Corona, Care, and Political Masculinity: Gender-Critical Perspectives on Governing the COVID-19 Pandemic in Austria
Titelübersetzung:Corona, Sorge und politische Männlichkeit: Eine geschlechterkritische Perspektive auf das Regieren der COVID-19 Pandemie in Österreich
Quelle: Historical Social Research, 46 (2021) 4, S 50-71
Inhalt: The article departs from the contradiction that the importance of care for society was publicly acknowledged during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the pandemic response of the Austrian government did not challenge the structurally devalued status of care. In order to sustain the hegemonic patriarchal-capitalist governance of care and social reproduction in the pandemic government actors had to reframe care. We investigate government discourses that normalised its careless crisis management and interrogate the role political masculinity and affects played therein. Based on our analysis of a set of selected press conferences held in March 2020, we find that a new mode of rational-affective political masculinity was constitutive of the political management of COVID-19 crisis. With help of this hybrid mode of masculinity, political actors reinterpreted care first and foremost as healthcare and caring for the economy, and as caring for the population in terms of biopolitics. At the same time, caring tasks in the 'private' sphere were left to the personal responsibility of individuals and families. In order to generate consent, political actors frequently invoked affects that pertained to risk and danger on the one hand and solidarity and responsibility on the other.
Schlagwörter:Österreich; Austria; Pflege; caregiving; Reproduktion; reproduction; Gesundheitspolitik; health policy; Krisenmanagement; crisis management (econ., pol.); politischer Akteur; political actor; Männlichkeit; masculinity; Biopolitik; biotechnology policy; Hegemonie; hegemony; Gender; gender; rational-affective masculinity; reframing care; care for the economy; solidarity; nationality; Corona; COVID-19; global pandemic; biopolitics
SSOAR Kategorie:politische Willensbildung, politische Soziologie, politische Kultur, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
Educational attainment and gender differences in work-life balance for couples across Europe: a contextual perspective
Autor/in:
Kromydas, Theocharis
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 4, S 8-22
Inhalt: The current article aims to explain the interrelationships between the educational attainment of individuals living in households with heterosexual partners, their work–life balance (WLB) and the macro-economic climate of the country they live in, using data from the European Social Survey. WLB is a complex concept, as it is not only determined by factors related to someone’s employment or domestic work and childcare responsibilities, but also by decisions informed by personal experiences and circumstances, subjective perceptions and preferences. Moreover, in households with cohabiting partners, this decision-making process involves certain compromises where financial incentives, interests, gender and power dynamics play an important role. Since educational attainment is positively related to labour market outcomes, such as employment and wages, while at the same time more women are participating in education and the labour market, the gender conflict on the division of work and time within households intensifies and traditional gender roles are challenged. WLB is at the heart of this conflict operating as a mechanism through which division of work and time is reconciled on the individual and household level. Results from the current article reveal great heterogeneity between the 17 European countries examined. Perhaps surprisingly, educational attainment can have a detrimental effect on the WLB of spouses and cohabiting partners, especially for women whose level of WLB seems also more sensitive to fluctuations of the macro-economic climate of the country they live in. However, there is an indication that when an economy goes into recession, higher education has a cushioning effect on female’s WLB compared to relatively better economic times.
Weibliche Führungskräfte in der Bundeswehr - Zur Geschlechterdifferenzierung weiblicher Offiziere
Titelübersetzung:Female leaders in the German armed forces - Gender differentiation of female military officers
Autor/in:
Hendricks, Judith
Quelle: AIS-Studien, 13 (2020) 2, S 45-58
Inhalt: Die deutsche Bundeswehr ist als militärische Organisation trotz ihrer umfassenden formalen Öffnung für Frauen und veränderter Aufgabenbereiche noch immer männlich konnotiert. Weibliche militärische Führungskräfte stellen in doppelter Hinsicht, als Frau und als Führungskraft, eine Abweichung und Verletzung bestehender stereotyper Zuschreibungen und Geschlechterdifferenzen dar. Der vorliegende Beitrag betrachtet die Bezugnahme auf die Kategorie Geschlecht durch weibliche Offiziere in diesem doppelt männlich konnotierten Kontext sowie deren Anwendung von Geschlechterdifferenzierungen. Es wird argumentiert, dass sie ein "strategisches Differenzmanagement" anwenden. Durch den Fokus auf die Auswirkungen der vertikalen Segregation im organisationalen Kontext auf das geschlechtliche Differenzmanagement ergänzt der Beitrag bisherige theoretische und empirische Ergebnisse bezüglich der Geschlechterkonstruktion und Geschlechterdifferenzierung in geschlechtsuntypischen Berufsbereichen.
Quelle: Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 6 (2020) , S 1-17
Inhalt: Image recognition systems offer the promise to learn from images at scale without requiring expert knowledge. However, past research suggests that machine learning systems often produce biased output. In this article, we evaluate potential gender biases of commercial image recognition platforms using photographs of U.S. members of Congress and a large number of Twitter images posted by these politicians. Our crowdsourced validation shows that commercial image recognition systems can produce labels that are correct and biased at the same time as they selectively report a subset of many possible true labels. We find that images of women received three times more annotations related to physical appearance. Moreover, women in images are recognized at substantially lower rates in comparison with men. We discuss how encoded biases such as these affect the visibility of women, reinforce harmful gender stereotypes, and limit the validity of the insights that can be gathered from such data.
Beyond Sex/Work: Understanding Work and Identity of Female Sex Workers in South China
Autor/in:
Ding, Yu
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 2, S 95-103
Inhalt: While scholars and activists often advocate using the term ‘sex worker’ in preference to prostitute, in my research I found that female prostitutes in the Pearl River Delta area, south China, do not like to be addressed as such, and prefer the title xiaojie in Chinese. ‘Sex worker’ generalises the heterogeneity of meanings these women identify and attribute to what they do; it does not capture the complex cultural meanings involved in the term xiaojie. It is stigmatising in that what is exchanged within the transaction is less defined by sexual acts and more by a diversified range of activities. The women employ what is useful to them and infuse new meanings in it to construct gender images and identities to resist the sex worker stigma and to express their desires as rural-to-urban migrants. Using xiaojie becomes a destigmatising and gender tactic. I also found that the women discard the idea of finding alternative jobs partly because of the practical difficulty, and partly because they do not want to work (gongzuo) any more in the future. This study highlights the importance of exploring desire and agency to understand the lived experiences of this particular group of women.
Schlagwörter:China; China; woman; Prostitution; prostitution; Stigmatisierung; stigmatization; Gender; gender; Ostasien; Far East; South China; desire; destigmatisation; sex worker
"Mummy is in a call": digital technology and executive women's work-life balance
Autor/in:
Nagy, Beáta
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 4, S 72-80
Inhalt: Research findings confirm the contradictory impact of mobile technology on work–life balance, as these tools both guarantee greater flexibility and contribute to blurring boundaries between private and working spheres. Several articles have been published on women executives’ work–life balance in Western countries; however, their usage of mobile devices remained almost unexplored in the post-socialist region, where in the wake of the transformation not only the unquestioned neoliberal change of the corporate sector but also refamilisation took place. This article gives an overview on the issue of how women executives make use of mobile technology during their everyday activities in Hungary, where not only are the signs of ‘corporate colonization’ present, but also motherhood plays an important role. Based on twenty semi-structured interviews with Hungarian women in senior management positions carried out in 2014 and 2015, the article discusses the perceptions and narratives explained by these women. Results contribute to the ongoing debate on the paradoxical impacts of modern technology on work–life balance and its specificities in the post-socialist context.
Schlagwörter:woman; gender; Mutterschaft; motherhood; neue Technologie; new technology; Technologie; technology; Arbeit; labor; Führungsposition; executive position; Familie-Beruf; work-family balance; Ungarn; Hungary; Interview; interview; boundary management; executive women; technology use
SSOAR Kategorie:Berufsforschung, Berufssoziologie, Technikfolgenabschätzung, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
Inhalt: Frauen waren und sind in Führungspositionen deutscher Wirtschaftsunternehmen unterrepräsentiert. Trotz politischer und betrieblicher Gleichstellungsmaßnahmen liegt der Anteil weiblicher* Führungskräfte in nahezu allen wirtschaftlichen Sektoren deutlich unter dem Anteil weiblicher* Beschäftigter insgesamt. Unabhängig davon, ob Organisationen als strukturell vergeschlechtlicht (Acker 1991, 2006) betrachtet werden oder die Aktualisierung von Geschlecht als kontextabhängig (z. B. Heintz/Nadai 1998) und kontingent analysiert wird, problematisiert die Geschlechterforschung, dass politische Gesetze und/oder einzelne Selbstverpflichtungen von Unternehmen jene mehr oder weniger subtilen Prozesse der Geschlechterdifferenzierung in Organisationen über die Ungleichheit hergestellt werden, kaum berühren. Anhand einer qualitativen Untersuchung in der Verwaltung eines großen Einzelhandelsunternehmens in Deutschland wird gezeigt, wie informelle Prozesse einer Geschlechtergleichstellung entgegenstehen - selbst wenn die Organisation eine Erhöhung des Frauenanteils in Führungspositionen wünscht und in den untersten Führungsebenen der Frauenanteil bereits vergleichsweise hoch ist.
Schlagwörter:woman; Führungsposition; executive position; gender; Differenzierung; differentiation; Gleichstellung; affirmative action; Unternehmen; enterprise; Gleichstellungspolitik; equal opportunity policy; Frauenanteil; proportion of women
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Management
