United Kingdom

The Reconstruction of Masculinities in Global Politics: Gendering Strategies in the Field of Private Security

Citation:

Stachowitsch, Saskia. 2015. “The Reconstruction of Masculinities in Global Politics: Gendering Strategies in the Field of Private Security.” Men and Masculinities 18(2): 363-386.

Author: Saskia Stachowitsch

Abstract:

The concept of masculinities has been central to the analysis of private security as a gendered phenomenon. This research has either focused on the identity constructions and practices of security contractors as men or on masculinity as a theoretical and ideological framework for making sense of security outsourcing. This article aims to overcome this dualism by developing a relational, strategic, and discursive understanding of masculinities and focusing on the gendering strategies that create them. These strategies are identified as masculinization of the market and feminization of the state, feminization and racialization of (some) security work, hypermasculinization as a critical or affirmative discourse, romanticizing the autonomous male bond, and militarization of private security. It is argued that private security as well as critical discourses on it integrate business, humanitarian, and militarized masculinities in a way that ultimately legitimizes masculinism and reconstructs masculinity as a privileged category in international politics.

Keywords: private security, feminist international relations, PMSCs, gendering strategies, masculinism

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Militarization, Security Regions: Americas, North America, Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom, United States of America

Year: 2015

The Participation of Women in Peace Processes. The Other Tables

Citation:

Villellas Ariño, María. 2010. "The Participation of Women in Peace Processes. The Other Tables." Barcelona: Institut Catalá Internacional per la Pau.

Author: María Villellas Ariño

Abstract:

This paper argues that women’s absence in peace processes cannot be explained by their alleged lack of experience in dialogue and negotiation, but by a serious lack of will to include them in such important initiatives of change. Women have wide ranging experience in dialogue processes including many war and post-war contexts, but there has been a deliberate lack of effort to integrate them in formal peace processes. After introducing the research framework, the paper addresses women’s involvement in peace, and analyzes the role played by women in peace processes, through the cases of Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland. The paper concludes that peace processes are as gendered as wars, and for that reason gender has to be a guiding line for including women in peace processes. (Abstract from original)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Gender Roles, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Post-Conflict Regions: Asia, South Asia, Europe, Northern Europe Countries: Sri Lanka, United Kingdom

Year: 2010

Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations and Challenges

Citation:

Cornwall, Andrea, Elizabeth Harrison, and Ann Whitehead. 2007. Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations and Challenges. Zed Books.

Authors: Andrea Cornwall, Elizabeth Harrison, Anna Whitehead

Annotation:

Summary:
The political project of reasserting feminist engagement with development has proceeded uneasily in recent years. This text examines how the arguments of feminist researchers have often become depoliticised by development institutions and offers accounts of the pitfalls and compromises of the politics of engagement (Summary from WorldCat).
 
Table of Contents:
1. Gender myths that instrumentalise women : a view from the Indian frontline
Srilatha Batliwala and Deepa Dhanraj
 
2. Dangerous equations? : how female-headed households became the poorest of the poor : causes, consequences and cautions
Sylvia Chant
 
3. Back to women? translations, re-significations, and myths of gender in policy and practice in Brazil
Cecilia Sardenberg
 
4. Battles over booklets : gender myths in the British aid programme
Rosalind Eyben
 
5. Not very poor, powerless or pregnant : the African woman forgotten by development
Everjoice Win
 
6. 'Streetwalkers show the way' : reframing the debate on trafficking from sex workers' perspective
Nandinee Bandyopadhyay with Swapna Gayen [and others]
 
7. Gender, myth and fable : the perils of mainstreaming in sector bureaucracies
Hilary Standing
 
8. Making sense of gender in shifting institutional contexts : some reflections on gender mainstreaming
Ramya Subrahmanian
 
9. Gender mainstreaming : what is it (about) and should we continue doing it?
Prudence Woodford-Berger
 
10. Mainstreaming gender or 'streaming' gender away : feminists marooned in the development business
Maitrayee Mukhopadhay
 
11. Critical connections : feminist studies in African contexts
Amina Mama
 
12. SWApping gender : from cross-cutting obscurity to sectoral security?
Anne Marie Goetz and Joanne Sandler
 
13. The NGO-ization of Arab Women's Movements
Islah Jad
 
14. Political fiction meets gender myth : post-conflict reconstruction, 'democratisation' and women's rights
Deniz Kandiyoti
 
15. Re-assessing paid work and women's empowerment : lessons from the global economy
Ruth Pearson
 
16. Announcing a new dawn prematurely? human rights feminists and the rights based approaches to development
Dzodzi Tsikata
 
17. The chimera of success : gender ennui and the changed international policy environment
Maxine Molyneux.
 

Topics: Development, Economies, Poverty, Gender Mainstreaming, Households, International Financial Institutions, NGOs Regions: Africa, MENA, Americas, South America, Asia, South Asia, Europe, Western Europe Countries: Brazil, India, United Kingdom

Year: 2007

Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670 to 2005

Citation:

Mercier, L., and J. Gier-Viskovatoff. 2006. Mining Women: Gender in the Development of a Global Industry, 1670 to 2005. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Authors: L. Mercier, J. Gier-Viskovatoff

Abstract:

This book explores gender relations and women's work and activism in different parts of the world. It also explores the subject from multiple perspectives and links each of these not only to cultural and domestic arrangements but also to an emerging industrial and capitalist system from the Eighteenth through the Twentieth centuries. (Abstract from Palgrave Macmillan)

Annotation:

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
Mercier, Laurie et al.
 
2. Mining Women, Royal Slaves: Copper Mining in Colonial Cuba, 1670–1780
Díaz, María Elena
 
3. Making a Difference in Colonial Interventionism in Gold Mining in Wassa Fiase, Gold Coast (Ghana): The Activism of Two Women, 1874–1893
Akurang-Parry, Kwabena O.
 
4. Lifting the Layers of the Mountain’s Petticoats: Mining and Gender in Potosí’s Pachamama
Absi, Pascale
 
5. Kamins Building the Empire: Class, Caste, and Gender Interface in Indian Collieries
Lahiri-Dutt, Kuntala
 
6. Sociability, Solidarity, and Social Exclusion: Women’s Activism in the South Wales Coalfield, ca. 1830 to 1939
Jones, Rosemary
 
7. Gender Relations in Iron Mining Communities in Sweden, 1900–1940
Blomberg, Eva
 
8. Invisible Labor: A Comparative Oral History of Women in Coal Mining Communities of Hokkaido, Japan, and Montana, USA, 1890–1940
Yoshida, Kayoko (et al.)
 
9. Coal Mining Women Speak Out: Economic Change and Women Miners of Chikuho, Japan
Sone, Sachiko
 
10. “I’m a Johnny Mitchell Man”: Gender and Labor Protest in the Pennsylvania Hard Coal Uprising, 1900–1902
Stepenoff, Bonnie
 
11. Violence and the Colorado National Guard: Masculinity, Race, Class, and Identity in the 1913–1914 Southern Colorado Coal Strike
DeStefanis, Anthony
 
12. “I Hate to Be Calling Her a Wife Now”: Women and Men in the Salt of the Earth Strike, 1950–1952
Baker, Ellen
 
13. Godless Communists and Faithful Wives, Gender Relations and the Cold War: Mine Mill and the 1958 Strike against the International Nickel Company
Steedman, Mercedes
 
14. Just a Housewife? Miners’ Wives between Household and Work in Postwar Germany
Jung, Yong-Sook
 
15. Women into Mining Jobs at Inco: Challenging the Gender Division of Labor
Keck, Jennifer (et al.)
 
16. From Ludlow to Camp Solidarity: Women, Men, and Cultures of Solidarity in U.S. Coal Communities, 1912–1990
Guerin-Gonzales, Camille
 
17. Epilogue
Gier, Jaclyn J.

Topics: Caste, Class, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Economies, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Post-Conflict Regions: Africa, West Africa, Americas, Caribbean countries, North America, South America, Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Europe, Nordic states, Northern Europe Countries: Bolivia, Cuba, Ghana, India, Japan, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States of America

Year: 2006

Faslane Peace Camp and the Political Economy of the Everyday

Citation:

Eschle, Catherine. 2016. “Faslane Peace Camp and the Political Economy of the Everyday.” Globalizations 13 (6): 912-14.

Author: Catherine Eschle

Annotation:

"In what ways is ‘the everyday’ reproduced and reconfigured at protest camps? I pursue this question in my current research project, in which protest camps are defined as a ‘place-based social movement strategy that involves both acts of ongoing protest and acts of social reproduction needed to sustain everyday life’ (Feigenbaum, Frenzel, & McCurdy, 2013, p. 12). My interest in the domestic arrangements of camps is common among observers, appearing prurient and disproportionate to those actually living them. As one interviewee from Faslane Peace Camp put it, ‘D’you know, I am actually here to try and stop the end of the world . . . and all you want to talk about is the bloody toilets!’ (‘Anna’, interview 22/10/2014). Nonetheless, buttressed by a feminist curiosity about the interconnections between the personal and political, I cling to the view that the reconfiguration of the everyday in protest camps is intrinsic rather than irrelevant to their political effect. In this short piece, I examine how daily life at Faslane Peace Camp, in Scotland, depends upon and fosters the critical interrogation of economic norms" (Eschle 2016, p. 912).

Topics: Civil Society, Conflict Prevention, Economies, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Conflict, Peace and Security, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Nonviolence Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2016

Making Women Visible in Disasters: Problematising the Private Domain

Citation:

Fordham, Maureen H. 1998. “Making Women Visible in Disasters: Problematising the Private Domain.” Disasters 22 (2): 126–43. 

Author: Maureen H. Fordham

Abstract:

Gender awareness and sensitivity in disaster research and management remains uncommon and tends to focus on the developing rather than the developed world. This paper uses a feminist oral geography to present some findings about women's experiences in two floods in Scotland. It is conceptualised around public and private (masculinised and feminised) space, problematising the private domain and presenting it, in the feminist research tradition, as a legitimate object of research. It shows the ordinary and everyday to be more opaque and complex than usually imagined and makes recommendations for their recognition and incorporation into disaster management. While there is a specific focus on the private domain of the home, this is not intended to reinforce gender stereotypes but simply to recognise the reality of many of the women interviewed. It concludes that disaster research generally has yet to advance much beyond the earliest stages of feminist studies which merely sought to make women visible in society.

Keywords: gender awareness, Scotland, floods, vulnerability

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Households Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 1998

Women, Violence, and Social Change in Northern Ireland and Chiapas: Societies Between Tradition and Transition

Citation:

Hoewer, Melanie. 2013. “Women, Violence, and Social Change in Northern Ireland and Chiapas: Societies Between Tradition and Transition.” International Journal of Conflict and Violence 7 (2): 216–31.

Author: Melanie Hoewer

Abstract:

Violence against women occurs in peacetime, intensifies during wartime, and continues in the aftermath of armed conflict. Women sometimes make gains during conflict and their efforts to break the pattern of violence have led to a greater awareness of gender-based violence. However, a lack of acknowledgement of transformations in gender identity at the macro-level during peace processes may create conflict in intimate partnerships. This study brings to light the complexity of changes occurring during peace processes in a multi-level analysis of women’s perceptions and positioning towards the state, their community, and their intimate partnership. This comparative analysis of fifty-seven female activists’ narratives from Chiapas and Northern Ireland demonstrates how a one-dimensional peace process (Northern Ireland) can limit the space for addressing women’s concerns, while peace processes that transcend the ethno- national dimension of conflict (Chiapas) can open a dialogue on issues of contention in male-female relationships.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, National Liberation Wars, Combatants, Domestic Violence, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Men, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Paramilitaries, Non-State Armed Groups, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Violence Regions: Americas, North America, Europe, Northern Europe Countries: Mexico, United Kingdom

Year: 2013

A Grounded Theory Investigation Into the Experiences of African Women Refugees: Effects on Resilience and Identity and Implications for Service Provision.

Citation:

Sherwood, Katie, and Helen Liebling-Kalifani. 2012. “A Grounded Theory Investigation Into The Experiences Of African Women Refugees: Effects On Resilience And Identity And Implications For Service Provision1.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 13 (1): 86-108.

Authors: Katie Sherwood, Helen Liebling-Kalifani

Abstract:

The current study aims to explore African women’s experiences of violence during conflict. The research was undertaken in 2009 in part fulfilment for a Doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology. Previous research on women refugees’ experiences has focused on the negative impact on psychological functioning despite indications that they show great strength and resilience. Using qualitative methods the study sought to identify the impact of violence on mental health as well as develop a greater understanding of the roles of resilience, coping and identity. Women from Somalia and Zimbabwe who attended a refugee centre in the UK were interviewed; analysis of the results identified a relationship between resilience, access to rights and support and identity. It also recognised cultural and societal influences and experiences in the United Kingdom as contributing factors. Findings support the move toward a more holistic model of understanding refugee women’s experiences. However, the study also reveals the importance of support and treatment assisting women to utilise their resilience in reconstructing their identities from traumatic events and recovery process.

Keywords: women, refugees, trauma, Africa, gender based violence

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Gender-Based Violence, Health, Mental Health, Trauma, Humanitarian Assistance, Context-Appropriate Response to Trauma, Rights, Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, Northern Europe Countries: Somalia, United Kingdom, Zimbabwe

Year: 2012

The Precarity of Feminisation: On Domestic Work, Heteronormativity and the Coloniality of Labour

Citation:

Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, Encarnación. 2014. “The Precarity of Feminisation: On Domestic Work, Heteronormativity and the Coloniality of Labour.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 27 (2): 191–202. doi:10.1007/s10767-013-9154-7.

Author: Encarnación Gutiérrez-Rodríguez

Abstract:

Despite women’s increasing participation in the labour market and attempts to transform the traditional gendered division of work, domestic and care work is still perceived as women’s terrain. This work continues to be invisible in terms of the organisation of production or productive value and domestic and care work continues to be unpaid or low paid. Taking domestic and care work as an expression of the feminisation of labour, this article will attempt to complicate this analysis by first exploring a queer critique of feminisation, and second, by situating feminisation within the context of the coloniality of power. Drawing on research conducted in Austria, Germany, Spain and the UK on the organisation of domestic work in private households, the article will conclude with some observations on the interconnectedness of feminisation, heteronormativity and the coloniality of power in the analysis of the expansion of precarity in the EU zone.

Keywords: coloniality, feminisation, Europe, heteronormativity, precarity

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Households, Livelihoods Regions: Europe, Central Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Western Europe Countries: Austria, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom

Year: 2014

Gender, Representation and Power-Sharing in Post-Conflict Institutions

Citation:

 Byrne, Siobhan and Allison McCulloch. 2012. "Gender, Representation and Power-Sharing in Post-Conflict Institutions" International Peacekeeping 19 (5): 565-580

Authors: Siobhan Bryne, Allison McCulloch

Abstract:

An emerging tension characterizes conflict resolution practice: promoting power-sharing between ethnic groups while simultaneously mandating women’s inclusion in peace processes and in post-conflict institutions. Scholars of ethnic conflict have not adequately theorized the gender implications of power-sharing, and practitioners have failed to implement mechanisms that would make power-sharing representative of constituencies beyond ethno-national cleavages. There is no substantive reason why the representation of women and ethnic groups should be in tension. Nevertheless, gender is often ignored in the power-sharing literature and gender-mainstreaming practices appear irreconcilable with power-sharing practice. Drawing on three cases of post-conflict power-sharing – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, and Northern Ireland – this article identifies reasons why this tension remains in practice, especially the overriding emphasis in powersharing on ethno-nationalist elites and conflict protagonists.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Peace Processes, Post-Conflict Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Burundi, United Kingdom

Year: 2012

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