Pub Date : 2025-09-24DOI: 10.1177/08912432251378440
Erika Grajeda
{"title":"Book Review: Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights By Katherine E. Maich Bringing Law Home: Gender, Race, and Household Labor Rights. By MaichKatherine E.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2025, 234 pp., $105.00 (cloth); $26.00 (paper; e-book).","authors":"Erika Grajeda","doi":"10.1177/08912432251378440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432251378440","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"154 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145141489","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 : 2025-09-17DOI: 10.1177/08912432251374235
Linda Blum, K. J. Surkan
In this article, we extend the study of the embodied health activism of breast cancer survivors to the relatively neglected peer-to-peer groups now proliferating online. We conducted in-depth interviews during COVID-19 with individuals with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) mutations because, with heightened risk of disease, they are unusually active online. We asked participants with diverse racial-ethnic, gender, and sexual identities about online experiences to understand solidarity and activism, particularly within the context of a neoliberal emphasis on taking individual responsibility to overcome health risks. We found that (1) most reported finding solidarity and shared experiential knowledge, yet desires for positive uplift to overcome cancer led to a moralized body politics of exclusion and individualized responsibility, and (2) such boundary making, particularly over breast reconstruction, has contradictory implications with larger lessons for social movement scholars. While boundary making builds solidarity among insiders, it threatens connections to others, as was also the case with the ideological and identitarian politics that limited second-wave feminism. In our case, boundary making limits transgressive body politics, leaving a moralized body politics of heteronormative femininity.
{"title":"Feminist Solidarity or Moralized Body Politics? Online Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Communities and Feminist Health Politics","authors":"Linda Blum, K. J. Surkan","doi":"10.1177/08912432251374235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432251374235","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we extend the study of the embodied health activism of breast cancer survivors to the relatively neglected peer-to-peer groups now proliferating online. We conducted in-depth interviews during COVID-19 with individuals with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) mutations because, with heightened risk of disease, they are unusually active online. We asked participants with diverse racial-ethnic, gender, and sexual identities about online experiences to understand solidarity and activism, particularly within the context of a neoliberal emphasis on taking individual responsibility to overcome health risks. We found that (1) most reported finding solidarity and shared experiential knowledge, yet desires for positive uplift to overcome cancer led to a moralized body politics of exclusion and individualized responsibility, and (2) such boundary making, particularly over breast reconstruction, has contradictory implications with larger lessons for social movement scholars. While boundary making builds solidarity among insiders, it threatens connections to others, as was also the case with the ideological and identitarian politics that limited second-wave feminism. In our case, boundary making limits transgressive body politics, leaving a moralized body politics of heteronormative femininity.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145077935","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 : 2025-09-15DOI: 10.1177/08912432251374244
Kausiki Sarma, Yang Hu
Mainstream theories tend to consider housework a form of labor and its gendered division a result of resource exchange or bargaining and an act of “doing gender.” These theories, however, insufficiently reflect the centrality of housework in many women’s lived experiences of marital violence, particularly in the Global South. Our in-depth interviews with 22 women survivors of marital violence from Assam, India, show that housework features prominently in the women’s experiences of marital violence. Drawing on our interviews, we show that marital violence can manifest in and through housework in three interlinked dimensions: (1) the coercive enforcement of how, when, and to what standard housework is performed; (2) the physical and mental harms inflicted in and through housework; and (3) the restrictions it imposes on women’s capabilities in other life domains. Uniting gender research on housework and marital violence, our study shows how a violence lens helps render visible the ways in which housework may be organized, enforced, and experienced for some women. In doing so, it highlights that the mundane (housework) and the extreme (violence) are not separate regimes of gender control and demonstrates how they intersect to (re)produce domestic gender inequality.
{"title":"The Mundane and the Extreme: Women’s Experiences of Housework and Marital Violence in India","authors":"Kausiki Sarma, Yang Hu","doi":"10.1177/08912432251374244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432251374244","url":null,"abstract":"Mainstream theories tend to consider housework a form of labor and its gendered division a result of resource exchange or bargaining and an act of “doing gender.” These theories, however, insufficiently reflect the centrality of housework in many women’s lived experiences of marital violence, particularly in the Global South. Our in-depth interviews with 22 women survivors of marital violence from Assam, India, show that housework features prominently in the women’s experiences of marital violence. Drawing on our interviews, we show that marital violence can manifest in and through housework in three interlinked dimensions: (1) the coercive enforcement of how, when, and to what standard housework is performed; (2) the physical and mental harms inflicted in and through housework; and (3) the restrictions it imposes on women’s capabilities in other life domains. Uniting gender research on housework and marital violence, our study shows how a violence lens helps render visible the ways in which housework may be organized, enforced, and experienced for some women. In doing so, it highlights that the mundane (housework) and the extreme (violence) are not separate regimes of gender control and demonstrates how they intersect to (re)produce domestic gender inequality.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"82 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145072659","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 : 2025-09-13DOI: 10.1177/08912432251374292
Katherine Alexander, Brandon Andrew Robinson, Amy L. Stone
Families are a key institution that reproduce and resist gender inequalities. For instance, families can maintain or challenge cisnormativity—a gender structure that erases, marginalizes, and harms trans people. However, beyond studying highly supportive parents of trans children, scholars lack a full understanding of how family members divest from cisnormativity. Furthermore, overfocusing on parents ignores how children and youth, including siblings, also challenge gender norms within families. Using interviews with 52 trans youth, who are mainly trans youth of color, this article examines how siblings of trans youth divest from cisnormativity and help trans youth achieve gender recognition when parents are unsupportive or ambivalent. We find that siblings recognize and support trans youth’s gender through both passive (such as nonchalantly accepting their trans sibling) and active (such as using correct names and pronouns) gender-supportive practices. We also introduce the concept of counterhegemonic accountability to describe how siblings hold accountable family members who misrecognize trans youth’s gender. Together, siblings and trans youth challenge cisnormativity at home and within the broader society. To understand the complex ways gender norms change in and through families and within society, gender scholars need to study sibling relationships.
{"title":"Unionized Against Cisnormativity: How Siblings of Transgender Youth Divest from Family Gender Norms","authors":"Katherine Alexander, Brandon Andrew Robinson, Amy L. Stone","doi":"10.1177/08912432251374292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432251374292","url":null,"abstract":"Families are a key institution that reproduce and resist gender inequalities. For instance, families can maintain or challenge cisnormativity—a gender structure that erases, marginalizes, and harms trans people. However, beyond studying highly supportive parents of trans children, scholars lack a full understanding of how family members divest from cisnormativity. Furthermore, overfocusing on parents ignores how children and youth, including siblings, also challenge gender norms within families. Using interviews with 52 trans youth, who are mainly trans youth of color, this article examines how siblings of trans youth divest from cisnormativity and help trans youth achieve gender recognition when parents are unsupportive or ambivalent. We find that siblings recognize and support trans youth’s gender through both passive (such as nonchalantly accepting their trans sibling) and active (such as using correct names and pronouns) gender-supportive practices. We also introduce the concept of counterhegemonic accountability to describe how siblings hold accountable family members who misrecognize trans youth’s gender. Together, siblings and trans youth challenge cisnormativity at home and within the broader society. To understand the complex ways gender norms change in and through families and within society, gender scholars need to study sibling relationships.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145072660","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 : 2025-09-11DOI: 10.1177/08912432251375114
Pharren Miller
Black feminist theory often focuses on the experiences of adult Black women, with limited consideration given to Black girlhood; many in the field of Black girlhood studies call for a deeper theorization of Black feminist theory in relation to Black girlhood. I use an intersectional lens of race, gender, and age to argue that our current understanding of controlling images can benefit from more fully theorizing how Black girlhood becomes subject to systemic violence and dehumanization. Using ethnographic methods at a local 6th- to 12th-grade school, I demonstrate how the controlling images of Jezebel, Sapphire, and Matriarch in the making—an iteration of the Matriarch—distinctly impact Black girls. Moreover, I distinguish how age creates slippages in how these controlling images are experienced. These slippages occur mainly when school staff deny Black girls their age-appropriate sexual exploration and development, and instead allow sexual violence, framing them as angry corrupting influences on others in the school. Such girls are seen as in need of carceral control. I contribute to the literature on Black girlhood studies, Black feminist theory, and the expectations of adulthood among young Black girls in schools to showcase how Black girls vacillate between being seen as adults and as children, furthering negative controlling images placed onto them.
{"title":"Critical Contradictions: How Black Girlhood in Schools Complicates Controlling Images","authors":"Pharren Miller","doi":"10.1177/08912432251375114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432251375114","url":null,"abstract":"Black feminist theory often focuses on the experiences of adult Black women, with limited consideration given to Black girlhood; many in the field of Black girlhood studies call for a deeper theorization of Black feminist theory in relation to Black girlhood. I use an intersectional lens of race, gender, and age to argue that our current understanding of controlling images can benefit from more fully theorizing how Black girlhood becomes subject to systemic violence and dehumanization. Using ethnographic methods at a local 6th- to 12th-grade school, I demonstrate how the controlling images of Jezebel, Sapphire, and Matriarch in the making—an iteration of the Matriarch—distinctly impact Black girls. Moreover, I distinguish how age creates slippages in how these controlling images are experienced. These slippages occur mainly when school staff deny Black girls their age-appropriate sexual exploration and development, and instead allow sexual violence, framing them as angry corrupting influences on others in the school. Such girls are seen as in need of carceral control. I contribute to the literature on Black girlhood studies, Black feminist theory, and the expectations of adulthood among young Black girls in schools to showcase how Black girls vacillate between being seen as adults and as children, furthering negative controlling images placed onto them.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145056684","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 : 2025-09-09DOI: 10.1177/08912432251374667
Madeleine Eriksson Kirsch
This study explores how women in lesbian couples in Sweden discuss in/equalities during their transitions into motherhood. The couples are situated in a context where gender equality discourse has long dominated public narratives and political decisions about families. Debates and policy-makers have focused on the challenges of motherhood in relation to fatherhood and couple inequalities due to gender differences. Against this background, this study asks: How do women in lesbian couples navigate their transition to first-time-motherhood? Drawing on interviews with 40 lesbian mothers-to-be (20 couples), the findings suggest that these women perceive themselves as exempt from the gender equality project. As such, they can “afford” inequitable household arrangements and approach intensive motherhood ideals while maintaining that they lead a feminist life. They see no incongruence because they assert that (absent) fathers and households with men are part of problems with gender equality. In the study, these associations are linked to cultural scripts about couple equality and motherhood—which, indeed, revolve around heterosexual couples. As a consequence, women in lesbian relationships may not foresee the gendered consequences of their actions and arrangements.
{"title":"“We Are Seriously Two Equals”: Lesbian Mothers-to-be and Sharing Motherhood in Sweden","authors":"Madeleine Eriksson Kirsch","doi":"10.1177/08912432251374667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432251374667","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores how women in lesbian couples in Sweden discuss in/equalities during their transitions into motherhood. The couples are situated in a context where gender equality discourse has long dominated public narratives and political decisions about families. Debates and policy-makers have focused on the challenges of motherhood in relation to fatherhood and couple inequalities due to gender differences. Against this background, this study asks: How do women in lesbian couples navigate their transition to first-time-motherhood? Drawing on interviews with 40 lesbian mothers-to-be (20 couples), the findings suggest that these women perceive themselves as exempt from the gender equality project. As such, they can “afford” inequitable household arrangements and approach intensive motherhood ideals while maintaining that they lead a feminist life. They see no incongruence because they assert that (absent) fathers and households with men are part of problems with gender equality. In the study, these associations are linked to cultural scripts about couple equality and motherhood—which, indeed, revolve around heterosexual couples. As a consequence, women in lesbian relationships may not foresee the gendered consequences of their actions and arrangements.","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145056689","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 : 2025-09-06DOI: 10.1177/08912432251372490
Danielle Slakoff
{"title":"Book Review: Hardship Duty: Women’s Experiences with Sexual Harassment, Sexual Assault, and Discrimination in the U.S. Military by Stepanie Bonnes Hardship Duty: Women’s Experiences with Sexual Harassment, Sexual Assault, and Discrimination in the U.S. Military. By BonnesStepanie. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2024, 236 pp., $95.00 USD (hardcover).","authors":"Danielle Slakoff","doi":"10.1177/08912432251372490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432251372490","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145002850","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 : 2025-08-05DOI: 10.1177/08912432251364862
Luisa T. Schneider
{"title":"Book Review: Women’s Work: Building Peace in War-Affected Communities of Uganda and Sierra Leone , By Jennifer Moore Women’s Work: Building Peace in War-Affected Communities of Uganda and Sierra Leone. By MooreJennifer. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025, 312 pp., $39.95 (paper; e-book), $120.00 (cloth).","authors":"Luisa T. Schneider","doi":"10.1177/08912432251364862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432251364862","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48351,"journal":{"name":"Gender & Society","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.5,"publicationDate":"2025-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144778201","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}
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