Feminine Norms Research Articles

“I LOVE This”: An Exploration of How Self-Objectification Predicts Support for Menstrual Suppression

This study was designed to explore support for menstrual suppression. It was hypothesized that menstrual attitudes would mediate, and feminine norms moderate, the relationship between self-objectification and support for suppression. Participants were 228 women who completed a questionnaire. Results indicate that menstrual shame is a significant mediator. The interaction between feminine norms and self-objectification acted as a moderator: those high in care for children who self-objectified less showed less support for suppression. Open-ended responses reveal reservations about safety and belief in the right to choose. Findings provide new insights into factors that affect women’s decision to use reproductive technology.

Ensuring Failure?

Historically, the regulation of girls through institutionalization has been guided by bourgeois norms of femininity, including virtue, domesticity, and motherhood. Using a Foucauldian perspective on the production of subjects in Swedish secure care, I investigate whether or not middle-class norms of femininity, centered today around self-regulation, still guide the regulation of working-class girls. By analyzing data from an ethnographic study, I show that even though secure care is repressive, it is also permeated with the aim of producing self-regulating subjects corresponding with discourses on ideal girlhood. However, since working-class girls are rarely made intelligible within such discourses, thereby making the position of self-regulatory subject inaccessible, the care system leaves them to shoulder the responsibility for resolving a situation that is shaped by structures beyond their control.

A Theoretical Development of the Gender Embodiment of Enrichment: A Study of Gender Norms in Enrichment and Factors Related to Enrichment in a Sample of the Swedish Working Population.

Enrichment is a phenomenon described as the synergistic and beneficial effects of participating in both work and private life. Far too few studies have acknowledged the role of gender in enrichment. By applying a gender theoretical approach, this article has two aims; first, we aim to study the role of gender in enrichment by examining the factorial structure of enrichment in men and women; secondly, we aim to study the relationship between enrichment and work and private life factors in an approximately representative sample of the Swedish working population. A multigroup confirmatory factor analysis with measurement in variance was performed and this resulted in a two-factor solution for enrichment for both men and women, representing the two directions of enrichment: work-to-life enrichment (WLE) and life-to-work enrichment (LWE). Factor loadings differ across genders, indicating that men and women construct and value items of enrichment differently. Next, linear mixed models were used to answer the second aim. Results show that gendered cultural norms in work and private life manifest in the relationship between factors in the work and home sphere and enrichment. Factors in work and private life with more or less masculine or feminine epithets relate differently to WLE and LWE for men and women. The main conclusion is that masculine and feminine norms are embodied in the values and experiences of enrichment and factors related to enrichment.

Reproducing normative femininity: Women\u2019s evaluations of their birth experiences analysed by means of word frequency and thematic analysis

BackgroundGiven the significance of the birth experience on women’s and babies’ well-being, assessing and understanding maternal satisfaction is important for providing optimal care. While previous research has thoroughly reviewed women’s levels of satisfaction with the childbirth experience from a multitude of different angles, there is a dearth of papers that use a gender lens in this area. The aim of this study is to explore through a gender perspective the circumstances attributed to both women’s assessment of a positive birth experience and those which contribute to a lack of satisfaction with their birth experience.MethodsThrough the use of a local birth evaluation form at a Swedish labour ward, 190 women gave written evaluations of their birth experiences. The evaluations were divided into groups of positive, ambiguous, and negative evaluations. By means of a latent and constructionist thematic analysis based on word count, women’s evaluations are discussed as reflections of the underlying sociocultural ideas, assumptions, and ideologies that shape women’s realities.ResultsThree themes were identified: Grateful women and nurturing midwives doing gender together demonstrates how a gender-normative behaviour may influence a positive birth experience when based on a reciprocal relationship. Managing ambiguous feelings by sympathising with the midwife shows how women’s internalised sense of gender can make women belittle their negative experiences and refrain from delivering criticism. The midwifery model of relational care impeded by the labour care organisation describes how the care women receive during labour and birth is regulated by an organisation not always adapted to the benefit of birthing women.ConclusionsMost women were very satisfied, predominantly with emotional support they received from the midwives. The latent constructionist thematic analysis also elicited women’s mixed feelings towards the birth experience, with the majority of negative experiences directed towards the labour care organisation. Recognising the impact of institutional and medical discourses on childbirth, women’s birth evaluations demonstrate the benefits and challenges of gender-normative behaviour, where women’s internalised sense of gender was found to affect their experiences. A gender perspective may provide a useful tool in unveiling gender-normative complexities surrounding the childbirth experience.

Gendered Body of Turkish Bikini Fitness Athletes on Instagram

This study sought to understand how Turkish bikini fitness athletes discipline their bodies on Instagram by using Foucault’s theorization of self-surveillance. We examined Instagram photos of 10 bikini fitness athletes and completed interviews with them. We analysed data by conducting quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The findings show that both bikini fitness and Instagram are modern forms of self-surveillance for Turkish female athletes. Bikini fitness dictates (hetero)normative femininity norms such as femininity, sexuality and heterosexual desirability with a feminine glance, silicone breast implants, make-up, long hair, jewelry, and so on. However, Turkish female athletes build a docile body image by confirming that they do not share sexually suggestive poses on Instagram, because of religious and patriarchal norms in Turkey. However, bikini fitness and Instagram are also considered to be potential tools of resistance against religious norms and patriarchal power for these athletes.

Gendered Re-Traumatization: End-of-Life Care for Abusive and Neglectful Parents (SCI907)

1.Describe re-traumatizing experiences of women providing EOL UCL to parents which mirror experiences of childhood trauma.2.Identify predictive and protective factors for gendered re-traumatization in the context of EOL UCL for parents.3.Examine structures of power in hospice and palliative care which perpetuate gendered re-traumatization. During the last year of life, 57% of Medicare beneficiaries depend on their daughters’ unpaid care labor (UCL) to meet their basic needs. End-of-life (EOL) UCL is associated with increased risks for physical and psychological morbidity, and negative health impacts of UCL are more common among providers with histories of childhood maltreatment. Over 40% of U.S. women report having experienced childhood sexual, physical, emotional abuse and / or neglect, with the majority of cases involving parents, yet the prevalence and impact of childhood trauma is rarely acknowledged in the field of hospice and palliative care. In contrast to the evidence, the assumption that love and reciprocity characterize relationships between daughters and parents to whom they provide care is widespread in research, policy, and practice. The objective of this study was to explore and conceptualize links between the experience of providing EOL UCL to abusive and neglectful parents and women's health. Using feminist poststructuralist narrative methodology, we performed and analyzed dialogic interviews with 21 women who provided EOL UCL to parents who maltreated them in childhood and 15 healthcare professionals who serve EOL UCL providers. EOL UCL represents a re-traumatization for many women, resulting in avoidable injury, illness, and complicated grief, impeding recovery, and increasing vulnerability to victimization. During EOL UCL, participants were subjected to isolation, domination, deprivation, betrayal, and identity assault mirroring their childhood traumas. In childhood and in EOL UCL, structures of power perpetuated patriarchal norms of family and femininity, constraining participants’ capacities for self-expression, self-esteem, and self-direction. Our analysis also uncovered factors which predicted or protected against gendered re-traumatization. The findings of this study challenge taken-for-granted ideologies in hospice and palliative care which harm marginalized women.

How is masculinity ideology related to transprejudice in Turkey: the mediatory effect of femmephobia

ABSTRACT Prejudice towards trans women is an under-examined but a critical social problem in Turkey. Patriarchal femininity sanctions women who do not comply with the idealised female bodies and feminine norms. On the other hand, ideals of hegemonic masculinity necessitate that men avoid femininity. In that sense, prejudice against trans women ostensibly stands at the intersection of hegemonic masculinity ideology and femininities that diverge from patriarchal feminine norms. Therefore, this study examines the mediatory effect of femmephobia in the link between masculinity ideology and prejudice towards trans women as measured by negative affect and social distancing motivations. Results indicate that femmephobia significantly mediates the relationship between the endorsement of masculinity ideology and prejudice towards trans women. Among three mandates of masculinity ideology, the endorsement of the antifemininity mandate was the most solid indirect predictor of negative affect and social distance through femmephobia, followed by mandates of toughness and status, respectively. Although participant gender does not have an indirect effect on the outcome variables, it has a direct effect on men’s social distancing intentions but not on negative emotions. The results are discussed in the light of existing literature which intersects with the devaluation of femininity.

Sonic Femininity: The Ronettes' Transgressive Gender Performance

Sonic FemininityThe Ronettes' Transgressive Gender Performance Hilarie Ashton (bio) Looking and looking back, black women involve ourselves in a process whereby we see our history as counter-memory, using it as a way to know the present and invent the future. —bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators" On September 28, 1963, the Ronettes performed on Dick Clark's American Bandstand for the first time.1 The curtain unfurls to reveal three singers exemplifying the uniformity and apparent demureness imposed by norms of classic sixties femininity: their slim bodies are dressed in identical long-sleeved pencil dresses, their hair is partially swept up in identical half-bouffants, and their eyes are thickly lined in black kohl. They sway their hips and arms awkwardly to the opening bars of "Be My Baby," and then Ronnie Spector, standing on the left, opens her mouth. That voice. That voice, which American teens had started hearing the month before when the "Be My Baby" single was released. That voice, which— per Bandstand's practice—was exactly what had been heard on the record, as the singers on the TV screens lip-synched along. But still: that voice. When the camera zooms in, Spector (then still known as Veronica Bennett) pushes past the limits of lip-synching by acting out the lyrics: she points to an unseen audience member on the line "so proud of me" (applying tricky emphasis to both of the italicized words) and cocks her head, adopting a quick Marilyn Monroe–esque pout, on "turn their heads." Still, these motions are small. Estelle Bennett's and Nedra Talley's movements, entirely synchronized, as the backup singers' job demanded, are even more circumscribed: their hands and forearms move up and down, and they remain in their assigned dance space. In a fourthwall-breaking moment during the bridge, the instrumentals take over, and all three of the singers briefly stop mouthing their "oohs." On the surface, this performance falls firmly within the complexly restrictive lines of accepted feminine behavior as understood at the time, especially accepted [End Page 90] feminine behavior in performance: modest clothing, light movements in an assigned space, and come-hither eyes (but eyes only). The Ronettes also fit into the sonic framework of the Wall of Sound: the janglingly bombastic and glitzy set of sounds and recording methods developed by producer Phil Spector and sound engineer Larry Levine. (To add to Spector's own controls exerted over the female singers in his stable of artists, by 1968 he would also become Ronnie Bennett's famously abusive and coercive husband.) But a deeper analysis shows some of the ways that Ronnie Spector, in particular, was rebelling against such strictures: hiding what might be provocation behind the facade of the "good girl," complicating her own performance of gender, and taking direct ownership of her own sonic persona. When Spector performs like this, she shifts the sonic effect of the Wall of Sound away from the production and toward the singer. Across her career, in performances, rehearsals, and even in the way she counters others' memories of herself, Spector exceeds the sonic and visual spaces allotted to her and injects transgressive power into the smallest of movements, subtly shifting the terms of acceptable, modest femininity in performance and pushing past the perceived obedience of pop. Indeed, Spector retrospectively categorizes her music as rock and roll, a frame she deploys capaciously enough to describe her excessive femininity and its connections to her biracial identity. Grandstanding here becomes a creative act, even in small ways. Spector pushes into new artistic territory, past the static choreography assigned to her and the fixed recording of her own voice. These boundary-shifting actions and others like them are characteristic of Spector's solo image building and of Spector, Talley, and Bennett's collective performance work. In this article, I argue that the Ronettes, and Spector in particular, transgressed social, gendered expectations in public performance and in various spaces of performance and rehearsal that cross the public/private divide. They did this through the frame of what I call the sonic feminine, a capacious combination of vocal and visual choices that (re)inserts women's perspectives into...

Цивилизационное развитие России и «женский вопрос» (XV – начало XX века)

The purpose of the article is to present a general picture of how the idea of normative femininity was formed in the process of the historical development of Russian civiliza­tion from the 15th to the beginning of the 20th centuries. The empirical base of the analy­sis consists of research materials on social and gender history, ethnography, and social philosophy. The main role in the formation of gender norms was played by the Orthodox Church, the autocratic state, the class social structure, and the agrarian type of produc­tion. Thus, the establishment of monotheism in Russia contributed to the formation of a patriarchal social order, which is characterized by the primacy of men and the subor­dination of women. This, together with changes in socio-economic conditions, the forma­tion of privileged estates and the influence of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, led to the depriva­tion of women of the rights that they had in Ancient Russia. A few centuries later, the reforms of Peter I dealt a significant blow to the archaic traditions. His innovations marked the beginning of the formation of secular legislation in the field of marriage and family relations, which reduced the role of canon law, prohibited some particularly fanati­cal domestic norms against women, and limited the power of the husband in the family. Europeanization contributed to the secularization of the social consciousness of the upper strata of society and the introduction of Western norms of social and cultural life. Later, the modernization of Russia, the abolition of serfdom, the development of industry and the wider involvement of women in it required an increase in their level of education. Beginning in the middle of the XIX century discussions about women’s right to univer­sity and vocational education, and to the right to vote, contributed to the awakening of women’s social activism. The author analyzes the specifics of the three main directions in the discussion of the “women’s issue”. One of them – the so-called theology of sex -was in line with the Russian philosophical tradition. The other two approaches drew on the socialist and liberal ideas of Western thinkers. The author comes to the conclusion that, in general, the formation of the normative gender structure in Russia proceeded in the same way as it did in European civilization: from the initial rigid gender hierarchy to the gradual empowerment of women until women received voting rights in April 1917. The article shows that the development of Russian civilization in the gender aspect went from patriarchal traditions to the provision of greater rights and opportunities to women. These trends were continued in Soviet times. The article provides convincing material to refute the claims of Russian conservative ideologists about the inviolability of patriar­chal gender norms in Russia.

BLOWING UP THE NUCLEAR FAMILY: SHIRLEY JACKSON’S QUEER GIRLS IN POSTWAR US CULTURE

This paper intends to analyze the representation of girlhood as a liminal space in three novels by Shirley Jackson: The Bird’s Nest (1954), The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962). Bearing in mind how nuclear fears and national identity are configured around the ideal of a safe domestic space in US postwar culture, the paper explores cultural anxieties about teenage girls who refuse to conform to normative femininity, following Teresa de Lauretis’s conception of women’s coming-of-age as “consenting to femininity” (1984). I will argue that Jackson criticizes the rigid possibilities for women at this time, and I will show how her representations of deviant femininity refuse and subvert the discourse of the nuclear family and, therefore, of the nation.

THE CULTURAL SHACKLES OF NORMATIVE FEMININITY THROUGH CERTAIN LITERARY AND FILM NARRATIVES

The contemporary challenges of culture and gender in consumer society are numerous. Through critical reflections on certain aspects of women's representation in popular culture, we will re-examine her role in society, seeking explicit and subliminal sexist messages embedded in literary and film language. Exploring the hegemony of the body, through the objectification of women and sexism, the cultural shackles of normative femininity, we will try to find gender asymmetry in the media representation and note the relationship with the ideology of consumerism and mass culture. Decoding the gender stereotypes, on the one hand, and the contemporary post-feminist transformations of femininity, on the other, we will re-examine the gender roles in popular culture by asking questions: To what extent do books and films about Bridget Jonesand The Stepford Wivesoppose the macho, sexist and patriarchal culture? Are they a rebellion against gender and structural discrimination against women? Is the criticism in those works clear and explicit or, in the attempt to detect gender stereotypes, do they in fact legitimize and strengthen them? Is it a matter of subversion, resistance or acceptance, or is it a reconciliation with the dominant values of popular culture and masculine society? Through the polysemic reading of the texts we will seek for the new meanings that are created through the juxtaposition of the code and the decoder, in the interaction between the text, the meaning, the context, the recipient and the discourse. The production of meanings extends far beyond the processes of fabrication, exchange and reproduction of culture

Dual Narrative Dynamics and the Critique of Privilege

Dual Narrative Dynamics and the Critique of Privilege

The clash of culture and cuisine: A qualitative exploration of cultural tensions and attitudes toward food and body in Chinese young adult women

Accumulating evidence suggests that the prevalence of eating disorders among Chinese women is a public health concern. Prior studies have drawn linkages between conflicting cultural values, identity confusion, and eating disorder symptomatology, which may be relevant for understanding the rise of eating disorders amidst China's rapid economic and sociocultural transformation. Here, we explore how women's experiences with traditional eating norms and modernizing norms of femininity may shape their food and body attitudes. Chinese young adult women (N = 34; aged 18-22 years) participated in semi-structured interviews focusing on experiences with norms surrounding eating and ideal feminine appearance, perceived conflict between these norms, and their responses to perceived conflict. Interviews were conducted via email (n = 27) or via Skype (n = 7). Participants were not asked about past or present diagnoses of eating disorders. Analysis of responses was guided by the principles of thematic analysis. Women reported encounters with cultural eating norms and feminine appearance norms, and described factors that motivated continued or discontinued adherence to these norms. Women reported strategies of conflict resolution, which resulted in different emotional and behavioral outcomes including eating disorder symptoms. Women's experiences with norms surrounding eating and appearance indicate the centrality of these encounters in the formation of individual and interpersonal values. Our findings suggest the importance for clinicians to assist clients in exploring the meanings behind internalized attitudes toward food and body, and to help clients balance interpersonal and individual needs.

Becoming-Woman in Pu Songling’s Strange Tales

Abstract This article examines the animal–human erotic encounters in Pu Songling’s strange [zhiguai 志怪] tales, using Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theories of becoming-woman and affect to think through several intersecting kinds of otherness, including the queer, the woman, the animal, and the strange. Zhiguai is a genre of writing that features ghosts, magical animal–human shapeshifting, dreams that intervene in reality, and other supernatural characters and events. The traditional scholarly approach to the zhiguai tales has been to understand queerkind in these tales as purely allegorical representations of humans and human society. This article approaches them from the perspective of their distinct supernatural qualities or the importance of hybrid human-animal bodies in the stories, as opposed to an anthropocentric reading of the zhiguai tales. It argues that the bodily transformations in the zhiguai tales are Deleuzian becoming-woman, which are sexually transgressive when eroticized queerkind bodies and desires queer the Confucian feminine norm of chaste women.

Relationship Between Health and Well-Being and Adherence to Social Norms Across Adulthood

When an individual deviates from social norms, others implement stressful social consequences to discourage deviance. Over a lifetime, this stress may accumulate, causing physiological wear-and-tear and poorer health and well-being. However, older adults may choose to surround themselves primarily with close, supportive others, so they may no longer be exposed to consequences for deviance, and would then be shielded from downstream effects. Alternatively, adults from older cohorts may value traditional norms more strongly, and would therefore experience greater effects of norm deviance. We expected that individuals who adhered to norms would report better health and well-being than individuals who deviated from norms, and that this effect would be either absent or intensified for older adults. We tested this prediction with a secondary data analysis of n=220 adults ages 25-65 (63.2% women). We operationalized individuals’ adherence to their respective gender norms and to general, non-gendered norms using demographic and questionnaire responses. Greater general norm adherence significantly predicted better health and well-being, independent of age. For masculine norms, work-primacy norm adherence predicted better well-being, but anger and self-reliance norm adherence predicted worse health and well-being in men. Age moderated this effect: with older age, the effect of anger was reversed such that greater anger predicted better health among men. For feminine norms, adherence did not predict better outcomes in women at any age. Although the relationship between gendered norm adherence and health and well-being may depend on cohort, the results suggest that general norm adherence does influence health and well-being.

Desiring Domestic Workers in "The Maid" and "The Desert Bride"

This article analyzes the representation of feminine desires in two Southern Conefilms, The Maid (La nana, Sebastián Silva, Chile, 2009) and The Desert Bride (La novia del desierto, Valeria Pivato and Cecilia Atán, Argentina/Chile, 2017), that feature female protagonists who have worked as live-in domestic employees for the same families for over twenty years. Both films eschew traditional depictions of domestic workers as either servile or aggressive to instead present these women as desiring and desirable subjects, thereby questioning how desire and desirability are determined by dominant social norms of femininity predicated on privileges of age, class, and race. Following Rosi Braidotti’s work on nomadism, the article examines desire, as depicted in these films, as a fluid notion that emphasizes transformation and the process of becoming. Ultimately the desires that the protagonists experience in horizontal, affective relationships lead them to embrace newfound independence outside of employment.

Hegemonic Masculinity and Subjugated Femininity: Deconstructing the Binary

Many social theories, particularly in the field of gender studies, posit that masculinity is hegemonic, whilst femininity is subjugated. Such theories lead audiences to believe that femininity is always lesser than masculinity, lacking hegemonic power. However, whilst even the most powerful of femininities, such as normative white femininity, will never occupy a hegemonic apex, the gender hierarchy certainly privileges this femininity over not only others, but also alternative forms of masculinity, which exist outside of the hegemonic realm. As such, while it can be said that femininity is not hegemonic, to say that femininity does not have hegemonic features would be irresponsible, especially when one considers intersectionality.

Illness of the Soul, Body or Culture? Postpartum Depression as a Theme in Contemporary Literature

This article describes the characteristics of postpartum depression (PPD), its etiology and reasons for making this phenomenon a taboo in contemporary culture. The author analyses cultural representations of postpartum depression, which she sees as one of the most important factors contributing to the phenomenon of removing the masks of motherhood (S. Maushart), growing in force at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Referring to selected examples from contemporary literature, and contextually also to film (including E. Şafak, N. Fiedorczuk, M. Susdorf, D. Barker,E. Atef), the author discusses the psychological and socio-cultural determinants of PPD, emphasising not only biological, but the mainly existential dimension of this experience and its strong connection to the contemporary norms of femininity and motherhood.

Gender Labor Policies in the Franco Dictatorship (1939–75): The Discursive Construction of Normative Femininity

Abstract This article analyzes the labor gender policies and the strategies of “genderization” put forward by the Franco Dictatorship in Spain. The Franco regime understood that women were the touchstone of society and key in both biological and sociocultural reproduction. Legislative regulations and sanctioned discourses accentuated the division between productive-public and reproductive-domestic spheres, relegating women to the latter. Nevertheless, to what extent did women embrace and challenge the regime's idealistic view of gender? This article contemplates female employment within and beyond official discourse. Oral sources used in this article suggest that socioeconomic reality overflowed the narrow limits of normative femininity. Not all women could enjoy the “honor” of embodying the exalted role of “perfect (house) wife” that the Franco regime had entrusted to them. In addition, this article explores changes in the ideal of femininity throughout the dictatorship. The Franco regime underwent crucial transformations during its almost 40 years of existence. This article argues that its adaptation had repercussions on sociocultural patterns and gender policies. Francoism built its early notion of normative femininity on the ideals of domesticity and Catholic morality, but (re)shaped the meanings of womanhood and (re)adjusted the legal system to fit the new circumstances that arose in the Cold War context.

Disruption of the Stereotypical Gender Construction through Afghan Women’s Voices in Khalid Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns

The paper aims to explore Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns(2007) from the deconstructive perspective of gender construction through the untraditional and challenging role of women in patriarchal Afghan society. Hosseini is one of the acclaimed Afghan-American novelists whose art speaks against the concerns of discrimination and segregation on ethnic, religious and gender basis. His novels are deeply entrenched with his own observations and experiences to portray the grim realities and the woes of Afghan society that is badly torn by the unending wars on its soil. The deconstructive approach challenges the taken-for-granted patriarchal socio-cultural norms of Afghan society represented in A Thousand Splendid Suns. Women characters engage in diverse performances that question the stability of gender construction in the novel. The variability of gender in the novel depends upon performativity of the characters. In their actions, they generate multiple shades of gender identities while deviating from norms of masculinity and femininity. So performances of the characters in the novel determine their gender identities in their social existence, their sexual labelling has nothing to do with their gender identification. Therefore, the novel exhibits the stereotypical and patriarchal norms prevalent in Afghan society that are used as a justification for the persecution and discrimination of women on gender basis. The paper thus argues that the country’s rampant gender stereotypical standards are resisted and challenged by the performativity of women characters. Furthermore, the research presents an innovative approach to study gender construction in a feudal Afghan society through its interrogation of gender stereotyping.