Gender Regimes Research Articles

‘I am not a feminist but…’: women’s activism in post-1991 Albania

This article examines the shape organized women’s activism took in Albania after the fall of the communist regime. It also analyses how gender and feminist studies have positioned themselves within the higher education system, the relationship between media and feminism and the new alternative spaces of women’s activism and feminist resistance to gendered power relations. The analysis follows the longue durée of the fraught relationship of debates around feminism during and after the fall of Communism starting with the communist top-down ‘women’s emancipation model’ as well as the lack of bottom-up women’s activism, the post-1991 neo-liberal frame and the generalized post-1991 stigma about ‘emancipation’, ‘equality’ or ‘feminism’, along with the need to resist post-1991 hierarchical gender regimes.

Political party gender action plans: Pushing gender change forward beyond quotas

Focus on quotas has shifted attention away from other, more comprehensive and strategic reforms aimed at furthering gender equality in political parties. This article concentrates on the gender action plans adopted by three Spanish parties. Using a gendered and institutional approach, it examines the conditions that led to the layering of these plans alongside existing party rules and assesses the outcome of such a gradual change. The results of the empirical analysis suggest that gender action plans have contributed not only to feminize the organization in terms of women’s numerical representation but also increasingly to regender it, thereby setting in motion a more profound change that challenges the foundations of gendered opportunities for political participation. The article also identifies the measures that have been less effective and pinpoints the reasons for the differential impact of gender equity institutional change across the various components of the party gender regime.

Beyond Intersectionality

Beyond IntersectionalityLise VogelLise Vogelc/o Science & Society, 33 Flatbush Avenue, 4th Floor, Brooklyn NY 11217 / USA. [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:March 2018https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2018.82.2.275PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations AboutReferencesAhmed Sara. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Google ScholarBeal Frances M. 1970. “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.” Revised from 1969 pamphlet. In Sisterhood is Powerful, ed. Morgan Robin. New York: Vintage Books. Google ScholarBenn Michaels Walter. 2006. The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality. New York: Metropolitan Books. Google ScholarBhattacharya Tithi. 2013. “What is Social Reproduction Theory?” https://socialistworker.org/2013/09/10/what-is-social-reproduction-theory Google ScholarBhattacharya Tithi. 2015. “How Not To Skip Class: Social Reproduction of Labor and the Global Working Class.” Viewpoint Magazine. https://www.viewpointmag.com/2015/10/31/how-not-to-skip-class-social-reproduction-of-labor-and-the-global-working-class Google ScholarBoyce Davies Carole. 2008. Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Google ScholarDavies Boyce, ed. 2011. Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment. Banbury, Oxfordshire, England: Ayebia Clarke Publishing. Google ScholarCabrera Nolan L. 2008. Review of The Trouble with Diversity, by Walter Benn Michaels. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 4:1. Crossref, Google ScholarCollins Patricia Hill, , and Bilge Sirma. 2016. Intersectionality. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Google ScholarCombahee River Collective. 1995 (1977). “A Black Feminist Statement.” In Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, ed. Guy-Sheftall Beverly. New York: The New Press. Google ScholarCrenshaw Kimberlé. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Practice.” University of Chicago Legal Forum, 89, 139–167. Google ScholarDavis Kathy. 2008. “Intersectionality as Buzzword: A Sociology of Science Perspective on What Makes a Feminist Theory Successful.” Feminist Theory, 9:1, 67–85. Crossref, Google ScholarEvans Sara M. 2015. “Women's Liberation: Seeing the Revolution Clearly.” Feminist Studies, 41:1, 138–149. Crossref, Google ScholarFerguson Susan, , and McNally David. 2013. “Capital, Labour-Power, and Gender Relations: Introduction to the Historical Materialism Edition of Marxism and the Oppression of Women.” Pp. xvii–xl in Vogel, 2013. Google ScholarFields Barbara J. 1990. “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America.” New Left Review, 181 (May–June), 95–118. Google ScholarGiardina Carol. 2010. Freedom for Women: Forging the Women's Liberation Movement, 1953–1970. Gainesville, Florida. The University Press of Florida. Google ScholarGimenez Martha. 2001. “Marxism and Class, Gender and Race: Rethinking the Trilogy.” Race, Gender & Class, 8:2, 22–33. Google ScholarGimenez Martha. 2018 (forthcoming). “Intersectionality: Marxist Critical Observations.” Science & Society, 82:2 (April). Google Scholar“Intersectionality.” 2017. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality. Accessed March 4, 2017. Google ScholarJames Marlon. 2016. “Why I'm Done Talking About Diversity. Or, Why We Should Try an All-White Diversity Panel.” http://lithub.com/marlon-james-why-im-done-talking-about-diversity Google ScholarLynn Denise. 2014. “Socialist Feminism and Triple Oppression: Claudia Jones and African American Women in American Communism.” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 8:2 (Fall), 1–20. Crossref, Google ScholarMcDuffie Erik S. 2011. Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Google ScholarRobinson Lillian S. 1978. Sex, Class, and Culture. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Google ScholarTaylor Keeanga-Yamahtta, ed. 2017. How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books. Google ScholarVogel Lise. 1971. “Modernism and History.” (With Lillian Robinson.) New Literary History, 3:1 (Autumn), 177–199. Google ScholarVogel Lise. 1974. “Fine Arts and Feminism: The Awakening Consciousness.” Feminist Studies, 2:1, 3–37. Crossref, Google ScholarVogel Lise. 1983. Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Google ScholarVogel Lise. 1991. “Telling Tales: Historians of Our Own Lives.” Journal of Women's History, 2:3 (Winter), 89–101. Crossref, Google ScholarVogel Lise. 2000. “Domestic Labor Revisited.” Science & Society, 64:2, 151–170. Reprinted in Vogel, 2013, 183–198. Google ScholarVogel Lise. 2013 (1983). Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory. Revised edition. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill/Boston, Massachusetts: Haymarket. Google ScholarWallis Victor. 2015. “Intersectionality's Binding Agent: The Political Primacy of Class.” New Political Science, 37:4 (December), 604–619. Crossref, Google ScholarWeigand Kate. 2001. Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. Google Scholar Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Cited byCited by1. #konstnärligfrihet: reifikation som förtryckshandling och motstrategiOnline publication date: 11 January 2023. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar2. Rethinking food regime as gender regime: agrarian change and the politics of social reproductionOnline publication date: 7 January 2023. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar3. Multidimensionality: A Cross-Disciplinary Review and IntegrationOnline publication date: 1 November 2018. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar Volume 82Issue 2Apr 2018 Information© 2018 by S & S Quarterly, Inc.PDF download

The indirect effect of gender on perceived career and influence among German national parliamentarians

ABSTRACTThis article investigates mechanisms behind career and influence (in)equality among men and women in the German Parliament (Bundestag). The German members of parliament (MPs) comprises a particularly interesting political elite to study as the parliament already contains a critical mass of women, although the gender regime setting of the country is relatively conservative. To collect the data required for this study, a survey was conducted on the entire German Parliament. This article employs a Structural Equation Model which was confirmed to fit the empirical data well, and shows that, although no general effects of gender were apparent, gender indirectly, through housework demands, affected career and influence as perceived by the MPs themselves (self-assessed).

Prevention of gender violence and working against LGBT prejudices: The intersection between collective action and institutional dynamics

Abstract This study compares two public campaigns against LGBT prejudices: ‘Dislike Homophobic Bullying’, by CIG, the Portuguese governmental mechanism for citizenship and gender equality; and the performative action ‘Exorcise the Pathologization’, included in the Portuguese branch of the international campaign Stop Trans Pathologization 2012. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) and visual analysis (VA), we conclude that gender violence is a cross-cultural and structural problem embracing a wide range of forms of violence against women and LGBT people in Portugal. It is grounded in a dominant culture where gender is socially constructed as polarized, complemented by the performativity of discourse, the intersectional and institutional power relations underlying social practices. We demonstrate how public campaigns against homophobia and transphobia can contribute to de-naturalizing the gender divide and gender regime, and thus to changing the cultural ground of gender violence. However, without deconstructing gender, they are at risk of reproducing gender hierarchies.

Kan-di(e)-dat?

Angela Merkel’s four national election campaigns offer a unique opportunity to explore the salience of gender in defining “competent leadership” in unified Germany. Women-friendly themes were deliberately avoided by the candidate and her party during her first two campaigns, but Merkel’s personal popularity rendered gender a positive asset during her third run for the Chancellorship in 2013. The 2017 campaign accorded new salience to gender as an electoral variable, albeit with a twist. The new dilemma for Germany’s first female leader was rooted in the need to win back alienated, if apolitical conservative men, attracted to an increasingly xenophobic Alternative for Germany. Although the GDR gender regime actively supported working women, eastern men appear to feel particularly threatened by the concrete advances towards gender equality witnessed across Germany since unification.

Transforming CSDP? Feminist Triangles and Gender Regimes

AbstractDespite equality being considered one of the key normative foundations of the EU, gender has not yet been mainstreamed within the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). This article investigates the impact of institutional structures on the inclusion of a gender dimension in this policy area. The article engages with the concept of feminist triangles to unpack the role of actors and processes; specifically, highlighting key innovations and missed opportunities to integrate gender into CSDP. Focusing in particular on femocrats, the article argues that for gender mainstreaming to take place, the office of the Gender Advisor needs to bridge the division between the military and civilian dimension of CSDP. It concludes that CSDP remains largely gender blind in spite of the EU's adoption of an action plan for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

Masculinity, Care and Stay-Behind Fathers: A Postsocialist Perspective

Over the last two decades many studies have focused on female migrants’ transnational care practices, while those of stay-behind fathers have hardly been investigated. This chapter deals with masculinity, childcare and fatherhood of stay-behind male partners of female migrants from former socialist countries in Europe. A discussion of the particularities of gender regimes in socialist and postsocialist Europe will be followed by a presentation of three case studies on fatherhood and lone parenting. The article concludes with a discussion of “mothering fathers’” predicaments in a postsocialist situation.

Walking into the Footprint of EU Law: Unpacking the Gendered Consequences of Brexit

This article explores the gendered nature of the process of withdrawing from the European Union. Considering the EU is widely accepted as a gender actor, particularly in the context of employment policy, the marginality of these issues in current debates reflects a hierarchy in the value attributed to different policy areas that crystallizes the high-low politics binary. European led initiatives have undoubtedly changed the nature of equality policies in the Member States. Recent studies have also outlined how, and to what extent, EU policy contributes to shifts in gender regimes, gender policy and gender relations at the national level. Women in the UK have benefited greatly from membership of the EU/EEC; thus, looking at Brexit as a process provides a unique opportunity to reflect on the relationship, and patterns of influence, between European and national legislation.

Gender mainstreaming revisited: Lessons from Poland

This article explores the dynamics and impact of the gender mainstreaming reform conducted within the European Social Fund in Poland in 2007–2013. It is based on qualitative interviews carried out with gender mainstreaming practitioners, both feminists and state administrators. The article examines factors enabling and hindering successful implementation of gender mainstreaming and discusses its potential positive spin-off effects. The analysed case suggests that civil servants’ strong professional ethics do facilitate progressive changes, whereas bureaucratic norms and non gender-specific values of particular public policies eventually hinder the effectiveness of the strategy. However, gender mainstreaming reforms, even if limited in time and undertaken in a technocratic manner, may serve for feminists as a unique entry point to state institutions, and further allow for changes to public organizations’ gender regimes. Gender mainstreaming may lead to an increase in the number of feminist allies within public administrations and give more legitimization to feminists’ demands on the state. Thus, the strategy may produce a destabilizing impact on public administration gender regimes.

Urbanization and urban planning at the European semi-periphery: Unintended gender consequences

This paper aims to answer two main questions: 1. what is the relation between urbanization, gender regimes and everyday lives of women at the European semiperiphery and 2. what is the role of urban planning in shaping gender relevant social changes? The authors present an historical overview of intersections between urbanization, planning and gender regimes, from socialist to present neoliberal conditions, the overview of gender aspects of everyday urban life and also engage with analysis of challenges of gender sensitive planning and development at the European semiperiphery. The analysis is mostly based on the case of Serbia and ex-Yugoslav region and has three main objectives: to define key challenges for engendering urban development and planning in the semiperiphery, to map out the ?knowledge gaps?, and to suggest guidelines for further research. In conclusion the authors state that urbanization at the semiperiphery on the one hand opens new opportunities for women, but also poses new challenges that make gender sensitive to urban planning very relevant for the quality of life of both genders. The ?gender and social double blindness? of urban planning and neoliberal urban development model at the European semiperiphery, are seen both as one of the key challenges to gender equality, as well as one of the consequences of their semiperipherial position.

HEJKUM GEJKUM?

By reinterpreting the Polish cult comedy Kingsajz (Kingsize, 1987), which is generally assumed to be a political allegory, this article argues that the film lends itself to a queer reading, as a statement on so-called regimes of gender. The author analyzes numerous homoerotic allusions in the film, and questions the dominant Polish reception code which privileges political interpretations over other possible readings, and which treats the political and the sexual as mutually exclusive.

Українська політологія в період фемінізації: боротьба «за» та «проти» патріархатної епістеми.

The article is devoted to the gender dimension of political science in modern Ukraine. The empirical base is 1687 posts about the defence of the Ph.D. and doctoral theses in political science, as well as 35 interviews with professors and associate professors from Kharkiv, Lviv and Simferopol.Male/female applicants have been divided into two groups: applicants from the Academy and outside it. In the first group feminization of modern Ukrainian political science at the Ph.D. level and masculinization at the doctoral level is revealed. In the second group masculinization is found out at the both levels of science. The reason for the simultaneous feminization of the “education / science system” and / or the masculinization “outside the education system / science” is that gender reflects the general structure of power in society. Male and female applicants from outside the Academy, ranging from ministers to prosecutors, add to it the power and property hierarchies that are more common to other areas of social and political life in Ukraine. As a result of the patriarchy of Ukrainian society the number of male applicants is increasing and the number of female applicants is decreasing. Such a transfer involves the commercialization of “legitimate” academic relationships and the adoption of a new hybrid system of scientific gender selection.The second part of the article deals with autobiographical narratives of the professors and associate professors in three Ukrainian political science communities. The dominant gender regime in the profession of political science is reconstructed and its perception by male and female practitioners is described. There are two main indicators of gender (in)equality in the profession: 1) the prevalence of diametrically opposed thoughts about discrimination, and 2) the tendency to direct distortion the (objective) facts. According to my hypothesis feminization of Ukrainian political science is not accompanied by the deconstruction of the patriarchal episteme. In particular, the female political scientists’ awareness of their own importance is formulated in the categories of gender stereotypes and evaluated in terms of establishing hegemony through the development of gender roles being traditionally considered as the “male” ones.

Introduction: Revisiting Beauty

Introduction:Revisiting Beauty Natalie Havlin (bio) and Jillian M. Báez (bio) As Central America's smallest, but most densely populated country, El Salvador sits at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. In some ways, El Salvador is a progressive nation following its civil war (1979–1992), spurred by military repression and income equality. For example, despite its small geographic size and poverty, El Salvador is internationally known for refusing to accept Monsanto's genetically modified seeds (Malkin 2014). Monsanto, a large and powerful corporation based in the United States, holds a monopoly over seeds sold to farmers throughout the globe. However, El Salvador is also the most violent nation in the Western hemisphere (Data Team 2017) fueled by political corruption, economic depression (partly due to changing the currency to the U.S. dollar in 2001), and patriarchal and homophobic norms governing post–civil war Salvadoran society. While the violence of Salvadoran gangs—largely comprised of disenfranchised and undocumented youth growing up in U.S. cities who are frequently deported to El Salvador—are often reported in U.S. news outlets, non-gang-related violence is less known outside of El Salvador. For example, trans people face the most violence in El Salvador than in any other nation in the world (Renteria 2017). Trans women are most often attacked because of their appearance and whether or not they pass for cis women. Beauty practices are at the heart of this type of violence because one's life is dependent on conforming to local, hyperfeminine beauty ideals. We open Beauty with this specific case as a reminder that beauty is not a frivolous concept nor practice. In many corners of the world, if and how one chooses to challenge beauty regimes cannot only lead to marginalization [End Page 13] but also sometimes violence. As such, this issue emphasizes the materiality of beauty. The politics of beauty have been heavily debated within feminist studies and LGBTQ studies. While some feminists critiqued beauty as an extension of patriarchal gender regimes, other feminists reconceptualized beauty as a form of play and identity expression (Church Gibson 2013). At the same time, women of color feminists, particularly black and Chicana feminists, such as bell hooks and Amalia Mesa-Bains (2006), and María Elena Cepeda (2008), acknowledge the significance of beauty—not only as personal adornment but also as a mode of survival. Moving away from white second wave feminists who dismissed beauty as mere compliance with patriarchal expectations, some women of color feminists embraced beauty as a site of agency. In response, LGBTQ studies and critical disability studies critique heteronormative beauty regimes and explore the potentials of non-gender-normative stylizations and more inclusive modes of recognition. This issue of WSQ places new interventions in gender and sexuality studies in conversation with these debates. The pieces in this issue take a critical and transgressive approach to gendered and sexualized conceptions of beauty. What is gendered beauty? How can we know that something is beautiful? Is the pursuit of beauty a fruitful endeavor in gender and sexuality studies? How is beauty being redefined, especially in light of race, disability, class, gender, sexuality, and economics? How are dominant beauty regimes steeped in racism, gender binaries, sexism, able-bodiedness, homophobia, colonialism, and capitalism? How do marginalized communities engage in beauty practices as forms of survival and resistance? How does beauty undergird countercultural movements? What is the relationship between beauty and aesthetics? Early germinal feminist scholarship dismisses beauty as a form of patriarchal subjugation. For example, in her classic text The Beauty Myth (1990), Naomi Wolf calls attention to the unrealistic beauty standards expected of women in our male-dominated society. In Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993), Susan Bordo builds on Wolf's critique and links popular culture representations of beauty to female pathology, particularly eating disorders. Bordo also notes that women's beauty regimes are not only sexist, but also largely Eurocentric. Black feminists also note the Eurocentrism in dominant beauty regimes, but at the same time note that beauty politics are complicated in Black communities. For example, Maxine Leeds Craig in her book Ain't I a Beauty Queen? Black [End Page 14...

Gendered Language and the Construction of Jewish Identity in 2 Maccabees

Gendered Language and the Construction of Jewish Identity in 2 Maccabees Joshua Ezra Burns (bio) When thinking about Judaism and gender, it is a common misconception to assume that the interface between the two is an exclusively modern phenomenon. According to conventional wisdom, Judaism is an ancient construction steeped in the scientific and sociocultural sensibilities of people who lived long before the contemporary distinction between sex and gender came to be articulated as such. Yet as that distinction has made its way into the discipline of Jewish studies, several scholars have observed that the ancient sages who authored Judaism's Talmudic intellectual canon exhibited acute anxieties about the instability of gender binaries analogous to those detected by contemporary gender theorists in modern texts. Thus, they have proposed to look within classical Jewish texts for signs of non-binary gender identities later written out of Judaism by self-appointed regulators of rabbinic orthodoxy.1 In this paper I hope to contribute to this project with a discussion of the earliest text that identifies Jewish culture as "Judaism." This text is 2 Maccabees, a second-century BCE Jewish composition predating the Talmudic era and preserved exclusively in Christian scriptural traditions. I shall contend that the author of 2 Maccabees used gendered language in his construction of Judaism to make the point that women were just as likely as men to exemplify its values, a point lost on subsequent Jewish generations who propagated more strictly hierarchical gender regimes. Finally, I argue that it useful to understand 2 Maccabees' negotiations between Jewish and Greek culture in the work. Interrogating Jewish Identity in Antiquity Before considering how 2 Maccabees articulates its author's sense of Judaism, it will be instructive to address what it meant to be a Jew in antiquity.2 Conventional wisdom has it that it meant something not unlike what it means to be a Jew today, namely to identify in whole or in part with the multifaceted religious, ethnic, and cultural system traditionally known as Judaism.3 Yet the very premise of describing "Jews" and "Judaism" in antiquity has been challenged [End Page 107] of late, eliciting a minor scholarly imbroglio with far-reaching implications for the documentation of the Jewish past.4 That debate is a consequence of an apologetic trend in biblical scholarship that started in the mid-twentieth century. After the Holocaust, Christian theologians became sensitive to the ills of antisemitism and sought to dull the sharp rhetoric against the Jews embedded within their sacred texts. Their solution, as it were, was to change the translation of the Greek term ioudaios (plural: ioudaioi), a linguistic cognate of "Jew" utilized in the New Testament and traditionally understood to indicate the Jewish identities of Jesus' opponents. As the hostile portrait of those Jews had given Jews in general a bad reputation in Christian discourse, scholars took to rendering ioudaios no longer as "Jew," but as "Judean," an ostensibly value-neutral demonym indicating nothing more than its subject's association with the long-since-vanished territory of Judea. The Christian animosity once heaped upon the Jews was thereby redirected toward the Judeans, a people who could not possibly be offended since they no longer existed as such.5 Yet what began as a well-meaning effort to circumvent the vilification of the Jew in early Christian texts eventually went off course. In his new edition of the writings of the first-century CE Jewish chronicler Flavius Josephus, Steve Mason decided to take the premise of recasting Jews as Judeans to its logical conclusion. Following the precedent of New Testament scholarship, Mason opted to render the generations of ioudaioi documented by Josephus as Judeans, effectively erasing every last Jew from the historian's work.6 He explained his rationale in a subsequent publication addressed to his detractors,7 first noting that the Greek word ioudaios and its Latin cognate iudaeus were commonly understood in antiquity to indicate one's nationality or ethnicity. According to Mason, the reinvention of the ethnic "Judean" as a religious "Jew" was the result of an invidious Christian arrogation of the terminology in question. Early Christian writers seeking to malign the erstwhile adversaries of Jesus, Mason maintained, cast...

The Importance of Job and Family Satisfaction for Happiness among Women and Men in Different Gender Regimes

The family and the work place are two arenas of central importance for most adult people. Consequently, one can assume that the level of satisfaction with one’s family life and job may be critical to one’s level of happiness in general. However, there are reasons to believe that there are variations according to gender and gender regime. The general aim of this study is to analyse the relative importance of job satisfaction and satisfaction with family life for happiness among women and men in different gender regimes. Analyses are based on comparative data from the International Social Survey Program 2012. Results show that the level of satisfaction with family life appears more important to the general level of happiness than the level of job satisfaction. This is true for both women and men and in different gender regimes. However, the level of satisfaction with family life appears less important to men’s level of happiness in countries representing a conservative gender regime. Another interesting related result is that the level of happiness appears generally lower among women living in a conservative gender regime.

Türkiyeli Göçmenler ve İsveçliler Arasında Bir Çatışma Nedeni Olarak Namus: Uppsala ve Stockholm Örneği

The concept of honor and honor killings continue to exist and be readapted to diverse patriarchal structures both in Turkey and other European countries. The practice of honor killings and the norm of honor erect walls between Western and Eastern cultures and support the ethnocentric discourse nourished by differences in gender regimes. This study is based on a review of feminist literature on honor and honor killings, a theoretical discussion on multiculturalism and intercultural communication, and 30 in-depth interviews conducted in Stockholm and Uppsala. This study claims that Turkish immigrants living in Sweden protect their perception of honor and that this perception has undesirable effects on communication between these immigrants and Swedes , despite the semantic and functional transformation of honor as a result of migration and multiculturalism.

Gender-segregated spaces in Icelandic high schools: resistance, power and subjectification

ABSTRACTOrganization of spaces in schools often revolves around gender and sexuality. For example, it has been reported that restrooms and locker rooms are the most heteronormative and heterosexist spaces within schools. Particularly within these spaces, hegemonic heterosexual masculinity/femininity is institutionalized, not only in the practices and individual performances, but also in the organization of these spaces. In that sense, the space of the restroom and the locker room is regulated and constructed on the basis of gender binaries, and as such, inscribes disciplinary power on those gendered bodies that do not conform to the hegemonic gender regime. For trans/transgender students and other gender-nonconforming students, these spaces have been experienced as hostile and problematic. The paper draws on ethnographic data from two Icelandic high schools and has the aim of moving the discussion about gender divided spaces (restrooms and locker/changing rooms) outside the sole emphasis on gender binaries by incorporating into the analysis identity categories based on sexuality and trans/transgender/gender-queer embodiment.

Balls, Barbecues and Boxing: Contesting gender regimes at organizational social events

What do the relaxed social events held by companies and organizations do for continued gender inequality? This article argues that outings, barbecues and parties offer opportunities for members of an organization to challenge unequal gender regimes. But they can also end up maintaining these inequalities instead. The article draws on Joan Acker’s theory of gendered organizations, and Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity. Based on 208 accounts of organizations’ social events, it identifies the following four areas of gender performativity and their varying significance in reaffirming or challenging unequal gender regimes: gender images, status differences, the body and sexuality. The findings indicate that practices reaffirming unequal gender regimes outnumber practices that possibly balance or break them. Paradoxically, practices that challenge unequal gender regimes, when joined with powerful responses from the hitherto privileged party, can form a vicious circle which again ends up continuing unequal gender regimes. The article provides a more nuanced understanding of ambivalences and the contested nature of gender regimes which is important in identifying avenues for gender equality.

Slovenia's Socialist Superwoman: Feeding the Family, Nourishing the Nation

This article explores how the Slovenian women's lifestyle magazine Naša žena ( Our Woman) helped the Yugoslavian socialist project construct and shape the ideal socialist woman, and argues that she became the crucial ally in implementing socialist ideas in the everyday lives of Slovenians. The article shows how texts on food preparation and consumption, as well as those touching on household management and family care, published in Naša žena from 1960 to 1991 played an important part in the ‘civilising’ process that shaped behaviour, directed cultural and social practices, influenced social relations and constructed women's identities during socialism. We show how food-related texts (articles, recipes, columns, advertisements and advertorials) were never far removed from the larger political and economic socialist realities. In fact, they bore witness to changes in living standards and told stories about gender regimes, socialist ideologies and fantasies. These texts belong to a corpus of social transcripts that guide collective understandings of what it means to select, prepare, cook and eat food; what constitutes good cooking and eating; and who is responsible for preparing meals. Despite official socialist feminist rhetoric about freeing women from backward patriarchal arrangements, this article shows that texts offering food-related advice in socialist Yugoslavia contained explicit instructions for the ‘correct’ performance of the social roles of women, legitimising women's roles as worker, mother, wife and housekeeper. Above all, a woman was to be an ‘engineer’ of the private domain whose goals were to feed her family and keep the nation healthy and hence productive, and to modernise her kitchen in support of the technological and economic development of Yugoslavia.