants live in the host country that affects the transformation of their gender attitudes, but the intention to connect their lives with Russia, the formation of an all-Russian identity (a sense of community with the citizens of the Russian Federation). At the same time, the position of Russia as a country that has not overcome the problem of gender inequality (50th place in the world ranking), coupled with the patriarchal ideas of some Russians, may allow immigrants not to rush to revise their own gender attitudes.

Post-Soviet Gender Regimes: Militarized Masculinities in the Making of the Russian–Ukrainian War

Post-Soviet Gender Regimes: Militarized Masculinities in the Making of the Russian–Ukrainian War

Male Writing on the Body-Territory of Two Rural Multigrade Schools

This paper explores the construction of masculinities in two rural multigrade schools located in Boyacá, Colombia, and San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Using an ethnographic approach, the daily dynamics and relationships between children and educational communities were investigated, focusing on how male children hegemonically dominate the playground. This dominance is based on a hierarchy where physical prowess confers greater male status. Rural schools are seen as bodies of domination where hegemonic masculinities are manifested, although affective practices that challenge this hegemony are also observed. Theoretically, the analysis is supported by concepts of hegemonic masculinity and gender regime of Connell (1995, 2001, 2016) and the masculinity mandate of Segato (2003). The methodology included observation of educational contexts, field diary records and interviews with teachers, students and family members. In San Luis Potosí, boys are organized in a "gang" that defends an exclusive space and excludes girls, reinforcing male dominance. In Boyacá, male "teams" occupy the playing field, excluding both girls and other males who do not meet the standards of hegemonic masculinity. Affective relationships also play an important role, as boys express affection and love in more private spaces such as bathrooms, challenging adult-centered authority

How to Get Punched by the ‘Weak’: An Analysis of the Agency of Filipina Domestic Workers in a Global, Unequal, and Gendered Labor System

Studying the challenges, suffering, and exploitation of the underprivileged around the world becomes valuable when it allows us to identify and then fix a problem. This paper pushes back against a narrative characterizing Filipina domestic workers as unable to fight against the global, unbalanced, sexualized, racialized, gender regime they work under. There are many examples where they are able to make a difference without needing the same resources as large international organizations or states. The key findings are a list of 10 actions taken by them, summarized as a tried and tested, non-exhaustive list of tools of the underprivileged ‘punching’ back. Using citizenship to leverage governments’ power, using their voices to leverage NGOs, reconciling and finding benefit with pervasive judgment and stereotypes, and even creating entire NGOs, magazines, and social movements, are all examples of how supposedly weak victims punch back.

Becoming apart: Drag and the practice of immanent resistance in postsocialist Belgrade

This article considers forms of drag in Belgrade that are critical of contemporary Serbian society and analyzes ways in which drag both participates in, and critically relates to, the postsocialist transitional socioeconomic environment, especially the creative industries. Becoming a part of the creative industries (re)produces drag, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender subjects as consumers, while the ‘becoming apart’ of drag offers possible sites of resistance to the dominant cultural, social and economic model. As some performances – by the Ephemeral Confessions collective, Dajana Ho and Dragoslavia – are critical of both current forms of capitalism and of cis-hetero-patriarchal regimes of gender and sexuality, as well as of the ethno-nationalist narrative that has shaped the region of former Yugoslavia, analysis of the Belgrade drag scene results in a conceptualization of a critical practice that is immanent to what is being critiqued – immanent resistance.

Gendered hybridity in leadership identities: a postfeminist analysis

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the discursive constitution of leadership identities by senior women leaders working in the City of London. This study draws on postfeminism as a critical concept to explore this constitution, as it has produced the cultural conditions for the reconfiguration of masculine and feminine gender norms in leadership.Design/methodology/approachIn a qualitative study, 13 women leaders in positions of power in the City of London were interviewed. Discourse analysis techniques were used to unpack the postfeminist shaping of leadership identitiesFindingsAt the heart of the leadership identities that senior women leaders construct is a gendered hybridity that is a multifaceted calibration of masculine and feminine attributes and behaviours. Postfeminist discourses of individualism, choice and self-improvement are entangled with discourses of authenticity, relatability and connectivity as particular leadership assets. The gendered hybridity of leadership identities unfolds the possibility for a fundamental makeover of leadership by opening-up space for a transformative change that accommodates women leaders.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the very few studies that foreground the leadership identities that women leaders construct within the confines of postfeminist gender regimes. It shows how these women invoke authenticity, unfolding possibilities for the transformational change of and political challenge to traditional gendered leadership in their organizations.

Being Involved in Sports or Giving Up: The Effects of Context on Teenage Girls’ Practice in French Disadvantaged Urban Neighborhoods

Despite French policies promoting sports for girls in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, gender inequalities in practice persist in these areas. Based on the sociology of socialization and Connell’s concept of gender regimes, this article proposes to analyze the effects of sports contexts on the (dis)engagement of girls going through the process of joining a club. The data stem from a number of ethnographic investigations (observations; interviews with athletes [girls and boys] aged 11–17, trainers, and parents, n = 42) conducted in three French disadvantaged urban neighborhoods in three different cities over a total of 5 years of field work. All the sports clubs of the neighborhoods studied were investigated. The results reveal that the forms of socialization favored by the club and the trainers of teenagers might structure feminine interrelationships either favorable to girls’ practice (as in gymnastics) or unfavorable, indeed conflictual (as in soccer).

Gender and the career trajectories of highly skilled Syrian refugees in Switzerland

This article looks at the role of gender relations and norms in the (re)making of career trajectories of highly skilled Syrian refugees in Switzerland. We explore how refugees encounter gender regimes while making sense of their present work situation vis-à-vis their career plans. We draw upon a qualitative study conducted with 27 highly skilled Syrian refugees in Switzerland. How do refugees encounter different gender regimes in Switzerland? What is the significance of gender in their transition to a new labour market? How do they re-negotiate gender meanings and roles following the displacement? Our findings show that refugees (re)make sense of gender norms, roles and meanings across space and time vis-à-vis their career trajectories. The gender regimes these people refer to are highly diversified and shape people’s negotiation of family roles and identities in complex and at times ambivalent ways, also along multiple lines of belonging.

Subverting technologies of gender in male-dominated gender regimes: (self) representations of Spanish and Swedish women filmmakers

ABSTRACT This article analyses (self)representations of women filmmakers active in the Swedish and Spanish film industries, looking at how “technologies of gender,” as theorised by Teresa de Lauretis, work to resist change within the industry’s “gender regimes” (as conceptualised by Raewyn Connell), but are also simultaneously reinvented by women film workers. Even though the gender regimes of Spain and Sweden are quite different, and despite the diversity of positions adopted by women film workers concerning cinema—as art, commodity, and socio-political technology—there are striking similarities in the obstacles faced by women in a male-dominated industry. We identify these similarities in a series of interviews with women filmmakers from both countries. What emerges as shared across both contexts is the ambivalent negotiation that women film workers have to carry out in their self-representations, when entering an industry built around a male norm. But along with these representations marked by the relation to patriarchal technologies of gender, many women creators also search for bottom-up narratives and appropriations of such technologies to construct themselves and their works outside and beyond the androcentric model of the current film industry.

Pursuing individualism without feminism: Leisure life and gender politics of young female bar-goers in urban China.

Drawing upon fieldwork data collected among young female bar-goers in China, we examine the gender politics manifested by their leisure activities and argue that these young women are pursuing individualism without feminism. By analyzing the act of bar hopping, we reveal the internal tension of individuation, which urges women to engage in gender labor in order to obtain preferential treatment regarding consumption and a competitive advantage in esthetic femininity. This indicates that the central axis of Chinese women's individualization is a hybrid of neoliberal individuals and essentialist gender roles. It encourages women to see themselves voluntarily as subordinate subjects in market transactions and feminized objects under male scrutiny. The pursuit of individualism without feminism prevents women from overcoming the highly gendered settings of bar scenarios, or imagining the female as a whole group with communal solidarity. The Chinese female individual manifests herself as a hostage of the collusion between the commodification of social life and a conservative gender regime. The case of China brings the individualization thesis out of its original compressed-modernity framework and indicates that East Asia's quest for modernity must address the compressed conditions of individualism and feminism simultaneously.

A narrative approach to displacement, gender and conflict: motivations of Kurdish women to leave Syria in times of lawlessness

ABSTRACT This article investigates the stories of Syrian Kurdish women who settled in Scandinavia during the Syrian war, which caused millions of people to leave their houses, families, and country. Although a considerable body of research exists on migration and gender in general, there is much less research available about the motivation for migration out of war and conflict and its gendered aspects. What reasons do Kurdish women give for their escape or migration from Syria? How do they talk about the options they had and the final decision to leave? Based on biographic interviews, it appears that the decision to leave Syria permanently was often a longer process of weighing options, that these decisions were often gendered in that they are different for women and for men, and that they were related to earlier histories of mobility. For women, the social consequences of leaving the home, staying and travelling need to be morally thought through within the context of a heteronormative society. By combining a narrative methodology with the gender regime theory and social meanings of migration, this article provides tools for analysing migration decisions and their gendered motivations, connecting individual motivations to macro level social forces.

Book Review: Eva Fodor, The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary

Book Review: Eva Fodor, <i>The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary</i>

Divas on the Dance Floor

Divas on the Dance Floor

Husband is a Priority: Gender Roles, Patriarchy and the Naming of Female Children in Nigeria

In onomastic practices of some traditional societies in Nigeria, stereotyped gender roles and patriarchy are deliberately perpetuated in the naming of female children, thus using naming traditions as weapons against girl-children. In these cultures, names are bestowed on female children to align with existing sexist norms and gender ideology in which the namer is dominant and the named is subservient. This article explores, from an ethnographic qualitative approach, the politics of this naming regime, and highlights the centrality of naming in the social construction of gender in two cultural traditions in Nigeria: Bette (South-east), and Owe (North-central), which entrench inequality and illuminate power and dominance against the girl-child. It considers the implications of this regime of names on the girl-child from the perspective of “doing gender” (West and Zimmermann in Gender Soc 1:125–151, 1987), which simultaneously recreates and reinforces the cultural meaning of gender and the systems of power and oppression on which it rests. I demonstrate how personal names are overtly used to enact conformism and/or resistance to patriarchy and the results, based on linguistic evidence, reveal that participants who conform to traditional gender norms or ideologies tended to reify inequality and oppressive gender regime through the choice of their names. Participants who resisted normative conception of gender opened up space for agency and autonomy, and thus expanded the frontiers of their gender expression.

(In)Stability of Gender Attitudes in Times of Family Policy Change—A Latent Class Analysis of Germany, Austria, and Sweden

Abstract Assuming a long-term feedback loop between attitudes about gender divisions of labor and family policy, we examine such attitudes in Germany, Austria, and Sweden, between 1994 and 2012. Using a longitudinal, case study approach, we argue that attitudes on the gender division of labor need to be put in relation to both recent family policy changes and a country’s gender regime. Employing latent class analysis, we examine the prevalence of different views on gender division of labor over time and test for measurement invariance to assess whether characteristics of attitudinal groups change across years. Results show increasing support for maternal employment within traditional groups in eastern and western Germany, potentially reflecting shifting policy within a changing gender regime. Simultaneously, intensive mothering and traditional attitudes remain more prevalent in Austria and western Germany than in eastern Germany and Sweden, indicating a persistent maternalist ideal among segments of these historically domestic gender regimes.