The Strategic Uses of Gender in Household Negotiations: Women Workers on Mexico's Northern Border

The study illustrates the potential of the 'doing gender' perspective to explain why employment does not always improve women's household–power. Eighteen in–depth interviews with women maquiladora workers in Mexico suggest that, depending on the gendered meanings of household negotiations, employment may help women gain new rights and extend the limits of respect accorded them by male companions and parents. Nevertheless, women were more successful when they used negotiating strategies that conformed to their gender identity, such as making offers , than when they used negotiating strategies that challenged traditional gender norms, such as withdrawing services or making threats .     

Howzat! Navigating Gender Disruptions in Australian Young Women’s Cricket

ABSTRACT

“Howzat” is colloquially used by cricketers to ask the umpire “How is that?” when they believe a batter is out. We employ this question here to frame interrogations of young women’s experiences as they navigate elite pathway cricket in an era of significant change. The global sports entertainment industry is, it seems, undergoing a form of gender disruption. The remuneration for Australian women cricketers rose by over 500 per cent between 2012 and 2017, providing opportunities for women and girls to transition to professional sport in ways quite different from historical amateur pathways. While on the surface this shapes as a time of great opportunity for aspiring sportswomen, there are unintended consequences that warrant consideration—particularly for females involved in sports with a legacy of masculine privilege. This article draws on qualitative research concerning five female pathway players and their respective parents, coaching and administrative staff who support them as they navigate the demands of playing elite cricket during adolescence. We employ Foucault’s concept of a “history of the present” to make sense of this dispositif to problematise how young women navigate gendered experiences in sports with “masculine” traditions amid a growing profile of women’s sport in Australia.     

Motherhood and Extradomestic Work in Urban Mexico

Abstract— This article analyses the meanings attributed by Mexican women of different social classes to motherhood and extradomestic work, as well as life experiences of family planning and child care. Information for the study was provided by 79 in-depth interviews with women who were either married or living with a partner who contributed regularly to the family income. The findings suggest that cultural norms regarding motherhood change far more slowly in urban Mexico than child-rearing or fertility control practices. Many women from different social classes still consider motherhood as their main source of identity and only a very educated and privileged group speaks with ambivalence regarding their mother's role. In contrast, more women are ready to accept child-care substitutes, especially if they find satisfaction in extradomestic activities, or carry them out because of personal or family necessities. Finally, the analysis points out that most urban women in Mexico, particularly the younger and more educated cohorts, are very much aware of the costs involved in children's education and rearing, and have acted accordingly, using contraceptives and limiting their family sizes. 0 1997 Society for Latin American Studies     

From Positive Neutrality to Partisanship: How and Why the Armenian Political Parties Took Sides in Lebanese Politics in the Post-Taif Period (1989–Present)

This article examines the policy of the Armenian political parties in Lebanon in light of the Taif agreement in 1989 that ended the Lebanese civil war and granted the Armenian community more political rights. The Armenian parties (Dashnak, Hunchak and Ramgavar) in the post-Taif period were obliged to abandon the policy of positive neutrality that they adopted from 1975 to 1989, and took sides with various Lebanese parties to protect the communal interests that the consociational structure of the state had allowed them. However, the Armenian parties were not united over the goal of maintaining the Armenian bloc inside parliament. As they chose different policies to pursue communal interests they took sides with the ruling majority and the anti-government opposition. The Armenians were criticized by some Christian politicians for their partisanship and were expected to maintain their traditional neutrality in Lebanese politics. It is very likely that the Armenians will return to their neutral policy and support the President and the government once their group rights are protected.     

Violence against Women in Politics: Female Politicians' Experience with Political Violence in Jamaica

This exploratory study describes the experiences of female politicians with political violence in Jamaica and the effect these encounters have had on them. The findings indicate that female politicians in Jamaica are affected by political violence before, during, and after an election, and even when they are in political office. Most of the violence experienced is of a gendered nature and can be defined as violence against women in politics. This study contributes to the growing body of scholarship on violence against women in politics by presenting and discussing findings from the Anglo Caribbean, an understudied region.     

¿”Mujeres al borde de un naufragio” or female redeemers? The representation and role of women in Galdós’s Torquemada novels (1889–95)

Considered superficially, the women in the Torquemada novels conform to the negative gender stereotypes imposed upon them by their male counterparts. On further examination, however, we discover that the male viewpoints are both undermined and questioned, and a number of female characters are used to pose questions that are even more ambitious than those raised in Galdosian novels where the eponymous characters are women. Aiming to enhance our understanding of the significance of the female characters in Galdós’s novels, as well as unearthing their complexity, this article highlights the presence of ambiguity in the Torquemada novels and argues that these works question traditional perceptions of women. Boundaries are revealed to be hazy and the male characters (who sometimes have effeminate qualities) are essentially puppets or “fronts” in what is effectively a domain controlled by the women. Displaying a level of resourcefulness, creativity, and resilience that surpasses that of their male counterparts, the female characters (particularly Cruz) are sometimes influential catalysts for change. Hence, rather than being misconstrued as “a problem” or “al borde de un naufragio,” they could be regarded as potential redeemers in a Spain that was in need of regeneration.     

Negotiating Gender Identities during Mixed-Gender Activities: Amateur Theatre in the 1930s and 1940s in Turkey

This article focuses on the amateur theatre of the People's House and the consumption of state-promoted mixed-gender activities in the 1930s and 1940s in Turkey. The People's Houses were community centres established in many Turkish towns between 1932 and 1950. They performed activities in adult education and political indoctrination with the chief aim to propagate the socio-cultural changes the state had been initiating since 1923. Drawing on complaint letters and investigative reports, this article focuses on the presence and activities of women in the People's Houses; reviews the tension produced upon the introduction of mixed-gender entertainment and social interaction like theatre within largely sex-segregated local societies; studies the practices performed by men and women and the discourses they articulated in response to and in an attempt to manage such moments of tension; and considers their significance as practices contributing to the negotiation and shaping of social identities.     

Willing Daughters: The Moral Rhetoric of Filial Sacrifice and Financial Autonomy in Tokyo's Sex Industry

Japan has one of the world's largest and most diverse legal sex industries. In a limited female labor market, sex industry work is a stigmatized yet lucrative form of women's short-term employment and advertisements for recruiting new employees are prominently displayed across urban spaces associated with feminized consumption. In this article, I examine the ideological impasses that adult Japanese women working in Tokyo's sex industry express when talking about their motives for pursuing this work. Female sex workers commonly justify their work as the necessary sacrifice of filial daughters. This rhetoric of reluctant acceptance for the sake of others, however, obscures the reality that many sex workers are middle-class and college-educated women who find the financial opportunity and flexibility of this industry appealing in contrast to more dominant forms of feminized labor. These women express the ambivalence of their desires for economic self-sufficiency through narrating the dependence of others on them. Examining these ambivalences, I argue that sex workers’ motivations can only be understood through considering the ethical and moral frameworks that define the gendered economies in which they labor.     

Gypsies and Society in Iraq: Between Marginality,Folklore and Romanticism

This article focuses on a Gypsy group that lives in Iraq, away from the main concentrations in Europe. Although Gypsies apparently arrived in Mesopotamia around the tenth century, long before many Arab tribes and despite their cultural assimilation into the local culture, Gypsies were not assimilated into the local society, partly because the local society rejected them and partly because they did not want to assimilate. The difference in the attitude of the local society to the Gypsies lies in their perceived ‘impurity’ and their occupation, dancing and music, in which Gypsy women are employed. Iraqi Gypsies had long suffered from social as well as governmental discrimination: Iraqi citizenship was given to them only in 1979. Unexpectedly, it was the Iraqi dictatorship of Saddam Hussein which improved their status considerably, yet, at the same time, made them dependent on the regime. Consequently, after the fall of the Ba`th regime, Gypsies now face a bleak future. The article gives a concise historical presentation of Gypsy life in twentieth century Iraq and takes a closer look at literary views of the Gypsies, reflecting the limits of liberal attitudes toward them.     

Between Maternalism and Feminism: Women in Nicaragua's Counter‐Revolutionary Forces

To date very little scholarship has focused on the experiences of women who fought or collaborated with Nicaragua's counter‐revolutionary forces (known as the Contra) in the 1980s. Based on qualitative research conducted in Waslala, this paper examines the circumstances which led a group of women to become positioned as Contra supporters. It then explores how these women constructed their gender identities in the light of their collaboration with the Contra. It argues that despite their participation in a right‐wing political organisation and despite their tendency to draw upon understandings of themselves as mothers, widows and victims of war, these women should not be seen as inherently conservative and reactionary, given that they have also been inspired by forms of political organisation that are indicative of an emergent feminist identity.     

The gender agenda: NGOs and capitalist relations in highland Cambodia

Cambodia’s mountainous northeastern province of Ratanakiri, which only twenty years ago was home to mainly indigenous minority groups largely focused on subsistence production, has undergone rapid ecological, social, and economic transformation. Deforestation and land alienation in the context of large-scale plantation agriculture, land speculation, and smallholder cash cropping have led to concerns that indigenous communities are being alienated from their land and not benefitting from economic changes. This has resulted in a significant number of NGO and government programs that attempt to protect and “empower” indigenous people, particularly women. This article examines a one-year research project which explored the relationship between indigenous women and land change in two indigenous villages. It discusses how indigenous women as well as Khmer and landless Cham immigrants have dealt with the commoditization of land and labor. It focuses on the differentiated way capitalist relations have pushed men, women, landless laborers, and increasingly wealthy landowners on increasingly divergent life trajectories. Compelled by donors to focus on gender and indigenous women as an object of governance, the NGO that directed this project struggled to keep up with the realities of capitalist relations on the ground.     

A Feminised Style of Politics? Women MPs in the House of Commons

One hundred and one Labour women MPs were returned to the House of Commons at the 1997 general election. Constituting 24 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party, they were, according to critical mass theory, a 'tilted group' and in a position to effect change. Drawing on 23 in-depth interviews with Labour women MPs first elected in 1997, this article establishes that many of them believe that women politicians practise politics in a feminised way. This claim is, however, premised upon gender rather than sex differences and party identity is also identified as an important determinant. The women MPs' perception that women's style is less legitimate than men's is explored through a discussion of the newly elected Labour women MPs' loyalty in parliamentary votes.     

Gender inequality in Russia's rural formal economy

Gender inequality in Russia's rural formal economy is examined using quantitative and qualitative data. Rural women continue to be underrepresented in farm managerial positions, and gendered income differences remain the norm. Rural women are underrepresented because they continue to have responsibility for most of the housework and child care. The traditional division of labor inside the household continues to dominate, thereby affecting women's career trajectories and earning potential. Value change about gendered roles in the formal economy has been minimal.     

Knowledge production and the construction of ‘Africa(ns)’ in the Caribbean

Abstract

There is a considerable lack of awareness of the interrelated nature of human activities due to insufficient information. A community without relevant information or public sensitivity to participation, in fostering a sense of personal environmental responsibility and greater motivation towards achieving personal goals, becomes problematic. Using the poststructuralist theory, this article takes a qualitative approach to analyse discourses and people's reaction to an ‘insecure’ environment within South African communities. It examines organisations which provide support to empower communities through education in Cape Town. One assumption here is that people gain knowledge about themselves, their environment and others around them, if they are empowered. The focus thus is on educational schemes and activities that communities and organisations undertake to challenge, accept and negotiate their ideological positions. The inventiveness and responses of the organisations considered, through the local communities and pupils, are therefore significant as they enable an understanding of the challenges encountered in democratic South Africa, including the causes of xenophobia. Ultimately, the consequences of ignorance about one's environment are detrimental to both neighbouring communities and people at large. The local communities considered expressed this sentiment while implicating the government's role in depriving its people of vital socio-cultural and politico-economic information.     

The Colonial Strut: Australian Leaders on the World Stage

In his influential account of modern nationalism, Benedict Anderson emphasises the role of the press in creating a sense of "imagined community". But the nation's identity is also constituted through the performances of representative nationals for an international audience. The visits of Australia's political leaders to London and Washington are carefully stage-crafted events, designed to elicit, or at least create an impression of, a favourable reception by its "great and powerful friends". This essay examines the international debuts of several Australian political leaders from Alfred Deakin (1887) and Robert Menzies (1935) to Bob Hawke and John Howard. It focuses especially on the interplay between the leaders' private and public selves; how they have crafted their public appearances and utterances to capture the attention of the desired international audience, and how their performances have been seen by the audience that, in the last resort, mattered most to them, the Australian one.     

Challenges to decentralisation in Ghana: where do citizens seek assistance?

Decentralisation in Ghana, and across sub-Saharan Africa, faces a number of challenges to successful local governance provision because there are a number of formal and informal actors to choose from. Citizens may take problems they want a governance provider to solve to a member of parliament or a district assembly person, a traditional chief or a police officer, a neighbour or an NGO. In this article we report on a four-constituency survey administered to explore and understand how citizens choose between the options of local institutions available to them in order to solve a problem important to their community or themselves. We find that formal national (Parliamentarians) and informal traditional (Chiefs) institutions are where respondents turn for assistance most often instead of constitutionally described local modes of governance (District Assemblies). We consider the implications of this finding in terms of decentralisation in Ghana and the need to build institutions that are context-sensitive and reflect how citizens understand political options.     

Making Space: Social Change, Identity and the Creation of Boundaries in the Central Ecuadorian Andes

Abstract— In rural Latin America, communities and their boundaries are changing due to government intervention, immigration, temporary migration and changing patterns of consumption. This article investigates the conflicts that arise from these changes and the impact they have on the creation of boundaries in a peasant community in the Ecuadorian Andes. It also discusses how the creation of community and household boundaries are linked to ethnic identification during rituals and daily life.     

Why Peacekeeping Does Not Promote Peace

Peacekeeping, and the conflicts to which it is applied, have evolved since the United Nations began these operations in 1948. Today, the UN has 90,000 peacekeepers deployed around the world in 12 operations that cost the international community $6.5 billion a year. Half of these missions have been going on for a combined total of three centuries, with no solution in sight to any of them. Five of the remaining six are in response to violent extremism. In those missions, a steadily growing number of peacekeepers are being killed despite the fact that they are unable to make any significant contribution to successfully combating the extremists. UN peacekeeping has therefore become either endless or impossible, and the peacekeepers have neither the carrots nor the sticks to effectively promote peace or punish those who are preventing it. It is time for the international community to rethink how it strives for international stability in conflict situations. To have a serious discussion, however, would require the UN member states to place a higher priority on peace than on their individual national interests.     

The Marquises of Viana: building distinction through the past (1875-1927)

In turn-of-the-century Spain, Teobaldo and José de Saavedra embodied an understanding of an aristocracy with one foot in the past and the other in the present. As holders of a recently created marquisate, their lifestyle exemplified the challenge faced by aristocrats who adopted practices and customs that were alien to them, whilst seeking to preserve elements of distinction they considered inalienable, such as dynastic history and dense family networks. The aim of this paper is to study the process of building aristocratic notability from a non-patrician origin. To this end, the profiles of the first and second Marquises of Viana are explored, paying special attention to their financial situation, social relations – particularly at Court – and a lifestyle steeped in their modern context. A key theme is their attention to art as a symbol of distinction, conceived as an instrument to leverage them to the position of the social elite of which they were becoming members. At the same time, the Marquises of Viana’s careers also reveal clear connections with Europe’s elite as they sought an exclusivity that would set them apart as a social group in a turbulent world.     

马来西亚华人妇女社团组织简析

马来西亚华人妇女社团组织的产生有其深刻的社会背景.华人妇女社团组织的形式主要有:专属女性的妇女社团、妇女组或妇女部、华团青年组织中的妇女组织、最高领导机构华总的妇女部门.不同华人妇女社团组织有简单或复杂的内部机构系统.华人妇女社团组织活跃的社会活动产生了良好的社会功效.