People under community supervision who use drugs face elevated HIV risk. This randomized controlled trial used a mixed-methods approach to examine PrEP acceptance among community-supervised men who use drugs and their female partners. The study evaluated PrEP willingness among participants (N = 394) randomized to either PACT (5-session couples' HIV intervention) or control (1-session HIV counseling). Qualitative interviews with 20 couples (n = 40) explored PrEP attitudes. The PACT group showed significantly higher intentions to use condoms with PrEP compared to controls (64% vs. 53%, p = 0.03). Female partners in the PACT intervention demonstrated stronger PrEP use intentions than females in the control (aOR = 2.85, p = 0.02). Qualitative findings revealed five key factors affecting PrEP acceptance: (1) partner infidelity concerns, (2) substance use and decision-making, (3) HIV acquisition fears, (4) low-risk perception despite objective risk factors, and (5) medical mistrust. Gender influences PrEP acceptance among criminal legal-involved couples. Effective interventions should address gender differences, risk perception disparities, and medical mistrust. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01690494 registered September 19, 2012.

Gender studies now! Europe: Contexts, challenges and futures – The French context

Gastritis is characterized by alterations in the gastric microbiota. This dysbiosis in the stomach may affect immune system regulation as well as influence the oral microbiota. Periodontal disease results from dysbiosis of subgingival microbial communities that cause inflammatory responses in periodontal tissues. The aim of our study is to examine the oral flora profile and dysbiosis status of gastritis patients along with their periodontal status. A total of 30 patients were included in our study, divided into two groups 15 patients diagnosed with gastritis and 15 systemically healthy individuals. Subsequently, the patients were subdivided into subgroups as periodontally healthy, gingivitis, and stage 1 periodontitis based on their periodontal status. Clinical periodontal parameters and saliva samples were collected. Microbial community composition was analyzed using 16S rRNA gene-based next-generation sequencing. Clinical and microbiological parameters were evaluated using non-parametric statistical methods. While no differences were observed in any metric in beta diversity analysis across gender groups, study groups, and subgroups, bacterial diversity was found to be higher in women in the Simpson, Shannon and Chao1 metrics in alpha diversity analysis, In the subgroups, a significant increase was observed in the stage 1 periodontitis-gastritis group in the Chao1 metric. Bacterial taxa that showed statistically significant differences between the groups and subgroups were identified using LEfSe analysis. Our study underscore dysbiosis in the oral flora in the context of gastritis while also taking into account the periodontal status. Gastritis with periodontitis may enhance the microbial diversity and abundance. Future research studies are needed to unravel systemic interaction between periodontitits and gastritis. This clinical trial was registered at ClinicTrials.gov (NCT07378540) Registration Date: 29/01/2026.

ABSTRACT This article examines how evolving United States legal doctrine, particularly the rise of the Unitary Executive Theory and a series of recent Supreme Court rulings handed down by a conservative supermajority, have created conditions for the consolidation of strongman presidential power. Focusing on Donald Trump’s political trajectory and evolving use of executive power and political persona, the article explores how sport has been co-opted both symbolically and instrumentally to advance exclusionary nationalism, affirm hypermasculine identity, and normalise illiberal government across cultural, institutional, and legal arenas. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature from strongman politics, sport, gender studies, and US constitutional law, the article shows how Trump has strategically deployed sport to legitimise power through grievance politics. It also analyzes key legal decisions, to illustrate how judicial erosion of constitutional checks and balances, and expanded executive authority have enabled the institutionalisation of authoritarian politics through federal policymaking and administrative enforcement. Beyond charting the symbolic appropriation of sport, this article identifies how sport has become a functional policy arena for enacting strongman authoritarian goals under the guise of legal normalcy. It traces the convergence of executive directives, agency rulemaking, and constitutional reinterpretation that now facilitate cultural enforcement. The analysis situates these developments within the broader stakes facing sport organisations in the current political climate, with high-profile global events on the horizon as likely flashpoints for intensified state involvement and ideological contestation.

ABSTRACT Engaging with the intellectual legacy of Shannon Bell presents an opportunity to re-insert sexuality into femme scholarship and make explicit femme’s contribution to sexuality studies. In this article, we offer a femme analysis of Bell’s work and use femme scholarship to extend and rework two of her key concepts: the female phallus and fast feminism. We bring femme scholarship into dialogue with Bell to offer a ‘fast femme-inist’ theory of femme erotic artforms – including postpornographic practices – as sites of knowledge and cultural production that contribute vital femme-inist perspectives to sexuality studies. We analyse femme life-writing, femme erotica, and pornography to demonstrate that femme cultural producers ‘do violence to the original context’ of normative femininity; re-articulate ‘receptive’ sexuality as agentic and erotic through enactment of the femme phallus; and position femme-inist sexual appetites as voracious and lesbian femme-inist sex as hardcore through an eroticization of vulnerability.

ABSTRACT Grounded in feminist and gender studies, this study investigates how Otisabi, a comic strip featured on the back cover of the humour magazine Uykusuz (Sleepless) from 2007 to 2023, offers critical insights into gender issues in Türkiye. Created by cartoonist and illustrator Yılmaz Aslantürk (b. 1967), Otisabi initially appeared in narrative form before evolving into a recurring comic strip character. The narratives portray Otisabi’s manipulative strategies for seducing women, often implying that certain women deserve such treatment, thereby highlighting problematic gendered assumptions. This study uses purposeful sampling to conduct an in-depth qualitative analysis of Otisabi. As Uykusuz had the highest circulation in 2013, 2012, and 2011, the analysis focuses on the strips from those years. Of the strips addressing gender issues, only six that simultaneously foreground male dominance, female objectification, and restrictive gender roles were selected for detailed analysis. By decoding the dynamics of gender stereotypes, this study argues that these comic strips not only reflect conventional norms but also critique and subvert them, envisioning more progressive representations of women. The study concludes that Otisabi serves as a microcosm of ongoing gender tensions, offering valuable insights into persistent power relations within social contexts in Türkiye that may appear more liberated.

ABSTRACT This co/autoethnographic study examines the educational experiences of two women from rural Azerbaijan, focusing on how societal ‘norms’, gendered expectations and post-Soviet transformations shaped their access to education from the 1990s onward. Using a co/autoethnographic methodology, we draw on collaboratively narrated memories, reflective memos and thematic analysis to analyse lived experiences across childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. This qualitative approach allows us to situate rural educational narratives within broader socio-historical and political contexts, including the collapse of Soviet institutional support, armed conflict in Azerbaijani lands, and the resurgence of traditional gender norms. Guided by a post-colonial framework, the study explores how structural instability, cultural restrictions and gendered power relations contributed to persistent educational barriers, impostor syndrome and resilience-driven motivation for girls from peripheral regions. The article contributes to the literature on post-Soviet gender studies by offering an empirically grounded, insider perspective on women’s education in rural Azerbaijan, an underrepresented context in existing scholarship. By linking autoethnographic data to national and regional gender dynamics, this study challenges static portrayals of post-Soviet transition and highlights the uneven, gendered consequences of social change. The findings underscore the importance of culturally sensitive, gender-responsive educational policies that address both structural inequalities and their long-term psychological effects.

The paper examines gastronomic symbolism in the prose of Olena Pchilka, a Ukrainian writer who articulated the experience of female emancipation in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the writer’s texts, food is consistently associated with the theme of women's identity and corporeality. Moreover, this gendering of nourishment is expressed both through the rituals of meal preparation and consumption and through the symbolic meanings ascribed to individual products. Therefore, focusing on the stories titled Artichokes, White Cat, and Wait, Woman, for the New Rights, this study argues that the central food images (artichokes, sugar, and butter) carry messages related to female sexuality and marital agreements. Accordingly, the application of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theory of culinary oppositions to “Artichokes” reveals how the irregularly shaped vegetable functions as an embodiment of a communicative gap during a matchmaking dinner. Combined gender and food studies serve as the analytical framework for White Cat, where sugar emerges as a euphemism for female sexuality, while excessive consumption of sweets signals both marital difficulties and poor health conditions. By contrast, the theory of Iris Marion Young was applied to analyze the third story “Wait, Woman, for the New Rights”, where the image of butter wrapped in cabbage leaves is interpreted as breast milk stagnation and the materialization of women’s resentment against the unjust patriarchal system. To sum up, the analysis demonstrates that the study of food imagery and culinary processes provides an effective me

Menstruation and homelessness are each highly stigmatised experiences, yet their intersection remains critically understudied. This paper introduces the concept of amplified stigma to describe the compounded psychosocial, material and structural harms faced by individuals who menstruate without stable housing in high-income Western cities. Drawing from a conceptual synthesis of over 70 interdisciplinary sources, including public health, feminist theory, medical sociology, anthropology and gender studies, we employ three core analytical frameworks: embodiment, objectification and intersectionality. These lenses reveal how stigma is not merely symbolic but deeply lived and institutionalised, shaping how menstruating unhoused bodies are surveilled, controlled and excluded.Through embodiment, we explore the visceral experiences of bleeding without privacy, resources or relief, compounded by internalised shame and systemic misrecognition, especially among ageing and transgender menstruators. Objectification highlights the bureaucratic demands and surveillance that reduce menstruators to regulated bodies, often denied dignity and care. Intersectionality foregrounds how race, gender identity, class and age intersect to exacerbate exclusion and harm within shelters, healthcare and public spaces.Our analysis challenges dominant menstrual equity narratives that focus narrowly on product access, advocating instead for a structural justice approach grounded in dignity, recognition and systemic reform. Addressing amplified stigma requires trauma-informed, gender-inclusive policies and healthcare, alongside decriminalisation of survival behaviours and intersectional research. This paper calls for moving beyond silence and charity towards accountability and societal transformation, affirming the right of all bodies to bleed with dignity.

Refusals in Jordanian Arabic and Chinese: A cross-cultural pragmatic study of language and gender

Underrepresented populations in dementia prevention research, including minoritized racial/ethnic groups, individuals with lower socioeconomic status, and others facing social and structural disadvantages, are disproportionately affected by dementia risk. This scoping review examined barriers and facilitators to recruitment, engagement, and retention of these populations in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) prevention studies, synthesizing evidence from both empirical studies and review articles. Guided by PRISMA-ScR and the conceptual structure described by Gilmore-Bykovskyi et al., findings were synthesized from 19 reviews and 53 empirical studies. Findings were interpreted with attention to how overlapping factors-such as ethnicity, age, gender, and structural inequities-may influence study participation. Studies originated primarily from the United States (U.S.). Five key themes were identified: 1) mistrust, 2) stigma and limited research literacy, 3) logistical and financial constraints, 4) communication gaps and lack of team diversity, and 5) systemic-level barriers. Facilitators included culturally tailored outreach, long-term community partnerships, and inclusive study design. Retention strategies remain underreported, and little is known about the non-U.S. context. These findings highlight the need for context-specific, multi-level strategies that address the intersecting barriers faced by underrepresented groups to support equitable participation in dementia prevention research, and ultimately, dementia prevention.

This theoretical-reflective essay addresses ethics in nursing care for transgender people, emphasizing the tension between the care provided and the institutional invisibilities that perpetuate the exclusion of this population in the healthcare system. Based on universal principles of human rights and contemporary philosophical concepts, such as Axel Honneth's ethics of recognition and Judith Butler's performative theory of gender, the text problematizes professional practice in the face of the specific demands and vulnerabilities of transgender people. Structural invisibility, sustained and reinforced by cisnormativity norms and the absence of specific content in professional training, represents an ethical barrier to ensuring humanized and inclusive care. The study highlights that the denial of gender identity, the incorrect use of the chosen name, and the perpetuation of prejudices constitute ethical and human rights violations, aggravating suffering and health inequalities. The proposed reflection also emphasizes the responsibility of nursing professionals to transcend technique and take a critical, ethical, and political stance that recognizes others in their uniqueness and promotes care practices that respect diversity. The essay advocates the adoption of an ethic of recognition as the foundation for transforming care into a space of welcome, justice, and redress for structural inequalities. Finally, the text reaffirms the importance of transforming invisibilities into visibilities, and that nursing should position itself as an active agent in promoting equity and the rights of the transgender population, ensuring care that legitimizes, values, and respects their identities and histories.

Introducing "ELLAS Survey Dataset" an open resource about factors that influence career interest and leadership in STEM in Bolivia, Brazil, and Peruo.

The individualisation of risk and responsibility for retirement planning, with the requirement to make ‘good saving decisions’, is an essential feature of the financialisation of pensions. Individuals are encouraged to become active financial subjects to ensure their own economic welfare. Additionally, concepts such as individual responsibility, risk management and financial planning are presented as moral obligations. This narrative has become an intrinsic part of neoliberal policies implemented over the last four decades in the UK, aimed at further privatising retirement. This paper examines the views and attitudes of young women towards individual responsibility and risk, within the context of retirement planning in the UK. The study presents a gendered analysis of financialisation of the pension system. It draws from the concept of ‘individual investor’ to critically discuss its shortcomings, using interviews and a focus group with young British women. The findings show how deep-rooted the idea of personal responsibility is amongst respondents, but also that the concept of managing risk and uncertainty is not adequately recognised, despite its centrality to investment practices.

International practice theory (IPT) is now firmly established as a key theoretical and methodological framework for International Relations (IR), offering novel ways to address the oversight around the ‘everyday’ in global politics. Yet, the presumed novelty of such an approach is surprising to feminist, race, and postcolonial IR scholars who have thought deeply about the problem of the everyday. Surprisingly, these approaches have been footnotes (at best) in practice-oriented research. Despite the growth of IPT and its increasing influence within the discipline, it has remained perplexingly silent on issues related to gender, race, or colonialism. This Forum brings together an international range of scholars to address these silences. First, we are interested in exploring whether gender, race, and postcolonial scholarship offer relevant concepts, methodologies, theoretical contributions, or case studies that can inform IPT scholars. Second, we are interested in providing a space for scholars of gender and race to ‘speak back’ to IPT. Finally, what does the silencing of gender and race within IPT tell us about knowledge production within our discipline?

This article explores how masculinities are constructed, negotiated, and occasionally transformed within the Mexican entrepreneurial ecosystem. Drawing on a critical epistemological perspectives and gender studies, the research analyses thirty in-depth semi-structured interviews with male entrepreneurs and institutional actors aged 25 to 50. Through thematic and interpretive analysis supported by Atlas.ti, the study identifies recurring narratives of control, emotional restraint, leadership, and care. Results reveal that entrepreneurship operates as a symbolic space where hegemonic masculinity is reaffirmed through ideals of self-sufficiency, competitiveness, and emotional discipline, yet also as a field where cracks appear—particularly in discourses that associate success with well-being, collaboration, and sustainability. These findings contribute to a broader understanding of how neoliberal entrepreneurial cultures reproduce and, at times, challenge gender hierarchies. The study concludes that entrepreneurship should be interpreted not merely as an economic activity but as a performative arena of masculine identity, where emerging models of caring and ethical leadership signal possible pathways toward more inclusive and humanized forms of being a man.

This research addresses a gap in the study of Minangkabau kaba literature, which has long positioned women as marginal subjects. It argues that Siti Jamilah in Kaba Lareh Simawang by Syamsuddin St. Radjo Endah performs affective sabotage as a form of structural resistance against polygamy and colonial patriarchal power. Employing a sociocritical method, this study analyzes themes, social elements, and traces of historical events within the kaba to understand the social structures and problems it reflects. Siti Jamilah's vulnerability as an "orang dagang" (outsider) constitutes affective sabotage whose explosive force delegitimizes the moral authority and bureaucratic-masculine position of the Lareh—transcending the passivity stigma of misogynistic readings. Her suffering is not a weakness but a subversive instrument: her pregnant body and cultural alienation become the most threatening liminal space for the stability of colonial patriarchal power in Minangkabau. These findings contribute to sociocritical literary studies and gender studies in the context of matrilineal-colonial societies, demonstrating that women's bodies and suffering are not spaces of defeat, but the most intimate and dangerous arenas of power negotiation.

ABSTRACT Adolescent pregnancy is a major public health issue in sub-Saharan Africa, including in Zambia. Its occurrence in rural areas is under-researched, and little is known about the factors driving it. This qualitative study explored the drivers of adolescent pregnancy in Kalabo District through 32 in-depth interviews with pregnant adolescents, parents, healthcare providers, traditional leaders, and marriage counsellors. Guided by the social ecological model and the theory of gender and power, thematic analysis examined how gender norms, gender socialisation, socio-economic conditions, and institutional gaps intersect to influence early childbearing. Four interconnected themes were developed: (1) culture and tradition, (2) early marriage, (3) barriers to sexual and reproductive health and rights information and services, and (4) weak legal enforcement. The findings show that the sikenge initiation rite reinforces submissive gender roles and emphasises fertility, while poverty and social pressure promote early marriage and monetary gain. Limited youth-friendly healthcare services, contradictions between sexual and medical consent laws, and inadequate sexuality education restrict adolescents’ and young people’s access to relevant information and services. Weak enforcement of child protection laws and the informal settlement of cases of defilement 1 further compromise adolescents’ rights and safety.

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.

ABSTRACT Women are both subjects of news production and Mnemonic Practices. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from gender studies and cultural memory, this paper focuses on female practitioners on the frontlines of news production in the News Comment Department of China Central Television (CCTV) during its Golden Age (1993–2008), examining the characteristics and significance of their memory practices. Through multimodal narrative analysis and sensory memory encoding, it is found that women, through bodily practices, emotional practices, and writing practices, have carved out non-institutionalized paths for memory production, generating “glimmers of memory” that challenge mainstream narratives. The study argues that these “glimmers of memory” are both the self-discovery and creation of women as subjects of life, and a means of resisting male canonical memory and constructing gendered professionalism through embodied memory practices. The production of gendered media memory deconstructs the idealist myth of male narrative authority in “Television Yan’an.” Drawing on women’s experiences in China’s television media reform, it reconsiders the gendered production of media memory and establishes a paradigm of gendered embodied memory within Assmann’s framework of cultural memory.