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: In this article, we draw a parallel between equality of opportunity in educational transitions and equality of opportunity in academic careers. In both cases, many methodological problems can be ameliorated by the use of longitudinal rather than cross-sectional data. We illustrate this point by using Finnish full-population register data to follow the educational and academic careers of the 1964-1966 birth cohorts from birth to the present day. We show how the Finnish professoriate is highly selected both in terms of parental background and in terms of gender. Individuals of different backgrounds differ greatly in the likelihood of completing different educational and academic transitions, but much less in the age at which they make these transitions. By contrast, women’s academic careers differ from those of men both in terms of timing and in terms of rates, with women’s PhDs and full professorships seemingly delayed compared to those of men. We additionally show with the help of a 2015 cross-section of Finnish professors how such differences are easily overlooked in cross-sectional data.
Schlagwörter:Bildung; academic (female); gender; Akademikerin; education; Chancengleichheit; Hochschulbildung; academy; Gender; equality of rights; Akademie; Karriere; Finland; woman; Gleichberechtigung; Akademiker; equal opportunity; Finnland; career; university level of education; academic
SSOAR Kategorie:Wissenschaftssoziologie, Wissenschaftsforschung, Technikforschung, Techniksoziologie, Berufsforschung, Berufssoziologie, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
Faith-based organisations as welfare providers in Brazil: the conflict over gender in cases of domestic violence
Autor/in:
Beecheno, Kim
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 7 (2019) 2, S 14-23
Inhalt: What does the growth of faith-based organisations (FBOs) in social welfare mean for women’s rights and gender equality, especially within advocacy services for women experiencing domestic violence? Through empirical research within a Catholic-based organisation providing welfare services to abused women in São Paulo, Brazil, this article argues that FBOs can negatively impact the provision of women's rights when conservative and patriarchal views towards gender and women’s roles in society are maintained. A heavily matrifocal perspective, where women’s identity and subjectivity are mediated through their normative roles as wives, mothers and carers of the family, appears to offer little possibility of change for abused women, who are encouraged to forgive violent husbands and question their own behaviour. Mediation between couples is promoted, undermining women's rights upheld through Brazil's domestic violence law (Lei Maria da Penha no 11.340). Furthermore, the focus of family preservation, supported by a patriarchal state, means that violence against women (VAW) appears to be subordinated to a focus on family violence and violence against children. In this case, faith-based involvement in social welfare rejects the feminist analysis of VAW as a gender-based problem, viewing it as a personal issue rather than a collective or political issue, making women responsible for the violence in their lives.
Inhalt: Healthcare has long been a gendered enterprise, with women taking responsibility for maintaining health and engaging with service providers. Universal healthcare provision notwithstanding, women nonetheless undertake a range of healthcare work, on their own account and on behalf of others, which remains largely invisible. As part of a multi-method comparative European study that looked at access to healthcare in diverse neighbourhoods from the point of view of people's own health priorities, the concept of "healthcare bricolage" describes the process of mobilizing resources and overcoming constraints to meet particular health needs. Bricolage mediates between different kinds of resources to meet particular challenges and describing these processes makes visible that work which has been unseen, over-looked and naturalised, as part of a gendered caring role. Drawing on 160 semi-structured interviews and a survey with 1,755 residents of highly diverse neighbourhoods in Germany, UK, Sweden and Portugal, this article illustrates the gendered nature of healthcare bricolage. The complex variations of women's bricolage within and beyond the public healthcare system show how gendered caring roles intersect with migration status and social class in the context of particular healthcare systems.
Women's Coalitions beyond the Laicism-Islamism Divide in Turkey: Towards an Inclusive Struggle for Gender Equality?
Autor/in:
Çağatay, Selin
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 6 (2018) 4, S 48-58
Inhalt: In the 2010s in Turkey, the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) authoritarian-populist turn accompanied the institutionalization of political Islam. As laicism was discredited and labeled as an imposed-from-above principle of Western/Kemalist modernity, the notion of equality ceased to inform the state’s gender policies. In response to AKP's attempts to redefine gender relations through the notions of complementarity and fıtrat (purpose of creation), women across the political spectrum have mobilized for an understanding of gender equality that transcends the laicism - Islamism divide yet maintains secularity as its constitutive principle. Analyzing three recent attempts of women's coalition-building, this article shows that, first, gender equality activists in the 2010s are renegotiating the border between secularity and piety towards more inclusive understandings of gender equality; and second, that struggles against AKP’s gender politics are fragmented due to different configurations of gender equality and secularity that reflect class and ethnic antagonisms in Turkish society. The article thereby argues for the need to move beyond binary approaches to secularism and religion that have so far dominated the scholarly analysis of women’s activism in both Turkey and the Nordic context.
The Traps of International Scripts: Making a Case for a Critical Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality in Development
Autor/in:
Roodsaz, Rahil; Van Raemdonck, An
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 6 (2018) 4, S 16-24
Inhalt: In this article, we look at colonialities of gender and sexuality as concepts employed in international aid and development. These international arenas reveal not only strong reiterations of modernist linear thinking and colonial continuities but also provide insights into the complexities of the implementation and vernacularisation of gender and sexuality in practices of development. Using a critical anthropological perspective, we discuss case studies based on our own research in Egypt and Bangladesh to illustrate the importance of unpacking exclusionary mechanisms of gender and sexuality scripts in the promotion of women’s rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights in postcolonial development contexts. We provide a conceptual analysis of decolonial feminist attempts at moving beyond the mere critique of development to enable a more inclusive conversation in the field of development. To work towards this goal, we argue, a critical anthropological approach proves promising in allowing a politically-sensitive, ethical, and critical engagement with the Other.
Schlagwörter:Kolonialismus; colonialism; Anthropologie; anthropology; Gender; gender; Sexualität; sexuality; internationale Hilfe; international aid; Entwicklungshilfe; development aid; woman; Menschenrechte; human rights; Postkolonialismus; post-colonialism; Feminismus; feminism; Ägypten; Egypt; Bangladesch; Bangladesh; Entwicklungsland; developing country; Nordafrika; North Africa; Südasien; South Asia; critical anthropology; development;
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Entwicklungsländersoziologie, Entwicklungssoziologie
Identifying the barriers to women's agency in domestic violence: the tensions between women's personal experiences and systemic responses
Autor/in:
Aldridge, Jo
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 1 (2013) 1, S 3-12
Inhalt: Despite advances in knowledge and understanding about the impacts of domestic violence on women's lives, global research on violence against women shows there is a need for research that not only places women centre stage in research praxis, but also that involves them more collaboratively in genuine dialogue about their experiences, including their agentic stances. This is especially the case for marginalised and socially excluded women victims of domestic violence, such as those who are not known or do not present to services and who survive abusive relationships alone or with little outside support. Evidence from two studies reported here-secondary analysis of women with severe and enduring mental health problems and a collaborative narrative project with unsupported women victims of domestic violence-suggest that women's capacity for agency are compromised by a number of critical factors, and that these are also reflected in the tensions between micro-macro analyses and understanding of the impact of domestic violence on women. This article considers the barriers to women's agency from the women's perspective and in the context of broader, systemic dynamics, including the denial or obscuring of abuse by governments and states and the consequences of stringent fiscal retrenchment that put women at increased risk of domestic violence.
Credibility assessments as "normative leakage": asylum applications, gender and class
Autor/in:
Wikström, Hanna; Johansson, Thomas
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 1 (2013) 2, S 92-101
Inhalt: Based on the assumption that credibility assessments function as "normative leakage" within the asylum process, we analyse how narratives of gender and class are articulated, rendered meaningful, or silenced in credibility assessments. Two cases concerning male applicants are selected in order to illustrate these processes. In relation to the existing concepts of internal/external credibility, we wish to introduce the concept of social credibility, which focuses on how the assessors read different socio-cultural narratives. While previous research has shown that the postcolonial will to protect women favours women as victims of patriarchal cultures, we wish to point out the continuity of this line of argumentation in relation to male and female applicants by adopting a theoretical generalization: male applicants instead become situated at the other end of the spectrum of postcolonial notions of modernity as non-victims, victims of other circumstances or perpetrators. We argue that these processes are accentuated in relation to credibility assessments. In order to prevent processes of social exclusion and to enhance inclusive practice, authorities need to acknowledge the "normative leakage" associated with the assessment process.
Schlagwörter:woman; soziokulturelle Faktoren; sociocultural factors; Glaubwürdigkeit; credibility; Asylverfahren; asylum procedure; gender; Norm; standard; Bewertung; evaluation; soziale Klasse; social class; Postkolonialismus; post-colonialism; Fallstudie; case study
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, soziale Probleme