Hegemonic Gender Norms Research Articles

International sports federations as de facto lawmakers: Queer-feminist explorations of the gendered power of sports law

Abstract This article analyses the law-making power of international sports federations, with a specific focus on their authority of shaping global norms on gender. It explores a variety of international sporting rules from feminist and queer perspectives. These include the ban of rainbow armbands at the 2022 FIFA (Men’s) World Cup, rules on the participation of transgender persons in rugby, gendered and racialized uniform regulations in sports, and the Semenya case concerning the sports participation of women with variations in sex characteristics The analysis asserts that despite being non-state actors, international sports federations are de facto international lawmakers that disseminate hegemonic gender norms reflecting cis-hetero-sexism and white body norms. However, analysing the Semenya case and the decision of the Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in the case shows that the law-making power of international sports federations in shaping gender norms is not absolute but embedded in a transnational network of norms. The article concludes that subjecting international sports federations to a feminist, queer, and anti-racist legal analysis assists in understanding how hegemonic norms on gender circulate transnationally and enhances knowledge on how international law works in practice.

#BimboTok: a critical discourse analysis of hyper-feminine bimbo identities on TikTok

This study adopts a multimodal approach to critical discourse analysis to unpack the discourses embedded in the performance of hyper-feminine bimbo identities on TikTok. Guided by a social semiotic approach to language, this study analyses a corpus of 16 short-form videos published by self-proclaimed ‘bimbos’ on TikTok, focusing on the lexical and iconographical choices of these texts and how they function contextually to signal broader discourses. This analysis reveals that TikTok influencers frequently reinforce hegemonic norms of gender by incorporating bodily signifiers of patriarchal Eurocentric ideals of femininity and linking signifiers of overconsumption and hyper-femininity in their performance of a bimbo identity. Simultaneously, they contest these hegemonic norms by juxtaposing hyper-feminine images with critiques of patriarchal, Eurocentric, and capitalist structures of inequality. Ultimately, the subversive potential of these representations is ambivalent; there is a marked tension between their stated aims of inclusion and empowerment and the intersection of hyper-femininity with privilege.

Migrate to (not) be ‘gurus’: Unpacking workplace masculinity in China's tech sector

AbstractThrough an intersectional analysis of gender, class, and migration, this article reveals how a hegemonic culture of workplace masculinity, embodied by a group of ‘gurus,’ is constructed in China's tech companies. The guru masculinity is characterized by proactivity and aggressiveness at work, ‘putting work first’ and overwork, and the ability to navigate boundaryless careers and settle down in first‐tier cities. It translates hegemonic masculine norms of material success, enjoying urban life, and men's breadwinner position in contemporary China on the one hand, and responds to a labor regime of precarious employment relations and prevalent overwork norm on the other hand. The article contributes to the literature on hegemonic masculinity in work organizations by showcasing how a hegemonic masculinity in China's tech workplace is constructed at the conjuncture of hegemonic gender norms at a societal level and the distinct labor regime in the tech sector. It also reveals that many male workers fail to conform to this cultural ideal, experiencing masculine frustration rooted in the nature of the ‘workplace masculinity contest,’ uneven urban development, and the demanding labor regime. It thus opens further discussions on how men resist hegemonic gender norms and construct alternative masculinities.

Sexual violence against sexual minority women in STEM: Compound backlash

BackgroundRecent research has found that gender parity (i.e., the ratio of women to men) in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines is associated with sexual violence (SV) victimization for women. This finding may reflect a type of backlash wherein SV is a means of punishing women who are perceived to be violating their gender roles and threatening the male hegemony. Sexual minorities, who are likewise disproportionately victims of SV, report experiencing heterosexist hostility and harassment in STEM disciplines. There is reason to suspect that the combination of these marginalized identity positions (e.g., a sexual minority woman in gender-balanced STEM) may amplify perceived gender role violations and exacerbate the risk of SV victimization. MethodsData were collected from undergraduate women at five institutions of higher education in the United States. Sampling was stratified by STEM vs. non-STEM majors and male-dominated vs. gender-balanced majors. Sexual violence was measured via the revised Sexual Experiences Survey. We tested the interaction of sexual minority status and gender parity in STEM on SV via fixed effects OLS regression. ResultsSexual minority women in gender-balanced STEM were most frequently victims of SV. Women in male-dominated STEM majors were at no greater risk of SV victimization, regardless of sexual minority status, than their peers in non-STEM majors. ImplicationsThese findings suggest the possibility of a compound form of backlash, wherein women are exponentially victimized because their sexual identity and their membership in these STEM fields are seen as dual challenges to the male hegemony. If true, this could exacerbate health disparities rather than promote health equity for these sexual minority women. Findings point to the ongoing need to challenge hegemonic gender norms, focus prevention programs on populations most at risk, and ensure they are provided the appropriate resources for support.

Decoupling touch from sex: gender(ed) representations of physical intimacy in the cuddle industry.

The present study explores the resistance to and potential transformation of hegemonic gender norms regarding intimacy and sexuality through an instrumental case study of the so-called "professional cuddlers", a category of body workers that have proliferated in Europe since 2015 offering paid sessions of non-sexual physical intimacy. Despite efforts to frame the service as a form of therapy, professional cuddling is often misunderstood as a front for prostitution, and practitioners must frequently deal with unwanted sexual advancements. Drawing from a 3-year online ethnographic study of cuddling services, the dataset includes 10 in-depth interviews informed by a previous qualitative analysis of 46 newspaper articles, 16 forum discussions, and 25 websites related to such practices. Findings demonstrate that the representational limbo experienced by practitioners could be better understood as a product of the "sexusociety". Though it is unclear whether professional cuddling has any significant impact on hegemonic gender norms, results show that it nonetheless deconstructs the normative landscape through the enactment of alternative scripts.

Feminine negotiations and patriarchal bargains: Contradictory resistance in women's flat track roller derby

Women in contact sports must negotiate hegemonic gender norms and expectations encoded with sexism and homophobia. Previous research has not fully taken into account the way roller derby athletes resist notions of hegemonic femininity while simultaneously reinforcing gendered hierarchies. Using ethnographic data and 15 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, I seek to make sense of the complex gender negotiations in one roller derby league. I find that skaters offer not only unique resistance by defying gendered expectations of femininity but also risk reaffirming gender hierarchies. Skaters also negotiate and embody characteristics of masculinity and alternative femininities to conform to expectations of sporting legitimacy. This study indicates that, even within progressive spaces, hegemonic expectations of masculinity and femininity can hinder resistance efforts by imposing the competing goals of women's empowerment and masculine norms of athleticism.

Becoming ‘good men’: Teaching consent and masculinity in a single-sex boys’ school

ABSTRACT While consent forms part of the Health, Wellbeing and Relationships strand of the New South Wales (NSW) Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) curriculum in Australia, it is not consistently or effectively delivered within schools. The recent e-campaign, Teach Us Consent in NSW, drew attention to the alarmingly high rates of sexual assault experienced by young women during their school years or shortly after. The campaign called for mandatory, inclusive and comprehensive consent education in schools. This paper presents research from a case study of an elite, same-sex, Catholic boys’ school in NSW, Australia, examining the types of knowledge and attitudes young men and their PDHPE teachers had about sexual consent and the types of consent pedagogies mobilised. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with the five male PDHPE teachers, and a focus group was conducted with five Year 11 male students (aged 16–17). The findings highlight that while participants recognised the importance of sexual consent in intimate relationships, consent pedagogies were grounded in individualising discourses of risk, responsibility and care, which rearticulated hegemonic gender norms. Findings from this study contribute to discussions of how schools approach consent education, and the limitations presented by outsourcing relationships and sex education.

“Flying under the radar”: Postfeminism and teaching in academic science

AbstractNeoliberal academia is marked by vertical and horizontal gender segregation, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is a particularly concerning case. Women with PhDs are underrepresented, and when they do participate, they are more likely than men to be in teaching‐intensive roles. Beyond equality concerns, this is problematic because when women are interpreters rather than producers of disciplinary knowledge, the STEM enterprise remains gender‐biased. Using data from a 2‐year ethnography with physical science faculty in teaching‐intensive roles, this paper argues that gender inequity is reproduced through postfeminist discourses of work‐life balance. Participants who are mothers say they are flying under the radar at work. They self‐surveille as they engage in both paid labor as university educators and unpaid carework at home. Importantly, when participants challenge hegemonic gender norms, they attract the radar's attention and are sanctioned. This study contributes to a growing understanding of how and why women are marginalized in STEM careers. Women with science PhDs fulfill their university's teaching mission with minimal support for the implied compensation of work‐life balance, leaving the institutional structures which privilege men's participation in STEM research intact.

Trapped in the platform: Migration and precarity in China's platform-based gig economy

Recent studies on precarity among gig workers has turned away from labour process factors to explore the role of the wider social, cultural and institutional environment. Existing western-centred studies in this aspect argue that platforms reproduce racialised and gendered hierarchies to leverage control over vulnerable populations. This study extends this literature by focusing on the migration factor in a non-western context. Using the case of Didi, drawing on ethnographic and interview data, it is argued that migrant drivers’ high tolerance for platform precarity should be understood as an imposed position, for they are actually trapped in the platform by China's state-led, tech-driven economic restructuring project, through a new mode of migrant labour differentiation comprising three factors – changes in the labour market, hegemonic gender norms and the reformed hukou system. It thus enriches our understanding of worker precarity in the gig economy by highlighting the impact of migration and the state.

Do the Marriageable Men want to Protect and Provide? The Expectation of Black Professional Hybrid Masculinity

Gender ideologies are embedded in intersecting race, class, and gender systems. Yet Black masculinity is often defined one-dimensionally, without attention to class variation in gender enactment. Particularly, with regard to heterosexual partnering, representations of Black masculinity most often involve men enacting compensatory displays to account for having too little masculine capital to meet the dominant culture’s protector–provider prerequisites for accomplishing marital masculinity. Drawing from interviews with 42 never-married Black professional men, I explore their ideas about how masculinity ought to be done within the marital relationship—a critical site for the reproduction of gender inequality. Findings reveal that these men construct “Black professional hybrid masculinity” around a simultaneously racialized and classed compensatory strategy of masculine protection and equitable spousal sharing, resisting simple classification as either hegemonic or counterhegemonic. Rather, it is a distinctly hybrid masculine strategy. These men cherry-pick hegemonic gender norms to reconstruct gender identities that reaffirm their sense of manhood and idealize their future wives as symbols of hybrid femininity—work-devoted women who are also femininely in need of masculine protection. This research offers an intersectional extension of hybrid masculinity and illustrates the need for heterogeneous and context-varied theories of how Black men do gender.

‘Genderism vs. Humanism’: The Generational Shift and Push for Implementing Gender Equality within Soka Gakkai-Japan

This paper investigates how young Japanese women in contemporary Soka Gakkai (SG) navigate Japan’s continuous gender stratified society that remains culturally rooted in the ‘salaryman-housewife’ ideology. How are young SG members reproducing or contesting these hegemonic gender norms that few seek to emulate? While SG has long proclaimed that it stands for gender equality, its employment structure and organization in Japan until recently reflected the typical male breadwinner ideology that came to underpin the post-war Japanese nation-state and systemic gender division of labor. As shown here, this did not mean that SG women were without power; in fact, in many ways they drove organizational developments in the Japanese context. The recent imposition of the global framework for Sustainable Development Goals of 2015 has enabled SG to more substantially challenge its own patriarchal public front. Based on long-term fieldwork, in-depth interviews and multiple group discussions with SG members in their 20s, this article explores how SG-Japan is being challenged to follow its own discourse of ‘globalism’ and ‘Buddhist humanism’, promoted by Daisaku Ikeda since the 1990s. Using Bourdieu’s analysis of symbolic power, the research shows how Japan’s powerful doxa of ‘genderism’ that held sway over earlier generations is currently being challenged by a glocalized Buddhist discourse that identifies Nichiren Buddhism as ‘humanism’ rather than Japanese ‘genderism’.

Gay fatherhood Experiences and challenges through the lens of minority stress theory

ABSTRACT Gay-fatherhood raises questions about hegemonic gender norms and traditional family systems in different contexts and countries. This study explores gay fathers’ desires, motivations, and experiences of having a child. Participants’ challenges and concerns regarding having and raising children also were explored. Data were obtained through in-person interviews of 11 self-identified gay fathers. The data were then analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) analysis. The analytical results identified three themes that shed light on participants’ desires and experiences of parenthood. These were: (1) innate motives to parent and gender role strains, (2) enacted stigma (i.e., acts of rejection due to sexual orientation and traditional gender roles), and (3) children’s social rejection due to their parents’ sexuality. The findings of this study stress the influence of contextual factors (stigma) and intrapersonal factors (internalized anti-gay prejudice) in participants’ health and well-being. This study potentially tries to expand cultural awareness of research in this field.

Intersecting the Academic Gender Gap: The Education of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual America

Although gender is central to contemporary accounts of educational stratification, sexuality has been largely invisible as a population-level axis of academic inequality. Taking advantage of major recent data expansions, the current study establishes sexuality as a core dimension of educational stratification in the United States. First, I analyze lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adults’ college completion rates: overall, by race/ethnicity, and by birth cohort. Then, using new data from the High School Longitudinal Survey of 2009, I analyze LGB students’ performance on a full range of achievement and attainment measures. Across analyses, I reveal two demographic facts. First, women’s rising academic advantages are largely confined to straight women: although lesbian women historically outpaced straight women, in contemporary cohorts, lesbian and bisexual women face significant academic disadvantages. Second, boys’ well-documented underperformance obscures one group with remarkably high levels of school success: gay boys. Given these facts, I propose that marginalization from hegemonic gender norms has important—but asymmetric—impacts on men’s and women’s academic success. To illustrate this point, I apply what I call a “gender predictive” approach, using supervised machine learning methods to uncover patterns of inequality otherwise obscured by the binary sex/gender measures typically available in population research.

The Role of Living Traditions in Decolonizing Indigenous Gender in an Urban Environment1

This article elucidates the role of living traditions in decolonizing indigenous gender in an urban environment. “Living traditions” are perspectives and practices that emerge organically over time to account for the shifting needs of indigenous communities impacted by enduring structures of settler colonialism. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted over 2 ½ years, I explore gendered power dynamics in two urban pan‐Indian communities—one comprised of people who relocated from reservations and maintain ties to tribal nations (relocators) and another comprised of people reclaiming indigenous identities despite dislocations from tribal nations (reclaimers). By interrogating the mutual construction of indigeneity and gender across communities, I illustrate how relocators’ and reclaimers’ different relationships with tribal nations influence strategies for decolonizing gender. Reclaimers’ weak ties to tribal nations result in dogmatic efforts to reject their (socialization into) whiteness and enact what they perceive as indigenous complementarian gender—gender roles that are horizontally but not hierarchically distinct. Reclaimers’ strategic though misbegotten gender behaviors inadvertently reify settler‐constructed gender norms affirming men’s dominance over women. In contrast, relocators’ ongoing relations with tribal nations facilitate the emergence of “living traditions” that support fluid and adaptable gender strategies necessary to resist colonization and challenge hegemonic gender norms.

Transgender and gender diverse individuals' daily experiences of rumination.

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people face a myriad of daily stressors because of the hegemonic gender norms embedded within U.S. society. Due to these minority stressors, TGD people report elevated anxiety, depression, stress, and suicidality, among other health issues. One mechanism through which stigma may lead to these negative mental health outcomes is through increased rumination. In this intensive daily diary study with 181 TGD individuals (ages 16-40), we gathered qualitative data on their ruminative thoughts over the course of 56 days. There were a total of 2,431 responses across participants, with individuals providing a range of 1-53 responses (M = 15 responses). Using an experiential framework and an inductive approach to thematic analysis, we generated the following themes: (a) interpersonal relationships as a site of struggle, (b) fear and worry in response to contextual factors, (c) the weight of basic needs and safety, (d) gender as experienced through self and others, (e) intersections of health and rumination, and (f) the occasional reprieve. Using a deductive approach, we also placed these data within the context of Bronfenbrenner's Person-Process-Context-Time model to provide a conceptual model for future research in this area. These ruminative experiences revealed significant adversities and challenges weighing on participants' minds that spanned many areas of life. These findings also highlight the nuanced nature of rumination for TGD individuals and areas that may be overlooked in current assessments of this construct. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Challenging Hegemonic Gender Norms in Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Rose” and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast

While heteronormativity remained at the core of the classic fairy tale, a queer subtext existed in the form of subtle symbolic codes. By reflecting the changing socio- cultural discourses about sexuality and gender in time, the representation of queer sexuality in fairy tales has also developed. This paper attempts a queer reading of the revisioning of Madame Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast” in Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Rose” and the 2017 Disney version. This paper demonstrates how Emma Donoghue’s adaptation deconstructs the heteronormativity of Beaumont’s tale by dismantling the binaries of Beauty/Beast and man/woman and represents queer sexuality and desire through multi-layered language. This paper also examines how in the Disney version the story takes a new dimension in close proximity to twenty-first century media culture and lends itself to queer interpretation.

“The Trouble Goes Back to Your Grandfather’s Time”: Masculinity and Domestic Spaces in Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread

ABSTRACT This essay reads evolving cultures of white American middle-class masculinity in tandem with ekphrastic symbolisms of domestic architecture in Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread. It interprets the text as a subversive narrative where if hegemonic gender norms oppress women and children, they also often confine men primarily to the role of a provider and alienate them from their own shelters. Accordingly, by focusing on the profound connection between masculinity and domestic architecture in A Spool of Blue Thread, this essay argues that Tyler’s postmillennial novel systematically debunks several conventions associated with both gender norms and domestic spaces. In sum, this essay—with the help of masculinity studies and space theories—suggests that by establishing how preservation, husbandry, and care over cold rationality and calculated aggression are elemental to constructions of both ideal masculinity and ideal homes in the current millennium, A Spool of Blue Thread necessitates conversations on changeovers that create felicitous domestic spaces for both men and women.

On learning and unlearning repertoires of gender embodiment

ABSTRACT This paper concerns physicality and the tendency to operate within bounds of familiar repertoires of embodiment. It questions the degree to which habitual ways in which we pose, repose, and action our bodies are authentic as opposed to constructed artifacts of our enculturation. With reference to notions of ‘neutrality’ as raised in Lecoq training and the Feldenkrais Method, this paper aims – though suggested autoethnographic exploratory practice – to bring awareness to habitual ways in which each of us embody gender. It highlights means by which educators can direct the focus of those with whom we work toward recognizing and deconstructing aspects of embodied gender behaviors that may be inherently, but not obviously, inequitable. Attending to these issues within spheres of education has the scope to safeguard the social and emotional well-being of those not inclined to embody in accordance with hegemonic gender norms and to broaden attitudes toward embodied expressive possibilities.

Mexican American Masculinities on Reality TV

This essay examines the treatment of Mexican American masculinities on Los Cowboys, an internet-based reality TV show that followed a team of charros (Mexican cowboys) from Los Angeles as they prepared to compete in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Though it aired for only two seasons (2015–16), Los Cowboys was a landmark achievement because it used the genre-specific techniques of reality TV to represent the diversity, complexity, and contradictions of Mexican American masculinities in ways that challenge longstanding patterns of racial and gender stereotyping on television. Integrating theories and methods from Chicanx studies, media studies, and masculinity studies, I analyze the characters’ interactions around issues such as dating, marriage, and childrearing; body weight and fitness; style and fashion; and labor and skill. While the show ultimately upholds the desirability of Mexican American men’s aspirations to be heteropatriarchal providers, it also shows hegemonic gender norms to be produced through interactions among men, rather than by essentialist traits, and to exist in critical dialogue with subaltern Mexican American gender formations, including feminism and queer Latinidad. I conclude that reality television offers rich potential for representations of diverse Mexican American masculinities, particularly when produced in the institutional contexts of the Latinx web series and internet television more broadly.

Masculine Female and Feminine Male: A Study of Gender Slippage Amid Migration Spaces in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

Abstract Reviewing gender as a doing reveals how gender idiosyncrasy is framed and formed. The present study tackles gender as a discursively constructed category in Mohsin Hamid’s novel, Exit West (2017). Employing theoretical ideas from Butler’s Gender Trouble (1999) and Bodies That Matter (2003), this qualitative descriptive study analyzes the performative nature of gender. It exposes the constraints which the normative matrix of binaries inflicts on sex, gender, and desire of Muslim migrant and refugee characters living in non-Muslim spaces. Moreover, the paper investigates the role of religion, ethnicity, and cross-national gender differences in instilling dominant gender discourses in the minds of the migrants. The findings of this study reveal that the characters produce alternative discourses of agency, transformation and voluntarism against hegemonic gender norms while relying heavily on the processes of gender slippage and role reversal. Keywords: gender, Exit West, Butler, gender slippage, migrants