The gendered dimensions of an ‘herbicide revolution’: a feminist analysis of herbicide adoption in central India

The purpose of ethical education is to develop critical thinking skills and cognitive capacities that a This study was carried out among students at Politehnica University of Timișoara, România, exploring their perceptions of women's rights and freedoms as well as gender relations both in Romania and Afghanistan, a country they primarily know through media representations. The main research objective was to gather insights into Romanian students’ perceptions of gender issues within the distinct political and cultural contexts of the two countries. To facilitate this analysis, a questionnaire comprising 34 variables was administered, enabling a comparative examination of gender perceptions in Romania and Afghanistan. The findings revealed significant differences in how women's rights and freedoms are perceived in the two nations. In Romania, factor analysis identified four key dimensions: women's rights, violations of gender behavioral norms, sanctions for behavioural deviations, and punishment of women for adultery. In contrast, the analysis of Afghanistan revealed three main factors: women's rights, sanctions against men for behavioral deviations, and punishment of women. These results underscore the contrasting frameworks through which gender issues are understood in Romania and Afghanistan, reflecting deeper societal values and norms. Ultimately, this research highlights the critical role of context in shaping perceptions of gender rights, suggesting that students' views are influenced not only by their personal experiences but also by external narratives about different cultures.

ABSTRACT This study traces the historical evolution of misogyny in urban China through a critical discourse analysis of the label laonü, a stigmatizing term that encapsulates complex intersections of gender, class, regionalism, migration, the state’s Household Registration System, and power relations. Shaped by China’s rapid urbanization and social transformation, the discourses surrounding laonü reflect a distinctive form of ‘Chinese-style urban misogyny’. By tracing the term’s trajectory from its origins in Cantonese-speaking migrant communities to its widespread circulation in popular media and online platforms, this research reveals how laonü discourse functions as a mechanism of patriarchal control by constructing binary oppositions and reinforcing social hierarchies that otherise and marginalize women. Central to this process is the phenomenon of ‘internalized misogyny among women’, which manifests as a form of ‘female intra-gender social disgust’, whereby women themselves engage in policing and stigmatizing laonü, thereby reproducing gendered divisions and social exclusion. Through exploring these dynamics, this study highlights the paradoxical negotiation of women’s agency within structural constraints and the politics of stigma, offering new theoretical insights into the multifaceted nature of misogyny and its enduring impact on gender relations in post-1949 Chinese society.

This article investigates the evolving role of rural women in Moroccan oases, focusing on how environmental change, particularly water scarcity, impacts their position within the social contract. Employing a conceptual framework that combines social contract theory with environmental justice perspectives, the study examines women’s access to protection, provision, participation, and recognition. Field research in the Drâa-Tafilalt region reveals that while women face structural marginalization and vulnerability, they are also active agents of change. The rise of women’s cooperatives, often centred around agricultural products but expanding to empowering developmental activities, demonstrates their capacity for innovation and adaptation. However, water scarcity threatens present achievements. The study highlights the interconnectedness of environmental degradation, gender relations, and state-society dynamics, emphasizing the need for policies that recognize gender-specific needs and contributions in the context of climate change.

Matrilineal and patrilineal descent systems create different gender relations surrounding the use, ownership, and decision-making about land and sea resources. Given the need for scaling community-based resource management (CBRM) across the Pacific, it is essential to consider how CBRM should be implemented in matrilineal and patrilineal contexts, such as found in Solomon Islands. This study used interviews and focus groups to investigate use and management of land and sea areas by communities with matrilineal descent systems. Themes explored include benefits and risks to matrilineal practices, and preferred approaches of community members for outsiders to engage with matrilineal societies. While matrilineal practices were valued, they are also undermined, particularly regarding women’s voice in natural resource management in areas with extractive industry development. Fisheries, conservation and development actors need to engage in ways that support matriliny and women’s voice, and a set of approaches is presented to guide such work in future.

BackgroundInfant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices are critical for child growth and survival, yet they are strongly shaped by sociocultural and livelihood contexts. In pastoralist settings, feeding practices are influenced by traditional beliefs, mobility, environmental constraints and access to health services. However, limited evidence exists on how community norms and social structures influence IYCF in remote pastoralist communities of Ethiopia.ObjectiveThis study aimed to explore maternal and community perspectives on IYCF practices in the pastoralist communities of Afar Region, Ethiopia.DesignQualitative observational study using a phenomenological approach.SettingPastoralist communities in the Afar Region, Ethiopia.Participants16 mothers of children aged 6–23 months participated in in-depth interviews, and 20 community members (religious leaders, elders and clan leaders) participated in three focus group discussions.MethodsParticipants were purposively selected. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and focus group guides, audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and translated into English. Data were analysed using an inductive thematic analysis approach.ResultsFour interrelated themes shaped IYCF practices. Cultural rituals and elder authority influenced breastfeeding initiation, particularly following home births, where pre-lacteal feeding linked to the Onor/Onqor ritual was described as delaying initiation. Although awareness of exclusive breastfeeding was commonly reported among participants, seasonal water supplementation and maternal workload limited consistent adherence. Complementary feeding was generally introduced at 6 months; however, dietary diversity was constrained by pastoral livelihood instability, drought, market inaccessibility and rising food prices. Gendered household dynamics shaped resource control and caregiving responsibilities, with women bearing primary responsibility for childcare, feeding and hygiene. Clan-based social networks provided support during hardship but also reinforced some traditional feeding practices.ConclusionsIYCF practices in pastoralist Afar are shaped by cultural norms, gender relations and structural constraints, including livelihood insecurity and limited service access. Interventions should integrate culturally responsive community engagement with gender-sensitive and livelihood-informed nutrition strategies.

Malaria remains one of the most persistent public health challenges in Ethiopia, where its meaning and treatment are shaped not only by biological causes but also by cultural beliefs and social inequalities. Despite increased awareness and government-led control efforts, the disease continues to affect communities in endemic areas. This study examined how communities in Jimma City understand and manage malaria, specifically focusing on how local beliefs, gender roles, and economic barriers shape treatment choices. An ethnographic study was conducted in Jimma City, southwest Ethiopia. Data were collected through in-depth interviews (n = 32), key informant interviews (n = 8), two focus group discussions, participant observation, and document review. Participants included household members affected by malaria, traditional healers, religious leaders, community elders, and health professionals. Interviews were conducted in Afaan Oromo and Amharic, transcribed verbatim, translated into English, and analyzed using thematic analysis. Malaria was understood through overlapping cultural and biomedical explanatory models. Local terms such as buda (evil eye), busa (seasonal fever), and sekera (killer disease) shaped how symptoms were recognized and interpreted. Treatment-seeking followed a pluralistic pathway, commonly beginning with home remedies, herbal treatments, and prayer, followed by biomedical care when symptoms worsened or persisted. Gender dynamics strongly influenced care-seeking: females were typically the first to recognize illness and provide care but often lacked decision-making authority and financial control, contributing to delays in accessing treatment. Males' occupational and social activities increased their exposure to malaria risk. Structural barriers including poverty, drug stockouts, transport constraints, inadequate housing, and weak health infrastructure further constrained timely and effective care. In Jimma City, malaria is experienced as a social as well as biomedical condition, embedded in local belief systems, gender relations, and structural inequalities. Malaria control efforts that focus solely on biomedical interventions risk overlooking the social realities that shape treatment-seeking behavior. Effective and sustainable malaria control requires engagement with local explanatory models, strengthening women's decision-making power, and addressing systemic barriers that perpetuate vulnerability.

Caregiving for older adults falls disproportionately on women and family members, but little research addresses how gender and kinship intersect to shape caregiver social support. This study generates an empirical typology of caregiver social networks and examines the types' association with caregiver gender, relationship to the recipient, and their interaction. We collected personal network data from a nationally representative sample of 2,824 caregivers in December 2020 and January 2021. We used zero-inflated negative binomial regressions of network size and latent profile analysis to identify network types based on their size, density, family composition, and proportion sharing in caregiving responsibilities. We used multinomial logistic regressions to examine associations between network type and caregiver and care recipient characteristics. We identified three network types: close-knit kin (CKK) based networks; larger networks sharing caregiving activities; and small networks in which few or no contacts assisted with caregiving. Women caring for a spouse/partner were more likely to have larger networks with broader care-sharing than either married men or other women; non-kin caregivers disproportionately had smaller networks lacking care-sharing. The results highlight the vulnerability of unpaid non-kin caregivers and suggest that interventions should consider the intersection of gender and kinship. This is important because the proportion of kinless older adults is expected to grow significantly, which may increase older adults' reliance on non-kin informal caregivers. Future work should examine whether differences in network type lead towards different outcomes by gender and caregiver-recipient relationship.

ABSTRACT Transgender first entered the transsexual social movements of Toronto in the late 1970s and 80s and reorganised the social relations of gender, sexuality, and class. This paper traces the original articulations of the transgender category through the archives of the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Transsexuals (FACT) and the Metamorphosis Medical Research Foundation (MMRF). These transsexual social movements developed a politics of respectability which attempted to align transsexuality with the expectations of middle-class comportment and normative sexuality. This politics would be contested as transsexual activists began to interface with other social movements and negotiate their relationships with transsexual sex workers and relatively privileged transvestites, who were variously considered socially unacceptable. The term transgender was adopted to name the sexual and class differences that did not conform to the expectations of transsexual respectability and were thus lumped together in this new social category. Transgender collective identity served as a catch-all for these differences and therefore preserved the transsexual politics of respectability within FACT and MMRF. Historicising transgender in the transsexual social movements of Toronto in the 1980s, this paper reveals the sexual and class relations that first necessitated and continue to underlie transgender collective identity today.

Young women in sub-Saharan Africa continue to experience a disproportionate burden of HIV infection despite expanding biomedical prevention strategies such as oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). While PrEP has been promoted as a woman-controlled prevention method, less is known about how its use is shaped by gendered power relations and relational contexts. This study contributes to understandings of HIV prevention by examining how female university students in South Africa experience and negotiate PrEP within intimate relationships. Informed by an interpretive qualitative design guided by feminist relational perspectives, in-depth interviews were conducted with twelve female university students, the majority of whom had not personally used oral PrEP. Findings highlight how PrEP is seen as a method used as a form of self-protection within unequal relationship dynamics, enabling women to manage HIV risk while navigating stigma, secrecy, and challenges around disclosure and trust. Women described practices that reflected ‘protection without negotiation,’ where prevention occurs without confrontation or reliance on partner cooperation. These findings demonstrate how PrEP operates as a relational strategy embedded within gendered social contexts rather than as an biomedical prevention intervention alone. Future HIV prevention programmes should take relational dynamics and gendered power structures into account when supporting women’s engagement with PrEP.

Climate change disproportionately affects poorer countries like Uganda, intensifying poverty and livelihood stress, which can escalate gender-based violence (GBV). Although the parent study was not designed to focus on GBV, GBV emerged repeatedly during interviews and focus groups; this paper presents a GBV-focused thematic analysis of those narratives. Particularly, we examine how GBV interconnects with poverty, shifting gender roles, alcoholism, environmental stress, and family planning dynamics. Between April and July 2021, we conducted an exploratory qualitative research study that comprised 28 focus group discussions (FGDs), comprising six-eight participants each, stratified by sex and age (18–25, 25–49, and mixed 50 + groups). Additionally, 40 key informant interviews (KIIs) were held in Rukiga district, Uganda. Purposive sampling was applied. Data were organised in NVivo 12 and analysed thematically. Participants perceived GBV, including intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, child abuse, and early marriage, as widespread and normalised. Two main interconnected driver clusters emerged. First, poverty, male alcohol use, and shifting gender norms contributed to household instability. As men abandoned provider roles, women assumed more responsibilities, provoking conflict and sometimes violence from disempowered male partners. Second, environmental degradation and climate-related stressors (droughts, floods, soil erosion) worsened economic hardship, tensions, and GBV. Population growth and limited land access further strained livelihoods. While family planning was generally supported, male opposition sometimes triggered conflict. Climate change impacts are gendered, with GBV pathways shaped by shifting gender roles, norms, and relations destabilised by environmental and livelihood pressures. Addressing GBV in climate-affected communities requires gender-transformative environmental and livelihood programmes. This should include strengthened social and structural resilience to challenge inequitable gender norms and power imbalances.

ABSTRACTTo what extent is women's employment accepted in modern Chinese firms? Drawing on pooled 2017 and 2021 nationally representative Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data, this article estimates the socioeconomic predictors and prevalence of the belief that women should be stay‐at‐home wives instead of working in Chinese firms. The results illustrate that women in Chinese firms have socioeconomic resources commensurate with men, but they remain targeted by the persistent patriarchal belief that women should marry and be relegated to the household instead of work. Contrasting against conventional accounts of private firms as anti‐discriminatory, private firm workers are observed to believe that women should be stay‐at‐home wives instead of working more than state firm workers. In particular, women workers are more likely to resist the traditional belief that women should be stay‐at‐home wives instead of working, whereas men appear more likely to endorse this belief, especially in private firms. The results suggest that women are not simply passive recipients of patriarchal beliefs, but exhibit a willingness to challenge their symbolic boundaries and reject traditional expectations of unequal gender relations in the workplace.

ABSTRACT Traditional cultural practices in pastoralist societies play a central role in shaping identity, gender relations, and social organization. However, some of these practices also raise critical human rights and socio-economic concerns. This study examines the socio-cultural aspects of the Ukuli Bula (bull jumping) rite of passage among the Hamar people of South Omo, Ethiopia. The study employs a qualitative phenomenological approach to exploring community members lived experiences and perceptions of the practice. The findings reveal that bull jumping is a collective, multi-stage ritual that facilitates the transition from boyhood to adulthood and eligibility for marriage. The ritualistic whipping of female relatives, while physically harmful, is socially reinterpreted as a symbol of loyalty, honor, and social capital. The study also identifies the significant economic burden associated with the ceremony and highlights the role of the Mingi practice in reinforcing social exclusion and inequality. Overall, the study argues that the Hamar bull jumping ceremony is an ambivalent institution that simultaneously strengthens kinship bonds while perpetuating gender inequality and socio-economic disparities. These findings suggest the need for culturally sensitive interventions that address harmful elements of the practice while respecting community identity.

Objectives This study examines how Ghanaian women interpret and experience sexual vocalizations during intimate encounters, focusing on the socio-cultural norms, gender expectations, and power relations shaping these expressions and their meanings. Method The study employed a qualitative interpretive design informed by post-structural feminist theory and symbolic interactionism. In-depth interviews were conducted between October and December 2025 with 31 women aged 20–50 in Camp, Sunyani, and Cape Coast, Ghana. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results Findings showed that sexual vocalizations are complex and context-dependent rather than direct expressions of pleasure. Three themes emerged: interpretations of vocalization during intimacy, socio-cultural meanings attached to women’s sexual expression, and gendered power dynamics influencing communication and interpretation within relationships. Participants reported that vocalizations could communicate pleasure, intimacy, reassurance, performance, compliance, discomfort, or distress. Many also indicated that male partners frequently interpreted vocal expressions as evidence of enjoyment even when they reflected pain, emotional discomfort, obligation, or coercive relational experiences. Conclusions The study argues that sexual vocalization is not a transparent indicator of pleasure or consent but a socially constructed and relationally negotiated practice shaped by cultural expectations and unequal gender relations. The findings contribute to sociological and African feminist scholarship on sexuality, agency, consent, and intimate communication.

This article reconceptualises social reproduction in Soviet Georgia through the lens of the geopolitics of care, arguing that care functioned not only as a domain of welfare provision but as a key technology of imperial governance. Drawing on feminist geopolitics, a pluralised Social Reproduction Theory (SRT), and the coloniality of welfare regimes, it examines how the organisation of labour, welfare, and everyday life simultaneously structured gender relations and mediated Georgia’s position within the Soviet imperial order. It challenges mainstream SRT’s capitalist focus by relocating analysis to a non-capitalist setting where life-making was centrally organised by the state. The study adopts a historical-discursive and interpretive approach, critically engaging secondary sources on Soviet policies, welfare arrangements and history. It develops a scalar analysis across two interlinked relations: women–state and state–empire, showing how socialist care infrastructures expanded women’s participation in the labour market while reproducing gendered hierarchies, dependencies, and forms of state control. These contradictions are made visible through moments of resistance, approached as diagnostic sites where tensions between care and control become legible. It concludes by reflecting on how these historical formations continue to shape post-socialist imaginaries of care, dependency, and geopolitical belonging in Georgia today.

Sexual dimorphism and estrogens in neuroendocrine neoplasms.

Digitalization has become a defining condition of organizational communication and governance in higher education institutions, reshaping how leadership is practiced and experienced. This study explores how digitalization influences organizational communication, leadership practices, and perceptions of the glass ceiling among female academic leaders within the framework of sustainable governance. While digital transformation is commonly associated with increased efficiency, speed, and flexibility, participants’ experiences indicate that its implications extend beyond technical improvement and are deeply intertwined with organizational culture and gender relations. Drawing on a qualitative research design, the study is based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 30 female academics holding leadership positions at different universities, with the data analyzed through thematic analysis using MaxQDA Analytics PRO 2024. The findings suggest that digitalization strengthens organizational communication by enhancing speed, accessibility, and coordination, supporting time and resource efficiency, and in certain contexts facilitating women’s participation in managerial processes by reducing exposure to overt gender-based bias. At the same time, digitally mediated communication and work practices generate new sustainability/related tensions, including expectations of constant availability, intensified workloads, reduced concentration in online environments, and the erosion of boundaries between work and private life. These dynamics appear particularly salient for female leaders, whose professional responsibilities intersect with persistent gendered expectations in domestic life. Overall, the study demonstrates that digitalization alone does not guarantee sustainable governance in higher education institutions; rather, its potential to support inclusive and equitable leadership depends on how digital technologies are embedded within organizational cultures that recognize human limits, protect work/life boundaries, and promote gender-sensitive leadership practices.

BackgroundA series of studies suggests that immersive virtual reality (IVR) can enhance perspective-taking and behavioral change by simulating real-world scenarios experienced from different points of view. IVR has emerged as a promising tool for the prevention of gender-based violence, including sexual harassment. However, evidence on the effectiveness of first-person embodiment–based interventions in fostering empathy and modifying gender-related attitudes remains limited.ObjectiveThis study aims to evaluate the efficacy of REVISE (Realidad Virtual Inmersiva y Sexualidad), an IVR-based intervention designed to influence beliefs related to sexual aggression and related psychosocial mechanisms in heterosexual men through partner identity exchange.MethodsNinety heterosexual couples will be randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: (1) IVR with partner identity exchange in a sexual harassment scenario, (2) IVR with partner identity exchange in a neutral scenario, or (3) third-person observation of a sexual harassment scenario. The intervention consists of a single IVR session, with assessments conducted at baseline, postintervention, and at 3-month follow-up. Data will include self-report questionnaires, physiological measures (eye tracking and pupillometry), and semistructured qualitative interviews. The primary outcome is the change in beliefs related to sexual aggression. Secondary outcomes include empathy, gender role attitudes, relationship functioning, and physiological responses.ResultsAt the time of manuscript submission, recruitment had not yet begun. The study is expected to generate quantitative and qualitative data on changes in beliefs related to sexual aggression, empathy, gender-related attitudes, and physiological responses across experimental conditions.ConclusionsThe REVISE trial will contribute to the evidence base on IVR interventions for the prevention of gender-based violence. By integrating embodiment, behavioral simulation, and multimodal assessment, this study may inform the development of future technology-based interventions aimed at promoting gender-equitable and prosocial behaviors.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT06839937; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06839937International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)PRR1-10.2196/91993

Disciplines associated with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics enjoy considerable epistemic privilege and it remains quite common today for them to be regarded as neutral and objective knowledge. The project of revealing the situatedness of all scientific knowledge has been advanced by various feminist approaches and critical epistemologies. However, little attention has been paid to the case of engineering, and to the role played by how university spaces are inhabited or how gender performance is embodied in the places where knowledge experiences take place. This research aims to illuminate Chilean engineering students’ experiences according to their gender identity and corporeality within the spaces where epistemic practices occur, such as classrooms and libraries. By using Relief Maps tool we explore how engineering students experience the somatic norm in classrooms and libraries on Chilean university campuses, and how gender relations, spatiality, corporeality, and knowledge experiences are mutually constituted. The study’s findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how spatial and bodily dynamics impact the knowledge experiences and exclusion in these contexts, proposing new ways to advance gender studies in STEM by analyzing the interactions between body, space, and gender.

For two decades, researchers in the field of ‘gender divisions of domestic labour’ have attended to diversity by studying families with a range of ethnic and racial identities, sexualities, genders (beyond binaries), marital and socioeconomic statuses, and cultures. But one important facet of diversity insufficiently incorporated into much of this research is place, and more specifically, the size, density, and remoteness of the communities in which households are located. Drawing on interviews with eleven families in rural, remote, and small-town places across Canada, in the context of a larger study including families from urban areas, we foreground place in three arguments. First, ‘distance-to-density’ has a direct impact on how families plan and divide paid and unpaid work, the ‘mental load’ of accessing services and amenities, and how households and communities coordinate and carry out childcare. Second, rural communities’ lower population density in some cases means more and different kinds of work – a phenomenon we call ‘the extra work of extra space’ – but also more freedom for some children. Finally, we show how the subjective dimensions of rurality – the ideas that rural places are safer, closer to nature, and more neighbourly – shape household care/work relations and experiences. Attending to rurality’s objective measures and subjective interpretations underscores the importance of understanding how all kinds of community characteristics, including urban ones, affect the logic, negotiations, strategies, meanings, and supports underpinning ‘who does what’ in households and communities.