Femininity/ies

Citation:

Kronsell, Annica. 2016. “Sexed Bodies and Military Masculinities: Gender Path Dependence in EU's Common Security and Defense Policy.” Men and Masculinities 19 (3): 311–36.

Author: Annica Kronsell

Abstract:

This article explores the European Union (EU)’s Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) through a framework based on feminist institutional theory that highlights the durability in the dynamics of gender relations. Path dependency based on historic features of military institutions—a strict sex division based on ‘‘gender war roles’’— has influenced the development of different CSDP bodies. The CSDP is sexed because male bodies dominate the organizations studied, yet this remains invisible through normalization. A dominant EU hierarchical military masculinity is institutionalized in the EU’s Military Committee, combat heterosexual masculinity in the Battle groups, and EU protector masculinity in the EU Training missions. The CSDP embodies different types of military masculinities; the relations between them are important for the reproduction of the gender order through a gendered logic of appropriateness. Yet, this too is invisible as part of the informal aspects of organizations. While women’s bodies are written out of the CSDP, the construction of femininity in relation to the protector/protected binary is central to it. Two protected femininities are read in the texts. The vulnerable femininity of women in conflict areas is important for how the CSDP understands itself in relation to gender mainstreaming. In relation to the vulnerable femininity, CSDP constructs an EU protector masculinity, in turn, set against an aggressive violent masculinity in the areas where missions are deployed. Women’s bodies are absent from the CSDP and they lack agency but are nevertheless associated with a protected femininity. 

Keywords: conflict, Europe, feminism, gender equality, hegemonic masculinity

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Male Combatants, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militarization, Security, Security Sector Reform Regions: Europe

Year: 2016

Citation:

Kihato, Caroline Wanjiku. 2015. “'Go Back and Tell Them Who the Real Men Are!' Gendering Our Understanding of Kibera’s Post-Election Violence.” International Journal of Conflict and Violence 9 (1): 12-24.

Author: Caroline Wanjiku Kihato

Abstract:

Using a gendered analysis, this article examines the post election violence (PEV) in Kibera, Kenya, between December 2007 and February 2008. Through indepth interviews with Kibera residents, the article interrogates how gender influenced violent mobilizations in Kenya’s most notorious slum. Most scholarly analyses have tended to understand the post-election violence as a result of politicized ethnic identities, class, and local socio-economic dynamics. Implicitly or explicitly, these frameworks assume that women are victims of violence while men are its perpetrators, and ignore the ways in which gender, which cuts across these categories, produces and shapes conflict. Kibera’s conflict is often ascribed to the mobilization of disaffected male youths by political “Big Men.” But the research findings show how men, who would ordinarily not go to war, are obliged to fight to “save face” in their communities and how women become integral to the production of violent exclusionary mobilizations. Significantly, notions of masculinity and femininity modified the character of Kibera’s conflict. Acts of gender-based violence, gang rapes, and forced circumcisions became intensely entwined with ethno-political performances to annihilate opposing groups. The battle for political power was also a battle of masculinities.

Keywords: conflict, xenophobia, violence

Topics: Class, Ethnicity, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Femininity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Governance, Elections, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya

Year: 2015

Citation:

Bilgic, Ali. 2015. "Hybrid Hegemonic Masculinity of the EU Before and After the Arab Spring: A Gender Analysis of Euro-Mediterranean Security Relations." Mediterranean Politics 20 (3): 322-41.

Author: Ali Bilgic

Abstract:

In the academic literature on EU–southern Mediterranean relations, a focal point of neglect has been the gendered dimension of Euro-Mediterranean relations. This article argues that the Euro-Mediterranean space has been formed within the gendered global West/non-West relations with the purpose of promoting the West's security interests. Euro-Mediterranean security relations, thus, embody a gendered power hierarchy between the hybrid hegemonic masculinity of the EU (bourgeois-rational and citizen-warrior) and the subordinate (both feminized and hyper masculinized) southern neighborhood. In addition, it shows that following the Arab Spring the EU has been determined to maintain the status quo by reconstructing these gendered power relations. This gender analysis contributes to the literature on Euro-Mediterranean relations through its specific focus on the (re)construction processes of gendered identities within the West/non-West context in tandem with the EU's competing notions of security. 

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, International Organizations, Security Regions: Africa, MENA, Asia, Middle East, Europe

Year: 2015

Citation:

Millar, Katharine M. 2015. "Death Does Not Become Her: An Examination of the Public Construction of Female American Soldiers as Liminal Figure." Review of International Studies 41 (04): 757-79. doi: 10.1017/s0260210514000424.

Author: Katharine M. Millar

Abstract:

Since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, over 150 female American military personnel have been killed, over 70 following hostile fire. Given Western society’s long-standing practice of reserving the conduct of collective violence to men, these very public deaths are difficult to encompass within the normative and ideological structures of the contemporary American political system. This study examines the ways in which the public duty to commemorate the heroism of soldiers – and the private desire to accurately remember daughters and wives – poses a significant challenge to coherent discursive representation. In doing so, the study employs hermeneutical interpretation to analyse public representations of female soldiers and their relation to death in US popular culture. These representations are examined via Judith Butler’s concept of grievability – the possibility of receiving recognition as a worthy life within the existing social imaginary. It is argued that female soldiers are grievable as both ‘good soldiers’ and ‘good women’, but not as ‘good female soldiers’. The unified subject position of ‘good female soldier’ is liminal, and thus rendered socially and politically unintelligible. The article concludes with an analysis of the implications of this liminality for collective mourning and the possibility of closure after trauma.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militarism Regions: MENA, Americas, North America, Asia, Middle East, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, United States of America

Year: 2015

Citation:

Moghadam, Valentine M. 2013. “Toward Human Security and Gender Justice: Reflections on Afghanistan and Iraq.” In Globalization, Social Movements, and Peacebuilding, edited by Jackie Smith and Ernesto Verdeja, 97–133. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

Author: Valentine M. Moghadam

Topics: Gender, Women, Men, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Justice, Security, Human Security, Violence Regions: Africa, MENA, Asia, Middle East, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan, Iraq

Year: 2013

Citation:

Kressel, Gideon M. 1992. “Shame and Gender.” Anthropological Quarterly 65 (1): 34-46.

Author: Gideon M. Kressel

Abstract:

Gender segregation among groups of Bedouin now living in Ramla, Israel, is examined and compared with the parallel phenomenon among the Bedouin of the Negev Highlands. Both groups leave to the mother the task of inculcating in girls the notions of claustration and propriety and, frequently, of supervising the mutilation of genitals. Why do mothers accept this role and thereby perpetuate the gender-related perceptions of shame (femininity) and honor (masculinity)? Several rationalizations are examined. My explanation relates to social structure and conventions of group dynamics. The link between shame and gender also supplies the metaphor for the superior status of big agnatic groups over small ones. The perpetuation of women’s inferiority is here read through the code of symbols underlying community politics.

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Femininity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Health Regions: Africa, MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel

Year: 1992

Citation:

Agathangelou, Anna M., and L. H. M. Ling. 2004. “Power, Borders, Security, Wealth: Lessons of Violence and Desire from September 11.” International Studies Quarterly 48 (3): 517–38.

Authors: Anna M. Agathangelou, L. H. M. Ling

Abstract:

America's “war on terror” and Al Qaeda's “jihad” reflect mirror strategies of imperial politics. Each camp transnationalizes violence and insecurity in the name of national or communal security. Neoliberal globalization underpins this militarization of daily life. Its desire industries motivate and legitimate elite arguments (whether from “infidels” or “terrorists”) that society must sacrifice for its hypermasculine leaders. Such violence and desire draw on colonial identities of Self vs. Other, patriotism vs. treason, hunter vs. prey, and masculinity vs. femininity that are played out on the bodies of ordinary men and women. We conclude with suggestions of a human security to displace the elite privilege that currently besets world politics.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Security, Human Security, Violence

Year: 2004

Citation:

Elias, Wafa, Gregory Newmark, and Yoram Shiftan. 2008. “Gender and Travel Behavior in Two Arab Communities in Israel.” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2067 (December): 75–83. doi:10.3141/2067-09.

Authors: Wafa Elias, Gregory Newmark, Yoram Shiftan

Abstract:

This research addresses the critical but understudied issue of gender differences in travel behaviors in traditional societies, in general, and in the Arab world, in particular. To avoid known problems of data collection, a careful and labor-intensive survey process was undertaken in two Arab communities in northern Israel. The data gathered through this process were analyzed by a variety of statistical means to reveal that rather stark gender distinctions in travel behavior exist. On the whole, men make more tours, spend more time traveling, make more stops, and spend more time at activities at those stops than women. Men disproportionately travel by private vehicle modes, whereas women disproportionately walk. In the communities surveyed, the amount of transit provided was low and had a correspondingly low mode share. This dearth of transit seems to impair women’s travel further. An extensive comparison of adult female and male tour frequencies was undertaken by using bivariate correlations and an ordered logit model. The most striking finding of this analysis was that 1/6th of Arab women do not leave the house to make even a single tour, whereas this proportion is 1/30th for men. The more nuanced statistical analyses revealed that demographic factors affect tour frequency differently for women and men. Effective policy interventions must consider these gender distinctions to address in the best way possible the travel needs of individuals in communities in the Arab world.

Topics: Gender, Women, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel

Year: 2008

Citation:

Porter, Gina. 2011. “‘I Think a Woman Who Travels a Lot Is Befriending Other Men and That’s Why She Travels’: Mobility Constraints and Their Implications for Rural Women and Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Gender, Place & Culture 18 (1): 65–81. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2011.535304.

Author: GIna Porter

Abstract:

This article is concerned with the implications of practices, politics and meanings of mobility for women and girl children in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Women and girls commonly face severe mobility constraints which affect their livelihoods and their life chances. The article reflects on their experiences in rural areas where patriarchal institutions (including the gender division of labour, which places great emphasis on female labour contributions to household production and reproduction), and a patriarchal discourse concerning linkages between women's mobility, vulnerability and sexual appetite, shape everyday social practices and material inequalities. This compounds the physical constraints imposed by poor accessibility (to services and markets) associated with poor roads and inadequate transport in both direct and more complex ways. The article draws on field research conducted in diverse socio-cultural and agro-ecological contexts in western and southern Africa (principally southern Ghana, southern Malawi and northern and central Nigeria) to explore the impacts of relative immobility and poor service access on women and girls. Three (interconnected) issues are examined in some detail: access to markets, access to education and access to health services. Possible interventions to initiate positive change are considered. (Abstract from original source)

Keywords: Gender, mobility, markets, education, health, promiscuity, transport

Topics: Civil Society, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Health, Infrastructure, Transportation, Sexuality Regions: Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa Countries: Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria

Year: 2011

Citation:

Gunkel, Henriette. 2010. The Cultural Politics of Female Sexuality in South Africa. New York & Oxon: Routledge.

Author: Henriette Gunkel

Abstract:

Sexual identity has emerged into the national discourse of post-apartheid South Africa, bringing the subject of rights and the question of gender relations and cultural authenticity into the focus of the nation state's politics. This book is a fascinating reflection on the effects of these discourses on non-normative modes of sexuality and intimacy and on the country more generally. While in 1996, South Africa became the first country in the world that explicitly incorporated lesbian and gay rights within a Bill of Rights, much of the country has continued to see homosexuality as un-African. Henriette Gunkel examines how colonialism and apartheid have historically shaped constructions of gender and sexuality and how these concepts have not only been re-introduced and shaped by understandings of homosexuality as un-African but also by the post-apartheid constitution and continued discourse within the nation.

Topics: Gender, Women, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Justice, Crimes against Humanity, LGBTQ, Post-Conflict Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2010