Negotiation Of Gender Roles Research Articles

Queering the Mexican Coming-of-Age Film: Quemar las naves (2007) by Francisco Franco Alba

Queering the Mexican Coming-of-Age Film:Quemar las naves (2007) by Francisco Franco Alba Juli A. Kroll Set against the backdrop of the Mexican state of Zacatecas' stark beauty, the award-winning Quemar las naves (2007) by director Francisco Franco Alba contributes to a growing body of twenty-first-century Mexican coming-of-age movies featuring gay characters and subtexts and/or LGBTQ themes (Y tu mamá también, 2001; De la calle, 2001; Sin destino, 2002; Temporada de patos, 2004; El cielo dividido, 2006; Niñas mal, 2007; La otra familia, 2008; Todo el mundo tiene a alguien menos yo, 2012; Peyote, 2013; Cuatro lunas, 2014; Memorias de lo que no fue, 2017). With adolescent protagonists driving the plot and focalizing pressing social issues, the coming-of-age movie is a potent vehicle for cultural criticism.1 In this vein, Quemar las naves–which won the Mexican film industry's Ariel award for Best Actress (Irene Azuela) and Best Music (Alejandro Giacomán)–takes its place as a key early twenty-first-century queer and anti-homophobic film that bridges gay and straight audiences. The film is staged as a traditional coming-of-age tale dealing with orphanhood and gender and sexual identity within the confines of normative gender roles. By employing recognizable images of female gender performativity, Quemar establishes communication with mainstream audiences in its first minutes while subtly coding its male protagonist, Sebastián (Ángel Onésimo Nevares), as queer. Relatively progressive in the history of Latin American and Mexican cinema, however, Quemar resists stereotypical portrayals of gay youths in film even as its characters resonate with three ways of representing gay men on screen: the maricón, the entendido, and the macho. Most significantly, sixteen-year-old Sebastián's coming out is staged not stereotypically as pathology or voyeuristic spectacle, but rather as a source of healing and metaphoric fledging from the familial nest. The film de-politicizes homosexuality by positioning the historically and geographically meaningful Zacatecan landscape as background for Sebastián's and his lover Juan's (Bernardo Benítez) budding relationship. This abets a positive mainstream Mexican audience reading of the pair's sexual identity and allows mainstream audience response to move from a dominant reading of hegemonic gender identity to what media theorist Stuart Hall might call a "negotiated response" ("Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse"). The result is a response that more closely aligns with the film's positive view of gay identity and coming out. [End Page 137] Quemar las naves depicts two teens struggling with the transition to adulthood, grappling with orphanhood and grief, negotiating gender roles, and dealing with homophobia. Siblings nineteen-year-old Helena (Irene Azuela) and sixteen-year-old Sebastián share a desperate fraternal love on the verge of being lost, and they express a tremendous urgency to strengthen familial ties via intimate acts and mimicking inherited gender performances. In the film, the siblings struggle with the death of their mother (Claudette Maillé), a well-known singer for whom Helena has been caring. Helena simultaneously shelters the vulnerable Sebastián, a shy and artistic youth whom Helena still bathes while she also positions him as an audience for her hetero-normative gender performances. These performances include lip-synching to recordings of her mother's songs and performing a campy femininity replete with a feather boa. When the mother dies in her bed at home about one third of the way through the film, Sebastián is away experiencing one of his first romantic encounters in the Zacatecas countryside on an overnight camping date with his hyper-masculine lover, Juan. Helena discovers Sebastián's emerging sexual identity and attacks him verbally in a shocking display of homophobic cruelty, which leads to a brutal physical confrontation between the two. Witnesses to the conflict are Aurora (Jessica Segura)–a young woman who is renting a room in Helena and Sebastián's spacious family home–and another important character, the wealthy Ismael (Ramón Valdés), a family friend of Helena and Sebastián who secretly harbors romantic urges toward Sebastián. The film ends with Sebastián's lover, Juan, getting into a...

Re-imagining family and gender roles in Aminatta Forna's Ancestor Stones

This paper examines the interplay between polygyny and gender by exploring the way in which family structure and gender roles are negotiated, imagined and exercised in fiction. Aminatta Forna's Ancestor stones (2006) is read in order to explore how the institution of polygyny changes over time and how it influences gender role negotiation. Using an African feminist approach, the paper juxtaposes the historical and contemporary institution of polygyny in relation to gender role negotiation and how contemporary writers build on their literary precursors in re-writing the history of polygyny and gender according to the socio-cultural needs of twenty-first century Africans. These changes in socio-cultural, economic and political spheres in Africa have played a pivotal role in altering family structure and arrangements. I therefore argue that the changes in familial structure and arrangement necessitate gender role negotiation.

Contextualising street sexual harassment in Morocco: a discriminatory sociocultural representation of women

ABSTRACTThis article aims to contextualise gender-based violence through the phenomenon of sexual harassment in public space in Morocco. This will be achieved by exploring the discriminatory social, cultural and political representation of Moroccan women, and discussing their status, image and treatment in a patriarchal social order. The study seeks to reveal the relationship between the stereotypical images of Moroccan girls and women and the violence that is likely committed against them. It suggests that women’s location in the power structures of the family, school, media and the law, as well as their access to the economic and political spheres, all contribute to the construction and negotiation of gender roles, relationships and inequalities, and consequently participate in fostering violent attitudes and practices against women in the public arena. The evolution of the status of women will be primarily guaranteed by changes in their freedom-of-movement, security and emancipation. However, regularising gender inequalities and naturalising women’s oppression remain obstacles that will encourage further harassment against women. Future research should address women’s discourse and experiences of street harassment as well as its social meaning, prevalence, severity and impact in order to better define the phenomenon and thus contribute to improving the image of women in the Moroccan context.

Discourses of sameness, unbalance and influence: dominant gender order in medicine

Despite the ongoing increase of women in the medical force, gender inequalities persist in medicine. The purpose of this paper is to study the mechanisms that regulate the contemporary gender order through a critical discourse analysis. We conducted 21 narrative interviews with Italian physicians, and 1 focus group with 10 Italian senior-year medical students. We used Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework to explain how “hegemonic masculinity” shapes discourses of sameness aimed at silencing gender inequalities in medicine; “natural female domesticity” challenges this sense-making and introduces new sparks in the debate about female career paths; similarly, “influential group power” discourses nurture the reflections about elitism in the profession. Our findings show that the new generation of physicians challenges the dominant gender order proposing new ways of negotiating gender roles in favour of a greater gender equality. This paper offers causes for reflection on a profession that has profound implications in our society and about the ways it is powered by dominant socio-political discourses which potentially can influence doctors’ careers. We address the potential in discourses to subvert or sustain power structures permeating healthcare professions, disclosing the discursive mechanism underlying different forms of oppression and offering the means to raise awareness and change.

Mary Howitt and the Business of Poetry

Mary Howitt served as the principal poetry editor of Howitt's Journal from 1847 to 1848. This article focuses on her understanding and practice of publishing poetry, as well as her approach to the many poems published under her oversight. Approaching Howitt's editorship as a social practice that encompassed networking, standards of poetic quality, and the negotiation of gender roles, I also consider the range of poems in Howitt's Journal and explore their political orientation as indicators of Howitt's editorial preferences. To illuminate her day-to-day editorial decisions and oversight of individual poems, I also draw upon her unpublished editorial correspondence.

Social Remittances: A Case Study of Receiving Country

Eastern European migrants have been bringing norms, values, practices and social capital to their communities of origin since the end of the nineteenth century. This paper sheds light on the unintended consequences of temporary migration from Eastern European by combining Merton’s functional analysis with Levitt’s work on social remittances. The article presents a juxtaposition of the non-material effects of earlier migration from Eastern European, dating from the turn of the twentieth century, with those of the contemporary era of migration from Eastern European since the 1990s. The analysis shows that some aspects, such as negotiating gender roles, the changing division of household labour, individualistic lifestyles, new skills and sources of social capital, and changing economic rationalities are constantly being transferred by migrants from destination to origin communities. Contemporary digital tools facilitate these transfers and contribute to changing norms and practices in Eastern European society. The article demonstrates that migration fulfils specific functions for particular sections of Eastern European society by replacing some functions of the communist state and by facilitating their adaptation to changing conditions.

Interracial Couples in Therapy: Common Themes and Issues

This article approaches the topic of intimate interracial relations from a clinical perspective. Throughout this article, we use the term “interracial” relationships, which refers to partners’ different racial categories defined by their physical and biological characteristics. This term falls under the larger umbrella of “interethnic” relationships, which refers to differences in partners’ cultural heritage as well as biological characteristics. Different racialized histories and experiences set interracial couples apart from other dyads, and can influence the types of problems that they encounter in their relationships. Given the challenging history of intergroup relations between races, a distinction is drawn between problems which are common to all couples (i.e., negotiating gender roles, poor communication, disagreements over financial management, and intimacy issues) and problems that are unique to interracial couples (i.e., managing societal disapproval, managing the effects of racial privilege). The utility of interdependence theory in furthering understanding of the problems that may arise in interracial relationships is examined. We argue that this theoretical model does not sufficiently address external casual conditions which are a primary source of the unique problems faced by interracial couples.

Perceptions and management of gender roles and dynamics inside OpAntiSH Intervention Teams in Cairo

A number of anti-sexual harassment and anti-sexual violence initiatives were formed by Egyptian citizens after 2011 to confront the rising tide of gender-based violence against women in the public sphere. Among those focused on direct intervention in cases of mob sexual assault in mass gatherings in Tahrir Square (Cairo), Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault (OpAntiSH) was the only one that always integrated male and female volunteers in all teams, including Intervention. This study of the management and perceptions of gender dynamics by volunteers inside OpAntiSH’s Intervention teams in 2012-2014, is based on micro-sociological analysis of the data gathered through participant observation and semi-structured interviews during this period. This paper first addresses women volunteers’ motivations – based on their own narratives – for joining Intervention teams, a choice that could be viewed as counter intuitive or frowned upon in Egyptian society, in which the dominant model of gender roles remains quite close to the model of hegemonic masculinity. Many framed this choice within an identity-based reading of the phenomenon of mass sexual assaults as attacks on all women as political agents in the public sphere, and their response as a means of resistance and reclaiming agency. Women’s presence in Intervention teams was initially an issue for many volunteers, who developed certain techniques and coping strategies to manage it. These included specific ways of performing gender within the group that differed from their practices in other contexts, and various approaches to the negotiation of gender roles within teams. Intervention involved a broader learning process about gender for some volunteers, whose view of women’s presence in teams evolved, though it remained somewhat of an issue for other “silent dissenters” of sorts. Ultimately, the particularity of the OpAntiSH experience is connected to the creation of a social sphere of gender equality and solidarity, geared toward the joining of forces between men and woman as equals, to fight mass sexual violence in the public sphere, within a very non-egalitarian society.

Gender Flux: Transatlantic Influence on Fashioning the Cross-dresser in American Silent Cinema

From the post-Victorian era to the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934, European theater and film played a significant role in the temporal conditional, sociocultural acceptance of gender fluidity in the USA. My claim is that during a time period that spanned between approximately 1906 and 1934, the popularization of female/male impersonators served as a transgressive force that propelled a meaningful dialogue surrounding social tolerance. The selection of films in this article represents an attempt to narrow the vast field and introduce the strongest evidence to substantiate my assertion. Each film reveals a direct link to a European artistic tradition; all cast the cross-dresser as protagonist; costume/fashion plays a central role in characterization; and finally the narratives demonstrate a socially progressive point of view regarding the negotiation of gender roles. Through detailed film sequence readings and costume and cultural analysis, I conduct an examination of these North American pivotal silent motion pictures and their antecedent British, French, German, Italian, and Spanish artistic influences. In order to better understand the complex political climate simmering beneath the artifice of twentieth-century drag, this article will also contextualize these texts within the social crisis that erupted as a result of modernity.

Genderové aspekty nucené migrace

This case study focuses on a variety of adaptation strategies responding to the economic uncertainty caused by forced migration in the post-Soviet Azerbaijan and their impact on gender. Liminal form of forced migration process contributes to the transformation of the ways of making a living and causing a negotiation of gender boundaries. These become more flexible and permeable but they are still constrained by socially shared and reproduced images of the ideal division of gender roles. I will illustrate longterm consequences of forced migration and negotiation of gender roles in three stories of households living in the rural foothills of Nagorno-Karabakh, where I conducted repeated long-term ethnographic research.

Understanding gender norms, nutrition, and physical activity in adolescent girls: a scoping review.

Public health is currently focused on childhood obesity, and the associated behaviors of physical activity and nutrition. Canadian youth are insufficiently active and do not meet nutritional guidelines. This is of particular concern for adolescent girls, as they are less active than boys, become less active as they age, and engage in unhealthy weight control behaviors. The purpose of this review is to determine what is known from the existing literature about how gender norms are understood in relation to the health-related behaviors of PA and nutrition in young girls. This scoping review follows the framework of Arksey and O’Malley, involving defining a research question, study identification and selection, charting, interpretation, summarizing, and reporting. In total, 28 documents are reviewed, and characteristics are summarized quantitatively and qualitatively. Five major themes are identified: (1) Girls’ relationships with PA are complex and require negotiating gender roles, (2) the literature focuses on dieting rather than nutrition, (3) appearance and perceptions influence behaviors, (4) “body” focused discourse is significant to girls’ experiences, and (5) social influences, institutions, and environments are influential and may offer opportunity for future research and action. Gaps in the literature are identified and discussed. It is concluded that young girls’ activity and nutrition is affected by gender norms and feminine ideals through complex negotiations, perceptions, body-centered discourse, and societal influences.

A Case Study of Remittances Receiving Country

Eastern European migrants have been bringing norms, values, practices and social capital to their communities of origin since the end of the nineteenth century. This paper sheds light on the unintended consequences of temporary migration from Eastern European by combining Merton’s functional analysis with Levitt’s work on social remittances. The article presents a juxtaposition of the non-material effects of earlier migration from Eastern European, dating from the turn of the twentieth century, with those of the contemporary era of migration from Eastern European since the 1990s. The analysis shows that some aspects, such as negotiating gender roles, the changing division of household labour, individualistic lifestyles, new skills and sources of social capital, and changing economic rationalities are constantly being transferred by migrants from destination to origin communities. Contemporary digital tools facilitate these transfers and contribute to changing norms and practices in Eastern European society. The article demonstrates that migration fulfils specific functions for particular sections of Eastern European society by replacing some functions of the communist state and by facilitating their adaptation to changing conditions

Gender Role Negotiation in the Migration Process. Bulgarian Migrants in Castile and Leon (Spain)

The Bulgarian community is one of the biggest migrants community settled in Castile and Leon (Spain). They have reached a high level of integration in the local terrain. Such integration strongly affects the migrants’ way of live, especially concerning to their conception of the roles of gender. The way in which male and female roles are understood by the community have a strong effect in terms of social position and social power. Therefore it is interesting to analyze the gender social construction in Bulgaria and how it has changed within the integration process, thanks to the migrants’ associations considered as the arena of the gender role negotiation.

Gendered water spaces: a study of the transition from wells to handpumps in Mozambique

In many parts of rural Africa, women and children spend a lot of time collecting water. In the development literature, the water collection task is portrayed as oppressive, arduous, and disliked by women. Eliminating this activity from women's lives is believed to empower them, yet there has been little research investigating what actually happens at the water source or how women themselves perceive the time spent there. This research is based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork in five rural communities in the northern province of Nampula, Mozambique. Over this year, handpumps were constructed in communities where people previously collected water from distant shallow wells and rivers. This article compares the social interactions and activities between the customary water sites and the handpump through the lens of gendered space. The customary water sites are controlled by women and highly valued for their social attributes. While clean water is more accessible at the handpumps, men often regulate access to the technology and social activities are limited. This article contributes to feminist geography and political ecology by showing how differences in the materiality of water spaces interact with local norms to shape social interactions and gendered subjectivities, and how, in turn, men and women contribute to the production and meaning of these spaces. I argue that the handpumps open up new spaces for men and women to negotiate gender roles and (re)define their associations with modernity and development.

Money matters: using qualitative research for policy influencing on gender and welfare reform

The UK government has been considering the design and delivery of the proposed “universal credit”, the centerpiece of its welfare reforms. The authors draw on findings from their own research, about how low/moderate-income couples manage money and negotiate gender roles, to demonstrate their relevance to exploring the gender implications of the proposals for universal credit. Findings from this and other similar studies are used to explore the value of qualitative research to policy design and debates – in particular to supplement economic modeling, which has been highly influential in driving the current UK government's thinking on welfare reform. The authors discuss the reasons why insights about gender relations within the household revealed by such qualitative research appear to have been resisted in the reform.

Mermaids and Spirit Spouses: Rituals as Technologies of Gender in Transnational African Pentecostal Spaces

This article aims to approach the construction of gender in transnational spacesby focusing on the ritual practice of African Pentecostal migrants in Europeand in Africa. One dimension of African Pentecostalism is its insistence on thepractice of exorcism called ‘deliverance’ where malevolent spirits are expelledfrom one’s body. Within the Pentecostal demonology, several categories ofspirits carry implications for how gender is constructed. This article will analyseeffects of the appearance of these spirits on the construction of genderamong Ghanaian and Congolese Pentecostal churches in Geneva and in Accra.It will show that variations in the appearance of spirits within rituals can beinterpreted as a negotiation of gender roles in a migratory context. Shifts inPentecostal demonology can therefore be interpreted as a response to thereconfiguration of gender roles associated with the broader gender contextand work opportunities in Europe.

Mermaids and Spirit Spouses: Rituals as Technologies of Gender in Transnational African Pentecostal Spaces

This article aims to approach the construction of gender in transnational spaces by focusing on the ritual practice of African Pentecostal migrants in Europe and in Africa. One dimension of African Pentecostalism is its insistence on the practice of exorcism called ‘deliverance’ where malevolent spirits are expelled from one’s body. Within the Pentecostal demonology, several categories of spirits carry implications for how gender is constructed. This article will analyse effects of the appearance of these spirits on the construction of gender among Ghanaian and Congolese Pentecostal churches in Geneva and in Accra. It will show that variations in the appearance of spirits within rituals can be interpreted as a negotiation of gender roles in a migratory context. Shifts in Pentecostal demonology can therefore be interpreted as a response to the reconfiguration of gender roles associated with the broader gender context and work opportunities in Europe.

“Physics and the girly girl—there is a contradiction somewhere”: doctoral students’ positioning around discourses of gender and competence in physics

Doctoral physics students have stories about what kinds of actions, behaviours and ways of doing physics allow individuals to be recognized as physicists. Viewing a physics department as a case study, and individual participants as embedded cases, this study used a sociocultural approach to examine the ways doctoral students construct these stories about becoming physicists. Through observations, photo-elicitation, and life history interviews, eleven men and women shared stories about their experiences with physics, and the contexts that have enabled or constrained their trajectories into doctoral physics. The results of this study revealed the salience of recognition in the constitution of physicist identities; but how recognition was achieved often entailed the reproduction or reworking of persistent discourses of gender norms. Various interchangeable forms of competence (technical, analytical, and academic) emerged as assets that can be used to achieve recognition in this physics community. However, competence was not the only means by which one might be recognized as a physicist. Contributing to the possibility for recognition was the performance of stereotypical Discourses for physicist that relied on traditional gender norms for the field. The results demonstrated that achieving recognition as a competent physicist often involved a complex negotiation of gender roles and the practice of physics.

Women Wrestlers' Gender Role Negotiation and Doing Gender

Women Wrestlers' Gender Role Negotiation and Doing Gender

“Doing Gender,” Ensuring Survival: Mexican Migration and Economic Crisis in the Rural Mountain West*

AbstractThis article draws on ethnographic research to explore the impacts of the current economic crisis on Mexican migrant families in rural Montana. It looks specifically at the ways rural families negotiate gender roles and expectations as they devise survival strategies in response to major economic shifts. My analysis suggests that traditional gender roles are being transgressed, as migrant women enter wage labor, often for the first time. Simultaneously, gender ideologies are being reinforced, as migrant women struggle to protect men's sense of masculinity by continuing to perform a culturally appropriate gender script. Whereas the paradoxical combination of gender transgression and tradition has been noted within urban migrant families, its dynamics are different in rural contexts. While urban migrants tend to look outward to social networks for support, rural migrants turn inward to their immediate families, strengthening family solidarities.