Support Of Gender Equality Research Articles

Feminist Overview of International Investment Law—A Preliminary Inquiry

ABSTRACT There have not been many studies to evaluate the tenets of international investment law from a feminist perspective. Thus, a study from a feminist perspective is not only desirable but also necessary to understand the position of women in this regime. To fill this gap, the article presents an analysis of the normative and structural frameworks of international investment law from a feminist standpoint. This article finds that women are under-represented in the structural framework of international investment law, and the normative framework barely touches upon the issues of women. The article suggests measures to gender-mainstream the investment law regime. It concludes that gender inclusiveness of the international investment regime can only be achieved when international investment policymaking is complemented by a flexible but robust municipal structure that supports gender equality and women’s participation in economic activities.

How Muslims’ denomination shapes their integration: the effects of religious marginalization in origin countries on Muslim migrants’ national identifications and support for gender equality

ABSTRACT Public debates proclaim that Muslims have turned their backs on Western societies and their “core values”. Quantitative studies have shown that Muslim migrants identify more with their origin nation and less with their host country, and that they support gender equality less than other migrants. While often attributed to Muslims’ religiosity, migrants’ denominations also reflect whether they belonged to the dominant religious majority or a marginalized minority in their origin country, which also shapes national identifications and support for gender equality. EURISLAM data on 1,500 migrants from Turkey and Pakistan show that Alevi and Ahmadiyya minority-migrants identify less with their origin country and more with their host society than Sunni majority-migrants. Pivotally, marginalized minority-migrants acculturate faster, as their support for gender equality increases more strongly over the years than majority-migrants’. Altogether, focusing on essentialist views of Muslims’ religion overlooks other mechanisms that shape diversity in acculturation among Muslim migrants.

Predicting Attitudes Towards Transactional Sex: The Interactive Relationship Between Gender and Attitudes on Sexual Behaviour

IntroductionThis article explores explanations for attitudes towards the acceptability of transactional sex. The sparse research investigating attitudes towards transactional sex uncovers a link between gender equality, or feminism, and a lack of support for the trade in sex. However, there are no research agendas that attempt to explain variance in attitudes towards transactional sex where support for gender equality is widespread throughout a population.MethodsWe estimate regression models utilizing the 2017 Danish Values Survey (Den Danske Værdiundersøgelse) in order to predict views on the acceptability of transactional sex.ResultsWhile the trade in sex is legal in Denmark, we find that a majority of respondents hold negative attitudes towards transactional sex, which conveys a lack of congruence between public opinion and policy. Further, gender is a powerful predictor of attitudes towards transactional sex, with women finding it less acceptable. In addition, the analysis uncovers that general attitudes towards sexual behaviour are the largest predictor of views on the acceptability of transactional sex. That being said, we find that men’s views on the acceptability of transactional sex are more of a function of their general attitudes towards sexual behaviour than they are for women.ConclusionsThe findings indicate that, unlike men, women appear to differentiate between their attitudes towards general sexual behaviour and their views on sexual behaviour that they may associate with negative societal implications.

CEOs as agents of change and continuity

PurposeChief executive officers (CEOs) are increasingly seen as change agents for gender equality, which means that CEOs have to lead others to achieve gender equality. Much of this leadership is going to happen through talk, which raises the question as to how CEOs talk about gender equality to act as change agents. The purpose of this paper is to understand the arguments of CEOs deploy.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on interviews with global CEOs, who have publicly supported gender equality work, the article draws on discourse analysis to understand the arguments of CEOs deploy.FindingsThe analysis shows that CEOs deploy three arguments. First, CEOs argue that women bring special skills to the workplace, which contributes to a female advantage. Second, CEOs argue that the best person for the job is hired. Third, CEOs talk about how biases and privilege permeate the workplace. The analysis shows that CEOs are often invested in essentialised views of gender while holding onto ideals of meritocracy.Originality/valueThe article suggests that how leaders talk about gender equality leads to continuity, rather than change in regard to gender equality.

Police Officers’ Preferences for Gender-Based Responding to Domestic Violence in China

This study examines Chinese police officers’ preferences for different formations of responders to domestic violence. Specifically, it assessed the connections between Chinese officers’ gender and gender-based attitudes and their perceptions of whether female officers, male officers, or mixed-gender officers are more suited for responding to battered women, offenders, and domestic violence overall. Survey data were collected from 1052 officers, including 278 females and 774 males from four provinces in China. Frequency distributions, cross-tabulations, and multivariate regression were used as data analysis methods. Chinese officers, in general, were more likely to believe that female officers are more suited to work with battered women, the male officer is more apt to handle offenders, and a combination of male and female officers are more adapted to deal with “domestic violence overall”. Female officers preferred male officers over themselves in investigating “domestic violence overall.” Officers who have more support for gender equality or more tolerance for domestic violence are more likely to believe that, compared to male officers, female officers are more suitable to work with batter women, and a combination of male and female officers is better to provide service to battered women and to respond to “domestic violence overall.” Policymakers and police administrators should strive to promote the value of a more gender-balanced police force and involve more female officers to work in responding to domestic violence.

Gender equality in the government water, sanitation, and hygiene workforce in Indonesia: an analysis through the Gender at Work framework

ABSTRACT Gender inequality remains a persistent challenge in workforces globally, with the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) workforce no exception. This paper aimed to investigate gender dynamics in the Indonesian government WASH workforce at national and subnational levels and evolve conceptual foundations for this type of study. The Gender at Work framework (Rao, A., J. Sandler, D. Kelleher, and C. Miller. 2016. Gender at Work: Theory and Practice for 21st Century Organizations. London: Routledge), provided a framing to support critical examination of power relations embedded in institutions and communities. In-depth interviews were undertaken with 52 government employees in the districts of Sumbawa and Manggarai and two national ministries. The findings identified four important themes which hinder or support gender equality in the Indonesian government WASH workforce: (a) career progression, continued education, and professional ambitions; (b) gender equality and gendered social dynamics in the workplace; (c) family and institutional support; and (d) gender-based violence and safety in the workplace. Our findings also generated insights on intersectional aspects, including people of different ethnic origins, pointing to the need to explicitly account for these in frameworks such as the Gender at Work framework. Through the identification and consideration of ‘gendered substructures’ this research provides a basis to promote greater equality in the WASH workforce.

Differences in quality of life and food insecurity between men and women living with HIV/AIDS in the state of Paraíba, Brazil.

A prevalence study was conducted to compare quality of life and food insecurity in men and women living with HIV/AIDS. The sample comprised 481 HIV-infected individuals undergoing antiretroviral therapy at a referral hospital in the State of Paraíba, Brazil. Food insecurity and quality of life were assessed using the Brazilian Household Food Insecurity Scale and WHOQOL-HIV Bref, respectively. The results were presented as absolute and relative frequencies and gender differences were tested using the chi-squared test adopting a significance level of 0.05. The findings showed that 40.1% of the sample were women. A higher percentage of women than men had a low income and low education level (65.8% and 72.5%, respectively). Prevalence of food security was lower in women than in men (29.0% compared to 42.7%), and a higher percentage of women than men reported below average quality of life (54.9% compared to 44.4%). The findings reveal that, besides the usual difficulties faced by HIV-infected patients, this group showed a significant level of gender inequality. The management of HIV patient care should consider these important findings, promoting access to care and support services and gender equality so that women can live fairer and more equal lives.

The Politics of Legal Abortion: From Direct Action to Dialogue

In her highly influential 1984 study Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, Kristin Luker speculates that opposition to legal abortion among women was likely to be strongest among those who were full-time homemakers without a college education (Luker 1984, 163). But despite a marked decline in that demographic group and a well-documented rise in public support for gender equality since then, the rate of support for legal abortion has remained stubbornly fixed at between fifty and fifty-five percent (Shields 2012). This tepid support has coincided with a steep decline in abortion services in rural states, and ever more sweeping restrictions on abortion being tested in the courts (Rose 2006, 89). Karissa Haugeberg's Women against Abortion and Katie Watson's Scarlet A both seek to address this state of affairs, albeit in markedly different ways. Haugeberg provides a historical chronicle of the motives and strategies of certain key women activists in the fight against legal abortion, with an eye toward how their concerns “came to serve as blueprints to legislators and judges who continue to craft policies and laws that erode women's right to abortion” (Haugeberg, 8). Katie Watson draws upon her experience as an attorney and bioethicist to write a guide “intended to encourage and equip you to engage in respectful, productive, private conversation about your experience with, and opinion of, abortion” (Watson, 37). Though both authors reveal their support for legal abortion, both are concerned to understand the motives and goals of those who fight against it.

The Motherhood Wage Penalty: A Meta-Analysis

Mothers tend to receive lower wages than comparable childless women. This ‘motherhood wage gap’ has been reported in numerous studies. We summarize the existing empirical evidence on this topic using meta-analysis and test for several mechanisms which can be responsible for the persistence of the wage gap. Based on 208 wage effects of having exactly one child and 245 wage effects of the total number of children, we find an average motherhood wage gap of around 3.7 percent. While the gaps associated with the total number of children are mostly explained by the loss of mothers’ human capital during child-related career breaks, the gaps associated with one child are predominantly driven by mothers’ choice of jobs and occupations that pay less. The residual gap is smallest in Nordic countries, where public policies actively support gender equality and reconciliation of work and family, as well as Belgium and France, and largest in the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Anglo-Saxon countries.

Gender Equality in Employment: A View from Kazakhstan

Abstract Issue under consideration: existing legal resources to support gender equality in the workplace. We systematised the provisions of Kazakhstan labour law, which should guarantee the prohibition of discrimination based on sex. The analysis resulted in five themes: “Characteristics of women’s labour”, “Analysis of labour laws differentiation”, “Evaluation of labour rights discrimination” and “Characteristics of the new labour legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan”, “Characteristics of workers with a special social status”. We analysed the essence of the method of differentiation of labour legislation, which affects the establishment of special working conditions for women and workers with family responsibilities. We suggested a correlation between the content of legal norms and the level of guarantees of gender equality in the labour market. The results show that family circumstances, gender equality are factors influencing the formation of labour legislation, state policy in the field of wage labour. The creation of a favourable environment for labour relations of the considered categories of workers should be carried out through labour contracts, acts of the employer, social partnership agreements, collective agreements. However, priority should be given to normative acts of national action. Ensuring gender equality in fact always requires the implementation of special measures by the employer, which must be guaranteed by a coercive state mechanism. At least this thesis is true for the conditions of Kazakhstan, a country with a transition economy, when business does not have high social activity, and state power is in a period of transformation. Importance should be given to the monitoring and implementation of international obligations in the field of ensuring the prohibition of discrimination, the implementation of best practices and standards. The post-Soviet law of Kazakhstan recognises the priority of international law over national law, and this channel should be maximally used to promote the value of gender equality.

Effects of Media Feminist Approaches on Youth

Feminism is tied in with examining sexual orientation contrasts and in regards to supplementing the job of genders in the public eye. Being a feminist it is just having faith in equivalent rights for all sexes. It's not tied in with detesting men. It's not about ladies being superior to men. It's not tied in with shunning womanliness. Pakistani Media is promoting western term of feminism and have recently launched the first feminism based web series CHURAILS. Four women run an office calling themselves CHURAILS. At the point when one of them disappears, their investigation drives them to something a lot greater than themselves. The purpose of this study is to analyze the perceptive of Pakistani youth on feminism, also the effect of feminism on youth, and to explore the digital media content on feminism in Pakistan. An online survey is conducted through social media to which 150 respondents of age 16-30 year old responded. This study highlights that the youngsters of Pakistan are fully aware of the term Feminism and support gender equality. In which the 41% of youth agreed with the concept of gender equality concept of feminism. But the Pakistani Media is portraying the western feminism which is destroying our culture, norms and religious value. This study shows that the wrongly portrayed feminism by Pakistani Media is causing discomfort in gender which will affect the feminist movements in future. This study also shows that web series like CHURAILS is promoting vulgarity among the youngsters.

Mainstreaming of Gender Equality in Islamic Family Law: Opportunities and Challenges

This study discusses the mainstreaming of gender equality in Islamic family law. As it is known, gender equality and Islamic law have axiological links in realizing family household that practices the universal values such as justice, literature, peace, love, compassion, etc. This research is a qualitative study with a gender perspective linked to Islamic law. The discussion showed that a number of opportunities were found as normatively affirmed in the Qur'an which has the same spirit as the mainstreaming of gender equality in Islamic family law. Likewise, legal rules such as the Compilation of Islamic Law and the development of Islamic studies caused the normative theological understanding to support gender equality. However, it cannot be denied that the understanding of theological texts has begun to erode in the context of the implementation of Islamic family law. For the challenges, there were several aspects that hinder the mainstreaming of gender equality in Islamic family law, namely marginalization of women, community stereotypes against women, subordination of women, double burden on women, and violence against women.

Normative Islam, prejudice and women leaders: why do Arab women leaders suffer?

ABSTRACT The main aim of this study is to compare prejudicial practices against women leaders with egalitarian Islamic guidelines and current efforts towards achieving gender equality. The study also aims to highlight and offer new readings of the Quranic guidelines that may reform gender prejudice against Muslim/Arab women leaders. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 14 women leaders, the results show that egalitarian Islamic efforts towards gender equality are in conflict with certain negative gender practices. This leads us to conclude (and theorize) that Islamic guidelines, as originally retrieved from the Quran, support gender equality and remedy prejudicial assessment against genders. This study contributes to the literature through offering a partial counterview that highlights an egalitarian reading of Islamic principles relating to women leaders. To our knowledge, this is the first endeavour that incorporates Muslim women leaders’ insights towards offering new readings of the Quranic guidelines on gender equality.

Political context is associated with extent of everyday physiological synchrony in older couples

Social units such as couples exist within a broader societal and cultural context. Characteristics of this macro-level context may indirectly shape couple dynamics by influencing opportunities and motivation for interdependence, e.g. through legislation and prevalent norms/values. The current study investigates the association between political context (left-right political spectrum) and physiological linkage (cortisol synchrony) in older couples’ daily lives. Older adult couples (N = 162) aged 56 to 89 years (M age = 72.3 years) and residing in Germany provided salivary cortisol samples 7 times daily for a 7-day period. Political context in which dyads lived was quantified with respect to where the federal state of residence was located on the left-right political spectrum using voting data from the 2017 federal election. Links between macro-context and extent of cortisol synchrony were examined using multilevel models, controlling for differences in diurnal rhythm, sex, age, body mass index, and individual-level political orientation. On average, there was evidence of synchrony in fluctuations in partners’ cortisol (b = 0.08, SE = 0.02, p < .001). The extent of cortisol synchrony was moderated by macro-context, such that couples living in a federal state placed further right on the left-right political spectrum exhibited greater cortisol synchrony (b = 0.03, SE = 0.01, p = .010). This new evidence provides a foundation for theorizing about and investigating how specific mechanisms contributing to political context, including family values, gender role attitudes, and laws supporting gender equality contribute to interpersonal linkages of physiological stress responses in daily life.

Gender Equality and Public Policy during COVID-19.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has affected men and women worldwide. The gender dimension of COVID-19 has attracted the attention of researchers and policymakers: while women seem to be less severely hit by the virus and are more compliant with the restricting rules imposed to reduce the spread of the contagion, they risk to suffer more the economic consequences of the pandemic, because they are more vulnerable on the labor market and because they are carrying on most of the burden of housework and childcare which increased substantially during the lockdown. Public policies are required to address the emergency and to deal with its gender implications. Anecdotal evidence suggests that women leaders have performed better than men in dealing with the emergency. This paper explores the evidence on the gender dimension of the pandemic under a new perspective proposed by Profeta (2020), focused on the double relationship between gender equality and public policy: on one side, I show which policies can support gender equality in times of COVID-19 and, on the other side, I explore whether women leadership can promote successful measures. While the evidence provided is only suggestive, future studies should assess causal relationships. (JEL codes: J16 and J18)

At War and at Home: The Consequences of US Women Combat Casualties

What are the consequences of women dying in combat? We study how women fighting on the frontlines of the military affects public attitudes toward (1) military conflict and (2) women’s equality. We demonstrate through a series of survey experiments that women dying in combat does not reduce public support for war. However, women’s combat deaths do shape perceptions of women’s equality. Women dying in combat increases support for gender equality, particularly in the public sphere of work and politics, but only among women respondents. The findings indicate that women’s combat deaths do not undermine leaders’ ability to garner support for war, but combat service—and indeed, combat sacrifice—alone is insufficient to yield women’s “first-class citizenship” among the general US public. The results highlight how major policy changes challenging traditional conceptions of gender and war can generate positive attitudinal shifts concentrated among members of the underrepresented community.

Indigenous knowledge and the enhancement of community resilience to climate change in the Northern Mountainous Region of Vietnam

ABSTRACT Over centuries, ethnic minority communities in the north of Vietnam have developed complex farming systems well-adapted to their environments. Much of this is based on indigenous knowledge concerned with adapting to locally-available resources and more recently enhancing resiliency to climatic risk. This article draws from data gathered with mixed qualitative methods in ten villages in rural Bac Kan Province in the north of the country. It documents specific examples in the production of banana and medicinal plants; maize and red peanut; taro, pachyrhizus, and maize; and green bean as systems that incorporate native crops in ways that provide resistance to drought, improve water-use efficiency, benefit the soil, minimize agrochemical use, preserve culinary traditions, support gender equality, and increase the incomes of farm families living near the poverty line. Overall, this study illustrates unique ways that indigenous knowledge and agroecological farming practices can increase social, economic, and environmental resiliency, mitigate risk, and strengthen livelihoods in marginalized communities. As communities across the Global South seek answers to ever-increasing challenges brought by changes in climate, this paper argues that policymakers should revisit, support, and promote the indigenous knowledge already present in these communities to advance more sustainable futures.

Gender Gap in Pension Income: Cross-Country Analysis and Role of Gender Attitudes

The aim of this paper is to study the gender pension gap in Europe based on the newest EU-SILC data from the 2018 wave. The contribution of the paper is twofold. First, it provides evidence on factors shaping the gender pension gap in a large number of EU countries. Second, it analyses the relationship between the pension gap and: (1) the coverage of occupational (second pillar) pensions and (2) gender attitudes. The main factor contributing to gender inequality in pension income is the number of years in employment. The influence of tertiary education is in the direction of increasing the gap, while the effect is the opposite when the hourly labor income gap is considered. The higher coverage of occupational pensions corresponds to a higher gender pension gap. This implies that the privatization of pension plans can lead to the conversion of a wage gap into a pension income gap and reinforces women’s disadvantage after retirement. In addition, a positive relationship is observed between unexplained portions of the pension income gap and the labor income gap. This could justify the hypothesis that unexplained portions are formed by the same factors persistent over time. One such factor could be gender norms; it has been found that countries with more gender equality support have lower unexplained portions of the labor income and pension gaps.

Country‐level and individual‐level predictors of men's support for gender equality in 42 countries

AbstractMen sometimes withdraw support for gender equality movements when their higher gender status is threatened. Here, we expand the focus of this phenomenon by examining it cross‐culturally, to test if both individual‐ and country‐level variables predict men's collective action intentions to support gender equality. We tested a model in which men's zero‐sum beliefs about gender predict reduced collective action intentions via an increase in hostile sexism. Because country‐level gender equality may threaten men's higher gender status, we also examined whether the path from zero‐sum beliefs to collective action intentions was stronger in countries higher in gender equality. Multilevel modeling on 6,734 men from 42 countries supported the individual‐level mediation model, but found no evidence of moderation by country‐level gender equality. Both country‐level gender equality and individual‐level zero‐sum thinking independently predicted reductions in men's willingness to act collectively for gender equality.

Mining companies and gender(ed) policies: The women of the Congolese Copperbelt, past and present

Mining companies of the past and present have promoted specific roles for men and women through their management practices. In DR Congo, first colonial and then state-owned companies naturalised the role of men as employees and breadwinners. At the same time, women were assigned responsibility for reproduction and were understood as being financially dependent on men's salary, either that of their fathers or husbands. By contrast, some LSM (large-scale mining) companies today support gender equality programmes, mainly to improve their corporate reputation. Drawing on the literature on women in the industrial extractive sector elsewhere in the world, I show how these discourses and processes continue to produce Congolese Copperbelt mines as masculine spaces at different levels. I then move to the ethnographic component of the paper by arguing that new investors’ gender practices and equality policies are not easily implemented in the area. On the contrary, they have to confront a region marked by the paternalistic social policies of mining companies in the past, which have entrenched a certain gender hegemony. Through the biographies of different women involved in the industrial mining sector past and present, I show the effects of mining companies’ policies on gender roles in Haut-Katanga Province.