Journal of Research in Gender Studies最新文献

{"title":"Gender Inequality amid Educational Expansion in India: An Analysis of Gender Differences in the Attainment of Reading and Mathematics Skills","authors":"Gregory White, M. Ruther, J. Kahn, Dian Dong","doi":"10.22381/jrgs62201610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22381/jrgs62201610","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionGender inequality in education is a persistent problem in Indian society, especially for girls from rural areas and lower socioeconomic backgrounds. During the past several decades, India has achieved success in moving toward universal school enrollment and in enacting policies to address educational inequalities such as those based on gender. However, education gaps still exist. This paper seeks to identify the factors through which educational gender inequality continues to operate and the social contexts that are associated with girls, who may be left behind academically.Using data from the 2005 India Human Development Survey (IHDS), this study analyzes how social background factors, access to learning resources, time devoted to formal learning activities, and cultural attitudes regarding the education of girls contribute to ongoing gender gaps in learning. This study is an attempt to go beyond more commonly found descriptive studies of country-wide achievement and attainment patterns by measuring a more diverse set of indicators available through the IHDS dataset, including the identification of statistical interactions among key variables. We hope the results will provide increased insight into the status of educational gender inequality in India, offer useful information to policymakers as they develop targeted policies to address areas of gender inequality where it persists, and identify areas for further study using more fine-grained analyses among a narrower range of variables.Prior research reveals educational disparities by various demographic and school-related factors such as gender, social background, and access to educational resources. To build on this foundation, additional research is needed to further examine factors that are associated with gender gaps, and to assess how the effects of India's increasing educational attainment, public policies targeted to girls, and changing educational landscape are having an impact.Several important questions emerge from the literature regarding gender inequality in education. For example, although socioeconomic and other family background factors have been shown to influence educational attainment, it is less clear how these factors differentially affect boys and girls. Time devoted to learning and other educational resources are also important to investigate, and it may be the case that parents are prioritizing sons' education over daughters' education through the allocation of these factors. Finally, the role of attitudes toward the education of girls is underexplored. Female students with parents who look favorably upon the education of girls might be expected to exhibit higher educational achievement relative to those without such parents. In order to answer these questions, this paper will explore the relative contributions that social background factors, learning resources, time devoted to learning, and cultural attitudes make to academic outcomes.Educational Expansion in ","PeriodicalId":342957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Gender Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132415144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On Both Sides of the Atlantic: Migration, Gender, and Society in Contemporary Irish Literature","authors":"Barros-del Río, M. Amor","doi":"10.22381/jrgs6220165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22381/jrgs6220165","url":null,"abstract":"1.Ireland on the MoveFor centuries, geographical movement in Ireland has been characterized by rural-urban transfer to be subsequently followed by overseas migration. Only recently has the magnitude and persistence of this phenomenon been acknowledged in some official documents (Report of the Task Force on Policy Regarding Emigrants, 2002; Global Irish: Ireland's Diaspora Policy, 2015). In the meantime, abundant literature has examined the Irish migration phenomenon from many different perspectives, though little interest has been shown in the relation between female migration and place. Undoubtedly, this is a complex issue that has deserved much academic attention (Gray, 2000; Martin, 1997; Ryan, 2001; Walter, 2004). More recently, it is the lives of Irish women abroad and their implicit/explicit relations with their homeland that have been the object of scholarly interest (Donkersloot, 2012; Harte, 2009; Miller, 2008; McDowell, 2014; O'Keeffe, 2013).Border crossing is a significant decision with vital implications that do not affect men and women equally, as the Task Force on Policy Regarding Emigrants (Government of Ireland, 2002) indicates. According to Walter (2004), the USA was the preferred choice of Irish women from the early 19th century, whereas in the early 20th century Britain became the most popular destination. Later, the flows to the neighbor country became massive between the 1950s and the 1980s, a trend that changed by the end of the last century when other European destinations became more attractive. These movements necessarily affect the concepts of land and nation as the sense of identity begins to multiply and diversify. Ideologically, the feminine icons of Mother Church and Mother Ireland (or Erin) had been gaining ground since the 19th century for nationalistic purposes, and from the first decades of the 20th century, women were \"actively interpellated as national subjects through identification with territory, soil, land and landscape\" (Gray, 1999: 205). At the time, paintings, songs and discourses praised the rural Irish woman who embodied \"the values of motherhood, tradition and stability\" (Nash, 1993: 47). According to Ingman, \"nations construct their identity around fixed concepts of gender\" (2007: 3), and Ireland was no exception as, for too many decades, the social status of women was framed by institutions that served to oppress them one way or another. These institutions, identified as family and household structures, and employment and welfare policies, were also legally supported in the 1937 Constitution. That Irish gendered project targeted women to limit their access to work and public spaces in order to produce \"decent women inhabiting virtuous spaces\" (Crowley and Kitchin, 2008: 355). Symbolically, as the new values of the nation clung to the homely rural landscape, virtuous Ireland became the place to be whereas other places such as urban spaces, or destinations such as Britain and the USA were identified a","PeriodicalId":342957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Gender Studies","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121066614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"ATTITUDES TOWARDS PARENTAL EMPLOYMENT: A RANKING ACROSS EUROPE, AUSTRALIA, AND JAPAN","authors":"Ralina Panova, Isabella Buber‐Ennser","doi":"10.22381/jrgs6220161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22381/jrgs6220161","url":null,"abstract":"1.IntroductionFamily attitudes and gender roles are key drivers of changing family patterns (Dommermuth et al. 2015; Frejka 2008; Goldscheider et al. 2015). The attitudes towards maternal employment do not only refer to the family but are also related to gender roles and the distribution of household labor. Research on attitudes towards parental employment and especially the country comparative perspective is very important for better understanding fertility behavior and gender culture. Evidence from panel data indicates that gender role attitudes and family formation are related in a dynamic process, in that gender role attitudes influence family formation and vice versa (Hanappi et al. 2016; Moors 2003). Differences in attitudes towards demographic behavior and values are large across countries (Aassve et al. 2013). The gendered division of paid work and care and individual attitudes towards it are crucial for understanding the gendered nature of welfare states (Haas 2005; Lewis 2002).The political, social and economic contexts as well as the cultures of care shape individual family attitudes. In modern societies there are dominant social norms and attitudes towards family and gender, which are part of an overall cultural system and embedded in the institutional system of a country.Parental employment - especially maternal employment - involves the need of external childcare. From various perspectives the relationship between parental employment and external childcare on the one hand and children's wellbeing on the other hand has been studied (Hsin and Felfe 2014; Ruhm 2004). Results indicate a positive effect of early institutional childcare (kindergarten, qualified day-care mother) on children's cognitive and linguistic development (Loeb et al. 2007; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network 2000; Sylva et al. 2011) their social competencies (Barnes et al. 2009) and no significant association between first-year maternal employment and elevated levels of child behavior problems (Brooks-Gunn et al. 2010). In line, Lombardy and Cooley (2014) conclude that early employment poses no risks on the development of chil- dren's cognitive skills. Children from families with low and middle income as well as children from families with a migration background benefit the most from the early external childcare and therefore from the early parental employment (Loeb et al. 2007). From an economic perspective, Havnes and Mogstad (2011) report a positive effect of involvement in external childcare on education and labor participation in later life course as well as a lower risk of dependence on social assistance. In addition, the role of familial habitus is shaping children's views of their future employment, as indicated by an intergenerational transmission of non-traditional attitudes from mothers to their children (Johnston et al. 2014). It turned out that daughters are significantly more likely to reach highe","PeriodicalId":342957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Gender Studies","volume":"521 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124504971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Romantic Terrorism? An Auto-Ethnographic Analysis of Gendered Psychological and Emotional Tactics in Domestic Violence","authors":"S. Hayes, Samantha Jeffries","doi":"10.22381/JRGS6220162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22381/JRGS6220162","url":null,"abstract":"This paper draws on the theoretical arguments outlined in Hayes (2014) to frame critical analyses of two real life domestic violence narratives. The authors are both academic criminologists and victims/survivors of domestic violence, but within differing contexts – one a conventional heterosexual relationship, the other a female same-sex relationship. Their experiences are intertwined in an extensive collaborative auto-ethnographic analysis that spans seven years of working and socializing together, in which each provided a sounding board and support for the other. The analysis therefore documents two personal journeys. Auto-ethnography is a methodology that “seeks to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)” (Ellis, Adams, and Bochner, 2011). The methodological approach taken by the authors is analytic rather than evocative, in the sense that we focus on collaboratively analyzing our dual experiences, rather than simply narrating them. We occupy the dual role of researcher and researched, and turn our gaze both inward and outward (Olson, 2004: 6). The academic and theoretical are intertwined with the personal and subjective to elicit an evocative and yet empirically validated study. The theoretical underpinnings of romantic love distortion, misogyny and sexism are used to frame these experiences of domestic violence and the differing sexualities of the authors provide a rich context for exploring the ways in which domestic violence victimization experiences are impacted by gender, sexuality, and heteronormative discourses of love, sex and relationships.","PeriodicalId":342957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Gender Studies","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121545706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is the Decrease in the Gender Wage Gap the Principal Driver of the Sustained Rise in Female Labor Market Participation","authors":"R. Mihaila","doi":"10.22381/jrgs6220169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22381/jrgs6220169","url":null,"abstract":"1.IntroductionWomen have made important advances in labor markets lately, bringing about well-defined merging in human capital investment (Androniceanu, 2015a, b) and hiring expectations and end results compared with men. Technological advancement in the workplace and swifter capital accumulation (Peters, 2015a, b) have increased the value of non-manual or non-routine abilities compared with manual/routine abilities, increasing female relative wages and involvement. Marketization of home services is a decisive strength (Popescu, Comanescu, and Sabie, 2016) causing both significant female involvement and the increase in market services. Women might have a reasonable superiority in producing services, and consequently structural transformation intensifies pressure for female labor inputs (Nica and Potcovaru, 2015), or they might have a powerful inclination for service positions than men, and therefore the increase in female involvement may invigorate the development of the industry that advantageously assists working women. (Olivetti and Petrongolo, 2016)2.Gender Dissimilarities in Labor Market Behavior and OutcomesThere is an inverse-U link between the degree of advancement of an economy and its income losses generated by gender breaches, while there is an adverse link between the advancement degree (Bratu, 2016a, b; 2015) and the income losses generated only by gender breaches in entrepreneurship. There is a beneficial impact of rises in income per person on gender impartiality (Buber-Ennser, 2015) and a detrimental impact of gender disparity on economic growth. Less trained women, or unfairness in women's education, may bring about diminished female labor force involvement and women being played down in entrepreneurship. Gender breaches in entrepreneurship have important consequences on the distribution of resources (Devine, 2015) and therefore on aggregate output (Lazaroiu, 2015a, b, c; 2014), whereas the breach from labor force involvement has a considerable impact on income per person. The expenditures related to gender breaches in the labor markets are significant. (Cuberes and Teignier, 2016) (Figures 1 and 2)3.Gender Disparities in Executive CompensationFemale executives are moved up in the same proportion as males with comparable qualification features and work-related experience. Women are moved up more swiftly internally, excepting that this is balanced by an inferior external promotion level, and tend to agree to inferior-ranked jobs (Nica, Manole, and Briscariu, 2016) with other companies. Compensation in executive administration is unquestionably associated with rank, women are remunerated to some extent better than males for any certain rank (Cesaroni, Sentuti, and Buratti, 2015) and qualification, and the entire degree of promotion is not determined by gender. Depending on age, instruction, working practice with the company (Ionescu, 2016), hiring and firing rate, decision-making experience, position, company size and industry, wom","PeriodicalId":342957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Gender Studies","volume":"113 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117286893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Feminizing world power: A new constellation of women in politics?","authors":"M. Peters","doi":"10.22381/jrgs6220163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22381/jrgs6220163","url":null,"abstract":"It is an interesting time in world politics. Neoliberal globalization seems on the back foot especially after an unexpected Brexit. Europe faces the prospect of realigning itself after the UK vote to leave the EU. The UK suffering from an immediate economic effect of Brexit has to renegotiate its international relations and trading agreements. The EU faces what seem insuperable problems: its Mediterranean economies are in bad shape and the EU is still recovering from the Great Recession of 2007-8. Meanwhile the Middle East is a boiling cauldron of regional, religious and ethnic conflicts involving a new round of US-Russia politics and strategic action over Assad's regime and larger regional bloc conflicts. The Syrian civil war is in its seventh year and refugees from Syrian have made up one of the largest migration crises mainly from displaced refugees in the Middle East since WWII with strong eco- nomic, social and security consequences for the EU. ISIL continues to grow and extend its influence in the Levant. Militant Islam with all its splinter groups continues to conduct its suicide and car bombing attacks on European civil society. There are also new crises brewing in the South China Seas with China's imperial ambitions as well as international difficulties with so-called \"rogue states\" like Korea. The likelihood of nuclear proliferation is probably greater at this point historically than any time since the end of WWII.At the same time the specter of Donald Trump grows larger as the US November elections approach and the rhetoric that spills forth from him on issues of NATO, Russia, and China scare most mainstream foreign policy specialists. His threatened withdrawal of major partnerships and international treaties including the recent Paris environmental agreement poses a real cause for alarm.The world leadership problems and issues confronting heads of state are probably more complex and intrinsically more difficult than at any time in the past. At the same time it appears that the emergence of women leaders currently in power is the highest it has ever been with the election or appointment of some twenty-two female heads of state and leaders in 2015.1 Caroline Howard and Michael K. Ozanian (2012) named \"The 100 Most Powerful Women\" beginning with Angela Merkel, Hillary Clinton, Dilma Rousseff, Melinda Gates, Jill Abramson, Sonia Ghandi, Michelle Obama, Christine Lagarde, Janet Napolitano, and Sheryl Sandberg under the following description:There's official power, which comes in the form of a head of state or CEO, and then there's the transformational force of impact, stemming from magnitude of reach and influence. Here are entrepreneurs and early adapters, celebrity role models, activist billionaires and the philanthropists who are healing the world - all ranked by dollars, media presence and impact.Yet as Swanee Hunt (2007), in an article \"Let Women Rule\" in Foreign Affairs, reminds us, the progress toward leadership and equal power for ","PeriodicalId":342957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Gender Studies","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123397163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gender and the Law","authors":"Mechthild E. Nagel","doi":"10.22381/jrgs6220167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22381/jrgs6220167","url":null,"abstract":"1.U.S. Exceptionalism and States of CaptivityThe United States government, business, media, etc., and my students have touted the virtues of its democratic values - it is the freest of all countries, and given that immigration continues unabated, it seems to be true! What would folks from the Global South give to win a coveted Green Card!However, this exceptionalist rhetoric has an ominous underside. No other country has engaged in wars of aggression at the level and intensity of the United States military machine since 1945. In fact, only seven years in its 200-year history have been relatively free from waging war. Hence no U.S. president can be considered a peace president!There's something very troubling about using bombs to \"free Afghan girls\" from the Taliban or free the Iraqi people from a dictator who the U.S. military and CIA propped up in the first place - women have had access to a variety of professional jobs in Iraq - so that invasion for \"freedom\" campaign couldn't have been executed under the humanitarian mantle of \"women's rights.\" As philosopher Angela Y. Davis has suggested in public talks, whenever George W. Bush exalted in \"freedom (and democracy)\" speechifying, one would do better by replacing \"freedom\" with \"capitalism\" - then his rhetoric actually made sense.Exceptionalism at any price. The Monroe Doctrine of the imperial 19th Century went eastwards to engulf the entire globe, especially in the wake of the Cold War and its hot expressions across Asia and Africa. So far a brief glimpse into the global, imperial expressions of an empire that considers itself democratic and decidedly export-friendly or zealous to enforce such democracy overseas.What does democracy mean within this nation-state, especially to all women and to men of color? In fact, as freed man Frederick Douglass exclaimed: What is the meaning of the 4th of July to the American slave? For our purposes, let us remember two important legal ramifications haunting the American republic: one - as presence, the other - as an absence.It is no secret that the United States confederacy was built on two pillars of violence: genocide of Indigenous peoples and enslavement of peoples captured from another continent. Yet, it basks in spreading \"freedom and democracy\" far and wide.Note the presence of one underexamined legal fact: the 13th amendment to the U.S. constitution captures the paradoxical nature of American Democracy: enslaved, indentured people are set free, but only if they don't commit a crime (U.S. Const. Amend. XIII)! Thus, the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 did not free enslaved Black people but instead ushered in statesanctioned enslavement. The state captures people and incarcerates them with such enthusiasm that to date the U.S. is the prison nation of the entire world. Having 5% of the world's share of population, it incarcerates 25% of the world's prisoners. And unsurprisingly, of the 2.3 million daily count of US prisoners, a majority of them are Blac","PeriodicalId":342957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Gender Studies","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126821480","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"RECONCEPTUALIZING GENDER: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE FROM STRUCTURE TO PROCESS AND INTERSECTIONALITY","authors":"April N. Terry","doi":"10.22381/jrgs6220164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22381/jrgs6220164","url":null,"abstract":"Brief Introduction to the Study of GenderFrom sex roles to gender, one of the most important theoretical advances in the study of gender has been the development of an interactionist perspective, a body of theory and empirical work that focuses on the \"doing\" of gender. The study of gender was really a Western invention. With the end of the nineteenth century came the doctrine of equal rights with Engels's work culminating in the idea of a social system with men and women based on a historical trajectory. However, Engels assumed a naturalness of the categories of women and men; there were views such as \"true\" men and \"true\" women (Connell, 1987; 2002). The 1940s produced terms such as \"sex role,\" \"male role,\" and \"female role.\" When studying gender and relationships, it took many decades for scholars to start assessing the continued production of gender inequality in a variety of institutional settings (Connell, 1987). Once this was acknowledged, others began to focus on the intersectionality paradigm which looks at a variety of forms of oppression (e.g. race/ethnicity, sexuality, class) that all interact together; they are not separate forms of inequality but rather additive in nature (Acker, 1988; Hill Collins, 1999; Anderson & Hill Collins, 2007; Kane, 2012; Hill Collins, 2015).Sex RolesSex role theory consists of a large body of literature. Most formulations have five points in common: 1) there is a distinction between the person and the position she occupies; 2) there is an action or role behavior that she is assigned to; 3) the role expectations or norms are defined by the actions of that position; 4) they are held by people occupying counter-positions (e.g. role senders, reference groups); and 5) they are enforced by means of sanctions. Role theory is one approach to studying social structure through the restrictions proposed by stereotyped gender expectations (Hill Collins, 2004). This means that being a man means something different than being a woman. Each individual is expected to respond to different social expectations and connect social structures to the formation of personality. There is a dominant \"norm\" for behavior; one who departs is seen as personally eccentric or the product of inappropriate socialization (Connell, 1987; Connell, 2002). These individuals are the ones who either consciously or unconsciously choose to move away from the stereotyped \"male\" and \"female\" roles. This can be through their appearance, behaviors, jobs, or other outlets of gender expression. Although those who choose to deviate risk the judgment of others as everyone is held accountable for acting/looking like their assigned sex role (Ridgeway, 2011; Kane, 2012).From Sex Roles to GenderMillman and Kanter's work sparked the era of feminist thought in the social sciences (Hess & Marx Ferree, 1987). Feminist thought, as a theory, looked at the departure from traditional sex role definitions. Hess and Marx Ferree (1987) reported that the study of men and w","PeriodicalId":342957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Gender Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126894556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ordinary Men with Extra-Ordinary Skills? Masculinity Constructs among Mmorpg-Gamers","authors":"C. Hellman, Maija Majamäki","doi":"10.22381/jrgs6220166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22381/jrgs6220166","url":null,"abstract":"1.IntroductionThe media discussion surrounding digital gaming tends to be risk- and problem-oriented. For example, computer video gaming has been depicted as causing mental health problems (Ahlroth, 2014) and reducing social competence and cognition (Mykkanen, 2013). Such public concerns are often heavily gendered by emphasizing how young boys lose out due to their gaming habits.Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are an easy target of public concern (see Karlsen, 2015). The gamers, who are mostly men, immerse themselves in the graphical virtual gaming environments about 20 to 25 hours a week (Griffiths et al., 2004; Ng & Wiemer-Hastings, 2005; Smahel et al., 2008), they appear exceptionally demarcated from the outside world. The fantasy and warfare milieus of the games are filled with tasks to be attended to through the coordination of the gamers' input. To advance and get the most out of the games, gamers form guilds that usually play together for several gaming sessions. In the public discourse, these online game communities are sometimes portrayed as breeding grounds for male aggression and lost souls (Walker, 2012; Karlsen, 2015). They have even been presented as a backdrop for the antagonized male offenders in school shootings (see Hoikkala & Suurpaa, 2007). Still, not much is known about the masculinity constructs that are upheld through the collaboration and the \"we\"-spirit of these communities. Although research has covered a myriad of aspects of strong and intense social bonds between players (e.g. Verhagen & Johansson, 2009; Li & Alfano, 2006; Nardi & Harris, 2006; Hsu et al., 2009; Quandt & Kroger, 2013), less is known about how masculinity constructs work as social glue in these processes. There is, no doubt, a need to analyze the masculinity constructs that gamer communities are, in fact, nurturing.In this study, we inquired into the masculine identities in applications (N=210) for community membership of one of the largest MMORPG gaming communities in Finland. The community has more than 2400 members, of whom less than 6% are women (2016). The study analyzes how the gamers present themselves as persons and as gamers, paying special attention to the nature and functions of their masculine identity. As both identity and masculinity positions are fluent concepts, we employ three gamers' identity positions (virtual, real, and projective, as suggested by Gee, 2003) and three masculinity positions (heroic, ordinary, and revolting, as suggested by Wetherell and Edley, 1999) for creating order and making sense of our observations.We start by presenting some earlier research on MMORPG as well as our theoretical framework. Then, we report the results. In the end, we discuss our contribution, drawing up a grid that summarizes the masculine identities construed in the community under study.2.Social and Gendered WorldsMMORPG gamers typically create and sustain order within gaming guilds and clans by community rules. These ","PeriodicalId":342957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Gender Studies","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125651625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"EMPLOYER SPONSORED FERTILITY PRESERVATION: DEBATING INSTITUTIONAL PROMOTION OF REPRODUCTIVE PROCRASTINATION OR CHOICE","authors":"Shelley Grant","doi":"10.22381/jrgs6220168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22381/jrgs6220168","url":null,"abstract":"IntroductionElective fertility preservation, colloquially called \"social freezing\" or \"egg freezing,\" has revived debates on the social norms, policy provisions and medical standards that govern the use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Essentially, \"social freezing\" is a trend in family planning strategies that repurposes existing ART techniques. The expression describes the election of presumably fertile females at peak childbearing ages to retrieve, cryopreserve and store sex cells as either unfertilized oocytes or gametes (fertilized eggs) for use in later childbearing attempts (ASRM, 2013). Although tissue and cellular freezing is used in numerous reproductive and non-reproductive medical procedures (Pegg, 2015), \"social freezing\" specifically connotes the socially motivated suspension of child creation processes for reasons such as partnership formation, career attainment or achieving economic stability. Some commentators have called fertility preservation the \"ultimate type of family planning for today's professional woman\" (Lockwood, 2014) because it allows the creation of genetically related children, while reducing the biological imperatives for early childbearing (Strathern, 2005). These benefits add to the relative lack of regulation on preservation processes. Cryopreservation processes are not restricted by the universalized standards that govern child adoption processes or the process bans or restrictions that have lead to jurisdictional inconsistencies in the recognition of surrogacy arrangements. In contrast, fertility preservation technologies (sometimes referred to as FTP) have developed into an unproblematic and routinely recommended medical effort to offset fertility loss resulting from treatments against potentially life threatening diseases such as cancer. Expanded interest in using preservation to retain fertility capacities in nonlife threatening situations has been a key reason for the rise in public concern on the need to create rules that control patient access to this novel option. Although similar to earlier debates on ART ethics, reservations on preservation can be understood as distinct in several respects. Among them, concerns on women's ability to successfully postpone the onset of family building link to equally unresolved questions on health care entitlements, protections for reproductive choice and institutionalized gender inequity. Few events allow so clear a view of these intersecting concerns as the pivotal announcement of a pioneering decision by high-profile, global technology corporations to pay for the cryopreservation costs of eligible employees.In mid-October 2014, the leading Silicon Valley technology company Facebook, Inc. (based in Menlo Park, CA) announced to major US news organizations details on a plan to fund two cycles of \"egg freezing\" or sex cell cryopreservation for eligible employees (Molina and Weise). Shortly afterwards, Apple, Inc. announced a similar decision to extend the sa","PeriodicalId":342957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Gender Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130218201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}