Women's Material Research Articles

The Partiality of Family Law Reform towards Women: A Comparative Study of Women's Material Rights after Divorce in Muslim Countries

The Partiality of Family Law Reform towards Women: A Comparative Study of Women's Material Rights after Divorce in Muslim Countries

Female impoverishment in the democratic process: perspectives of decision-making power

This article analises problem the impact of female impoverishment on the democratic process, critically analyzing care relationships and the removal of decision-making power. Using the deductive method, it aims to investigate the imbalance of power and the invisibility of unpaid domestic work, as well as its consequent non-recognition by the law. To this end, it delimits the study into the invisibility of women's domestic work; the asymmetries of power and the difficulty of participating in democratic life; care and removal from decision-making power and, finally, women's political poverty and the need to review the deficit of democratic protagonism. The movement to reflect on and denounce gender inequality focuses on the overlap between paid and unpaid work relationships developed by women, and the inescapable conclusion is that the maintenance of patriarchy and the normalization of female impoverishment is largely due to the solidity of incessant, permanent, invisible and unpaid domestic work. The indignity of simultaneous working hours leads to women's material and, above all, political poverty and, as a result, to their removal from power and from the democratic processes of discussion and deliberation.

Long-term Consequences of Men's Migration for Women's Well-being in a Rural African Setting.

Labor migration is a massive global reality, and its effects on the well-being of nonmigrating household members vary considerably. However, much existing research is limited to cross-sectional or short-term assessments of these effects. This study uses unique longitudinal panel data collected over 12 years in rural Mozambique to examine long-term connections of women's exposure to husband's labor migration with women's material security, their perception of their households' relative economic standing in the community, their overall life satisfaction, and their expectations of future improvements in household conditions. To capture the cumulative quality of such exposure, we use two approaches: one based on migrant remittances ("objective") and the other based on woman's own assessment of migration's impact on the household ("subjective"). The multivariable analyses detect a significant positive association between "objective" migration quality and household assets, regardless of women's current marital status and other characteristics. However, net of household assets, "objective" quality shows a positive association with life satisfaction, but not with perceived relative standing of the household or future expectations. In comparison, "subjective" quality is positively associated with all the outcomes even after controlling for other characteristics. These findings illustrate the gendered complexities of long-term migration impact on nonmigrants' well-being.

The traditional decorations of Karabakh (examples of jewelry art) (Azerbaijan Republic)

  This article, based on the achievements of modern ethnographic science of Azerbaijan, examines the history of the creation of traditional women's jewelry in one of the most ancient regions of Azerbaijan - Karabakh. The jewelry art of this region has a deep tradition that go back to the origins of the most ancient civilizations of the Turkic world. Specific real images in the form of rethought conventional-decorative symbols were presented in jewelry, which were used as a talisman-amulet in the costumes of Karabakh residents. The sacred function has been strong in jewelry since its inception and has not lost its significance in some types of jewelry to this day. During the Middle Ages and modern times, a symbolic function has increased in traditional women's jewelry, which serves as an indicator of a woman's material condition, her gender and age category, position in society, and local belonging. Over time, in the traditional women's jewelry of Karabakh, their aesthetic component increased, and the sacred-magical function weakened, but did not completely lose its significance.

Introduction: In memoriam: bell hooks, 1952–2021

Introduction: In memoriam: bell hooks, 1952–2021

The invisible thread: women as tradition keepers and change agents in Spanish pastoral social-ecological systems

Pastoral social-ecological systems (SES) provide myriad benefits to humanity and face multiple challenges in the 21st century, including interacting climate and land-use change, political marginalization, and demographic shifts, leading to loss of traditional knowledge and practices associated with sustainable use. Research and policy increasingly recognize women's roles in sustaining pastoral SES in the Global South, yet women pastoralists in the Global North have received scant attention. In Spain, like other countries in the Global North, the rise of intensive industrialized agriculture contributed to rural depopulation, land abandonment, and the masculinization of rural spaces. In this qualitative study, we address the empirical gap in studies of women pastoralists in the Global North by investigating Spanish women pastoralists' roles in pastoral SES conservation, adaptive transformation, and abandonment (regime shift). Drawing on in-depth life-history interviews with 31 women from 4 regions of Spain, and participatory workshops with women in each region, we explored women pastoralists' diverse identities and roles in conserving, transforming, and abandoning pastoral SES, focusing on 3 levels of social organization: the household/enterprise and local community, the extensive livestock sector, and society broadly. We found that women contributed to all three processes and we highlight synergies between women's roles as tradition-keepers and change agents that could serve as a leverage point for adaptive transformation. Our analysis also revealed key contradictions in women's material and discursive practices; how these are shaped by intersecting axes of social differences such as age, class, origins. and family status; and their implications for policy and practice to foster adaptive transformation of extensive livestock systems. This work advances SES/resilience research by addressing social science critiques of resilience approaches through the application of feminist theories and methodology that center the voices and subjective lived experiences of women pastoralists and attend to the roles of gender and power in SES dynamics.

Supplemental Material for Women’s Exposure to Sexualized TV, Self-Objectification, and Consideration of Cosmetic Surgery: The Role of Age

Supplemental Material for Women’s Exposure to Sexualized TV, Self-Objectification, and Consideration of Cosmetic Surgery: The Role of Age

Supplemental Material for Women—Particularly Underrepresented Minority Women—and Early-Career Academics Feel Like Impostors in Fields That Value Brilliance

Supplemental Material for Women—Particularly Underrepresented Minority Women—and Early-Career Academics Feel Like Impostors in Fields That Value Brilliance

Returning to the Gender Frontier

Returning to the Gender Frontier Susanah Shaw Romney (bio) Tai S. Edwards. Osage Women and Empire: Gender and Power. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018. vii + 232 pp.; ill. ISBN 978-0-7006-2609-0 (cl); 978-0-7006-2610-6 (pb). Laurel Clark Shire. The Threshold of Manifest Destiny: Gender and National Expansion in Florida. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. ix + 273 pp.; ill. ISBN 978-0-8122-4836-4 (cl). Susan Sleeper-Smith. Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690–1792. Williamsburg, VA: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2018. vii + 376 pp.; ill. ISBN 978-1-4696-4058-7 (cl); 978-1-8468-591-69 (pb); 978-1-4696-4059-4 (ebook). Over the last two decades, scholars have rethought the history of empire and colonization in North America. Epitomized by Pekka Hämäläinen's Comanche Empire, historians have used the term "empire" to turn the tables on traditional assumptions about European power. They instead posit that Native empires maintained or increased control over the heart of the continent into and beyond the eighteenth century.1 At the same time, theorists of Native and Indigenous studies have used the framework of "settler colonialism" to identify the continuous drive for the erasure of multiple Native groups from North American landscapes from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries.2 These dual literatures open up analytical space for new considerations of the relationship between gender and empires in Native North America. If we take seriously notions of Native geopolitical power, while reckoning with the long-term eliminatory process of settler colonialism, what do we need to rethink about the histories of Indigenous women? Three new books, by Susan Sleeper-Smith, Tai S. Edwards, and Laurel Clark Shire, indicate how productive this analytical space can be. Their work shows that grounding studies deeply within women's work and culture can allow for better understandings of both Indigenous power and settler colonial processes. Tai S. Edwards's engaging study of Osage women puts both of these historiographic developments front and center. In four compact, highly readable chapters, Edwards explores women's contributions to the creation [End Page 146] of an Osage empire, and their subsequent experience of dispossession under the US empire. Ideal for undergraduate classroom use, Edwards's lucid prose takes the reader through a long sweep of Osage history. Drawing on a wealth of Indigenous sources and published anthropological research, Edwards gives a clear picture of women's lives and the function of gender complementarity at different stages of Osage history. Since she begins, rather than ends, with discussions of Two-Spirit people, who inhabited both gender roles in parallel, she prevents the reader from developing an overly-rigid sense of gender division. Instead, she shows the constant fluidity of male and female in Osage thinking. This clear summation of Osage gender norms allows Edwards to explore women's material and spiritual role in the rise of an Osage empire in the eighteenth century. Here, she relies on Kathleen DuVal's rethinking of Native power in the Arkansas River Valley and the work of such Osage specialists as Willard H. Rollings. She takes the framing of the Osage as an empire as a given, noting Hämäläinen's explication of the differences between Native American and European empires. Although Edwards agrees with Osage historians about their expansion and dominance with the coming of the fur trade, her understanding of Osage women's coequal place within this growing world offers a fresh perspective. The advent of exchanges in horses, furs, and slaves did not require a reorganization of gender roles; rather, new prosperity allowed more people to have access to spiritual knowledge, since having more goods to give away enabled more people to undergo initiation ceremonies. This meant a rise in the Osage celebration of Wa-kon'-da, the creative power, which "favored [women] with the mystic power of creating human life" (18). So, empire among the Osage, in Edwards's view, entailed a decline neither in women's spiritual importance nor in their daily work and material lives. Even Osage success in warfare and violence, a...

Is transactional sex exploitative? A social norms perspective, with implications for interventions with adolescent girls and young women in Tanzania.

Although transactional sex is common in many sexual relationships, there has been little research into the degree to which the practice is considered exploitative in the settings in which it is practiced. We describe the social norms that influence transactional sex in two sites in Mwanza, Tanzania, and explore local understandings of whether and under what conditions it is considered exploitative. We then compare these “emic” understandings of exploitation to international definitions and norms around sexual exploitation. This study employed a qualitative research design involving 18 focus group discussions and 43 in-depth interviews with young people aged 14–24 years and parents with children aged 14–24 years in a rural area and an urban center within Mwanza, Tanzania. Thematic analysis was conducted with the aid of NVivo 10. The social norms influencing the practice of transactional sex included: reciprocity as a core cultural value that permeates the way exchange in sexual relationships is judged; gendered expectations that men should provide for women’s material needs in sexual relationships and that women should reciprocate by means of sex; and peer pressure to be perceived as “fashionable”. Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) are under strong peer pressure to conform to a “modern lifestyle” as reflected in stylish clothing and other items of modernity such as cellphones. The emic conceptualization of exploitation is defined by circumstances surrounding the relationship or a sexual encounter. Important factors that characterize local notions of when transactional relationships are considered exploitative include: when the encounter or relationship involves an imbalance of power (based on age, male economic power and social status); when a man fails to reciprocate; and when sex is coerced. According to community perspectives, young women’s behavior should be considered exploitative of men when they take gifts or money yet refuse sex or when they demand large sums of money. Interventions aimed at reducing AGYW’s exploitation through transactional sex need to be cognizant of the variations in the understanding of what constitutes sexual exploitation as well as the social and gender norms influencing the practice of transactional sex. Interventions need to involve communities and families in critical thinking that helps them identify positive alternatives to current gendered social norms that shape the involvement of AGYW and men in transactional sex.

Supplemental Material for Women’s Short-Term Mating Goals Elicit Avoidance of Faces Whose Eyes Lack Limbal Rings

Supplemental Material for Women’s Short-Term Mating Goals Elicit Avoidance of Faces Whose Eyes Lack Limbal Rings

Supplemental Material for Women’s Work: Remembering Communal Goals

Supplemental Material for Women’s Work: Remembering Communal Goals

Supplemental Material for Women’s Experiences of Immigration to Canada: A Review of the Literature

Supplemental Material for Women’s Experiences of Immigration to Canada: A Review of the Literature

Pubic hair and its removal: A practice beyond the personal

Pubic hair removal, now common among women in Anglo/western cultures, has been theorised as a disciplinary practice. As many other feminine bodily practices, it is characterised by removal or alteration of aspects of women's material body (i.e., pubic hair) considered unattractive but otherwise “natural.” Emerging against this theorisation is a discourse of personal agency and choice, wherein women assert autonomy and self-mastery of their own bodies and body practices. In this paper, we use a thematic analysis to examine the interview talk about pubic hair from 11 sexually and ethnically diverse young women in New Zealand. One overarching theme – pubic hair is undesirable; its removal is desirable – encapsulates four themes we discuss in depth, which illustrate the personal, interpersonal and sociocultural influences intersecting the practice: (a) pubic hair removal is a personal choice; (b) media promote pubic hair removal; (c) friends and family influence pubic hair removal; and (d) the (imagined) intimate influences pubic hair removal. Despite minor variations among queer women, a perceived norm of genital hairlessness was compelling among the participants. Despite the articulated freedom to practise pubic hair removal, any freedom from participating in this practice appeared limited, rendering the suggestion that it is just a “choice” problematic.

Some years you live like a coyote: Gendered practices of cultural resilience in working rangeland landscapes.

Rangeland researchers are increasingly interested in understanding working rangelands as integrated social–ecological systems and in investigating the contexts of human decision-making processes that support system resilience. U.S. public lands ranchers are key partners in rangeland conservation, but the role of women in building system resilience has not yet been explored. We conducted life-history interviews with 19 ranching women in the Southwestern United States. We analyzed the resulting transcripts by identifying contradictions between women’s material practices and traditional discourses in the ranching livelihood that illustrated women’s efforts to maintain both a way of life and a living during social and ecological change. These gendered practices of cultural resilience included self-sacrifice during difficult financial times, engagement with non-rancher networks, and efforts to transfer cultural and technical knowledge. We argue that the key part ranchers play in rangeland conservation cannot be fully understood without a consideration of gendered practices of cultural resilience.

“Doing the Impossible”

In 1915, the California Commission of Immigration and Housing (CCIH) unveiled a bold new experiment: the Home Teacher Program. In Los Angeles, this program sent volunteers into Mexican communities to teach immigrant women new, more “American” ways of homemaking and childrearing. The lesson plans, sample dialogues, teacher testimonies, and photographs featured in CCIH publications provide a fascinating window on to the tense interactions between home teachers and immigrant women. Scholars have long explored different ways of mining institutional records and other forms of writing by Americanization advocates for insights into the experiences of those who participated in the programs. This essay contributes to the discussion of California's Americanization curricula in two ways: First, I provide a close reading of CCIH texts in order to uncover and analyze three layers of recorded experience: (1) teacher biases confronted by immigrant women; (2) immigrant women's difficult material realities; and (3) immigrant women's complex responses to Americanization. Second, I provide further evidence for the view that Mexican immigrant women responded to Americanization efforts in a variety of ways, from outright resistance to milder forms of pushback and, at times, conditional acceptance of the “American” customs presented to them. In light of the evidence, I argue that Mexican immigrant women were “doing the impossible” by laying claim to a piece of California through the complex relationship they negotiated with the home teachers. Although Americanization programs intended to flatten Mexican women's ethnic affiliations, the immigrant women found subtle ways to assert their agency, survive hardship and prejudice, and forge a new Mexican American ethnic community in the process.

Supplemental Material for Women With Alcohol Dependence: A Randomized Trial of Couple Versus Individual Plus Couple Therapy

Supplemental Material for Women With Alcohol Dependence: A Randomized Trial of Couple Versus Individual Plus Couple Therapy

Supplemental Material for Women Selectively Guard Their (Desirable) Mates From Ovulating Women

Supplemental Material for Women Selectively Guard Their (Desirable) Mates From Ovulating Women

Feminine Libidinal Entrepreneurship

This essay examines the upward mobility appeal of Serbia's post-socialist feminine libidinal entrepreneurship rooted in the figure of the sponzoruša (“sponsored woman”), and closely tied to the aesthetics of turbo folk. Contrary to the dominant critical dismissal of the phenomenon as inherently anti-feminist, the sponzoruša figure has the potential to reveal deeply contradictory tendencies of popular culture: to both reaffirm and transgress some of society's most troubling hierarchies. Here I offer a reparative reading of the sponzoruša as a figure that deploys her very features of sexual difference towards an enactment of class mobility during precarious times. I examine how, within the performative domain of such technologically mediated, post-socialist femininity, a potentially transgressive challenge to traditional gender roles takes place. This challenge, embodied in what I call a cyborg-goddess, exposes both femininity and class identity as historically and economically contingent factors of women's material and cultural marginalization. I argue that turbo folk's sponzoruša has the potential—though not a guarantee—to short-circuit a clean boundary between nature and technology and the ways in which this binary constitutes womanhood as such.

Supplemental Material for Women’s Representation in Science Predicts National Gender-Science Stereotypes: Evidence From 66 Nations

Supplemental Material for Women’s Representation in Science Predicts National Gender-Science Stereotypes: Evidence From 66 Nations