Pub Date : 2024-11-07DOI: 10.1177/08912432241291059
Alford A. Young
{"title":"Book Review: Brotherhood University: Black Men’s Friendships and the Transition to Adulthood, By Brandon A. Jackson","authors":"Alford A. Young","doi":"10.1177/08912432241291059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432241291059","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"244 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142596605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-05DOI: 10.1177/08912432241293445
Jessica Stallone
The 2013 Charter of Values in Québec proposed to ban “ostentatious” religious symbols in the public sphere; while ostensibly neutral, such bans harm women who identify as Muslim, hurting their sense of belonging. This article examines the emotional experiences of Canadian Muslim women and the emotion work they do to manage non-Muslims’ impressions of them in a context of rampant Islamophobia. To understand their experiences, I develop a concept called spatialized feelings—how emotions, relationally accomplished in intersectional hierarchies, are contingent on the spaces social actors occupy. My interviews and participant observation of Muslim women in Québec revealed that their feelings about self and belonging were spatialized. In spaces dominated by whiteness (work, school, in public), my participants felt different, due to experiences of exclusion. In spaces with other Muslims, participants felt connected, but belonging was complicated by intersectional identities. Although their engagement in emotion work indicated agency, emotion work reproduced raced and gendered bodies and spaces. With exclusionary politics on the rise across the Atlantic, targeted minorities will increasingly experience racialization in gendered ways in public spaces; spatialized feelings are at the core of understanding the consequences of these politics for belonging and emotion work.
{"title":"“I Would Have Given them a Piece of my Mind”: Spatialized Feelings and Emotion Work Among Racialized Muslim Women in Québec","authors":"Jessica Stallone","doi":"10.1177/08912432241293445","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432241293445","url":null,"abstract":"The 2013 Charter of Values in Québec proposed to ban “ostentatious” religious symbols in the public sphere; while ostensibly neutral, such bans harm women who identify as Muslim, hurting their sense of belonging. This article examines the emotional experiences of Canadian Muslim women and the emotion work they do to manage non-Muslims’ impressions of them in a context of rampant Islamophobia. To understand their experiences, I develop a concept called spatialized feelings—how emotions, relationally accomplished in intersectional hierarchies, are contingent on the spaces social actors occupy. My interviews and participant observation of Muslim women in Québec revealed that their feelings about self and belonging were spatialized. In spaces dominated by whiteness (work, school, in public), my participants felt different, due to experiences of exclusion. In spaces with other Muslims, participants felt connected, but belonging was complicated by intersectional identities. Although their engagement in emotion work indicated agency, emotion work reproduced raced and gendered bodies and spaces. With exclusionary politics on the rise across the Atlantic, targeted minorities will increasingly experience racialization in gendered ways in public spaces; spatialized feelings are at the core of understanding the consequences of these politics for belonging and emotion work.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142588672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-01DOI: 10.1177/08912432241290544
Eman Abdelhadi, Anna Fox
Political and popular tropes portray Muslims as monolithically, uniquely, and inherently patriarchal and misogynistic—a phenomenon of which Muslims are acutely aware. This study asks whether and how Islamophobic tropes influence Muslims’ gender ideologies. Using life history interviews with Muslim Americans, we find a diversity of gender beliefs, challenging the discourses that frame Muslims’ gender ideologies as monolithic. Four major typologies emerge in our data: Loyalist Complementarians, Patriarchal Reactionaries, Critical Egalitarians, and Reformist Egalitarians. These beliefs are multifaceted and are composed of a dialogic exchange between beliefs toward gender relations, perceptions of Islamic doctrine, and negotiation with what we call the Orientalist gaze. Each group navigates how their ideas about gender fit into or challenge a broader society that is scrutinizing Muslims, and each group articulates their gender beliefs through and against Islamophobic discourse, a process akin to walking an Orientalism tightrope.
{"title":"Walking the Orientalism Tightrope: How Muslim Americans Construct their Gender Ideologies","authors":"Eman Abdelhadi, Anna Fox","doi":"10.1177/08912432241290544","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432241290544","url":null,"abstract":"Political and popular tropes portray Muslims as monolithically, uniquely, and inherently patriarchal and misogynistic—a phenomenon of which Muslims are acutely aware. This study asks whether and how Islamophobic tropes influence Muslims’ gender ideologies. Using life history interviews with Muslim Americans, we find a diversity of gender beliefs, challenging the discourses that frame Muslims’ gender ideologies as monolithic. Four major typologies emerge in our data: Loyalist Complementarians, Patriarchal Reactionaries, Critical Egalitarians, and Reformist Egalitarians. These beliefs are multifaceted and are composed of a dialogic exchange between beliefs toward gender relations, perceptions of Islamic doctrine, and negotiation with what we call the Orientalist gaze. Each group navigates how their ideas about gender fit into or challenge a broader society that is scrutinizing Muslims, and each group articulates their gender beliefs through and against Islamophobic discourse, a process akin to walking an Orientalism tightrope.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"63 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142563238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-21DOI: 10.1177/08912432241289404
Olatunji David Adekoya, Maria Adamson, Chima Mordi, Hakeem Adeniyi Ajonbadi, Toyin Adisa
Changing socioeconomic conditions are enticing more and more Nigerian mothers to work and pursue careers. This article explores how middle-class professional women navigate working mother subjectivities in the context of Nigeria’s strong patriarchal culture, where traditional notions of maternal femininity prevail. We argue that the working mother’s subjectivity is a key site where the struggle over gendered cultural meanings takes place. Drawing on 32 qualitative interviews, we demonstrate how a small group of women refused traditional feminine subject positions; however, most mothers either embraced or reluctantly acquiesced to traditional femininity, despite having access to broader cultural repertoires and material resources. By unveiling the complexities of the cultural appeal of traditional femininity and social penalties for breaching it, the article extends our understanding of how patriarchal cultures resist gendered change and the nuances and limits of individual patterns of resistance.
{"title":"In the Grip of Traditionalism? How Nigerian Middle-Class Working Mothers Navigate Normative Ideals of Femininity","authors":"Olatunji David Adekoya, Maria Adamson, Chima Mordi, Hakeem Adeniyi Ajonbadi, Toyin Adisa","doi":"10.1177/08912432241289404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432241289404","url":null,"abstract":"Changing socioeconomic conditions are enticing more and more Nigerian mothers to work and pursue careers. This article explores how middle-class professional women navigate working mother subjectivities in the context of Nigeria’s strong patriarchal culture, where traditional notions of maternal femininity prevail. We argue that the working mother’s subjectivity is a key site where the struggle over gendered cultural meanings takes place. Drawing on 32 qualitative interviews, we demonstrate how a small group of women refused traditional feminine subject positions; however, most mothers either embraced or reluctantly acquiesced to traditional femininity, despite having access to broader cultural repertoires and material resources. By unveiling the complexities of the cultural appeal of traditional femininity and social penalties for breaching it, the article extends our understanding of how patriarchal cultures resist gendered change and the nuances and limits of individual patterns of resistance.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142486890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-10-21DOI: 10.1177/08912432241289424
Rebecca Lennox
The field of critical heterosexualities studies invites sociologists to untether heterosexuality from biology. In this article, I leverage the findings of 113 interviews with a racially diverse sample of cis and trans women to examine how women maintain everyday dignity in the street despite widespread gender harassment and systemic, racialized sexual inequalities. Drawing on social constructionist theory and applying an intersectional framework, I examine heterosexuality as a performance, uncovering how gender identity, race, and sexual orientation intersect to shape both the costs and benefits of “doing heterosexuality” in the street. Through practices such as wearing wedding rings, holding the hands of men friends, and displaying affection for men in public places, straight, queer, cis, and trans women creatively resist heteronormativity’s regulation of their social-sexual lives and strive to enunciate sexual unavailability; communicate the existence of a protector; and signal respectability by demonstrating conformity with racialized, cisnormative ideals of gender and sexual normativity. Findings demonstrate that racialized, queer, and trans participants tend to experience greater emotional costs and fewer symbolic rewards associated with “doing heterosexuality” than white, straight-identified, and cis participants. This intersectional analysis enriches extant research on gender and sexuality, illuminating the utility of the “doing heterosexuality” framework for uncovering intersections between heterosexual accountability and gender inequality across diverse organizational and interpersonal contexts.
{"title":"“The Only Self-Defense I Have is My Wedding Band”: Doing Heterosexuality, Evading Gender Harassment, and Becoming Respectable in the Street","authors":"Rebecca Lennox","doi":"10.1177/08912432241289424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432241289424","url":null,"abstract":"The field of critical heterosexualities studies invites sociologists to untether heterosexuality from biology. In this article, I leverage the findings of 113 interviews with a racially diverse sample of cis and trans women to examine how women maintain everyday dignity in the street despite widespread gender harassment and systemic, racialized sexual inequalities. Drawing on social constructionist theory and applying an intersectional framework, I examine heterosexuality as a performance, uncovering how gender identity, race, and sexual orientation intersect to shape both the costs and benefits of “doing heterosexuality” in the street. Through practices such as wearing wedding rings, holding the hands of men friends, and displaying affection for men in public places, straight, queer, cis, and trans women creatively resist heteronormativity’s regulation of their social-sexual lives and strive to enunciate sexual unavailability; communicate the existence of a protector; and signal respectability by demonstrating conformity with racialized, cisnormative ideals of gender and sexual normativity. Findings demonstrate that racialized, queer, and trans participants tend to experience greater emotional costs and fewer symbolic rewards associated with “doing heterosexuality” than white, straight-identified, and cis participants. This intersectional analysis enriches extant research on gender and sexuality, illuminating the utility of the “doing heterosexuality” framework for uncovering intersections between heterosexual accountability and gender inequality across diverse organizational and interpersonal contexts.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142486790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-30DOI: 10.1177/08912432241284047
Abhilasha Srivastava, Zehra Aftab
Questions about women’s safety have gained importance in both India and Pakistan, as gendered and sexual violence in public spaces has risen. This motivates questions about the presence and mobility of women in public spaces in South Asia and their determinants. In this paper, we extend feminist scholarship on space and time, social reproduction, classical patriarchy, and the everyday by unpacking the concept of mobility into two new categories: instrumental and substantive mobility. We use these categories to dig deeper into spatial and temporal patterns of women’s mobility at the national level. Our regression models and tempograms based on nationally representative time-use surveys show that women’s presence in public spaces remains abysmally low in both countries. It increases only temporarily with travel for paid/unpaid labor and education in instrumental ways. However, any mobility that breaks the temporal rhythm of the everyday or norms governing space and time is rarely observed. Our analysis also shows that these mobilities are also affected by social contexts such as marriage, class, and caste, among others. Also, despite popular perceptions, we find no substantial differences in the mobility patterns for women in the two countries. This paper makes a case for reassessing interactions between neoliberal economic regimes and classical patriarchy and how “power geometries” of space, time, and social reproduction impact women’s mobilities in South Asia.
{"title":"Mobility for What? Space, Time, Labor, and Gender in South Asia","authors":"Abhilasha Srivastava, Zehra Aftab","doi":"10.1177/08912432241284047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432241284047","url":null,"abstract":"Questions about women’s safety have gained importance in both India and Pakistan, as gendered and sexual violence in public spaces has risen. This motivates questions about the presence and mobility of women in public spaces in South Asia and their determinants. In this paper, we extend feminist scholarship on space and time, social reproduction, classical patriarchy, and the everyday by unpacking the concept of mobility into two new categories: instrumental and substantive mobility. We use these categories to dig deeper into spatial and temporal patterns of women’s mobility at the national level. Our regression models and tempograms based on nationally representative time-use surveys show that women’s presence in public spaces remains abysmally low in both countries. It increases only temporarily with travel for paid/unpaid labor and education in instrumental ways. However, any mobility that breaks the temporal rhythm of the everyday or norms governing space and time is rarely observed. Our analysis also shows that these mobilities are also affected by social contexts such as marriage, class, and caste, among others. Also, despite popular perceptions, we find no substantial differences in the mobility patterns for women in the two countries. This paper makes a case for reassessing interactions between neoliberal economic regimes and classical patriarchy and how “power geometries” of space, time, and social reproduction impact women’s mobilities in South Asia.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142360289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-30DOI: 10.1177/08912432241286010
Amanda E. Fehlbaum
{"title":"Book Review: Body and Gender: Sociological Perspectives By Roberta Sassatelli and Rossella Ghigi and Interpreting the Body: Between Meaning and Matter Edited by Anne Marie Champagne and Asia Friedman","authors":"Amanda E. Fehlbaum","doi":"10.1177/08912432241286010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432241286010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142360288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-26DOI: 10.1177/08912432241277223
Feranaaz Farista, Ameeta Jaga
The cessation of breastfeeding by low-income mothers returning to work is a feminist concern. Our research advances knowledge from the Global South to extend understanding of breastfeeding at work as a form of foodwork in organizational settings. A major reason for breastfeeding cessation is the conflict between this foodwork labor and the physical labor of paid employment. In-depth interview data from 33 black low-income working mothers in South Africa were analyzed through an intersectional lens of race, gender, and social class. The findings yield both struggles and innovations in the mothers’ attempts to combine nourishing their children with paid employment. The paper explores three themes: (1) the labor of breastfeeding within contexts of low-income earning, (2) gender and social class norms shaping childcare and foodwork, and (3) local knowledge about foodwork and employment. We present recommendations for improving workplace support for low-income mothers’ breastfeeding efforts, and for advancing gender equity.
{"title":"Workplace Breastfeeding As Foodwork In Organizational Settings: Advancing Knowledge From Black, Low-Income Women In South Africa","authors":"Feranaaz Farista, Ameeta Jaga","doi":"10.1177/08912432241277223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432241277223","url":null,"abstract":"The cessation of breastfeeding by low-income mothers returning to work is a feminist concern. Our research advances knowledge from the Global South to extend understanding of breastfeeding at work as a form of foodwork in organizational settings. A major reason for breastfeeding cessation is the conflict between this foodwork labor and the physical labor of paid employment. In-depth interview data from 33 black low-income working mothers in South Africa were analyzed through an intersectional lens of race, gender, and social class. The findings yield both struggles and innovations in the mothers’ attempts to combine nourishing their children with paid employment. The paper explores three themes: (1) the labor of breastfeeding within contexts of low-income earning, (2) gender and social class norms shaping childcare and foodwork, and (3) local knowledge about foodwork and employment. We present recommendations for improving workplace support for low-income mothers’ breastfeeding efforts, and for advancing gender equity.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142325600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}