In this issue, the articles selected centre around gender and work. For many decades, the legislative and philosophical tools, purported to provide a vehicle for change, have failed to deliver equality for many under-represented groups. Traditional hegemonies and oppression persist in the field of work – either in underpaid sectors; viewed as the domain of women or as gaps in pay, and status, within sectors; viewed as the responsibility of the individual. Expecting the white, privileged, straight, binary, male to give up his privileges has proved, perhaps unsurprisingly, ineffective; often inviting hostility (and not just from men). The articles here examine these ideas from a variety of working domains.
In What role does gender have in shaping knowledge that underpins the practice of midwifery? Pendleton examines a profession traditionally practiced by women and the role that gender exclusivity has played in it. Over the centuries midwifery has passed from a female domain to one of male scientific enquiry. Focussing on the mechanics of childbirth created an opportunity for men, backed by the perceived superiority of early obstetric knowledge, to intervene for payment. This paper concludes with a discussion of how contemporary regulation has encouraged practitioners to use patriarchal structures, and frameworks of knowledge, to co-exist within the hegemonic biomedical model advocated by the majority of their obstetric colleagues.
In Women seafarers in Taiwan, Guo describes the willingness of Taiwanese shipping companies to provide female navigational students with on-board opportunities. Through interviews with women seafarers, and representatives of shipping companies, as well as sailing on an LPG carrier, the author discovers that, in the battle between occupational gender-equality awareness and the shipping market, the power remains in the hands of employers but that they can demonstrate gender bias towards women seafarers due to the specific vicissitudes of their industry.
In STEMinism, Myers, Gallaher and McCarragher look at the role that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) play in creating knowledge and pathways to power. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with STEM students from a large university in the US, the authors find that interviewees benefitted from programs aimed at recruiting women, and people of color, but that rather than problematizing gendered power dynamics in the classroom, lab, and workplace, students espouse, what the authors refer to as, STEMinism. This demands that under-represented groups working in STEM recognize the problem and fix it for themselves. An interruption of the structural forces that perpetuate sex-segregation in STEM, as well as suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of programs designed to end gender inequality, are offered by the authors.
In Cultural Sexism and the UK Higher Education Sector, Savigny points to the under-presentation of women at senior levels within the academy and the various forms of discrimination that women experience. Through interview data, this article explores the cultural dimensions which serve to reinforce women’s structural disadvantage and contends that ‘cultural sexism’ provides a vocabulary through which to make sense of this.
In ‘I made myself small like a cat and ran away’ Villegas explores the intersection between workplace sexual harassment, immigration status, and insecure employment. Drawing on narratives from migrant women with precarious immigration status in Toronto, Canada, the author describes an illegalization process, which leads to a ‘legal violence’ against migrants. The research demonstrates that precarious status migrant women do not experience sexual harassment in isolation but that other axes of oppression interlock to exacerbate it.
In Masculinizing National Service, Lowe studies the role that a conscription-based military plays in transforming Singaporean boys, from various classes and ethnic backgrounds, into adult men. At a time when much is written of military masculinities in countries that have abandoned conscription, this article examines how compulsory enlistment reproduces hegemonic masculinities. This work articulates a framework for theorizing how military masculinities are responsible for gendering male citizenship in Singapore and how this allows those who participate to gain access to elite networks of power.
In When a Man Debates a Woman, Grebelsky-Lichtman and Katz observe the effect of mixed-gender televised political debates. This study maps gender accountability structures of verbal/nonverbal communication patterns in the candidates selected for the 2016 US Election (Trump and Clinton). The findings indicate that during mixed-gender debates, contenders present conduct that correspond to their gender communicative structures, primarily nonverbal patterns. The theoretical and analytical framework highlights the effect of gender on political communication.
In Stage model for female criminals, Gottschalk seeks to explain why it is that in Norway females represent only 6% of the white-collar crime prison population. For this article, two groups of business school students were asked to estimate various components of a stage-model designed to account for the disparities. Based on the existent literature the author attempts to account for the most obvious discrepancies between the research literature and the two survey groups.
In On being the gender person in an academic department Henderson refers to the colloquial expression ‘gender person’ to describe those who research or teach about gender, but whose primary affiliation is not to a gender studies department. The article reapplies Lucy Ferguson’s framework to academics working as ‘gender people’ in academia. The article provides empirical data on being the ‘gender person’ and shows that relying on a ‘gender person’ for gender mainstreaming renders both gender academics, and academic departments, vulnerable in different ways.
Blu, June 2019