Our second issue of 2024 begins with three articles considering gender in relation to the issues of women’s work and welfare, disaster management and sleep. In the first of these, Keerty Nakray assesses the charges of gender blindness levelled against the classification of capitalist countries as liberal, conservative-corporatist and social-democratic welfare regimes. Using World Bank data on female workforce participation, paid and unpaid work, and social expenditure, with five indices for classifying countries based on their efforts towards enabling women’s paid work access, the article addresses gender gaps in welfare regime research and the importance of taking the geographical, economic and cultural variations between countries into account.
Virginia Cocina Díaz, Sandra Dema Moreno and Mar Llorente Marrón consider how gender roles were connected to the rescue of material goods following the earthquake in the Spanish town of Lorca in 2011. Working with people who survived this catastrophe, they show that, with some exceptions, the actions carried out by men and women to rescue their possessions were linked to the gendered division of labour; men were more likely to recount the risks they took in gaining access to their homes, while women focused on their rescue of essential items such as medication, clothing and monetary goods.
Ritu Rani, Y. Selvamani and Ankit Sikarwar examine how gender differences and socioeconomic status are related to sleep and sleep problems, focusing on their work with adults over the age of 50 in India. They show that women in this category were 46% more likely to report sleep problems than men and suggest that gender difference in sleep problems is driven by lower socioeconomic status – poverty, not working and lack of educational attainment.
The issue includes three papers that draw together different aspects of masculinity. In the first of these, Anne McNulty and Megan E. Birney discuss their research investigating how adolescents who have grown up during the #MeToo movement view masculinity. Working with 16- to 19-year olds in the UK, they show how, compared to girls, boys appear to feel more comfortable with media representations of hegemonic masculinity, are more likely to value traditional masculine characteristics such as strength, competence and success, and are less engaged with thinking about masculinity. Their research suggests that hegemonic masculine ideals still hold weight for this age group, despite the intense media coverage of narratives about masculinity.
Saad Ali Khan and Afrasiyab Khan consider the sports of Pehlwani (Indian wrestling) and bodybuilding, both characterized by an intense focus on maintaining the body in alignment with ideals of what it means to be a man and performed within exclusively male communities. Their article, based on research in Pakistan, shows how these sporting cultures depend on the support of women and on a refusal of men’s bodies and relationships as erotic. Instead, men’s bodies are turned into objects of admiration based on an aesthetic that values size and strength, and an ideal that prizes drive, control and competition.
Noting that we know little about sporting relationships between older men, Kristi A. Allain draws on her work with male hockey players in Canada, showing that while those in late midlife continue to enact patterns of male relationships associated with younger men, older men may break with some of these, for example, by moving away from engaging in behaviour based on misogyny and competitiveness and developing an appreciation of relationships with depth and intimacy. The study suggests that dominant sporting masculinities embraced by younger men may wane in some ways as men reach later life.
Finally, we include two papers considering gender and survey construction. Julie Mooney-Somers, Ania Anderst and Rachel Deacon discuss the Sydney Women and Sexual Health (SWASH) survey, which has informed Australian public policy in this area for 25 years. The authors note that reflecting on this kind of quantitative research is rare, but it is vital if researchers are to demonstrate their accountability to the communities and sectors who depend on their work. They show how their work has resulted in positive changes, with the survey adapted to better represent trans and gender diverse people.
Elizabeth Yarrow, Robbie Duschinsky and Catherine L Saunders describe the development and testing of a new composite scale, the Gender Variance Scale (GVS), which measures gender diversity on a spectrum in order to identify experiences of gender beyond a basic sex binary. They discuss the scale in the context of their broader study which provides the basis for examining how gender intersects with other aspects of identity; for example, in their findings that higher levels of gender variance were associated with being lesbian, gay or bisexual and having a disability.