Shifting Gender Roles Research Articles

Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia, Visual Culture and Late-Victorian Gender Politics

Abstract Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face was first published in Fraser’s Magazine in 1852, but was reissued in numerous book editions in the late nineteenth century. Though often viewed as a novel depicting the religious controversies of the 1850s, Kingsley’s portrayal of the life and brutal death of a strong female figure from late antiquity also sheds light on the way in which the Victorians remodelled ancient histories to explore shifting gender roles at the fin de siècle. As the book gained in popularity towards the end of the century, it was reimagined in many different cultural forms. This article demonstrates how Kingsley’s Hypatia became a global, multi-media fiction of antiquity, how it was revisioned and consumed in different written, visual and material forms (book illustrations, a play, painting and sculpture) and how this reimagining functioned within the gender politics of the 1880s and 1890s. Kingsley’s novel retained a strong hold on the late-Victorian imagination, I argue, because the perpetual restaging of Hypatia’s story through different media facilitated the circulation of pressing fin-de-siècle debates about women’s education, women’s rights, and female consumerism.

Family conflict mediates the relationship between past violence and wellbeing among female refugees

Abstract Background Past exposure to violence has been suggested to have a lasting effect on subjective well being (SWB). Similarly, family conflict is another known predictor of SWB. Research shows that refugee women exposed to gender based violence (GBV) before resettlement may also face post-resettlement family conflicts due to socio-cultural factors, changes in social network and migration-based shifting gender roles. This study examines the role of family conflict as a likely mediator between past exposure to violence and SWB among Syrian refugee women in Sweden. Methods A total of 452 women out of a random sample of 1215 Syrian refugee women in Sweden responded to a questionnaire survey in Arabic. Variables include Past violence i.e. exposure to any of torture, physical or sexual violence preflight or during flight before arriving Sweden; Post-resettlement distressing family conflicts i.e. feeling disrespected or unimportant in the family or distressing conflicts; SWB was measured by WHO-5 wellbeing index. Maximum likelihood estimation with Robust standard errors and bias corrected bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals for all estimates. Results Total effect of past violence on SWB was significant (Estimate = -6.63; CI= -12.73 - -0.46). Similarly, family conflicts were associated with decreased SWB (Estimate = -3.80; CI= -5.17 - -2.40), and past violence exposure increased family conflicts (Estimate = 0.57; 0.13 - 1.08). The total effect of violence exposure on decreased SWB was decomposed into a direct and an indirect effect (mediated via family conflicts). The indirect effect via family conflicts was significant (M= -2.19; C1= -4.30 - 0.59), while decomposing rendered the direct effect non-significant (Estimate= -4.44, CI= -10.51 - 1.52). Conclusions Post-resettlement distressing family conflicts mediate the effect of prior exposure to violence on reduced SWB among refugee women. Key messages Past violence exposure reduces refugee women’s SWB via aggravated family conflicts implying the need for family targeted interventions to improve SWB of female refugees previously exposed to violence. Strategies to improve subjective wellbeing among female refugees should include screening for and addressing all forms of previous and ongoing GBV.

“My professional future can be lost in a minute”: Re-examining the Gender Dynamics of US Army Nursing during the Second World War

Celebrations of Second World War nurses as virtuous, angelic heroines have elided the complex realities of nurses’ lives during this time of extreme social upheaval. Nurses’ sexuality has remained a taboo subject in scholarly examinations of their wartime service, while the pregnancies of nurses – who were not allowed to marry – were intentionally omitted from the official military record. This article significantly revises our understanding of Second World War nursing by examining the letters of two American women who embarked on romantic relationships that resulted in pregnancy and their subsequent discharge from the US Army. Through critical feminist analysis, it investigates how both women navigated their personal lives and shifting gender roles during and post-war. An examination of their radical choices and experiences discloses the hidden history of unmarried, pregnant nurses returning from the Second World War and how the US military dealt with those nurses and their children.

Ambivalence and Representations of Women’s Work in Nineteenth-Century Spanish American Writing, 1861–1896

Debates over shifting gender roles in nineteenth-century Spanish America included the question of women’s participation in the workforce. Writers of fiction and nonfiction posed arguments about paid employment for middle-class women and often represented work itself in ways that reinforced traditional gender norms by envisioning women’s entry into the labor force as an extension of their family and household roles. Nonetheless, the tactics that allowed writers to make stronger claims for women’s right to paid employment often reimposed limitations on women. The complex rhetorical maneuvers that many authors deployed bespeak their anxieties about the potential for social change brought by newly visible options for women. This essay examines novels and nonfictional essays and argues that authors who advance progressive agendas about and for women sometimes undermine their own purported arguments when they fall back on more conventional attitudes about women’s roles in families and society. This article contends that these problematic moments in the selected texts serve to maintain a system in which privilege accrues to male elites.

Interlocking Lives: Employment Mobility and Family Fixity in Three Gentrifying Neighbourhoods of Montreal

AbstractThis article explores the relationship between employment mobility, family fixity, and gentrification in the lives of 36 residents in and extended commuters to Montreal's southwest borough. Once described as the birthplace of industry in Canada, the neighbourhoods of Saint‐Henri, Little Burgundy and Point Saint‐Charles have undergone sweeping changes in recent decades. Inner‐city areas are not necessarily where one expects to find mobile workers, but this is changing due to shifting gender roles, the rise of dual‐income households and gentrification. Michael Savage's concept of ‘elective belonging’ proved particularly useful in understanding this connection. With its proximity to childcare, schools, stores and workplaces, the central city permits a more equitable division of labour within the household. Our place‐based approach to mobile work enables us to capture a wide spectrum of experience, ranging from people with extended daily commutes to those whose work takes them away from home for days, weeks or months at a time. Our interviews reveal a connection between employment mobility and family gentrification, as upwardly mobile families find ways to localize other aspects of their lives. The simultaneity of mobility and immobility are often essential, especially in dual‐income households. One parent's mobility often leads to the relative immobility of other family members.

Gender, history, and the medicalization of childbirth: the exhibition "Women and Health Practices"

With the institutionalization of medicine in childbirth there came about a shift in gender roles. In the late nineteenth century, at the same time as midwives' work was being marginalized and discredited, women were fighting to gain access to university-level medical education. In the first half of the twentieth century, there was a marked scarcity of women at medical faculties, and the work of midwives was important, especially in hospital settings. Part of this history is contained in the exhibition "Women and Health Practices" at the Museum of the History of Medicine of Rio Grande do Sul. We highlight the value given to this knowledge and these practices amongst the Brazilian population by means of informal education at museums.

Prevalence and predictors of violence among Syrian refugee women resettled in Sweden

Background Refugee women are at more risk of a continuum of violence, pre, during and post flight. After resettlement, increased family conflicts are likely, due to shifts in gender roles and chang ...

Parental and gender hegemonic struggle in Iranian wedding invitations across (1970–1990) and (1990 to present)

There is a mutual relationship between conventional ways of discoursal practice and social changes which create new ways of thinking or ideology in a particular society. Considering the changes that Iranian society has undergone throughout two different periods of time (1970–1990 and 1990 to present), the current study aimed to show how these changes in terms of reference and person deixis, as a discourse practice in wedding invitations (WIs), introduce a marked shift in parental hegemony and small beginning of shifts in gender roles in Iran’s society. To this end, 100 WIs were divided into two corpus, one dating from 1970 to 1990 and the other from 1990 to present. Then, a pilot study was arranged to identify the linguistic features which had predominantly changed and could have mirrored the sociopolitical changes. The results of the pilot study revealed that terms of reference and personal deixis in the WIs had changed remarkably across the two groups of WIs. To analyze the frequency and percentage of reference and personal deixis in the WIs, two small corpus (one containing 1970–1990 WIs and the other containing 1990 to present) were created using Sketch Engine website. Finally, Fairclough’s [2010. Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Routledge] framework of critical discourse analysis as a form of critique of social change in terms of historical dynamics was used to account for the changes. The analysis of the data revealed that paternal, as well as gender hegemony, has been diluted in WIs published in recent times.

Masculinity might be more toxic than we think: The influence of gender roles on trait emotional manipulation

Previous research has established sex differences in emotional manipulation; specifically, men are more likely than women to engage in emotional manipulation. This study aimed to explicate these sex differences by investigating, for the first time, the influence of gender roles in the prediction of trait emotional manipulation. Participants were 435 females and 139 males (N = 574) who reported their levels of masculine and feminine gender roles, as well as primary and secondary psychopathy, trait emotional intelligence, and trait emotional manipulation. Separate regressions were conducted for each sex. As predicted, for both males and females, masculine gender roles positively predicted emotional manipulation. For males, no other predictors were significant, however there was evidence of statistical suppression for feminine gender roles. For females, low female gender roles, high primary and secondary psychopathy, and high emotional intelligence all significantly predicted emotional manipulation; the effect of emotional intelligence was via statistical suppression. This study represents an important first step in understanding the interplay between socialisation and emotional manipulation. Future research would benefit from using a longitudinal approach to determine whether emotional manipulation can be reduced through shifting gender roles.

Systematic review of the impact of coparenting interventions on paternal coparenting behaviour.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of interventions to support coparenting, how partners relate to and support one another as parents, on paternal outcomes. Despite societal shifts in gender roles leading to fathers' increasing involvement in parenting and growing recognition of the need for couples-based parenting interventions, fathers have been underrepresented in parenting research. Systematic review. Medline, Embase, Healthstar, and PsycInfo. We followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses to identify peer-reviewed articles published up to 2016 that evaluated the effectiveness of coparenting interventions for expectant fathers or fathers of children <18years. Study quality was assessed using Cochrane risk of bias criteria for Effective Practice and Organisation of Care reviews; Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) criteria were used to summarize quality of the evidence. The primary outcome was coparenting behaviour among men. We identified 16 randomized controlled trials that evaluated 14 coparenting interventions. Nine interventions targeted partners in the perinatal period; five targeted parents of children. All but one involved face-to-face contact, but this varied in duration and intensity. Of the 12 trials that examined coparenting outcomes, eight reported an effect on at least one measure of paternal coparenting behaviour. The quality of the evidence was at a low level. Success was moderate, supporting the need for future research to explore the use of additional approaches to increase efficacy, including technology-based interventions, to improve uptake among men.

Free markets and feminism: the neo-liberal defence of the male breadwinner model in Britain, c. 1980–1997

ABSTRACTAlthough neo-liberalism is often seen as a set of ideas that prioritises the individual, in fact, neo-liberals have always seen the traditional family as the critical social institution that is to be protected from the state and to be granted new freedoms by greater access to market opportunities. A male bread-winner model of economic life was therefore as central to the worldview of neo-liberalism as it was to post-war social democracy. How did the advocates of market liberalism on the British right conceptualise the shifts in gender norms that took place during the 1980s and 1990s? How far did they try to adapt their free market objectives to this new social reality and how far did they try to resist it? How did they react to the growing salience of feminist arguments and policies on the left of British politics, and in particular Labour’s growing enthusiasm for a social democratic politics that integrated some feminist insights? This article investigates these questions through an examination of the political thought of Britain’s market liberals. The picture that emerges is two-fold: in the first instance, a concerted, although unsuccessful, effort by the free market right to resist some of this social change, but secondly greater ideological success for neo-liberals with respect to the role that could legitimately be played by the state rather than the market in addressing the social challenges posed by shifting gender roles.

Introduction: Food as Medicine, Medicine as Food.

The history of food is “well and truly out of the academic wilderness.”1 Long a marginalized area of inquiry in both food studies programs and history departments, food history has moved into the historical mainstream since the early 2000s, and found institutionalization in conferences, journals, anthologies, and programs of study.2 The publication of companion guides to food history perhaps signaled this move most of all.3 In addition to being at the center of an increasingly well-demarcated field, food has also become a useful category of analysis in political, social, and environmental histories. Food has been recognized, for example, as a particularly illuminating way of examining empire and globalization.4 At the opposite end of the scale, food forms part of local and national history.5 Changing technologies of food production in the home have been linked to shifts in gender roles and particularly to increasingly housebound women.6 Environmental historians have used food to raise issues around resource management, economic development, and the configurations of notions such as purity and the natural.7

Liebe schreiben: Paarkorrespondenzen im Kontext des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts ed. by Ingrid Bauer and Christa Hämmerle

Reviewed by: Liebe schreiben: Paarkorrespondenzen im Kontext des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts ed. by Ingrid Bauer and Christa Hämmerle Jacqueline Vansant Ingrid Bauer and Christa Hämmerle, eds., Liebe schreiben: Paarkorrespondenzen im Kontext des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017. 358 pp. The essay volume Liebe schreiben is an outstanding example of just how fruitful a well- organized long-term group project can be. Sponsored by the Austrian "Wissenschaftsfonds FWF" (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung) from May 2010 to April 2014 and directed by the historians Ingrid Bauer and Christa Hämmerle, the FWF project "(Über) Liebe schreiben" is successfully concluded with this volume, which consists of an in-depth introduction and eight essays of consistently high quality. The editors also include eight pages of color photographs from select artifacts covering the time span of their study, which are an apt complement to essays. The letters between the couples have much to say about the history of emotions and particularly love, the historical contexts of "private" writing, and changes and discontinuities of discourses and practices in heterosexual relationships. As a whole the volume [End Page 106] shines light on the interplay of historical, political, socioeconomic and cultural contexts with the expression of emotions and heterosexual relationships. In the introduction Bauer and Hämmerle present the parameters of the project, beginning with the choice of letters. The working group selected the bulk of the corpus studied from letters housed at the University of Vienna as part of the "Sammlung Frauennachlässe" collection. The team received additional letters as a result of calls they issued and the positive publicity the project garnered. The group ultimately settled on seventy correspondences, which cover roughly a hundred years from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century. With few exceptions the correspondents are from the western part of Cisleithania and present-day Austria. Bauer and Hämmerle acknowledge that letters from representatives of the working class are few and far between. Moreover, the group was unable to add exchanges between gay and lesbian pairs. As the editors note, they have more letters from men than women, which, they suggest, is related to gendered practices of collection and saving letters. Some of the exchanges extend over sixty years, but most focus on the early phases of love relationships—the establishment of a relationship, the first declarations of love, efforts to solidify and maintain the relationship, and future plans for the twosome. Although each essay can stand alone, read as a whole they provide evidence of the rewards of collaborative work. Roughly following a similar pattern, each author clearly states the questions she addresses and situates her work within the academic discussions on the topic. Six essays focus on a limited stretch of time, yet in their totality cover a hundred years. In her essay "Gefühle erwünscht: Normiertes Liebeswerben in Verlobungskorrespondenzen aus den 1860er/70er Jahren?" which explores the exchange of two couples, Ines Rebhan-Glück uncovers unexpected gendered aspects of the expression of love. Very much in line with examples from letter-writing breviers of the period, men are effusive in expressing their emotion, while women are much more reserved in expression emotions. In "'[…] mein Eheweib und nicht mein College'? Liebe und Beruf(ung) in Paarkorrespondenzen vor dem Hintergrund der Frauenenbewegung/en um 1900," Nina Verheyen examines the ways in which debates on women's position in society were reflected in letters of five couples written between 1900 and the outbreak of World War I. Barbara Asen's essay "'[…] nicht nur Gattin, sondern auch treue Kameradin': Zur Konstruktion von Liebesbeziehungen in der Briefkommunikation von Paaren der Zwischenkriegszeit" examines five epistolary exchanges written [End Page 107] between 1918 and 1931, four from bourgeois couples and one between a domestic servant and the son of her employer. The author situates the exchanges in a phase of intensive shifts in gender roles. The selection allows her to illustrate that despite awareness of changing gender roles, the attitudes of the bourgeois women were quite varied and each partner had quite different expectations for his or her respective mate. With the inclusion of the letters from the young woman working as a...

"I Don't Make Coffee for My Husband in the Morning": Gender and Precarious Life among Home-based Workers in the Philippines

This article is about precariousness of work and shifting gender roles among Filipina home-based workers, who labor from or nearby their homes either as industrial homeworkers working for an employ ...

‘Look What Market She Hath Made’: Women, Commerce, and Power in &lt;i&gt;A Chaste Maid in Cheapside&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Bartholomew Fair&lt;/i&gt;

This essay examines the effects of women’s roles in early modern English food marketplaces, highlighting ways that ordinary women could use their participation in food transactions to destabilize (and even subvert) power structures and garner authority. In Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613) and Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614), food informs a complete understanding of early modern attitudes toward shifting gender roles in the ever-evolving and expanding food economy.

How Legacies of Genocide Are Transmitted in the Family Environment: A Qualitative Study of Two Generations in Rwanda

The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and its aftermath led to large-scale individual traumatization, disruption of family structures, shifts in gender roles, and tensions in communities, which are all ongoing. Previous research around the world has demonstrated the transgenerational effects of mass violence on individuals, families and communities. In Rwanda, in light of recurrent episodes of violence in the past, attention to the potential ‘cycle of violence’ is warranted. The assumption that violence is passed from generation to generation was first formulated in research on domestic violence and child abuse, but is receiving increasing attention in conflict-affected societies. However, the mechanisms behind intergenerational transmission are still poorly understood. Based on qualitative research with 41 mothers and their adolescent children, we investigated how legacies of the 1994 genocide and its aftermath are transmitted to the next generation through processes in the family environment in Rwanda. Our findings reveal direct and indirect pathways of transmission. We also argue that intergenerational effects might best be described as heterotypic: genocide and its aftermath lead to multiple challenges in the children’s lives, but do not necessarily translate into new physical violence. Further research is needed on how children actively engage with conflict legacies of the past.

The New Portrayal of Female Child Sexual Offenders in the Print Media: A Qualitative Content Analysis

The mass media has the ability to shape public opinion on child sexual offenders. To date, research has found that offenses committed by female child sexual offenders have been portrayed in the media with undertones of sympathy and romanticization. With the apparent shift in gender roles toward gender egalitarianism, the aim of the present study was to obtain an up-to-date understanding of how female child sexual offenders are portrayed in the print media across western countries. The study utilized newspaper articles involving female child sexual offenders, published in English across western countries from 2012 to 2016 (N = 35 articles). A qualitative content analysis revealed two major themes: female child sexual offenders are dangerous and they are accountable for their actions. The findings of the current study are positive and shed light on the potential advancement of the reporting of female child sexual offenders in the print media at an international level.

Contextualizing gender in climate change adaptation in semi-arid Zimbabwe

PurposeClimate change impacts tend to coalesce with everyday vulnerability and affect different socio-economic groups in different ways. In this regard, this study aims to contribute to studies that make gender critical to understanding the way that climate change is experienced. Socially constructed gender differences have a bearing on the extent of exposure to climatic shocks, leading to various patterns of vulnerability to these shocks.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to collect data.FindingsThe study finds that there is an inherent potential within the study area for equal opportunities for both men and women to address levels of vulnerability to climatic shocks and, by implication, potential to challenge patriarchal structures that tend to characterize these study areas. The contextualization of gender analysis remains elusive in the face of increasingly shifting gender roles that traditionally defined women as victims to everyday vulnerability and more recently in conjunction with climatic shocks.Originality/valueIn this regard, this research contributes to emerging perspectives on the potential role of ‘woman as heroine’ and challenges the perception of ‘woman as victim’ in environmental management. Considerations for mainstreaming adaptation responses to climate change do not necessarily have to consider women as a special social group in isolation but, rather, implications for both men and women and caution that embeddedness remains key for gender considerations in any rural context.

Changing Gender Role: Women’s Livelihoods, Conflict and Post-conflict Security in Nepal

This article examines how the Maoist conflict in Nepal affected women ex-combatants and non-combatants, looking at shifts in gender roles during and after the conflict particularly from the standpoint of current livelihood challenges. We argue changing gender roles largely depends upon everyday practice of gender division of labour and power as it evolved during and after the conflict. We also found the conflict had different and contradictory effects: Both categories of women experienced shift in gender roles, with women taking on tasks earlier reserved for men, but this effect was strongest amongst ex-combatants during conflict. In the aftermath of conflict, these changes were partly reversed and especially ex-combatant women faced severe livelihood challenges and returned to traditional gender roles. The article also considers how women experience state and non-state responses meant to improve their livelihoods security in the post-conflict setting. The article is based on in-depth fieldwork in Chitwan and Kathmandu districts of Nepal. It draws on interviews with women ex-combatants/non-combatants and key informant interviews.

The figure of the ‘Horla’ in Guy de Maupassant’s short stories: from isolation and alienation to annihilation

ABSTRACTThis essay examines the crisis Maupassant’s self-isolating bachelors face when the separation they initially sought from their peers becomes stifling isolation. As the noose of loneliness slowly tightens around them, their own house becomes the scene of terrific visions: the loners, unaccustomed to company, hear footsteps, and are soon confronted by a ghostly Other (le Horla), a recurring figure in many of his fantastic tales. The essay argues that in Guy de Maupassant’s short stories, the paradoxical and liminal figure of the bachelor and his Double, the Horla, crystallize the crisis of masculine identity at the end of the nineteenth century. The Horla appears as more than a fantastic trope. It is an expression of the anxiety associated with shifts in gender roles, and the inability of Maupassant's bachelors to connect with others. Following the journey of broken men who end up inhabiting no liveable psychic or social place, this essay shows that Maupassant’s bachelor-protagonists become ‘hors-là’.