The role of Eritrean women in thirty years war of independence brought major changes and reflects in the present demography and economy of Eritrea in the development arena. Their participation in the economy contributes to local production and income by filling the gaps left by men who died in the war or who have left the country and settled in different parts of the world. Despite the growing importance of women for the formal economy, jobs and self-employment (...) opportunities available to women are still clustered in low-productivity and/or low-status industries. To cope with the growing number of female-headed households, Eritrea needs to increase the earning potential of women. This paper indicates that providing women with education at secondary or tertiary level is one way to go. This paper deals with, why Eritrean women are entering into the labour markets: one, family ties and control of women is weakened due to absent men and increasing divorce rates. The second, there is a shortage of male breadwinners. The third, growing education levels increase their earning potential. (shrink)

During much of U.S. history, Black women had higher employment rates than white women. But by the late twentieth century, women in more privileged racial/ethnic, national origin, and education groups were more likely to work for pay. The authors compare the employment of white women to Blacks and three groups of Latinas—Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans—and explain racial/ethnic group differences. White women work for pay more weeks per year than Latinas or Black (...) class='Hi'>women, although the gaps are small for all groups but Mexicans. In all groups, education encourages and children reduce employment. Having a husband does not reduce employment, and husbands’ earnings have little effect. The higher fertility of Mexicans and the large number of recent immigrants among Mexican women reduce their employment relative to that of white women. The higher education of white women explains large shares of the employment gap with each group of women of color because, in today’s labor market, education strongly predicts employment. (shrink)

Based on interviews with a random sample of white women who are in a second marriage, this article examines changes in women's marital power across marriage, divorce, and remarriage. In some marriages, women's market work is not considered a resource and hence does not have a positive effect on marital power, particularly when husbands are employed in low-status occupations. Conversely, women who are domestically oriented do not necessarily suffer a loss of power. Hochschild's concept of “economy (...) of gratitude” illuminates the way that marital power is affected by the meanings couples assign to women's paid and unpaid labor. Furthermore, women's previous market work and marital and divorce experiences affect the meaning of their paid and unpaid labor upon remarriage, as well as their desire for each. (shrink)

Data from 590 college graduates are used to assess the relationship between family employment status and gender role attitudes for a predominately European American sample. The women in this study are employed full time, part time, or are full-time homemakers, and all report being married to men employed full time. The men in the study are all employed full time and report having wives who are employed full time, part time, or are full-time homemakers. Controlling for the effects (...) of selected background factors, full-time employed women are the most supportive of nontraditional family gender roles, followed by part-time employed women. The attitudes of homemakers are more similar to those of the men. Few significant differences exist when comparing the men with full-time employed wives, those with part-time employed wives, and men married to homemakers. The findings suggest an important link between work experiences, lifestyle choices, and gender role attitudes, particularly for women. (shrink)

This article presents an investigation of the dynamics of women’s gender attitudes from the perspective of women’s conflicting employment and child-rearing responsibilities. It examines the independent and joint effects of motherhood and employment on gender attitudes using combined data from the British Household Panel Survey and the Understanding Society panel study. The results of fixed effects models show no evidence supporting a direct influence of either motherhood or employment on women’s attitudes toward a traditional (...) division of labor. However, changes in attitudes are observed when motherhood and employment statuses are considered jointly. Specifically, women are less traditional after the transition to motherhood than before only if motherhood is combined with full-time employment. By contrast, women are more traditional after the transition to motherhood than before only if motherhood coincides with their withdrawal from the labor force. These associations remain robust after considering feedback from earlier attitudes. All the findings suggest that the emergence and realization of incompatibility between women’s employment and child-rearing responsibilities reshape women’s gender attitudes during the transition to motherhood. (shrink)

Despite 20 years of official concern, women scientists in the United Kingdom are still unrepresented in the higher echelons of U.K. science, engineering, and technology and limited in their opportunities for advancement. The author attributes this to the organization and structure of scientific work, together with male “ownership” of science (even where women are a sizeable minority), rather than to the choices women make. Conflict with childbearing and child raising is significant in science more than in law (...) and medicine because external funding sources and large, rigid laboratory organizations disparage and hence disadvantage part-time scientists. Perception is another factor. Women scientists are not seen as equally committed to their work or as eager for advancement. Industrial employment, which should be freer of some of the problems in academic or research science, nevertheless shows restrictions on women’s advancement, too. (shrink)

The current study examined how the level of perceived stress among women living in Dhaka varies by their degree of social capital and illustrated the relative significance of some of their sociodemographic statuses, such as employment status, marital status, education, and income level, with those variables of interest. In this cross-sectional study, data were collected from a total of 485 women, 243 formally employed (having a tax identification number), and 242 non-employed (50 students and 192 homemakers). Apart (...) from the demographic information, the questionnaire includes statements from Cohen’s perceived stress scale (PSS) and the Internet Social Capital Scale (ISCS). Results indicate that social capital substantially reduces perceived stress, with the effect being particularly apparent among non-employed and unmarried women. While unmarried women experience higher levels of stress compared to married ones, it appears that women’s perceived stress levels do not differ by employment status, education, or income. In addition, there is no significant variation in social capital by marital status or income level; however, it is observed that working women possess higher social capital compared to unmarried women. The study concludes that women’s employment can contribute to their social well-being by enhancing their social capital, but their perceived stress levels may not differ substantially because of their formal employment. (shrink)

Using data from the General Social Survey and the National Organizations Survey, this study assesses the extent to which job search methods affect gender composition in a job. In contrast to past research and the popular notion that networking maximizes job search outcomes, it is found that women who use informal job search methods had jobs with more women in them compared to not using such methods. Women using formal job search methods had jobs with fewer (...) class='Hi'>women in them compared to not using these methods. For men, job search methods were not associated with the gender composition of the job. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore why women’s participation in the Jordanian workforce remains comparatively low—despite an increase in the number of employed women across many countries and regions. Focusing on the Jordanian private sector, where the greatest disparities lie, we assess the conformity between the provisions that regulate family-related rights in the workplace within national labour law and international law. From this examination, we conclude that whilst law offers the potential for significant positive change in the Jordanian labour (...) market, and notwithstanding the labour law reforms which took place between 2000 and 2020, the underlying structure of the existing laws is inimical to the goal of women’s full participation. Using a women’s rights perspective, we argue that, instead of piecemeal reform, the labour law sphere must be revised as a whole to better accommodate respect for women’s needs in the workplace. This change must be underpinned by family-friendly legislation, which, as our study shows, is a key factor in alleviating some of the major challenges facing women workers. (shrink)

This study replicates and extends previous work by Oppenheimer and Wiesner [1990, Sex discrimination: Who is hired and do employment equity statements make a difference? Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, Personnel and Human Resources Division], and examined the effects of minority qualifications on hiring decisions, the effects of employment equity directives when minority candidates are less qualified and the effects of different types and strengths of employment equity directives on (...) hiring decisions. The results indicate that when employment equity is in place, people are increasingly more likely to hire underrepresented group members, to the extent that they are more qualified. Men appear to be treated in a positively biased manner, and are more likely to be hired when they are less qualified. Women are less likely to be hired when they are under-qualified, and in the absence of employment equity directives or when there is a suggestion that women are underrepresented. Moreover, when employment equity directives are strengthened, there appears to be a subtle backlash for women but not for men. (shrink)

Many employers assess their workforces with gendered and racialized imagery that can put groups of workers and applicants at a disadvantage in the labor market. Based on 78 interviews with white employers in Atlanta, the author reveals that some employers use a complex but widely shared stereo-type of Black working-class women as single mothers to typify members of this group. These employers use this single-mother image to explain why they think Black women are poor workers, why they think (...) Black women are reliable workers, and why they think Blacks are poorly prepared for the labor market. In focusing on these white employers' claims, the author concentrates not on the well-documented out-comes of labor market discrimination, such as differential rates of pay and promotion, but on how employers construct and use the images that may from the basis of it. This is especially relevant amid current attacks on affirmative action programs. (shrink)

Women as individuals experience subtle discrimination regarding career development opportunities as evidenced by research on the Glass Ceiling. This paper looks at the ramifications of technology, specifically the Internet, and how it affects women’s career opportunities.

Previous work suggests that gender attitudes are associated with different individual and organizational factors. At the same time, ethics research suggests that many of these same variables can influence ethical reasoning in companies. In this study, we sought to combine these streams of research to investigate whether individual skepticism of women's employment is related to ethical reasoning in a gender-based ethical situation. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis indicated that skepticism of women's employment was negatively (...) related to the recognition that the gender-based dilemma involved an ethical problem, and that skepticism was also negatively related to judgments that the situation was unethical. These findings imply that companies should advance policies that increase tolerance for women's employment, such as diversity training codes of conduct, and ethics training. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article examines the issue of gender equality within Islam in order to develop an ethical framework for businesses operating in Muslim majority countries. We pay attention to the role of women and seemingly inconsistent expectations of Islamic and Western societies with regard to appropriate gender roles. In particular, we contrast a mainstream Western liberal individualist view of freedom and equality—the capability approach, used here as an illustration of mainstream Western liberalism—with an egalitarian Islamic view on gender equality. While (...) the article identifies an opportunity for this particular approach to reform patriarchal interpretations and practices of Islam toward gender egalitarian interpretations and practices, it also contests the notions of adaptation and well-being inherent within the capability approach. We suggest that a dialectical approach to understanding the relationships among religion, culture, and business provides a better guide to responsible business action in Muslim Majority countries than does the capability approach. (shrink)

Using data from the Chinese Household Income Project survey, we find that self-employed women have lower levels of well-being compared with their male counterparts. When comparing individuals' well-being in self-employment and wage-employment, we discover that self-employed men have higher levels of health, the standard of living, satisfaction, and life satisfaction compared with wage-employed men, whereas self-employed women have lower levels of health and life satisfaction than their counterparts in wage-employment. Furthermore, if a given self-employed man (...) or woman had been selected for wage employment, their well-being would not improve. Hence, self-employed women face a double challenge: lower well-being than both self-employed men and wage-employed women. The article discusses recommendations for future research and policy implications. (shrink)

Recent research indicates that among young women, Blacks have lower employment rates than whites. Evidence is provided about whether young Black women's lower employment rates stem from structural features of the labor market, discrimination, or changing family or individual characteristics. Data show that Black women exit full-time employment at higher rates because they are more likely to be laid off, to leave because they work in temporary/seasonal jobs, and to leave for other reasons. Structural (...) features of the labor market are key in explaining Black women's higher rates of lay-offs, exits from temporary/seasonal work, and exits for other reasons. Individual characteristics and discrimination play a role in Black women's higher rates of lay-offs and exits for other reasons while family characteristics are important in explaining Black women's higher rates of leaving temporary/seasonal work and leaving for other reasons. Evidence suggests that Black women's higher exit rates are indicative of disadvantage in the labor market. (shrink)

Background: In 2014, companies began covering the costs of egg freezing for their employees. The adoption of this benefit was highly contentious. Some argued that it offered women more reproductive...

Conflicts regarding family and workplace obligations often lead to frustration, dissatisfaction and lower levels of happiness. Taking into account the current low fertility rates in many European countries, the subjective well-being of women seems to be a crucial factor in population growth strategy. The rather low reproduction level underlies the analysis of women’s subjective well-being in respect to their employment and maternity status in Europe. How much do the European countries differ in terms of females’ subjective well-being? (...) Does employment protection legislation explain these differences through mothers’ employment patterns? This paper shows a significant negative association between the subjective well-being of women aged 17–54 and the rigidity of labor protection regulations. The conclusion stems from a multilevel model based on the European Value Study of 2008. The results showed that the subjective well-being of working mothers is higher in countries with liberal labor legislation while it is significantly lower in countries with strict employment protection legislation. (shrink)

In First-World-War Britain, women's ambition to perform noncombatant duties for the military faced considerable public opposition. Nevertheless, by late 1916 up to 10,000 members of the female volunteer corps were working for the army, laying the foundation for some 90,000 auxiliaries of the official Women's Services, who filled support positions in the armed forces in the second half of the war. This essay focuses on the public debate in which the volunteers overcame their critics to understand how they (...) obtained sufficient popular consent for their martial work. I explain the process in terms of shifting hegemonic understandings of space. As critics' arguments in the debate indicate, the gender attribution of war participation was organized and represented spatially, assigning men to the warlike “front” as warriors and women to the peaceful “home” as civilians. To redefine the meaning of these gendered wartime spaces, women volunteers deployed rival spatial discourses and practices in their campaign for martial employment. The essay explores the progress of these competing definitions through feminist and spatial theories, including gender performativity, discursively constructed and constructive spaces, and heterotopias. I argue that the upheaval caused by the war in gender and spatial norms undermined absolute conceptualizations of space with dichotomous binary areas on which critics drew for their arguments and reinforced more recent, relative spatialities, including the cultural construction of militarized heterotopic sites in between and paralleling both “home” and “front” for soldiers in training or recovery. The volunteers' efforts to gain access to military employment both contributed to and were supported by this shift. Heterotopic sites offered ideal discursive locations for constructing the new gender role of auxiliary soldiering through the performance of martial training and work, and competing spatial definitions provided arguments through which they could justify their activities to both critics and supporters. (shrink)

This study uses a comparative framework to examine the relationship between individual-level attributes and gender-role attitudes in a state-market society and in a capitalist society. Data from the 1988 International Social Science Program indicate significant differences in attitudes between the two populations. Both women and men in the United States were more supportive of women's employment than their counterparts in Hungary, despite the Hungarian government's policy of full employment during communist rule. Nevertheless, the level of agreement (...) between women and men was uniform across national contexts: Women were more supportive of women's employment than men. We also found that individual-level attributes, such as employment status and marital status, differentially affected gender-role attitudes in the two countries. This study contributes to a broader dialogue about the dynamic relationship between social structure and gender ideology. (shrink)

This paper argues that a thorough discussion on women’s rights needs to go beyond progress in civil and political rights. Looking comparatively at Iran and Turkey, it posits that the legal and political context of secularism v. theocracy has much less of an impact than expected, and suggests that other variables offer much more compelling explanations. The paper combines feminist constructivist insights with the broader lens of world -system theory to hypothesize that the explanation for women‘s inequality in (...) employment is found at the intersection of endogenous gender constructions heavily influenced by culture and religion, and of an international economic order that contributes to the reproduction of a patriarchal structure in poorer countries, regardless of their political system. (shrink)

This article uses Public Use Microsample data drawn from the 1990 census to explore the relationship between military presence, defined as the percentage of the local labor force in the active-duty armed forces, and women's employment and earnings across local labor market areas in the United States. Comparisons of local rates of unemployment and mean women's earnings are made between those LMAs in which the military plays a disproportionate role in the local labor market and those in (...) which military presence is low. Results suggest that women who live in labor market areas with a substantial military presence have, on average, lower annual earnings and higher rates of unemployment than their counterparts who live in nonmilitary LMAs. The argument is made that through the interaction of several socially situated conditions—including gender, family, labor markets, human capital, and place—the military emerges as a source of inequality in labor market outcomes for women working on or around military installations. (shrink)

The Pāli tradition presents a diverse and often contradictory picture of women. This book examines women's roles as they are described in the Pāli canon and its commentaries. Taking into consideration the wider socio-religious context and drawing from early brahmanical literature and epigraphical findings, it contrasts these descriptions with the doctrinal account of women's spiritual abilities. The book explores gender in the Pāli texts in order to delineate what it means to be a woman both in the (...) context in which the texts were composed and in the context of their ultimate goal - that of achieving escape from the round of rebirths. The critical investigation focuses on the internal relationships and dynamics of one tradition and employs a novel methodology, which the author calls "critical sympathy". This assumes that the tradition's teaching is valid for all, in particular that its main goal, nibbāṇa, is accessible to all human beings. By considering whether and how women's roles fit within this path, the author examines whether women have spiritual agency not only as bhikkhunīs (Buddhist nuns), but also as wives and mothers. It offers a new understanding that focuses on how the tradition construes women's traditional roles within an interdependent community. It aims to understand how what many scholars have seen as contradictory and inconsistent characterizations of women in Buddhism have been accepted and endorsed by the Pāli tradition. With an aim to show that the Pāli canon offers an account of women that is doctrinally coherent and consistent with its sociological facts, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Buddhism and Asian Religion. (shrink)

It has been widely reported that women are underrepresented in academic philosophy as faculty and students. This article investigates whether this representation may also occur in the domain of journal article publishing. Our study looked at whether women authors were underrepresented as authors in elite ethics journals — Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs, the Journal of Political Philosophy, and the Journal of Moral Philosophy — between 2004-2014, relative to the proportion of women employed in academic ethics (broadly (...) construed). We found that women are indeed underrepresented overall in prestigious ethics journal publishing. Though this is not our focus, we discuss possible causes for this finding, such as top ethics journals’ tendency not to publish much feminist philosophy; the impact of women’s lesser professional status or rank within philosophy on their prospects for, and success in, journal publishing; and the review process itself, which may disadvantage or discourage women authors — perhaps especially when their gender, rank, and affiliation are known to the editor or reviewer, or if their work is explicitly feminist. We discuss possible avenues for future research on the "woman problem" in philosophy, noting how our study relates to existing research on this issue. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is steadily becoming a tameable, mild communicable disease globally. In the Western countries and some countries in Asia, such as China, for example, this milestone is owed to a high response to vaccination programmes. The same cannot be said of Africa, where the uptake of vaccines has not been encouraging. In Zimbabwe, for example, the government had intended to vaccinate at least 10 million of its estimated 16 million population in order to reach herd immunity. The (...) figures are still very small, indicating vaccine hesitancy. In this article, it is contended that vaccination campaigns must be adapted to local religious culture and engage critically with the elderly women in particular. Indigenous religio-cultural beliefs and practices can either mobilise or immobilise individuals and communities in implementing the COVID-19 containment measures, depending on how they are approached. To this end, any response to the pandemic should never be exclusively unidirectional. This article employs cultural hermeneutics as its lens of analysis. It does not only seek to promote life-giving values associated with elderly women in African religio-cultures but also to interrogate negative practices driven by religio-culture that put their lives at risk in the era of COVID-19. Elderly women are at worst vulnerable to the disease, and at best they are the hub of communities’ health services. Packaging the vaccination campaigns in the religio-cultural and spiritual consciousness of a people has a potential to increase vaccine uptake in line with the spirit of Goal 3 of the United Nations Agenda 2030. This article is both theoretical and empirical. It uses the Ndau of south-eastern Zimbabwe to ascertain the meaning that they create about the elderly women’s interaction with the public health call for vaccination in the context of their religio-culture. The term ‘religio-culture’ has been used because throughout Africa, religion and culture are inseparably tied together. Data are generated through interviews with key informants.Contributions: Elderly women are vulnerable to COVID-19. Despite their vulnerability, Ndau elderly women find themselves compelled by their religio-culture to respond to the crisis in their communities. There is no literature that addresses the paradox and its attendant opportunities and challenges that characterise the circumstances of elderly women in the context of COVID-19 in the efforts to motivate vaccine uptake. The article shows that indigenous religio-cultural beliefs and practices can either mobilise or immobilise individuals and communities in taking the COVID-19 vaccines, depending on how they are approached. (shrink)

Western scholarship on religion and gender has devoted considerable attention to women’s entry into leadership roles across various religious traditions and denominations. However, very little is known about the dynamics of women’s religious authority and leadership in developing settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of powerful and diverse religious expressions. This study employs a combination of uniquely rich and diverse data to examine women’s formal religious authority in a predominantly Christian setting in Mozambique. I first use (...) survey data to test hypotheses regarding the prevalence and patterns of women’s formal leadership across different denominational groups. I then support and extend the quantitative results with insights on pathways and consequences of women’s ascent to formal congregation authority drawn from qualitative data. The analysis illustrates how women’s religious authority both defies and reasserts the gendered constraints of the religious marketplace and the broader gender ideology in this developing context. (shrink)

This article compares the ways in which Saba Mahmood’s The Politics of Piety and Cressida Heyes’ Self-Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalization, unlike current governmentality studies, employ the later Foucault’s ethical theory. By explaining the theoretical framework of the ‘middle’ Foucault and the ‘later’ Foucault and then comparing Mahmood and Heyes’ use of Foucault’s work, it is argued that Mahmood and Heyes’ analyses, though thought-provoking and incisive, overlook aspects of Foucault’s later work, ultimately preventing them from offering productive ‘feminist strategies’. The (...) author seeks to link this discussion to contemporary debates and analyses of agency, freedom and Muslim women in the media. The article concludes with an assessment of how Foucauldian feminist perspectives might be drawn on to establish effective ‘cross-cultural feminist strategies’, and closes by presenting a case of a cross-cultural media strategy aimed at countering the stereotypical images of Muslim women in the media. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses the question of how to reconceptualize “women” in order to do a more intersectional feminism. Intersectionality—the idea that gender, race, class, sexuality, and so on operate not as separate entities but as mutually constructing phenomena—has become a gold standard in contemporary feminist scholarship. In particular, intersectionality has achieved success in showing that the old conception of women as a single, uniform concept marginalizes women and others who exist at the intersecting axes of multiple oppressions (...) (e.g., women of color, women in the global South, working-class women, and/or queer and trans people), and thus, demonstrating the need to develop a new way of conceptualizing women. However, the question of what such a new conception would be remains unanswered. Specifically, if feminist theory today is to destabilize the old notion of “women” that relegates multiply oppressed women to the margin of feminism, and yet still needs to use some notion of “women” to critically analyze how the social structure of sexist oppression operates to subordinate women and to dismantle this oppression, how should the concept “women” be reformulated? In this dissertation, I argue that we need to understand women as a concept that is open to constant redefinition, which is socio-historically situated in the actualities of oppression. This is what I refer to as the “situated redefinition” model of women, which is formulated in more detail as follows: -/- The Situated Redefinition Model of Women (SR) – The concept “women” should be always open to being redefined in a way that it could better serve political goals grounded in the actual, daily lives of the marginalized. That is, “women” should be always open to new meanings and provisional definitions that the marginalized would find more useful to achieve political goals, which grow out of their concrete experiences in the current intersecting structures of oppression. -/- My central argument is that we need to understand the concept “women” according to the situated redefinition model, in order to employ this concept for doing intersectional feminism. To support this thesis, the dissertation is divided into two main parts. By engaging with the intersectionality literature, critical race feminisms, Asian/American feminisms, and recent critiques of intersectionality, the first part of the dissertation elucidates what exactly it means for feminism to be more “intersectional.” The second part develops the situated redefinition model and articulates why this model is needed to do intersectional feminism, drawing on the social/political philosophy literature on non-ideal theory, postmodern discussions of universality, and feminist discussions of identity politics. Broadly, this dissertation seeks to shed new light on how we understand and use the concept women for feminist ends. My conceptual model offers a way for feminist scholar-activists to subvert the essentialist/exclusionary notion of “women” without abandoning altogether feminist-political deployments of the concept “women” for the purpose of ending sexist and intersecting oppressions. (shrink)

The restructured globalized economy has provided women with employment opportunities. Globalisation has also meant a shift towards self-regulation of multinationals as part of the restructuring of the world economy that increases among others things, flexible employment practices, worsening of labour conditions and lower wages for many women workers around the world. In this context, as part of the global trend emphasising Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the 1980s, one important development has been the growth of voluntary (...) Corporate Codes of Conduct to improve labour conditions. This article reviews from a feminist interdisciplinary perspective the broad academic literature on women workers, covering the more classical debate on women workers in the industrialization process and entering into women workers in the global supply chains and women workers and corporate codes of conduct. The main argument is that this research on women workers is crucial to frame the issues of business ethics and in particular CSR and Codes of Conduct in the context of women in the global political economy. When this crucial knowledge is ignored, then the ethical policies of the companies also ignore the real situation of the women workers at the bottom of their supply chains. (shrink)

Women's Power To Be Loud: The Authority of the Discourse and Authority of the Text in Mary Dorcey's Irish Lesbian Poetic Manifesto "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" The following article aims to examine Mary Dorcey's poem "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear," included in the 1991 volume Moving into the Space Cleared by Our Mothers. Apart from being a well-known and critically acclaimed Irish poet and fiction writer, the author of the poem has been, from its (...) beginnings, actively involved in lesbian rights movement. Dorcey's poem "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" is to be construed from a perspective of lesbian and feminist discourse, as well as a cultural, sociological and political context in which it was created. While analyzing the poem, the emphasis is being paid to the intertwining of various ideological and subversive assumptions, their competing for importance and asserting authority over one another, in line with, and sometimes, against the grain of the textual framework. In other words, Dorcey's poem introduces a multilayered framework that draws heavily on various sources: the popular culture idiom, religious discourse, the text even employs, in some parts, crime and legal jargon, but, above all, it relies upon sensuous lesbian experience where desire and respect for the other woman opens the emancipating space allowing for redefining of one's personal and textual location. As a result of such a multifarious interaction, unrepresented and unacknowledged Irish women's standpoints may come to the surface and become articulated, disrupting their enforced muteness that the controlling heteronormative discourse has attempted to ensure. In Dorcey's poem, the operating metaphor of women's silence, conceived of, at first, as the need to conceal one's sexual identity in fear of social ostracism and contempt of the "neighbours," is further equated with the noiseless, solitary and violent death of the anonymous woman, the finding of whose body was reported on the news. In both cases, the unwanted Irish women's voices of either agony, during the unregistered by anybody misogynist bloodshed that took place inside the flat, or the forbidden sounds of lesbian sexual excitement, need to be censored and stifled, not to disrupt an idealized image of the well-established family and heteronormative patterns. In the light of the aforementioned parallel, empowered by the shared bodily and emotional closeness with her female lover, and already bitterly aware that silence in discourse is synonymous with textual, or even, actual death, the speaker in "Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" comes to claim her own agency and makes her voice heard by others and taken into account. (shrink)

Migrant women are often stereotyped. Some scholars associate the feminization of migration with domestic work and criticize the “care drain” as a new form of imperialism that the First World imposes on the Third World. However, migrant women employed as domestic workers in Northern America and Europe represent only 2% of migrant women worldwide and cannot be seen as characterizing the “feminization of migration”. Why are migrant domestic workers overestimated? This paper explores two possible sources of bias. (...) The first is sampling: conclusions about “care drain” are often generalized from small samples of domestic workers. The second stems from the affect heuristic: imagining children left behind by migrant mothers provokes strong feelings of injustice which trump other considerations. The paper argues that neither source of bias is unavoidable and finds evidence of gender stereotypes in the “care drain” construal. (shrink)

Previous work suggests that gender attitudes are associated with different individual and organizational factors. At the same time, ethics research suggests that many of these same variables can influence ethical reasoning in companies. In this study, we sought to combine these streams of research to investigate whether individual skepticism of women’s employment is related to ethical reasoning in a gender-based ethical situation. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis indicated that skepticism of women’s employment was negatively (...) related to the recognition that the gender-based dilemma involved an ethical problem, and that skepticism was also negatively related to judgments that the situation was unethical. These findings imply that companies should advance policies that increase tolerance for women’s employment, such as diversity training codes of conduct, and ethics training. (shrink)

It is clear that philosophy has a “woman problem”. Despite the recent acceptance of this fact, it is less clear what ought to be done about it. In this paper, we argue that philosophy as a discipline is uniquely well-positioned to think through the marginalisation suffered by women and other minorities. We therefore interrogate two values that already undergird conversations about inclusion— representation and intersectionality—in order to think about the path ahead. We argue that, once we have done so, (...) it becomes clear that the slow pace of improvement over the last few decades is unacceptable and more radical steps need to be taken. First, we outline the current state of women in philosophy focusing on three areas: levels of employment, publishing, and sexual harassment. Then we turn to representation and intersectionality respectively. We conclude by arguing that many women and people of colour have been arguing for a more radically diverse philosophy for many years. What we are facing is a lack of ambition on the one hand and problem of attention on the other. (shrink)

The youth in South Africa are subject to unemployment and the pressure to fit into society. The unemployment rate in South Africa is high; therefore, some find themselves desperate for employment and often find themselves hoping and praying for a miracle; hence, the number of churches in South Africa is increasing. People go to church to be prayed for by ministers in a hope to better their lives and that of their families. Some of these young South Africans became (...) victims of sexual harassment, rape and gender-based violence (GBV) at the hands of their pastors. The aim of this article was to challenge the church in identifying ways to break the cycle of perpetrators among pastors and help find the role pastoral counsellors can play regarding both victims and offenders to prevent history from repeating itself. Domestic violence and abuse in South Africa have been investigated by various disciplines. One of the most difficult realities for the church is the existence of clergy who abuse their female congregants. The article will create an awareness of violence against black women at the temple of black churches which is vindicated by Christian faith as miracle and healing. The violence against black women at the temple of the churches is patriarchal violence as male clergy sacrifice them in the name of faith using the bible. Some scholars of Black theology of liberation (BTL) argue that Elmina Castle had a chapel where women trading took place. Elmina Castle had a dungeon that kept black women who were waiting to be sold to a trade master. This article also exposed patriarchal violence that has been engraved on black women using the Bible by male clergy and connected Elmina Castle to Bishops Israel Makamu and Stephen Bafana Zondo to see the position of black women in these temples. Black theology of liberation was used to expose oppression of black women, by black men, in black churches.Contribution: This article aimed to challenge pastoral care givers to remain ethical during pastoral care and counselling to those in need, especially young women. This study was a literature review study. (shrink)

Drawing on the narratives of young lower-middle-class women employed in cafés, call centers, shopping malls, and offices in Delhi, India, in this paper I identify malleability or “plasticity” of the body as an important feature of contemporary service work. As neophyte service professionals, young women mold themselves to the middle-/upper-class milieu of their workplaces through clothes, makeup, and body language. Such body plasticity can be experienced as enabling: Identifying with the image of the “New Indian Woman,” young (...) class='Hi'>women enter the bourgeoning service economy. However, they also experience this body plasticity as threatening; bodily changes to meet the requirements of work can, at times, feel inauthentic as well as be read as promiscuous by others. I draw attention to how women appraise plastic bodies as both generative of change and a site of labor discipline, thus offering insights into the relationship among bodies, social inequalities, and contemporary service work. (shrink)

Literature on women's labor force participation traditionally divides women's activities into one of two categories: participants and nonparticipants. This article examines whether this dichotomization provides an adequate summary of women's employment patterns. Longitudinal data are used to examine employment sequences of American mothers for 2 to 10 years following the birth of their first child. The data indicate that beyond the first few postbirth years, a division of women's employment patterns into two groups (...) fails to encompass the patterns of a large proportion of mothers. Further, the results indicate that there are important differences by race in the role sequences followed by women. The findings of this study emphasize that women follow substantially more diverse life paths than is often recognized in the literature and that a dynamic perspective of women's employment participation over time is needed. (shrink)