The article analyses the process of transformation and reinvention of patriarchal gender order at times of radical changes caused by violent conflict and life in emigration. The case study draws a comparison between younger and older generations of Chechen women in Austria, Poland and Germany and their radically different gender practices. The analysis shows that the turn towards more conservative gender relations, which can be observed among the younger generation, cannot be explained by a reference to the Chechen culture as (...) inherently patriarchal. Nor can it be ascribed solely to the insufficient reception and the lack of recognition experienced by refugees in the receiving countries. Rather, it is an outcome of women’s different conditions of socialization that have affected their hierarchy of values and continue to exert significant influence on their adaptation strategies in exile; most notably, on how the women perceive and make use of the opportunity structures in the receiving contexts. (shrink)

This article analyses the increasing participation of Muslim women in mosques in Norway in light of current discourses on citizenship, gender and migration. It discusses how various processes in the mosques can be interpreted as contradictory and complex by sometimes increasing the participation of women and promoting liberation, while at other times constraining women'ss activities through various forms of discipline and control. Women are vital for the building of religious institutions among Muslim immigrant communities, and they are slowly achieving more (...) space in such institutions. They are also being included in new forms of participation in some mosques. Recently, some Muslim women in Norway have made public calls for the reinterpretation of the Qur'an in ways that are more inclusive towards women. Despite pressures from both within and outside the mosques, however, Muslim congregations in Norway can still be described as patriarchal gender regimes where the participation and citi- zenship of women depends on the willingness of men to include them. (shrink)

This article explores variation in how immigrant Muslim women in Oslo, Norway, interpret and practice gender relations within the framework of Islam. Religion, family, and work are important sites for the formation, negotiation, and change of gender relations. The article therefore discusses the views and experiences of immigrant Muslim women concerning wife-husband relations and participation in the labor market. Four analytical types of views toward gender relations are introduced, and the variation in gender practices and views found among Muslim women (...) in Oslo is discussed in relation to these types. The analysis suggests that immigrant Muslim women use Islam as a flexible resource for interpreting gender relations. It also shows that while women generally uphold a religious ideal of complementary gender roles, their actual practice often contradicts with and contests this ideal. (shrink)

Based on in-depth interviews with 18 Korean immigrant working couples, this study explores Korean immigrant working wives' ongoing challenge to male dominance at home and to the unequal division of family work. A main factor in wives' being less obedient to their husbands is their psychological resources such as pride, competence, and honor, which they gain from awareness of their contribution to the family economy. Under immigrant family circumstances in which working for family survival is prioritized, wives feel that their (...) negligence of family work, rejection of the superwoman ideal, and perceived right to demand their husbands' help with family work is legitimized. However, Confucian patriarchal beliefs lead these wives to place limits on the degree of challenge. The findings highlight the interplay of wives' psychological resources, gender norms, and the social standing of being immigrant families in affecting wives' challenge to gender inequality at home. Differences in effects among Korean immigrant families are explored. (shrink)

Integrating race and gender in a social constructionist framework, the authors examine the way that second-generation Asian American young women describe doing gender across ethnic and mainstream settings, as well as their assumptions about the nature of Asian and white femininities. This analysis of interviews with 100 daughters of Korean and Vietnamese immigrants finds that respondents narratively construct Asian and Asian American cultural worlds as quintessentially and uniformly patriarchal and fully resistant to change. In contradistinction, mainstream white America is constructed (...) as the prototype of gender equality. Hence, Asian American and white American women serve in these accounts as uniform categorical representations of the opposing forces of female oppression and egalitarianism. The authors consider how the relational construction of hegemonic and subordinated femininities, as revealed through controlling images that denigrate Asian forms of gender, contribute to internalized oppression and shape the doing of ethnicity. (shrink)

Despite the classic patriarchy of the Roman Catholic church, American Catholic nuns entered into patriarchal bargains that latently gained them access to resources and status within the system. By means of educational advancement and professional careers, encouraged by the male hierarchy as necessary to performing the works of the church, nuns gained both informal power in the system and an awareness of their disadvantaged position. This article analyzes the shifts that have occurred in these bargains during the past 40 years (...) in terms of the submerged networks of feminist consciousness that have existed in Catholic convents for decades. The article concludes with a description of the current crisis occurring within religious orders as they experience a decline in membership and rapidly increasing median ages of members. (shrink)

Between 1920 and 1940, increasing proportions of urban Italian and Jewish women gave birth under the supervision of doctors in clinics and hospitals and limited the number of children they bore. We examine the role of women's informal conversation in accounting for the differences between Jewish and Italian women in the timing of these social changes. Women in both groups drew on relatives, friends, and neighbors for information and social support, but differences in the composition of Italian and Jewish networks (...) were relevant for the timing of change in these reproductive behaviors. (shrink)

A decade ago, the “new sociology of masculinity” emerged as an exciting new paradigm for understanding gender, emphasizing the study of “hegemonic power relations” among men and women. However, subsequent research has not fully redeemed the promise of the NSM, failing to seriously engage the theoretical implications of studying hegemony. This article addresses the lacunae by presenting a theoretically informed analysis of life history interviews with Chinese American men. Its chief empirical question is how Chinese American men “achieve” masculinity in (...) the face of negative stereotypes. This is accomplished, it is found, through four possible gender strategies: compensation, deflection, denial, or repudiation. The author then fashions a theoretical account of these strategies to show how they can reproduce the social order by striking a hegemonic bargain, which occurs when a Chinese American man's gender strategy involves consciously trading on—or unconsciously taking advantage of—the “privileges” of his race, gender, class, generation, and/or sexuality for the purposes of elevating his masculinity. (shrink)

Early research suggested that migration changed gender roles by offering women new wages and exposing them to norms of gender equity. Increasingly, however, scholars have drawn attention to the role of structural factors, such as poverty and undocumented status, in mediating the relationship between migration and gender. This article takes such insights a step further by showing that migrant communities’ reactions to structural marginality—and their efforts to build alternatives in their home villages—may also draw women into new gender roles. I (...) demonstrate this mechanism through the case of San Miguel, a Mixtec sending community in Southern Mexico where, in the context of U.S. migration, once-excluded women came to predominate in civic affairs. In response to harsh conditions in the United States, migrants from San Miguel returned to their village. To make this economically feasible, they sought state development resources. Men, who often stayed in the United States as breadwinners, relied on sympathetic women back in the sending community to advocate on their behalf. Meanwhile, women’s own rejection of migrant life gave them new interest in sustaining their village. For both, incorporating women into politics offered a strategy to secure needed resources and avoid assimilating into an undocumented underclass. (shrink)

Recent transnational migration literature does not sufficiently explore women's role in the development of transnational communities. By analyzing 30 interviews with Puerto Rican migrant and return migrant women, the author shows that women, through subsistence production, play a significant role in the social construction of transnational communities. By using a transnational perspective and placing migrant women's subsistence work and its contradictory nature at the center of her analysis, the author challenges studies that assume that maintaining ties to homelands leads to (...) freedom for all family members, moves away from home/host binary frame works of immigrant women's experiences that locate greater gender oppression in home countries and more freedom in host societies, and explores women's complex perceptions of home. (shrink)