Unequal Gender Power Relations Research Articles

“You feel like you’re fairly disadvantaged with an advert over your head saying ‘in final years of reproduction’”: social egg freezing, dating and the (unequal) politics of reproductive ageing

Recent decades have seen an increasing gap occurring between the ‘desired’ and ‘actual’ family size of middle-class and professional women. This situation of ‘unrealised fertility’ and ‘incomplete families’ carries implications at a population, but also couple and individual level. This paper explores how middle-class professional women make decisions about partnering and parenthood and how these are shaped by a contemporary neoliberal feminist discourse which articulates the possibility of ‘having it all’ through engagement in careful life planning, appropriate self-investment, and by drawing on new technologies of reproductive biomedicine. Informed by semi-structured interviews with UK and US women conducted at two different points in time, it explores how they approach and experience the process of relationship formation in the face of age-related fertility decline. It also examines how the use of social egg freezing shape their romantic and family building expectations but also their interactions with (potential) partners. In doing so, it explores how gendered cultural dating scripts and unequal gender power relations shape the formation and progression of intimate relationships in a manner which can disempower women as they age. It therefore questions whether egg freezing may be the ‘great equaliser’ that some have hoped.

Social protection for transformative resilience: do programmes really address underlying causes of vulnerability of subsistence farmers to climate change?

ABSTRACT Conventional social protection programmes that fail to intentionally consider climate change effects in their design and delivery are criticised for not addressing the root causes of vulnerability to climate change, particularly for rural livelihoods. Increasingly, we see a shift to adaptive social protection programming to address climate vulnerability, which incorporates transformative objectives. However, there is a dearth of research into the transformative effects of adaptive approaches. Addressing this gap, we employ a “rights-based approach” to assess how adaptive social protection affords greater transformative resilience and wellbeing outcomes over conventional social protection programming. Taking Bangladesh as our case, empirical data show that although social protection programming incorporates some transformative elements, their impacts in terms of subjective resilience and wellbeing outcomes are limited. These limited outcomes result from prevailing clientelism, inadequate benefits paid to participants, lack of beneficiary participation in decision-making, and failure to address unequal gender norms and power relations. These failures are intentionally obscured through the performative practice of corrupted reporting. We conclude by proposing social protection features that are expected to promote more equitable, inclusive and just pathways to sustainably reduce climate induced vulnerability of subsistence farmers.

The discursive construction of gender identities and roles for women in cash transfer programmes: Implications for gender power relations

Cash transfer (CT) programmes in Global South countries do not only provide cash grants to extremely poor households to smoothen consumption and improve human capital development, but they also promote collective action, strengthen relation-building and social transformation. Ghana’s Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) is one of many such programmes with considerable success in providing cash to extremely poor households, mostly with women as caregivers, but there are also some concerns worth highlighting. The questions are: first, how does Ghana’s LEAP CT programme perpetuate or transform gender power relations? Second, how do women caregivers exercise agency within the intersecting relations of the programme in the cultural context? Gender, power, and discourse are the theoretical underpinnings of the article with an ethnographic-discourse strategy inspired by a dialectical-relational approach to critical discourse analysis. The discursive analysis of the practices of the LEAP CT programme officials and the women caregivers demonstrate that the LEAP CT programme, at the institutional level, discursively reproduces and naturalises gender identities, roles and subject positions for women despite prioritizing women as the recipients of the cash. However, it also reveals nuances of women agency evident at the intersecting and participatory practices of women caregivers in the programme and in the socio-political contexts of the local communities. Whilst the first finding affects women negatively, the second presents a potential for transforming gender power relations in institutions and local communities in Global South countries as it challenges the taken-for-granted notions of gender relations for a better world. The study contributes to an improved situated understanding of unequal and pervasive gender power relations in Global South countries’ social protection interventions.

Spotlight on the gendered impacts of COVID-19 in Australia: a gender matrix analysis

ABSTRACT The gendered impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, beyond infection and fatality rates, can be seen across a range of broader social and economic issues including care overload, domestic violence, unemployment and job loss, and housing insecurity. On the whole, government public policy in response to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has not adequately addressed or prevented the inevitable gender impacts that have emerged. To what extent did governments have ‘early warning’ of these impacts? Using a matrix methodology to shine a light on a range of COVID-related gender impacts in Australia, this article indicates how the impact of the pandemic was exacerbated by already existing unequal gendered power relations. Our findings, identifiable in real time through news media reports, reveal that these debilitating effects extended to other social identifier groups (for instance, elderly, ethnic minorities, disabled) who were similarly caught up in underlying uneven power relations and structures.

High Time to Break Up the Boys’ Club: The Gendered Politics of Spoken Word and Open Mic Spaces in Trinidad and Tobago

The increased visibility of spoken word in media, public campaigns, and literary festivals demands critical attention to the social organisation of the art form, movement, and space. This paper explores the gendered politics of spoken word and open mic spaces in Trinidad and Tobago since 2000. Based on semi-structured interviews with spoken word poets and open mic organisers, this article discusses the unequal gender power relations between male and female spoken word poets in open mic events. I argue that unredressed gender stereotypes and male privilege contextually marginalise female spoken word poets and maintain the posture of “power” for male spoken word poets and organisers in the movement.

Female Leadership in the Local Governments: Reconstruction of Traditional Gender Identity of Women in Rural Bangladesh

The local government bodies of Bangladesh have always been dominated and controlled by men––the traditional power holders. Bangladeshi rural women are mostly confined to household chores and engaged in subsistence agricultural activities due to the patriarchal social system and a rigid gender division of labour. Moreover, women’s lives are controlled by cultural and religious gender norms which limit their mobility in public spaces and political participation. Hence, women’s participation in local government has always been a symbol of tokenism up until the introduction of a direct election system for women. Given this context, this study explores how Bangladeshi rural women have proved themselves to be the change-makers in the rural society and what influencing factors supported them in reconstructing their traditional gender identities despite social and structural constraints. The study was conducted through a qualitative inquiry by adopting a case study approach. Data and information for the study were collected through 12 in-depth (IDI) interviews of elected female Union Parishads (lowest local administrative unit) (UP) chairpersons, UP members and Upazila (subdistrict local administration council) female vice chairpersons along with four focus group discussions and five key informant interviews from four selected districts of Bangladesh. This study concluded that these female leaders are enormously motivated and committed to reshaping their traditional gender identity and altering unequal gender power relations that predominantly factor in the rural social fabric of Bangladesh.

Customary Marriages and Gender Equality : Zimbabwean and South African Perspectives

Patriarchy continues to place limitations on women’s rights in many societies. This is manifested by the unequal gender power relations between sexes, which also adversely impact women’s sexual and reproductive health rights. Using the key human rights principles of non-discrimination and gender equality, the study aimed to analyse gender equality within the sexual and reproductive health domain in customary marriages from the Zimbabwean and South African perspectives. The study was qualitative, conducted in Makwarela (South Africa) and Concession (Zimbabwe) with 16 participants using semi-structured interviews to collect data which were analysed using narrative analysis. The study established that there are restrictive gender norms that negatively affect the interaction of women with the health system, thereby producing negative health outcomes. The study recommends that women be empowered educationally, politically and financially so that they can make their own decisions regarding their health and well-being.

Social space of preschool institutions as a factor of gender equality

The subject of this paper is a sociological gender-sensitive analysis of the use-value of space in public preschool institutions (PPI), starting from the level of Serbian society, through Belgrade and Belgrade municipalities, down to the level of individual kindergartens. The objective of the research is to design the space of PPI facilities, which would provide the families and mothers with control over public space, and thus meet one of the preconditions for positive structural change - gender equality. The following parameters are used as indicators of the use-value of DPU space: the position of the preschool system in Serbia, coverage of children in the preschool system and preschool institutions by type of ownership, coverage of DPU children, insufficiency of DPU social space in Belgrade, compliance of available space in DPU municipalities Cukarica and Vozdovac with valid norms). Data sources: institutional data research (survey research ?Spatial capacity of preschool institutions in Belgrade?, conducted at the Faculty of Geography, Department of Spatial Planning, on the subject of Social Development Planning, 2018-2019). The main results of this research confirm the presumed issue in this field, which causes the unequal gender power relations and various consequences which affect the position and quality of life of women-mothers and men. The preschool system in Serbia is in an unfavourable position due to the serious insufficiency of PPI facilities in Belgrade (out of a total of 124,846 preschool children, there is enough space for less than one half; the analysis of the existing PPI capacity shows that there are large differences in capacity at the municipal level, from about three quarters to about one quarter,) and at the level of Belgrade municipalities. The data available for the municipalities of Cukarica, Vozdovac, Palilula, Zemun, Zvezdara, and Novi Beograd show that the same problem exists there as well, which can be solved by accepting the proposals for the required capacity of public kindergartens, which are given in this paper. The insufficient PPI capacity in the municipalities of Cukarica and Vozdovac has been documented at the kindergarten level (a total of 55, 22 of which in the municipality of Cukarica, and 33 in the municipality of Vozdovac.

From Wollstonecraft’s dilemma to Nancy Fraser’s theory of gender justice: a proposal for the analysis of gender equality policies

Social policies are an essential instrument for fighting against women’s discrimination and overcoming gender inequality. However, an agreement about what gender equality consists of has not been achieved yet and, consequently, neither has a consensus been reached about what the suitable meanings (speaking in terms of public policies) to reach that egalitarian paradigm. The main confrontation in this regard has been featured by the alternative positions held by the equality feminism and by the difference feminism. Based on the theoretical contributions developed by Nancy Fraser to try to overcome this dilemma, this paper aims to present some criteria that we consider key to the analysis of a given system of gender equality public policies when it comes to assessing its transformative-gender capacity, that is, the potential of these measures to subvert the unequal gendered power relations that lie on the basis of women’s subordination.

A continuum of participation: rethinking Tamil women’s political participation and agency in post-war Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT In post-war contexts, attention is given to women’s participation and barriers to their participation in formal processes (for example, peace talks, economic initiatives, and elections). Yet, women have engaged in various activities to exercise collective and individual agency to impact political participation. This article examines how Tamil women’s political participation in post-war Sri Lanka exists along a continuum, from formal participation within state structures and party politics to informal community participation. Scholarship about Tamil women’s political participation is framed within discourses of “militants,” “ex-combatants,” “political mothers,” or “victims.” Using narrative interviews, we argue that – based on their awareness of unequal gendered power relations, structures, and norms impacting their lives in post-war Sri Lanka – Tamil women in Mannar exercise agency to challenge these constraints and promote a broader transformative political arena. Some women attempt to expand the agency of others and to promote a collective voice through which women can be better represented in politics. Drawing on feminist international relations and gender and development knowledge, this study demonstrates how political agency is constituted within informal arenas, disrupting masculinist assumptions about who is considered a political actor and what counts as political agency by examining the spectrum of political participation in post-war contexts.

Gendered inequalities in competitive grant funding: an overlooked dimension of gendered power relations in academia

ABSTRACTResearch grant funding influences the organisation of academic work and academic careers. We problematise general approaches to gender bias in research grant funding and argue that it fails to include the wider structures of inequality and the unequal gendered power relations in academia. Approaching the subject with gender budgeting we challenge assumed gender-neutral practices. The objective is to illuminate how the gendered funding system and (the previous and subsequent) gendered structures of academia are maintained. The whole grants scheme is assessed, drawing on statistical data collected on the whole population of a medium-size, comprehensive research and educational institution in Iceland, and two types of competitive grants. The data is measured against the pool of applicants and comparisons within and between fields and ranks are made. By including the structures of inequality and the gendered power relations, the results show how the funding system is biased not only in favour of men, but towards the male-dominated and culturally masculine positions and fields. This approach illustrates the need to address the whole academic system in order to challenge the norms that maintain and reproduce gender inequalities.

“Let feminists tell me my fault”：a study of the discourse strategies of sexual harassment suspects

ABSTRACT The spread of the #MeToo movement in China has led women to speak out about their experiences of sexual harassment through social media. However, most of these incidents have not been responded or acknowledged by the suspects, and even if they responded, their attitude was to evade accusations through various strategies. This paper analyzes the response of 15 male suspects who were revealed to the public in 2017 and 2018, and finds that the discourse strategies they used include mixing up the characters’ images, shaping a victim identity for themselves, transferring the main issue, and beautifying harassment behaviors. These discourse strategies show that sexual harassment suspects remain deeply entrenched by patriarchal thinking. The suspects’ ignoring the experience of female victims continue to sustain the unequal gender power relations.

Gender and Forced Labour: Understanding the Links in Global Cocoa Supply Chains

This paper investigates the gendered patterns and dynamics of labour exploitation and forced labour in the cocoa supply chain. The empirical basis of our analysis is an original primary dataset produced through the Global Business of Forced Labour project, which includes data gathered in Ghana in 2016–2017, comprising 60 in-depth interviews and a survey of 497 cocoa workers across 74 cocoa communities from Ghana’s two largest cocoa-producing regions, the Western and Ashanti Regions. Drawing on this dataset, we show that prevailing business models within the Ghanaian cocoa industry rely on and reinforce labour exploitation and unequal gender power relations. Given that the links between forced labour and gender remain poorly understood, we analyse the factors that render women workers disproportionately vulnerable to severe labour exploitation, underscoring the role of unequal family relations, responsibility for reproductive labour, and social property relations in creating vulnerability to exploitation.

Unveiling the Myth of Mars and Venus in French rap: An analysis of the gender determinants of non-standard language use

This article studies the use of non-standard language (NSL) in a corpus of selected francophone rap tracks to see whether gender determinants have an impact on its use. This study relies on a lexicographic analysis to produce quantitative results, which are then analysed qualitatively with the help of extracts from francophone rap tracks and semi-structured interviews with francophone rappers. This article initially focuses only on male versus female rappers but the qualitative discussion takes more complex notions into account, such as gender performativity, queer linguistics or androgyny. Moreover, this research investigates unequal gender power relations in a male-dominated heterosexist industry. This study reviews how male and female artists react to and perpetuate these stereotypical gender manifestations in their lyrics. Some of the NSL use is also analysed in terms of speech acts to try and determine what the artists want to accomplish by using specific terms in certain contexts. It can be concluded that no real difference can be found between male and female rappers with respect to their NSL use. When differences are found, they are not very wide and can also be observed by only comparing men or only women.

Relationship power and HIV sero-status: an analysis of their relationship among low-income urban Zimbabwean postpartum women

BackgroundHIV disproportionately infects women in many regions. Zimbabwe is one of the countries, most heavily affected. Unequal gender power relations between men and women can increase women’s vulnerability to HIV. The aim of this paper was to determine the relationship between gender power and HIV sero-status among postpartum women in Zimbabwe.MethodologyA cross-sectional survey was conducted among 2042 women aged 15–49 years, attending postnatal-care at six public primary health care clinics in low-income urban communities of Harare in 2011. Women were asked about relationship power factors using an interviewer-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire included adapted WHO multi-country study items, which measure partner violence perpetrated against women. HIV status data were based on rapid HIV diagnostic tests done during earlier antenatal visits. The analysis was restricted to women with known HIV test results (n = 1951). Multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to assess the predictors of HIV and relationship power factors.ResultsHIV prevalence was 15.3% (n = 299/1951). Three quarters of the women (76.9%, n = 1438/1871) reported some level of relationship control in their current/most recent intimate relationship. HIV positive women reported higher levels of control by the male partner in their intimate relationships. In adjusted models, the study found a significant association between relationship-control by the male partner and women’s HIV status (AOR 1.11, 95% CI 1.01–1.22), and the decision-making dimensions of relationship power. Although there were indications of high male partner control in participants’ intimate relationships, some women still had agency, as they were able to make independent decisions to fall pregnant. These women were less likely to be HIV positive (AOR 0.54, 95% CI 0.29–1.00). Having a partner who ever refused use of a family planning method was associated with increased odds of having a positive HIV status among the postpartum women (AOR 1.88, 95% CI 1.20–2.90).ConclusionUnequal gender power relations continue to be a risk factor for heterosexual transmission of HIV. This suggests that prevention efforts have not successfully resulted in gender equality. HIV prevention interventions should address gender power dynamics to help curb the disproportionate HIV burden among women.

Advancing gender equality in media industries: an innovative european approach

Most people recognise that mainstream media industries are important players in contemporary societies, simultaneously galvanizing change through cutting-edge programming and technological development but also reinforcing long-standing inequalities and discrimination through the perpetuation of stereotypes in content and restricting career opportunities. When we consider the specific issue of gender and media and their inter-relationship, numerous research studies over the past 50 years have demonstrated persistent problems in terms of disrespectful representations of women, routine inequalities within the workplace and unequal gendered power relations in management structures (Tuchman et al., 1975; Gallagher 1995; Rush et al., 2005; Byerly 2011; North, 2015; Ross & Padovani, 2016). These issues serve to constrain societal progress and make the goal of gender justice extremely hard to achieve.

Masculinities and femininities through teachers’ voices: Implications on gender-equitable schooling for vulnerable children from three primary schools in Swaziland

Informed by social constructionism and the intersectionality framework, this article focuses on the fight for sustainable gender-equitable and inclusive school environments for vulnerable children. It foregrounds the centrality of teachers’ constructions of gender within prevailing dominant gender discourses and the implications these constructions have on gender equality, the vulnerable children’s welfare and experiences of gender in three rural primary schools in Swaziland. The article draws on a qualitative narrative study and utilises semi-structured individual interviews and open-ended questionnaires with nine randomly selected teachers (three teachers from each of the targeted schools). The findings revealed that the absence of gender in the school curriculum left teachers with no option but to resort to dominant constructions of gender in their pedagogical practices. These gender constructions were inundated in paradoxes of equality of opportunities for all children, in ways that held different expectations for boys as compared to girls. The teachers’ constructions of masculinities and femininities as two diverse homogeneous groups made the gendered experiences of vulnerable boys and girls invisible, hence perpetuating the social injustices against them. Generally, the teachers were found not to concede the social inequalities and hierarchies within each social group of boys or girls. The study recommends the need to make teachers aware about the limiting and adverse effects of constructing gender and socialising vulnerable children in ways that affirm unequal gendered power relations, as a strategy for promoting gender-inclusive and gender-equitable school environments.

Gender respect: Empirical insights for (moral) educators about women’s struggles for respect in the Global South

Promoting gender respect is essential to the development of both sexes and to gender equality. This article argues for the importance of moral education to support the struggle of girls and women to achieve respect within unequal and complex gender power relations, especially in poverty contexts. Evidence collected from a sequence of in-depth qualitative studies in the Global South highlights the diverse ways that the giving of respect and the struggle to be respected shapes women’s lives. We show that moral education has a role to play in foregrounding female voices in order to: better understand the poverty-gender-education nexus; recognise the contribution of women and mothers as moral educators; acknowledge girls’ struggles to gain self-respect, peer respect and mitigate disrespect; and, ensure sexual respect despite aggressive masculinities. Moral education programmes which encourage respectful relations between the sexes need to address these highly contextualised forms of struggles for ‘gender respect’.

Using participatory visual research to explore resilience with girls and young women in rural South Africa

abstractSexual violence is deeply embedded in historical and structural inequalities and is driven by unequal gender power relations. These unequal power relations give rise to gendered norms and practices that inform the social ecologies in which women and girls negotiate their lives. South Africa has one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world. Research suggests that girls and women from resource-poor rural communities are particularly susceptible to sexual violence due to the dominance of gendered cultural practices and belief systems in these contexts. Our research is part of a six-year, international and interdisciplinary partnership which seeks to explore how participatory visual methods can be used to advance knowledge-production, policy-making and communication in relation to sexual violence against indigenous girls and young women in Canada and South Africa. The data presented in this article are drawn from a series of participatory visual workshops with girls and young women in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Through a thematic analysis of girl-authored cellphilms and digital stories, and with reference to the seven qualitative aspects related to resilience (Ungar et al., 2007), we explore two questions: (1) How do gendered power dynamics affect resilience in relation to sexual violence in their lives? (2) What is the relationship between resilience and the gendered nature of adversity in this setting? We conclude by suggesting how our work with the girls might support, build and leverage gender-specific resources, which could facilitate resilience in this environment.

Engendering development and disasters.

Over the last two decades the different impacts of disasters on women and men have been acknowledged, leading to calls to integrate gender into disaster risk reduction and response. This paper explores how evolving understandings of ways of integrating gender into development have influenced this process, critically analysing contemporary initiatives to 'engender' development that see the inclusion of women for both efficiency and equality gains. It has been argued that this has resulted in a 'feminisation of responsibility' that can reinforce rather than challenge gender relations. The construction of women affected by disasters as both an at-risk group and as a means to reduce risk suggests similar processes of feminisation. The paper argues that if disaster risk reduction initiatives are to reduce women's vulnerability, they need to focus explicitly on the root causes of this vulnerability and design programmes that specifically focus on reducing gender inequalities by challenging unequal gendered power relations.