Masculinity/ies

When the Disaster Strikes: Gendered (Im)mobility in Bangladesh

Citation:

Ayeb-Karlsson, Sonja. 2020. "When the Disaster Strikes: Gendered (Im)mobility in Bangladesh." Climate Risk Management 29.

Author: Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson

Abstract:

Gender influences people’s behaviour in various ways. This study investigates gendered (im) mobility during cyclone strikes in Bangladesh. During such strikes people have described being unable to move away from environmentally high-risk locations and situations. The Q-based Discourse Analysis used by this study shows how and why gender-roles (im)mobilised people in three coastal locations during the cyclones. People (and especially women) explained that failing to evacuate to the cyclone shelters when a disaster strikes was not uncommon. Gender, or feminine and masculine social roles, played a significant role in these evacuation decisions while facilitating or constraining their mobility. The gendered subjectivities presented different accepted social behaviours and spaces for women and men. In this way, immobility (social, psychological, and geographical) was strongly gendered. Masculine roles were expected to be brave and protective, while female ‘mobility’ could be risky. Women’s mobility therefore ended up being constrained to the home. In other words, when the disaster strikes, everyone did not have the same ability to move. These empirical insights are important to inform climate policy in a way that it better supports vulnerable populations worldwide as they confront global environmental changes today and in the future.

Keywords: disaster, (im)mobility, non-evacuation behaviour, trapped populations

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Femininity/ies, Households Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2020

Men's Help-Seeking Attitudes in Rural Communities Affected by a Natural Disaster

Citation:

Labra, Oscar, Robin Wright, Gilles Tremblay, Danielle Maltais, Ray Bustinza, and Gabriel Gingras-Lacroix. 2018. "Men's Help-Seeking Attitudes in Rural Communities Affected by a Natural Disaster." American Journal of Men's Health 13 (1).

Authors: Oscar Labra, Robin Wright, Gilles Tremblay, Danielle Maltais, Ray Bustinza, Gabriel Gingras-Lacroix

Abstract:

The article describes a mixed methods study of help-seeking in men living in the Chilean Central Valley, following exposure to a major earthquake event in 2010. The results identify that, within the sample, positive attitudes toward help-seeking correlated with younger age, higher education levels, above-average incomes, and stable personal relationships. It appears that education plays a significant role in shaping such positive attitudes, particularly by influencing views of gender roles and help-seeking. Conversely, older men’s reticence toward seeking help appeared linked to negative perceptions of available services and the influence of traditional notions of masculinity. The study concludes that adapting interventions and service offers to men’s needs in rural contexts must include an ecosystemic analysis of their reality and incorporate an understanding of masculinity socialization processes.

Keywords: men, help-seeking, rural, masculinity

Topics: Age, Class, Education, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Chile

Year: 2018

The Gendered Body Politics in Disaster Policy and Practice

Citation:

Rushton, Ashleigh, Suzanne Phibbs, Christine Kenney, and Cheryl Anderson. 2020. "The Gendered Body Politics in Disaster Policy and Practice." International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 47.

Authors: Ashleigh Rushton, Suzanne Phibbs, Christine Kenney, Cheryl Anderson

Abstract:

The field of gender and disasters emerged from the notion that a disaster is a physically and socially constructed event. Recognition that women's position in society and the home increases vulnerabilities to disasters has led to the development and application of gender in disaster policy and practice over the last three decades. Gender research has been important to ensure women's needs are recognised and assistance provided in an appropriate manner within disaster contexts. However, ‘gender and disaster’ has become synonymous with the interests and concerns of women due to enduring structural inequalities that extend into disaster management. Drawing on sets of understandings about the body politic within social and political theory, which considers how the male body underpins sets of understandings about the ‘neutral’, idealised gender, this paper reviews how an inclusive understanding of gender and disasters may be developed through considering the strengths of, and challenges for, men. There has been limited analyses of the broader perceptions and personal experiences of men impacted by disasters. Therefore, expanding this scholarship through an analysis of masculinity will provide a foundation for understanding men's stories and experiences of disaster.

Keywords: Gender, disaster, DRR, women, men, masculinity

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Masculinity/ies

Year: 2020

Re-Masculinizing the Nation: Gender, Disaster, and the Politics of National Resilience in Post-3.11 Japan

Citation:

Koikari, Mire. 2019. "Re-Masculinizing the Nation: Gender, Disaster, and the Politics of National Resilience in Post-3.11 Japan." Japan Forum, 31 (2): 143-64.

Author: Mire Koikari

Abstract:

Following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquakes, Japan has entered into a new phase of cultural production where discourses on risks, dangers, and calamities mobilize varieties of individuals and institutions for the purpose of maintaining the nation's safety and security. In this phase, masculinity plays a salient role, leading to a series of discourses and practices that have to do with manhood and nationhood. Drawing on insights from Masculinity Studies, Disaster Studies, and Cultural Studies, this article examines the workings of masculinity in post-disaster Japanese culture by analyzing ‘national resilience’, a leading national initiative that demands a sweeping transformation of the nation. Calling for the revitalization of the nation, national resilience also insists on the need to re-strengthen men and manhood, providing a gendered vision of national security in post-disaster Japan. Unlike other, more politicized sites of controversies on nation and nationhood, i.e. constitutional revision, Yasukuni Shrine, and comfort women, national resilience is a yet-to-be marked domain of contestation where the public concern with safety frequently overrides and obscures its political intentions and implications. Yet, national resilience constitutes a potent site of politics, where discourses about men, the military, nation, and empire are repeatedly mobilized to promote the revitalization of Japan.

Keywords: masculinity, safety and security, Great East Japan Earthquake, disaster resilience

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Security Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan

Year: 2019

Engendering Care: HIV, Humanitarian Assistance in Africa and the Reproduction of Gender Stereotypes

Citation:

Mindry, Deborah. 2010. "Engendering Care: HIV, Humanitarian Assistance in Africa and the Reproduction of Gender Stereotypes." Culture, Health & Sexuality 12 (5): 555-68.

 

Author: Deborah Mindry

Abstract:

ENGLISH ABSTRACT
This paper draws upon recent research in Durban, South Africa to unravel the complexities of care ethics in the context of humanitarian aid. It investigates how the gendering of care shapes the provision of aid in the context of the HIV in Africa constructing an image of ‘virile’ and ‘violent’ African masculinity. Humanitarian organisations construct imagined relations of caring, invoking notions of a shared humanity as informing the imperative to facilitate change. This paper draws on varied examples of research and NGO activity to illustrate how these relations of care are strongly gendered. Humanitarian interventions that invoke universalising conceptions of need could instead draw on feminist care ethics that seeks to balance rights, justice and care in ways that attend to the webs of relationships through which specific lived realities are shaped. Essentialising feminised discourses on care result in a skewed analysis of international crises that invariably construct women (and children) as victims in need of care, which at best ignore the lived experiences of men and, at worst, cast men as virile and violent vectors of disease and social disorder.
FRENCH ABSTRACT:
Cet article s'inspire d'une récente recherche à Durban, en Afrique du Sud, pour révéler les complexités de l'éthique des soins dans le contexte de l'aide humanitaire. Il examine la manière dont l'intégration des notions de genre aux soins détermine l'approvisionnement en aide dans le contexte du VIH en Afrique, en conceptualisant une image de la masculinité africaine «virile» et «violente». Les organisations humanitaires conceptualisent des relations imaginées du soin, basées sur des notions d'humanité solidaire qui informent l'impératif de la facilitation du changement. Cet article s'inspire d'exemples variés de recherche et d'activité des ONG pour illustrer l'intensité avec laquelle ces relations de soins sont basées sur le genre. Les interventions humanitaires qui invoquent l'universalisation des conceptions des besoins devraient plutôt s'inspirer de l'éthique féministe des soins, qui cherche à équilibrer les droits, la justice et les soins de manière à assister les réseaux des relations à travers lesquelles les réalités spécifiques vécues sont définies. L'essentialisation des discours féminisés sur les soins a pour résultat une analyse faussée des crises internationales qui, de manière invariable, conceptualisent les femmes (et les enfants) comme des victimes nécessitant des soins et, au mieux, ignorent les expériences vécues des hommes; au pire, représentent ces derniers comme des vecteurs virils et violents de la maladie et du désordre social.
SPANISH ABSTRACT:
Este artículo se basa en los recientes estudios en Durban, Sudáfrica, que revelan las complejidades de la ética asistencial en el contexto de la ayuda humanitaria. Analizamos cómo la cuestión del género en la asistencia determina la concesión de ayudas en el contexto del VIH en África construyendo una imagen de masculinidad africana ‘viril’ y ‘violenta. Las organizaciones humanitarias construyen relaciones imaginarias de asistencia invocando nociones de una humanidad compartida que hace imperativo facilitar cambios. En este artículo presentamos varios ejemplos de investigaciones y de las actividades de las ONG para ilustrar cómo estas relaciones de asistencia vienen determinadas en gran medida por el sexo. Las intervenciones humanitarias que invocan conceptos universales de necesidad podrían basarse mejor en la ética de asistencia feminista que intenta equilibrar los derechos, la justicia y la asistencia prestando atención a las redes de relaciones que forman las realidades específicas vividas. Los discursos feministas que esencializan la atención llevan a un análisis sesgado de las crisis internacionales que invariablemente caracteriza a las mujeres (y niños) como víctimas que necesitan cuidados y, en el mejor de los casos, ignora las experiencias vividas por los hombres y, en el peor, representa a los hombres como vectores viriles y violentos de trastornos sociales y enfermedades.

Keywords: Gender, Africa, masculinity, HIV/AIDS, humanitarian aid

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Health, HIV/AIDS, Humanitarian Assistance, NGOs Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2010

Challenging Refugee Men: Humanitarianism and Masculinities in Za‘tari Refugee Camp

Citation:

Turner, Edward Lewis. 2018. "Challenging Refugee Men: Humanitarianism and Masculinities in Za‘tari Refugee Camp." PhD diss., SOAS University of London. 

Author: Lewis Edward Turner

Abstract:

Feminist scholarship has demonstrated that ‘womenandchildren’ become the central and uncontroversial objects of humanitarian care and control in contexts of conflict, disaster, and displacement. Yet very little scholarly work has attempted to understand the place of men within humanitarian policies, practices and imaginaries. Through an exploration of the life and governance of Za‘tari Refugee Camp, Jordan, in which 80,000 Syrians live, this thesis argues that for humanitarianism, refugee men present a challenge. Humanitarian actors read Syrian men in gendered and racialised ways as agential, independent, political, and at times threatening. Refugee men thereby disrupt humanitarian understandings of refugees as passive, feminised objects of care, and are not understood to be among the ‘vulnerable,’ with whom humanitarians wish to work. Grounded in feminist and critical International Relations scholarship, and with an emphasis on the embodied, material and spatial practices of humanitarianism, this thesis draws on twelve months of fieldwork in Jordan, including participant-observation in Za‘tari Refugee Camp, and interviews with humanitarian workers and refugees. It demonstrates that humanitarian actors consistently prioritise their own goals, logics, and understandings of gender, over those of Syrians themselves, and exercise power in masculinised ways that actively disempower their ‘beneficiaries’. In the name of ‘global’ standards, humanitarian interactions with, and control over, refugee women are justified by a rhetoric of ‘empowerment.’ Refugee men, by contrast, are present but made invisible within the distribution of humanitarian aid, time, space, resources, and employment opportunities. These modes of humanitarian governance challenge Syrian men’s understandings and performances of masculinities. Yet when refugee men attempt to exercise agency in response to the disempowerment they experience in Za‘tari, humanitarian actors understand them as problematically political, and too autonomous from the control of humanitarian and state authorities, who attempt to re-assert their authority over the camp, and render Za‘tari ‘governable.’

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugee/IDP Camps, Feminisms, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Humanitarian Assistance, Race Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Jordan

Year: 2018

Achieving Gender Equality in Humanitarian Assistance: A Contest of Athena and Poseidon

Citation:

Rathnamalala, Hasini. 2016. "Achieving Gender Equality in Humanitarian Assistance: A Contest of Athena and Poseidon." Sri Lanka Journal of International Law 25.

Author: Hasini Rathnamalala

Abstract:

The aim of this article is to analyze the legal protection of gender equality in humanitarian assistance. The objective of the research is to examine the adequacy of applicable legal framework that governs humanitarian assistance, particularly, that which is applicable to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) while engaged in humanitarian assistance. The analysis of the aforesaid area of law is carried out in order to identify and clarify the nature of the accountability measures for NGOs while identifying the gaps both in theoretical legal framework as well as in its practical applicability. As to how gender in humanitarian assistance can be described as a contest between Athena, representing wisdom and the feminine and God Poseidon who represents the strength and power of masculinity, the author frames the discussion of humanitarian assistance within the myth of the founding of Athens. This story contrasts Poseidon's salt water spring with the sustainability of Athena's olive tree. In the same manner, when providing humanitarian assistance, NGOs should recognize and incorporate a gender equality dimension in order to achieve a holistic and qualitative outcome from their services.

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Humanitarian Assistance, NGOs

Year: 2016

Gender-Biased Street Naming in Urban Sub-Saharan Africa: Influential Factors, Features and Future Recommendations

Citation:

Zuvalinyenga, Dorcas, and Liora Bigon. 2020. "Gender-Biased Street Naming in Urban Sub-Saharan Africa: Influential Factors, Features and Future Recommendations." Journal of Asian and African Studies. doi:10.1177/0021909620934825.

Authors: Dorcas Zuvalinyenga, Liora Bigon

Abstract:

This article explores the present-day problematic of gender-biased street names as prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa’s cityscapes. That is, the abundance of masculine street names as opposed to feminine ones in the urban environments of this region. The article first provides a comparative view on the scope of this toponymic phenomenon in other geographic regions with relation to sub-Saharan Africa. It also identifies few decisive factors in the creation of the gender-biased urban landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa. These factors consist of: recent tendencies in critical toponymy studies; colonial and post-colonial cultures of governmentality; and inadequate urban planning legislation and vision as pertained by post-colonial states. This toponymic problematic is then exemplified in a site-specific analysis of the city of Bindura in north-eastern Zimbabwe. The article concludes with recommendations for designing a more socially inclusive urban management policy in the region, pointing to future research directions of this under-studied phenomenon in critical place-name studies.

Keywords: gender-biased street names, Sub-Saharan Africa, Bindura/Zimbabwe, urban planning, urban management, Critical toponymy studies

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Governance, Infrastructure, Transportation, Urban Planning Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2020

Climate Hazards, Disasters, and Gender Ramifications

Citation:

Kinnvall, Catarina, and Helle Rydstrom, eds. 2019. Climate Hazards, Disasters, and Gender Ramifications. Abingdon: Routledge.

Authors: Catarina Kinnvall, Helle Rydstrom

Annotation:

Summary:
This book focuses on the challenges of living with climate disasters, in addition to the existing gender inequalities that prevail and define social, economic and political conditions.

Social inequalities have consequences for the everyday lives of women and girls where power relations, institutional and socio-cultural practices make them disadvantaged in terms of disaster preparedness and experience. Chapters in this book unravel how gender and masculinity intersect with age, ethnicity, sexuality and class in specific contexts around the globe. It looks at the various kinds of difficulties for particular groups before, during and after disastrous events such as typhoons, flooding, landslides and earthquakes. It explores how issues of gender hierarchies, patriarchal structures and masculinity are closely related to gender segregation, institutional codes of behaviour and to a denial of environmental crisis. This book stresses the need for a gender-responsive framework that can provide a more holistic understanding of disasters and climate change. A critical feminist perspective uncovers the gendered politics of disaster and climate change.

This book will be useful for practitioners and researchers working within the areas of Climate Change response, Gender Studies, Disaster Studies and International Relations. (Summary from Routledge)

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Climate Hazards, Disasters and Gender Ramifications
Helle Rydstrom and Catarina Kinnvall

2. Gender Responsive Alternatives on Climate Change from a Feminist Standpoint
Maria Tanyag and Jacqui True

3. Why Gender Does Not Stick: Exploring Conceptual Logics in Global Disaster Risk Reduction Policy
Sara Bondesson

4. Women as Agents of Change? Reflections on Women in Climate Adaptation and Mitigation in the Global North and Global South
Misse Wester and Phu Doma Lama

5. Industrial/Breadwinner Masculinities and Climate Change: Understanding the 'White Male Effect' of Climate Change Denial
Paul Pulé and Martin Hultman

6. Climate Change and 'Architectures of Entitlement': Beyond Gendered Virtue and Vulnerability in the Pacific Islands?
Nicole George

7. Gender as Fundamental to Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction: Experiences from South Asia
Emmanual Raju

8. #leavenoonebehind: Women, Gender Planning and Disaster Risk Reduction in Nepal
Katie Oven, Jonathan Rigg, Shubheksha Rana, Arya Gautam, and Toran Singh

9. Gendered and Ungendered Bodies in the Tsunami: Experiences and Ontological Vulnerability in Southern Thailand
Claudia Merli

10. Disasters and Gendered Violence in Pakistan: Religion, Nationalism and Masculinity
Sidsel Hansson and Catarina Kinnvall

11. Crises, Ruination and Slow Harm: Masculinized Livelihoods and Gendered Ramifications of Storms in Vietnam
Helle Rydstrom

12. In the Wake of Haiyan: An Ethnographic Study on Gendered Vulnerability and Resilience as a Result of Climatic Catastrophes in the Philippines
Huong Nguyen

13. Accountability for State Failures to Prevent Sexual Assault in Evacuation Centres and Temporary Shelters: A Human Rights Based Approach
Matthew Scott

14. Conclusions
Catarina Kinnvall and Helle Rydstrom
 

Topics: Age, Class, Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Equality/Inequality, Sexuality

Year: 2019

Critical Ecofeminism

Citation:

Gaard, Greta. 2017. Critical Ecofeminism. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Author: Greta Gaard

Annotation:

Summary:
Australian feminist philosopher Val Plumwood coined the term “critical ecofeminism” to “situate humans in ecological terms and non-humans in ethical terms,” for “the two tasks are interconnected, and cannot be addressed properly in isolation from each other.” Variously using the terms “critical ecological feminism,” “critical anti-dualist ecological feminism,” and “critical ecofeminism,” Plumwood’s work developed amid a range of perspectives describing feminist intersections with ecopolitical issues—i.e., toxic production and toxic wastes, indigenous sovereignty, global economic justice, species justice, colonialism and dominant masculinity. Well over a decade before the emergence of posthumanist theory and the new materialisms, Plumwood’s critical ecofeminist framework articulates an implicit posthumanism and respect for the animacy of all earthothers, exposing the linkages among diverse forms of oppression, and providing a theoretical basis for further activist coalitions and interdisciplinary scholarship.
Had Plumwood lived another ten years, she might have described her work as “Anthropocene Ecofeminism,” “Critical Material Ecofeminism,” “Posthumanist Anticolonial Ecofeminism”—all of these inflections are present in her work.
Here, Critical Ecofeminism advances upon Plumwood’s intellectual, activist, and scholarly work by exploring its implications for a range of contemporary perspectives and issues--critical animal studies, plant studies, sustainability studies, environmental justice, climate change and climate justice, masculinities and sexualities. With the insights available through a critical ecofeminism, these diverse eco-justice perspectives become more robust. (Summary from Google Books)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Just Ecofeminist Sustainability
 
2. Plants and Animals
 
3. Milk
 
4. Fireworks
 
5. Animals in Space
 
6. Climate Justice
 
7. “Cli-fi” Narratives
 
8. Queering the Climate

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Sexuality

Year: 2017

Pages

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