Separate but Equal: Durkheim's Response to the Woman Question*

This article reexamines Durkheim's views on gender relations within the context of nineteenth century French feminism. Durkheim's response to the woman question reflects the sociopolitical discourse on individual rights and responsibilities, the family, and women's roles in the private and public spheres. Durkheim's perspective on gender relations is predicated on a biologically differentiated conception of gender role complementarity that emphasizes the couple, not the individual. This perspective, shared by feminists, is best characterized by the phrase, separate, but equal.     

Gendered economies: Transferring private gender roles into the public realm through rural community development

This paper considers the important issue of women's economic participation in rural community development and regeneration. The paper explores the economic lives and actions of women residents in “Ilston”, a village in the Northumberland Rural Coalfield. The women's narratives illustrate the economic connections between private and public spheres, represented respectively by the household and community-led regeneration initiatives. The connections were realised through a female responsibility for household budget management, which incorporated the protection and maintenance of their personal and household economic status within the community. This role was extended into the public sphere through female responsibility for community group and project fund raising, management and subsequent maintenance of the community group's economic status. This practice formed part of the women's constructed economic identity(ies) within the community, and in turn feminised economic practices regarding community-led development and regeneration in the village.     

Still a “Stalled Revolution”? Work/Family Experiences,Hegemonic Masculinity,and Moving Toward Gender Equality

Hochschild described the “stalled revolution” in the late 1980s: women made great gains in labor force opportunities, particularly in stereotypically “masculine” fields, yet men did not move comparably into “feminine” roles. This article examines the current “stalls” in the gender equality movement regarding gendered experiences at work and home, including occupations, the gender wage gap, career trajectories, and the division of household labor. This article also discusses efforts to “unstall” the gender revolution. Pop culture solutions on the individual‐level and academic research on structural/cultural barriers often focus on women's access to historically “masculine” roles (e.g. representation in STEM fields). There is far less emphasis on men's involvement in historically “feminine” roles. Gender scholars examine hegemonic masculinity as the narrowly constrained expectations for men's “appropriate” behavior. While efforts to “unstall” the gender revolution focus largely on expanding women's opportunities, this article addresses why the gender revolution will remain incomplete and “stalled” without redefining hegemonic masculinity. Cross‐national research demonstrates that changing views of masculinity are critical for greater gender equality at work and home.     

Empowered Women,Failed Patriarchs: Neoliberalism and Global Gender Anxieties

Notions of “empowered women,” promoted by NGOs, economists, and feminists beginning in the 1970s, do not necessitate a countervailing notion of “failed patriarchs.” However, our review of the feminist literatures on globalization, development, and migration in the United States, the former Soviet Union, and South Asia suggests that discourses of empowered women and failed patriarchs are fused in the specter of the “reverse gender order.” A presumption of this new order is that global capitalism has liberated women to such an extent that they have surpassed men who are now the truly “disadvantaged.” Drawing on these literatures as evidence, we argue that the large‐scale incorporation of poor and working‐class women into global capitalism relies upon an ideology of the family that keeps women's labor “cheap” and draws support from the feminist idea that work is empowering for women. Diverse nationalisms uphold the ideology of the family as central to capitalist expansion, providing culturally resonant justifications for women's unpaid reproductive work, while men are breadwinners. Thus, poor and working‐class men experience a painful dissonance between breadwinning expectations and economic opportunities. We show that these tensions between ideologies and material conditions make women's responsibility for reproductive work a structural feature of neoliberalism.     

The Influence of Gender Composition in Powerful Positions on Public Relations Practitioners' Gender-Related Perceptions

Against the background of the high feminization of the German agency sector, this article investigates 2 specific factors that help explain women's careers in public relations agencies: gender stereotypes and the organizational context. We present parts of a recent German explorative study: Long interviews were conducted with 13 female public relations experts to explain their view on women's situation in public relations in general and to describe their own careers. Findings reveal the evolution of a “PR bunny” stereotype that adds a negative touch to the female image as “natural born communicators.” Furthermore, our results support the argument that women seem to prefer (a) the organizational culture of public relations agencies, (b) agency-specific job tasks, and (c) agency-specific work processes. Possible consequences for practitioners and the profession are discussed.     

“The Way That I Look at Things [Is] Different Because It's Me”: Constructing and Deconstructing Narratives About Racialized Sexual Selves

Many gender scholars have abandoned the notion that we can explore women's experiences without attention to other identities such as race, class, and/or sexual orientation. Until now, the ways race influences the development of sexual selves has been underexplored. In this paper, I focus on heterosexual women's accounts of the interplay of race, gender, and sexualities. Based on in‐depth interviews with sixty‐two white and African American heterosexual women between the ages of twenty and sixty‐eight, I examine the ways in which narrative work tells a story about the presentation of public sexual selves. I also explore how women's personal narratives are impacted by larger cultural narratives about race. Specifically, through a study of sexuality, I focus on the social construction of “postracialism.”     

Emotion Work,Shame, and Post-Soviet Women Entrepreneurs: Negotiating Ideals of Gender and Labor in a Global Economy

Drawing on ethnographic research among Russian women traders or “shuttle traders” (chelnoki), I examine discourses on shame as a type of emotion work and consider links to ideal gender roles among Russian women entrepreneurs. In a post-Soviet era increasingly shaped by transnational mobility, as well as by a persistent legacy of Soviet sensibilities, a focus on emotion among women traders provides an ideal lens for considering what travels between eras marked by distinct ideologies, between nation-states, and between public and domestic spaces. A discourse of shame links Soviet sensibilities of proper labor and contemporary gender sensibilities that continue to elevate men as breadwinners; thus, a focus on shame enables us to see the contradictory ways in which women are positioned in local and global economies in the 2000s. This case shows how Russian women's insertion into the global economy beginning in the early 1990s has required emotion work that is similar to that required in other locations where global capitalism has brought about reconfigurations of work lives and required people to renegotiate gender roles, expressions of power, and the meaning of labor in their lives.     

Scientific Acedia

Abstract

Using a gendered context, this paper examines women's fear management strategies. Using twenty-six in-depth interviews with married and divorced participants, the researcher considers one question: “How does gender influence fear management strategies among newly married and divorced women?” Results depict a unique intersection between strategies women use to manage fear of crime and the ways they “do gender” that vary by the marriage context, providing insight into women's fear of crime.     

Decomposing Gender Beliefs: Cross‐National Differences in Attitudes Toward Maternal Employment and Gender Equality at Home

Few cross‐national studies distinguish between different aspects of gender egalitarianism and compare them systematically. In this study, we examine cross‐national differences in attitudes toward mothers' participation in the labor market and toward gender equality within the household, using a multilevel analysis of individual data from 33 nations. The results indicate greater support for employed mothers, but a lower level of approval of gender equality at home, among residents of countries that offer women more educational and economic opportunities. We argue that macrolevel gender equality increases individuals', particularly women's, incentives to support female labor force participation. Because of a persistent belief in gender differentiation, however, macrolevel gender equality has the opposite relationship with attitudes toward altering gendered practices beyond enabling women's public sphere participation. The fewer explicit barriers to women's achievement in society, the more likely individuals will feel a need to defend gendered roles in the private sphere. That the potential harm of advocating gendered practices in the private sphere is smaller in societies with fewer impediments for women is also likely to account for the negative association between macrolevel gender equality and support for egalitarian gender roles at home.     

Setting the Agenda

Abstract

Foreign funding for women's non-governmental organizations (NGOs) during democratic transition plays a crucial role in shaping values and attitudes within civil society. Concepts of feminism, gender equality and the role of women in democratic politics are affected by the discourse established by foreign funders. In this article, the role of US and Nordic gender policies are examined in the Estonian context using a feminist constructivist framework. I explore the effects of neoliberal versus social-democratic gender policies and conclude that, while funding for women's NGOs serves to create a necessary discourse on women's equality, these policies may actually serve the funders' needs to gain geopolitical influence in the region.     

Deconstructing Development Theory: Feminism,the Public/Private Dichotomy and the Mexican Maquiladoras*

L'analyse postmoderne, la plus récente des nombreuses façons d'aborder le développement international, permet de mieux comprendre les tendances occidentalisantes de la théorie sur le développement ainsi que les dichotomies moderne/traditionnel et progressiste/retrograde qu'elles favorisent. Elle ne parvient cependant pas à mettre en evidence les dichotomies révélatrices de l'inégalité des sexes - homme/femme, public/privé et productif/non productif -, celles qui font partie intégrante de la pensée sur le développement. Le but de cette étude théorique n'est pas de faire le bilan des répercussions du développement dans la vie des femmes du tiers monde mais bel et bien de procéder, dans l'optique feministe, à une analyse deconstructiviste postmoderne de la théorie dominante du développement et à 1'examen d'un exemple pratique, celui des maquiladoras mexicains. Par le biais d'une deconstruction feministe, la théorie du développement trahit un discours foncierement phallocentrique qui cherche à imposer de facon systematique une interpretation occidentale du role de la femme dans les societes dites sous-developpees, avec pour consequence la devalorisation de son apport dans les domaines public et prive. As the newest of many varied approaches to the topic of international development, the postmodern approach offers valuable insights into the Westernizing project of development theory, not least of which is its insight into the dichotomies of modern/traditional and progressive/backward. What the postmodern approach fails to do adequately, however, is uncover the specifically gendered dichotomies also resident in development thought, including male/ female, public/private, and productive/non-productive. The purpose of this primarily theoretical essay is not to enumerate Third World women's experiences with development, but rather to apply the postmodern tool of deconstruction from a feminist perspective, first to mainstream development theory, and subsequently to a practical example of development, the Mexican maquiladora project. Through a feminist deconstruction, development theory is shown to be a fundamentally gendered-phallocentric-discourse that systematically applies Western notions of gender to “underdeveloped” societies and cultures, thereby undervaluing women's essential contributions to both public and private spheres.     

Globalization and Social Movements: Comparing Women's Movements responses to NAFTA in Mexico,the USA and Canada

The article examines the responses of women's movements in Canada, the United States and Mexico to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) from a comparative perspective. It argues that while some women's groups have raised important critiques of trade agreements from a feminist perspective, they have largely failed to make the gendered dimension of regionalization visible in public debate on NAFTA and have had virtually no impact on public policy. The nature of the women's movements in the three countries limited the possibilities of greater contestation of the form of economic liberalization at both the national and transnational levels. Drawing upon the literature on social movements, the article suggests that the ability of women's movements to respond to NAFTA was conditioned by: (1) the shifting universe of political discourse in each country - whether it permits the identification of macroeconomic policy as a gender issue - which is conditioned in part by the diverse forms of engagement with liberalism as a political philosophy in each country, and (2) the organizational structure of women's movements in each country, their relationships with their respective states, and their role within broader coalitions.     

A home from home: the organization as family

The basic unit of human organization has always been the family, although the meaning and composition of “family” has altered over the millennia of human existence. The current view in Western thought is that there is a distinct schism between the family and other social organizations, particularly those organizations associated with work. As a broad distinction, the family is held to be in the private sphere of human interaction and work organizations in the public. Much feminist theory is predicated on this private/public split, and one of the reasons proposed for the social inequality of women is that the private, which is women's “natural” domain, is held to be of lesser social significance.

The paper considers, in a light-hearted (but we hope not lightweight) manner, the metaphor of the organization as family. We provide analogies between the notions of “family” as a private social institution and the work organization, drawing no conclusions, but providing some small insights into affinities and congruences which blur the private/public distinction. If we assert anything at all, it is this: because the work organization is family, we are able to slip from one to the other each day with the minimum of psychic stress.

“Travail, Famille, patrie” (the slogan of the Vichy régime)     

'Woman,Speak with a Loud Voice!'

This paper seeks to contribute to the critique of mainstream development discourse by conveying the ideas and issues raised by rural South African women. Building upon feminist and post-colonial discourses, this paper shifts the epistemological location of knowing to the women affected by development programmes and policies. Based upon interviews and discussions with over 600 women in rural communities, we offer a brief characterization of the South African context of rural women's lives, followed by rural women's comments about development, their daily struggles, and empowerment. Rural women's comments reveal a conception of development that is tied to their localized problem-solving skills and opportunities. Their response to the absence of development opportunities within their communities is to forge a space where they can negotiate between institutional spheres of power in order to address their needs. We argue that traditional development approaches overlook the space, or interstice, rural African women occupy between the modern state and traditional authority. For persons interested in development issues, rural women's experiences direct our attention to the in-between spaces as potential sites of empowerment.     

Changes in Public and Private Environmentally Responsible Behaviors by Gender: Findings from the 1994 and 2010 General Social Survey

We examine gender differences in public and private environmentally responsible behaviors (ERBs) and whether and how these differences changed between 1994 and 2010. We consider how political attitudes and environmental concern influence the relationship between gender and ERBs. Ordinary least squares regression models were estimated using the 1994 and 2010 General Social Survey. The study results indicate that women had higher levels of private ERBs than men in 1994 and 2010. Political ideology and environmental concern partially explain gender differences in private ERBs in 1994 and fully explain them in 2010. Men and women have similar levels of public ERBs in 1994; in 2010, men's level of public ERBs is significantly higher than women's, after controlling for political ideology and environmental concern. In addition, there are some gender differences in the effects of political orientation and environmental concern on ERBs. Our study indicates that the relationship between gender and environmentalism is complex and that concern and political orientation should be considered when designing strategies to enhance ERBs.     

The Social Imaginaries of Women's Peace Activism in Northern Uganda

The metanarrative of global feminism is often constructed as a progressive and emancipatory movement emanating from the West and fostering radical politics elsewhere in the world. Such a view is not only ethnocentric but, critically, it fails to engage with the complex ways in which feminist politics travel and are evinced in specific localities. In this article, I seek to understand how marginalized women in the “Global South” – particularly in Africa – interpret, experience and negotiate feminist ideas to wield political power within the context of their social and moral worlds. I focus on women's organized resistance to violence and armed conflict, known as “women's peace activism.” Using a case study of a women's peace movement in Uganda mediated by an international feminist organization called Isis Women's International Cross-Cultural Exchange, I conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with a wide range of activists in the organization and in its network in postconflict areas in Northern Uganda. I argue that the feminist peace discourse is most meaningful when its universal values of equity and securing the dignity of women are appropriated and re-signified through the cultural institutions and the collective memory of activists in their local settings.     

Gender roles and social control

Drawing upon social control theory in criminology, this paper examines the relationship between gender roles and the inhibitors of deviance. We develop and test hypotheses that “traditional” females, defined in terms of either position in the social structure or gender‐role attitudes, perceive higher levels of three types of sanctions assocíated with crime than do males; while “nontraditional” females are similar to males in their perceptions of sanctions. Results indicate that while changing gender roles and gender‐role attitudes affect perceived threats of guilt‐feelings and social stigma, they do not appear to influence women's perceptions of legal sanctions.     

Who Gets What? Gender Differences in “Spendable” Income

SUMMARY

Feminist policy makers need accurate measures of inequality in the economic well-being of men and women. In this paper, we explain why the wage gap by gender gives a misleading measure of women's relative economic well-being in the United States, emphasizing the effects of income pooling within households. We construct a household-level index of women's “spendable” income relative to men's that builds on Randy Albelda's (1988) “PAR index.” We improve on the PAR index in three ways. First, we account for economies of scale associated with additional household members. Second, we utilize the Current Population Survey to capture the impact of government taxes and transfers, providing an indicator of “spendable,” rather than “money,” income. Finally, as a step toward redefining the concept of “spendable” income, we deduct a lower-bound estimate of child care costs.     

Exist or exit? Women business‐owners in Bangladesh during COVID‐19

Within the unique context of COVID‐19, this feminist research provides novel insights on how gender‐specific issues are articulated in the experiences of women concerning their small businesses in a patriarchal developing nation. Based on the interviews of women business‐owners in Bangladesh, this research reveals the diversified gendered experiences of women in private and public spheres in continuing their business operations during the pandemic period. It also unveils patriarchal practices regarding women's discontinuing or closing down ventures due to the COVID‐19 crisis. Thus, the research substantially advances the understanding on the influence of gender on women's continuing or discontinuing or even closing down their businesses in a highly patriarchal developing nation during the pandemic period. It further offers important suggestions for policy practitioners in supporting women business‐owners of patriarchal developing nations during the COVID‐19 pandemic.     

The Incomplete Revolution

South Africa's negotiated transition promised significant gains for gender equality, as women acquired one-third of the seats in the national parliament, secured constitutional protection, and began a process of legislative and institutional reform. Once apartheid was dismantled, the programs of racial and gender empowerment theoretically should have proceeded at the same rates, given the rhetorical commitments of the liberation parties. Life for the majority of South African women, however, continues to be marked by socio-economic hardships, patriarchal domination, and gender violence. This article asserts that the roots of women's continued inequality are found within the western reform models utilized by the anti-apartheid movement that reproduced public/private, male/female dichotomies in state institutions, thereby entrenching male discourse and power. The data suggest that in order to disrupt the power of the patriarchy women need to challenge male domination within the domestic sphere as well as challenging gender discrimination in public political spaces.