Gender Roles

Transnational Cycles of Gendered Vulnerability: A Prologue to a Theory of Global Gender Justice

Citation:

Jaggar, Alison M. 2009. “Transnational Cycles of Gendered Vulnerability: A Prologue to a Theory of Global Gender Justice.” Philosophical Topics 37 (2): 33-52.

Author: Alison M. Jaggar

Abstract:

Across the world, the lives of men and women who are otherwise similarly situated tend to differ from each other systematically. Although gender disparities vary widely within and among regions, women everywhere are disproportionately vulnerable to povery, abuse, and political marginalization. This article proposes that global gender disparities are caused by a network of norms, practices, policies, and institutions that include transnational as well as national elements. These interlaced and interacting factors frequently modify and sometimes even reduce gendered vulnerabilities but their overall effect is to maintain and often intensify them. Women's vulnerabilities in different areas of life mutually reinforce each other and I follow other authores in referring to such casual feedback loops as cycles of gendered vulnerability. I argue taht these cycles now operate on a transnational as well as national scale and I illustrate this by discussing the examples of domestic work and sex work. If global institutional arrangements do indeed contribute to maintaining or intensifying distinctively gendered vulnerabilities, these arrangements deserve critical scrutiny from philosophers concerned with global justice.

Topics: Economies, Poverty, Gender, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods

Year: 2009

Teachers’ Perceptions of National Identity and Its Intersection with Gender: A Phenomenological Study in a Conflict Society

Citation:

Panteli, Yolanda, and Michalinos Zembylas. 2013. “Teachers’ Perceptions of National Identity and Its Intersection with Gender: A Phenomenological Study in a Conflict Society.” Gender & Education 25 (4): 379–95. doi:10.1080/09540253.2012.746648.

Authors: Yolanda Panteli, Zembylas Michalinos

Abstract:

The aim of this study is to investigate Greek-Cypriot teachers’ perceptions regarding the role that national identity and its intersection with gender play in representations of the past. Drawing on data deriving from forty individual interviews and analysed through the lens of intersectionality theory, it is shown that: although all teachers were able to recognise the role of national identity in representations of the past in the Cyprus conflict, the majority of these teachers were not equally aware of the gender politics in representations of the past. The participants seemed to be willing to take responsibility for the ways in which they represented the national identity, but they were not willing to assume responsibility for their gendered representations; instead, these representations were deemed ‘unconscious’ or a ‘product of tradition’ or the ‘natural order’ and, thus, not within their control. The paper ends with a discussion of how this study informs educational research and teacher professional development, concerning the intersection of national identity and gender in relation to issues of collective memory.

Keywords: identities, qualitative interviews, conflict and post-conflict studies, primary (elementary) education

Topics: Education, Gender, Gender Roles, Nationalism Regions: Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Cyprus, Greece

Year: 2013

Gender and the Global Economic Crisis in Developing Countries: A Framework for Analysis

Citation:

Elson, Diane. 2010. “Gender and the Global Economic Crisis in Developing Countries: A Framework for Analysis.” Gender and Development 18 (2): 201-12.

Author: Diane Elson

Abstract:

This paper sets out a framework for thinking about the gender dimensions of the economic crisis. It considers the likely impact of the crisis, as well as the responses to it, on the part of both individuals and collectivities, in three spheres of the economy: finance; production; and reproduction. It identifies the kinds of 'gender numbers' that we need; sex-disaggregated statistics of various kinds. It also argues that we need to pay attention to gender norms--the social practices and ideas that shape the behavior of people and institutions. The norms may be reinforced in times of crisis; but they may also start to decompose as individuals transgress norms under the pressures of crisis. In addition, there may be opportunities for the transformation of norms, through collective action to institute new, more egalitarian, social practices and ideas.

Keywords: economic crisis, finance, production, Gender, reproduction

Topics: Economies, Gender, Gender Roles

Year: 2010

Gender Aspects of Human Security

Citation:

Moussa, Ghada. 2008. “Gender Aspects of Human Security.” International Social Science Journal 59 (193): 81-100.

Author: Ghada Moussa

Abstract:

The chapter deals with the gender dimensions in human security through focusing on the relationship between gender and human security, first manifested in international declarations and conventions, and subsequently evolving in world women conferences. It aims at analysing the various gender aspects in its relation to different human security dimensions. Gender equality is influenced and affected by many social institutions: the state, the market, the family (kinship) and the community. Human security also takes gender aspects. The author focuses on the dimensions in human security that influence gender equality. These are violence as a threat to human security and negative influences in achieving gender equality, the needs approach, poverty alleviation and considering women as among the most vulnerable groups in the society. Raising the capabilities of women is essential in achieving gender equality, thus security and participation is needed to guarantee equality and to realise gender equality.

Keywords: human security, gender equality, world women conferences, gender based violence, poverty, political participation

Topics: Civil Society, Economies, Economic Inequality, Poverty, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Gender Balance, Gender-Based Violence, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Nonviolence, Political Participation, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Security, Human Security, Sexual Violence, Violence

Year: 2008

Power, Patriarchy, and Gender Conflict in the Vietnamese Immigrant Community

Citation:

Kibria, Nazli. 1990. “Power, Patriarchy, and Gender Conflict in the Vietnamese Immigrant Community.” Gender and Society 4 (1): 9-24.

Author: Nazli Kibria

Abstract:

Based on an ethnographic study of women's social groups and networks in a community of Vietnamese immigrants recently settled in the US, this article explores the effects of migration on gender roles and power. The women's groups and networks play an important role in the exchange of social and economic resources among households and in the mediation of disputes between men and women in the family. These community forms are an important source of informal power for women, enabling them to cope effectively with male authority in the family. Yet, despite their increased power and economic resources, these women supported a patriarchal social structure because it preserved their parental authority and promised greater economic security in the future.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Economies, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Households Regions: Americas, North America, Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: United States of America, Vietnam

Year: 1990

Gender and ‘Peace Work’: An Unofficial History of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations

Citation:

Aharoni, Sarai. 2011. “Gender and ‘Peace Work’: An Unofficial History of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations.” Politics & Gender 7 (3): 391–416. doi:10.1017/S1743923X11000274.

Author: Sarai Aharoni

Abstract:

Unlike earlier attempts to theorize Israeli women’s peace activism in civil society, this article examines the involvement of women in backstage roles of formal negotiations during the Oslo Process. On the basis of a qualitative analysis of the organizational structure and gender division of labor in Israeli negotiating bodies, I find that women were placed as midlevel negotiators and professional and legal advisors, and also served as spokeswomen and secretaries. This pattern of participation reveals 1) that the “security logic,” developed by Israeli negotiators led to, and reinforced, a structured gendered division of labor, providing a rational justification for gender inequality; 2) that the ability to control administrative capacities and women workers generated symbolic masculine power and assisted in maintaining asymmetries between Israeli and Palestinian delegations; 3) and that midlevel Israeli negotiators’ narratives reveal the extent to which conceptual confusion and self-contradictory approaches toward the Oslo Accords reinforced women’s overall invisibility. I conclude that patterns of rigid gender roles in official negotiating structures not only minimize women’s meaningful inclusion in peace negotiations but also affect the production of public historical narratives about gender, peace, and war.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Peace Processes Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel, Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2011

Between the Human, the Citizen and the Tribal

Citation:

Bora, Papori. 2010. “Between the Human, the Citizen and the Tribal.” International Feminist Journal Of Politics 12 (3): 341-60.

Author: Bora Papori

Abstract:

On 15 July 2004, a public protest was staged in the state of Manipur, in India's Northeast, to oppose the rape and custodial killing of a young Meitei woman, Thangjam Manorama, by soldiers of a counter-insurgency paramilitary battalion, the Assam Rifles, who suspected she was a militant. At this protest, several women appeared nude, holding a banner that read 'Indian army rape us'. This analysis considers how we might read the nudity and the statement 'Indian army rape us'. I argue that the language of law, human rights and women's rights as human rights, are inadequate to analyze the protest and the events surrounding it because they do not situate the protest within larger political struggles in the Northeast. Further, such universalist approaches take categories like 'Indian citizen', 'woman' and 'tribal' as a given and do not allow for an engagement with how these categories are mutually constituted, or the law's complicity in their constitution. Accordingly, concerns about contested notions of citizenship that are at the heart of the Manipur protest cannot be adequately addressed within this framework. Instead, I suggest a postcolonial feminist analytics as an alternative means to engage with the political questions raised by the protest.

Keywords: women and political participation in India, rape as a weapon of war

Topics: Armed Conflict, Citizenship, Democracy / Democratization, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Paramilitaries, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, SV against Women, Tribe, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2010

War and Peace: For Men Only?

Citation:

Anderson, Shelley. 1996. “War and Peace: For Men Only?” Off Our Backs 26 (5): 4.

Author: Shelley Anderson

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Gender, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Violence Regions: Africa, Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda

Year: 1996

Rights of the Body and Perversions of War: Sexual Rights and Wrongs Ten Years Past Beijing*

Citation:

Petchesky, Rosalind P. 2005. “Rights of the Body and Perversions of War: Sexual Rights and Wrongs Ten Years Past Beijing*.” International Social Science Journal 57 (184): 301–18. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2451.2005.552.x.

Author: Rosalind P. Petchesky

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Health, HIV/AIDS, Mental Health, Reproductive Health, Trauma, LGBTQ, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against Men, SV against Women, Torture, Sexual Torture

Year: 2005

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