Transitions and Conflicts: Reexamining Impacts of Migration on Young Women’s Status and Gender Practice in Rural Shanxi
Autor/in:
Yang, Lichao; Ren, Xiaodong
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 2, S 58-67
Inhalt: This article explores impacts of migration on young women’s status and gender practice in rural northern China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a village in Shanxi Province, it suggests that rural-urban migration has served partially to reconstruct the traditional gender-based roles and norms in migration families. This reconstructive force arises mainly from the changes of the patrilocal residence pattern and rural women’s acquisition of subjectivity during the course of migration. However, after migrant women return to their home villages, they usually reassume their roles as care providers and homemakers, which is vividly expressed by a phrase referring to one’s wife as ‘the person inside my home’ (wo jiali de). Meanwhile, although migrant women’s capacity and confidence have greatly increased consequent upon working out of the countryside, their participation in village governance and in the public sphere has been decreasing. Further examination suggests that the reinforcement of gender inequality and the transformation of gender relations result from the continuous interplay of local power relations, market dominance, and unchallenged patrilocal institutions. Through adopting a life course perspective, it challenges too strict a differentiation between migrant and left behind women in existing literature.
Schlagwörter:China; China; Landbevölkerung; rural population; Patriarchat; patriarchy; gender-specific factors; woman; Ethnographie; ethnography; Feldforschung; field research; Stadt-Land-Beziehung; city-country relationship; Geschlechtsrolle; gender role; traditionelle Gesellschaft; traditional society; Geschlechterverhältnis; gender relations; gender relations; migration; patriarchy; rural Chinese women
Women in China Moving Forward: Progress, Challenges and Reflections
Autor/in:
Yang, Juhua
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 2, S 23-35
Inhalt: While China's socialist revolution has been credited with improving the status of women, gender inequality remains. Drawing on macro data, this article provides an overview of gender equality in China, focusing on labor force and political participation in the past 70 years, particularly since 1978, the onset of socioeconomic reform. Specifically, the article describes, compares, and examines the progress and challenges that women face in accessing economic opportunities and political resources. We find a more equal relationship between male and female when resources are relatively adequate, but that females are disadvantaged when resources are scarce, for example, including representation in more prestigious occupations, higher income, and political positions. These findings illustrate how inequality is maintained and reproduced, and suggest that despite China’s progressive socialist agenda, its gender revolution remains 'stalled.'
Schlagwörter:China; China; soziale Ungleichheit; social inequality; gender-specific factors; woman; Erwerbsbeteiligung; labor force participation; politische Partizipation; political participation; Gleichstellung; affirmative action; historische Entwicklung; historical development; Geschlechterverhältnis; gender relations; Benachteiligung; deprivation; Ostasien; Far East
Falling behind the Rest? China and the Gender Gap Index
Autor/in:
Chen, Binli; He, Hailan
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 2, S 10-22
Inhalt: China’s rank falling in the Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum has aroused the domestic scholar’s controversy. Based on the data provided by the Global Gender Gap Report, this article will describe the gender inequality in China by comparing its overall index scores and scores in the fields of economic participation and opportunity, education attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment with other countries, and then examining the reasons for China’s falling in rank through the score changes of sub-dimensions and indicators. Analysis of the data suggests that China has not kept up with the rate of improvement in the overall index, and in the four fields, compared to the original 112 countries, the upper-middle income countries, and the Asian and Pacific countries. Over the 13 years covered by the report, China’s score experienced a rapid improvement from 2006 to 2009 and a decline after 2013. China’s high sex ratio at birth, further expansion of gender inequality in active life expectancy, and an enlarged gender gap in secondary education caused China’s lagging overall score and ranking. In addition, the inclusion of measures such as secondary education enrollment, political empowerment, and other indicators also led to the backward ranking of China to some extent.
Schlagwörter:China; China; Ungleichheit; inequality; gender-specific factors; Geschlechterverhältnis; gender relations; Ostasien; Far East; gender gap
Implications of digital inclusion: digitalization in terms of time Use from a gender perspective
Autor/in:
Arroyo, Lidia
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 2, S 180-189
Inhalt: The implications of digital technologies for the transformation of gender relations and identities have been discussed since the early days of the internet. Although gender studies have identified clear gender gaps in terms of digital inclusion as well as potentialities for the transformation of women’s subjectivity, there is a lack of empirical evidence of the impact of digitalization in terms of time use from a gender perspective. Public policies have begun to address the digital gender gap, but the incorporation of a gender perspective in digital inclusion programmes which promotes women’s emancipation by challenging the gender division of time through use of the internet has been not incorporated in the digital policies agenda. This article aims to provide empirical evidence of the mutual interrelation between the time allocation and digital inclusion from a gender perspective. It considers how gender inequalities in time use shape women’s experience of digital inclusion and, at the same time, how digital inclusion promotes the reconfiguration of time in women’s everyday lives. Qualitative analysis based on episodic interviews explored the representations and practices of internet use by women in their everyday lives. The sample was made up of 32 women who were digitally included through a lifelong learning programme in Spain and had experienced the effects of the Spanish economic crisis. The article argues that digital inclusion does not automatically lead to a more egalitarian allocation of time use for women, but rather places greater value on women’s free time.
Schlagwörter:Digitalisierung; digitalization; Technologie; technology; Geschlechterverhältnis; gender relations; Ungleichheit; inequality; Internet; Internet; Inklusion; inclusion; Arbeitsteilung; division of labor; Zeit; time; Nutzung; utilization; digital gender gap; digital inclusion; gender division of labour; gender inequalities
The transition to parenthood in the French and German speaking parts of Switzerland
Autor/in:
Zimmermann, Regula; LeGoff, Jean-Marie
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 4, S 35-45
Inhalt: After the first transition to parenthood, most couples adopt a gendered labor division, where mothers become main caregivers and fathers breadwinners of the family. By comparing two distinct language regions within one country, the present article explores how parents’ gendered labor division comes into existence and what role gendered culture and social policy play. The analysis draws on in-depth interviews with 23 German speaking and 73 French speaking participants from Switzerland. The results reveal that French speaking women and men presume an egalitarian labor division as parents. In German speaking regions, however, participants anticipate that mothers will become the main caregivers and fathers the breadwinners. It is shown that the labor market structure, which is in line with the male breadwinner norm, contributes to men's full-time employment, whereas mothers' labor market insertion is influenced by the acceptance of non-parental childcare and to a lesser extent by the offer of childcare facilities. Further, mothers experience more time conflicts than fathers, and the less mothers’ paid work is accepted, the more they suffer from feelings of guilt when being employed.
Schlagwörter:Schweiz; Switzerland; Familienpolitik; family policy; gender; Ungleichheit; inequality; Geschlechterverhältnis; gender relations; Arbeitsteilung; division of labor; Elternschaft; parenthood
SSOAR Kategorie:Familiensoziologie, Sexualsoziologie, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung
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.
Outsiders within: framing and regulation of headscarves in France, Germany and the Netherlands
Autor/in:
Lettinga, Doutje; Saharso, Sawitri
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 2 (2014) 3, S 29-39
Inhalt: While women in Europe who wear the Islamic headscarf are generally seen as outsiders who do not belong to the nation, some countries are more tolerant towards the wearing of headscarves than others. France, Germany and the Netherlands have developed different policies regarding veiling. In this paper we describe how headscarves became regulated in each of these countries and discuss the ways in which French, Dutch and German politicians have deliberated the issue. The paper is based on a content analysis of parliamentary debates on veiling in France (1989-2007), Germany (1997-2007) and the Netherlands (1985-2007). Our aim is to discuss what these national political debates reveal about the way in which the social inclusion of Islamic women in (or rather exclusion from) the nation is perceived in these three countries. Our claim is that veiling arouses opposition because it challenges national self-understandings. Yet, because nations have different histories of nation building, these self-understandings are challenged in various ways and hence, governments have responded to headscarves with diverse regulation. While we did find national differences, we also discovered that the political debates in the three countries are converging over time. The trend is towards increasingly gendered debates and more restrictive headscarf policies. This, we hypothesize, is explained by international polarization around Islam and the strength of the populist anti-immigrant parties across Europe.
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.