In 2015, the people of Ireland voted, through an historic referendum, to legalise same-sex marriage. This year by over 65% (64% turnout) they voted to legalise abortion. Ireland has a well-documented history (through its factual and fictional narratives) of failing to provide for women who maintain, or seek to end, a pregnancy. This has particularly been the case for unmarried women and the church has had its own shame to carry in this regard. The amendments likely to be made by the Irish Parliament after this referendum are more progressive than those found in current UK legislation (largely unchanged since the 1967 Act of Parliament which legalised abortion under certain circumstances). Northern Ireland currently has the most hostile position on women seeking to terminate an unwanted pregnancy even where that pregnancy has arisen from incest or rape or where there is a serious foetal abnormality.
In Rationalizing pay inequity, Davies, McGregor, Pringle and Giddings argue that neoliberalism, with its pervasive patriarchy and co-option of feminism, renders women tacitly complicit in gendered pay inequalities. In interview, women engineers created narratives of their individualized shortcomings as the source of pay disparities and so the systemic causes of pay inequity remain unchallenged.
In Vegan men and hybrid masculinity, Greenebaum and Dexter consider how eating meat is equated with ‘masculine traits’ and to what degree vegan men threaten the view of hegemonic masculinity. This research suggests that vegan men engage in hybrid masculinity by modifying values associated with veganism and femininity to align with traditional masculine standards. Here, vegan men contested the narrow definition of hegemonic masculinity but fell short of challenging gender inequalities.
In The rough guide to love, Burge evaluates the relationship between sexualization and romantic love and in the process challenges claims that the current ‘crisis’ of sexualization is a product of late modernity. This paper employs identifies the formation of gendered meanings and practices in How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter, a late medieval advice text for young women, and twenty-first-century advice from the MyBliss website. Focusing on sexualized clothing, contact with others, reputation and social status, Burge contests that in both texts discourses of romantic love and sexualization are mutually dependent and reveal a lengthy pattern of gender normativity and inequality.
In Gender-reveal parties Gieseler examines the trend to publicize what was once a private, moment in parenthood. As this trend has grown in popularity, it has sparked a divisive discourse and reasserted normative ideals of gender. Approaching this phenomenon through performativity illustrates how a collective reshaping of the now-sexed/now-gendered baby, through rituals linked to binaried identity, takes place. It allows adults to recuperate what they have learned from their own gendered constructions, reinscribing expectations and assumptions onto the unwritten body of the unborn.
In Doing gender in Spanish same-sex couples Alvarez-Bernardo, Romo-Avilés and García-Berbén look at known patterns in the distribution of housework and childcare as mechanisms for ‘doing gender’. Same-sex couples might escape this gender binarism, and so this study set out to learn about the distribution of work in these couples, as well as the influence of gender socialization. In their study, the authors found no differences between male and female couples. Nevertheless, the female couples showed higher levels of discontent when the distribution was not egalitarian. Consequently the authors propose that the effects of gender socialization are perpetuated beyond heterosexual relationships and also affect same-sex couples.
In Australian news media’s representation of Cate McGregor, Kerry investigates the representation of transgender individuals by Australia’s news media (ANM), conducting an analysis of its representation of the highest ranking Australian transgender military officer. The author concludes that, on the one hand, ANM reproduces traditional transgender tropes (such as publishing ‘before/after’ photographs). On the other hand, ANM gives voice to McGregor’s views pertaining to living as a woman and a transgender woman which are disruptive to sex/gender normativities. The author argues that, in this respect, the ANM engages in a remediation of transgender theory.
In Young people, friendships and gender learning, Yang looks at friendship microfilms produced by Taiwanese students; how they can be used to understand their relationships and how they make these meaningful. A common theme emerged concerning romantic concerns among close friends and the effects that follow. The films present scenarios such as ‘I want to be more than merely your friend’ and ‘A conflict arises from a love triangle’. The films also reveal the anxiety of gay adolescents trapped in dilemmas involving being neither a love interest nor a best friend and wondering whether to come out of the closet. The practices of homosociality in the films manifest gender differences.
In ‘My private kingdom and sometimes my private jail’ Alassad-Alhuzail evaluates the concept of home in the lives of Bedouin women. At times it has been considered a ‘private kingdom’ – an intimate space, a sphere of influence and a space of creativity as well as well-being. In other periods it has been perceived as a ‘private jail’ – suffocating and limiting. The Bedouin communities in southern Israel, which are part of the country’s Arab-Palestinian population, are undergoing major changes. The external form of the Bedouin home has changed too, from a tent to a cement-block house, from an open structure to a closed one, from being part of the open space of the desert to being a limited space in a neighbourhood. To understand the changing meaning of home during this transition, the author conducted a narrative study with 30 women who live today in permanent settlements, but who represent three generations that correspond to three periods of settlement and three housing types, and how these women ascribe different meanings to the idea of home.
In Doing homebirth like a man? Daniels and Chadwick discuss constructions of masculinity in South African men’s narratives of homebirth. The authors draw on an analysis of interviews in which efforts are made to articulate a masculine perspective of birth. Men talked of ways of being present and passive during homebirth in ways that challenged normative constructions of masculinity. The notion of selfless masculinity emerged as a key ideal in which giving during birth was constructed as integral to being a good father/man. However, competing forms of normative masculinity constructed in men’s narratives meant gender tensions remained in continued traditional meta-narratives, such as being the ‘breadwinner’.
Blu, June 2018
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