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
Der EU Aktionsplan zur Frauen, Frieden, Sicherheit Agenda - Chancen und Herausforderungen für die Umsetzung der Agenda in Österreich
Autor/in:
Knipp-Rentrop, Karen; Stachowitsch, Saskia; Stiegler, Josefa
Quelle: Österreichisches Institut für Internationale Politik (oiip); Wien (Policy Paper / Österreichisches Institut für Internationale Politik), 2020. 10 S
Inhalt: Die besonderen Auswirkungen von Konflikten auf Frauen sowie ihre wesentliche Rolle in Friedensprozessen wurde erstmals im Jahr 2000 in der UN Sicherheitsratsresolution 1325 festgehalten. Die Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda der Vereinten Nationen definiert seitdem Fragen von Geschlecht, Gleichstellung und Frauenrechten als zentral für die Erreichung dauerhaften Friedens und nachhaltiger Sicherheit. Die österreichische Bundesregierung beschloss 2007 den ersten Nationalen Aktionsplan (NAP) zur Umsetzung der Resolution 1325. Unter dem österreichischen Ratsvorsitz hat die Europäische Union Ende 2018 den 'EU Strategic Approach to WPS' verabschiedet. Der dazugehörige Aktionsplan beinhaltet Maßnahmen zur Stärkung der Partizipation und zum Schutz von Frauen, zu Gender Mainstreaming und zur Vorbildfunktion der EU in allen Phasen von Friedensbemühungen. Vor diesem Hintergrund entwickelten Expert*innen aus Politik, Wissenschaft und Zivilgesellschaft in einem von CARE Österreich und dem oiip veranstalteten Workshop die Politikempfehlungen im Policy Brief.
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
The Making of a Modern Self: Vietnamese Women Experiencing Transnational Mobility at the China-Vietnam Border
Autor/in:
Huang, Pengli
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 2, S 77-85
Inhalt: China-Vietnam marriages attract increasing public attention in China and trigger many discussions on the phenomenon of 'Vietnamese brides.' The discussions are often linked to the rapid modernization of the border areas since the 1990s, caused by the re-opening of the border, the prosperity of the transnational economy and the increase of cross-border mobility between the two countries. Guided by the qualitative research paradigm, 30 Vietnamese women in cross-border intimate relationships with Chinese men were interviewed to examine their motivation and their experience of transnational mobility at the China-Vietnam border. By challenging the popular image of Vietnamese women as pitiable and ignorant country bumpkins in public discourse, this study acknowledges that these women, like other modern women, have the capacity to imagine and desire, to make decisions and to act, caring a lot about self-development and expression. Comparably, these women may not be able to enjoy the relatively rich resources and capital like the economic elites, but they have strategically manipulated multifaceted and contradictory realities at the specific context of the China-Vietnam border to better their economic circumstances, and to reshape their personal, familial, and social relationships.
To Wear or Not to Wear the Hijab Online (a Study of the Identity Performances of Muslim Canadian Women on Facebook)
Autor/in:
Mohammadi, Fatemeh
Quelle: Journal of Cyberspace Studies, 4 (2020) 2, S 81-160
Inhalt: This paper looks at how Muslim women with an Iranian background and now living in Canada perform their identity through wearing the hijab. This was achieved by observing the behavior of six members of this community on Facebook using Erving Goffman’s stigmatization theory. The observation reveals that women who wear the hijab are more likely to identify themselves as Muslim-Canadian while those who have abandoned the hijab after immigration are more likely to identify themselves as Iranian-Canadian. Moreover, the results show that while Goffman’s theory is very useful in trying to understand the stigmatization of the veil after the 9/11 attacks as well as other extremists’ attacks, the pressures that this created on Muslim women, as well as the behavior of some women in dropping the veil in order to ‘pass’ such stigmatization, his theory is of limited use in understanding the more complicated performance of women who kept their hijab in spite of the challenges they faced.
Die "inferiore" Arbeit der Erzieherinnen: zu den verdeckten Dimensionen beruflicher Ungleichheit
Titelübersetzung:The "inferior" work of kindergarten teachers: on the hidden dimensions of occupational inequality
Autor/in:
Maiwald, Annett
Quelle: AIS-Studien, 13 (2020) 2, S 98-114
Inhalt: Der Beitrag untersucht die vielschichtigen Ungleichheitsdimensionen im Feld der institutionellen Kleinkinderziehung. Angenommen wird, dass Aspekte des Inferioren mit dieser enervierenden, körperlichen Tätigkeit bis heute verbunden blieben. Diese eher impliziten und damit verdeckt bleibenden gesellschaftlichen Zuschreibungen haben vermutlich mit dem faktischen Anspruchscharakter von Erziehungsarbeit zu tun. Auf Grundlage eines theoretischen Struktur- und Handlungsmodells und von Fallanalysen zum Erzieherinnenberuf wird versucht, die geschlechtsspezifischen Ungleichheitsverhältnisse, denen zudem eine Bildungsungleichheitsproblematik eingeschrieben ist, material zu durchdringen. Hinter der Delegation dieser Arbeit an die Frauen (die Personalstatistik wird ausführlich diskutiert) verbergen sich weitere subtile Formen von Ungleichheit, die mit wissenschaftlicher Distanz, der normativen Verkennung der eigentlichen Kita-Wirklichkeit, der Konfrontation der Praxis mit Konzepten von "Bildung" - letztlich mit der Dignität von Erziehungsarbeit zu tun haben.
Schlagwörter:Erzieher; educator; woman; Ungleichheit; inequality; Kleinkind; infant; frühkindliche Erziehung; early childhood education and care; gender-specific factors; Bildungsungleichheit; educational inequality; Kindertagesstätte; day nursery
SSOAR Kategorie:Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Berufsforschung, Berufssoziologie
How Iranian Women Express Themselves through Social Media Photos: a Case Study of Instagram
Autor/in:
Einifar, Mina; Kosari, Masood
Quelle: Journal of Cyberspace Studies, 4 (2020) 1, S 1-26
Inhalt: In this study, the issue of using Instagram social network by different groups of Iranian women and their interests and desires in publication of photos is investigated. The purpose of the study is to identify the common aspects and differences in women's lives reflected in their self-expression efforts based on their social characteristics. Therefore, the women were classified into eight groups based on the elements affecting the way they show their daily lives, such as education level, occupation and marital status. Then, qualitative method, including virtual ethnographic techniques, content analysis and online interviews, was used. Photos posted on Instagram by 32 users were studied and analyzed, and these users were interviewed. Questions were asked about their tendency towards posting photos of their daily lives on Instagram via direct messages. The conceptual framework of the study included Bourdieu’s theory of 'distinction' and Baudrillard’s concept of 'system of objects'. Results showed that women in each group select specific approaches to the publication of photos based on their social conditions. In the present article, these differences are discussed in detail. The significance of this research lies in the possibility of understanding different aspects of women’s everyday life and their individual identity through self-reports in the new media as opposed to the traditional media which only presents a standardized type of identification. Since studying women's efforts in presenting themselves on social media has been neglected in studies conducted on social networks in Iran, this study leads to a better understanding of Iranian women's diverse identities.
Perceiving and Deflecting Everyday Poverty-Related Shame: Evidence from 35 Female Marriage Migrants in Rural China
Autor/in:
Zhang, Guanli
Quelle: Social Inclusion, 8 (2020) 2, S 123-131
Inhalt: This research examines how poverty is perceived and deflected by a group of female cross-provincial marriage migrants in contemporary rural China. It presents accounts of poverty-related shame in everyday village life. Known as migrant wives, respondents in this research have experienced both absolute and relative poverty over the course of their lives. The personal lament of insufficiency and the social discourse of poverty respectively underpin internal and external poverty-related shame. Correspondingly, migrant wives employ strategies of recounting misery and redefining identity to normalise their poverty and their stigmatised social image, hoping to mitigate the psychological and social impacts of shame. This research contributes an empirical analysis to our understanding about the origin, manifestation, and impact of povertyrelated shame, which is usually a neglected consideration in poverty studies. It also sheds light on the gender-specified risks, burdens, and social expectation that affect migrant wives’ perception and experience of poverty.