The idea of gender equality has been and still is an exogenous concept in Romanian culture. Initially introduced and institutionalized by communist ideology after World War II along with other utopian egalitarian principles, gender equality remains to this day a somewhat alien concept in practice for the majority of the Romanian population. Nevertheless, in the early twenty-first century, with renewed economic growth and more liberal governance in Romania, the gender equality debate has intensified, and multiple advocacies now (...) compete on the political and social arenas. The most notable actors shaping current attitudes toward women in Romania are the Orthodox Church, political parties, feminist organizations, and the media. (shrink)

This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors, Méré, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender. Dr Moriarty shows that far from being timeless and universal, the term 'taste' is culture-specific, shifting according to the needs of a writer and his social group. The notion (...) of 'taste' not only helped to shape a new dominant culture, but also registered the conflicts within that culture between a view of taste that presupposted the values of 'polite society' as an exclusive (though not necessarily aristocratic) group, and a view that stressed the value of the classical-humanist tradition as a source of standards ratified by a broader public. this study sheds light not only on the central concept, but also on the individual authors discussed and on the norms of French classical literature in general. (shrink)

Justice, Gender and the Politics of Multiculturalism explores the tensions that arise when culturally diverse democratic states pursue both justice for religious and cultural minorities and justice for women. Sarah Song provides a distinctive argument about the circumstances under which egalitarian justice requires special accommodations for cultural minorities while emphasizing the value of gender equality as an important limit on cultural accommodation. Drawing on detailed case studies of gendered cultural conflicts, including conflicts over the 'cultural defense' in criminal (...) law, aboriginal membership rules and polygamy, Song offers a fresh perspective on multicultural politics by examining the role of intercultural interactions in shaping such conflicts. In particular, she demonstrates the different ways that majority institutions have reinforced gender inequality in minority communities and, in light of this, argues in favour of resolving gendered cultural dilemmas through intercultural democratic dialogue. (shrink)

Mainstream theory and research in the field of social movements and political sociology has, by and large, ignored the influence of gender on social protest. A growing body of feminist research demonstrates that gender is an explanatory factor in the emergence, nature, and outcomes of all social movements, even those that do not evoke the language of gender conflict or explicitly embrace gender change. This article draws from a case study of the postpartum depression self-help (...) movement to outline the relationship between gender and social movements. Linking theories of gender to mainstream theories on social movements allows us to recognize gender as a key explanatory factor in social movements and, in turn, to identify the role that social movements play in the social construction of gender. (shrink)

In recent decades, many studies have examined gender-related differences in paid employment and the reconciliation of family and employment. Considering perceptions of time conflicts with regards to work at home and leisure activities, this article contributes to a more encompassing understanding of attitudes toward reconciliation problems. Special attention is given to the role of external child care services. The use of an original data set from 60 Swiss municipalities and hierarchical multiresponse regression models enable an analysis of the various (...) aspects of time conflicts simultaneously, and a consideration of how different policy contexts shape these attitudes. This study provides evidence that the communal provision of external child care is related to gender-specific perceptions of time conflicts. Most interestingly, men seem to be affected most strongly by communal policy conditions, whereby the provision of external child care is related to systematically higher levels of time conflicts. (shrink)

Amy Allen’s insightful and nuanced feminist critical-theoretical account of the politics of our selves could be strengthened with a more complex and differentiated account of power and of gender, and of the social as a site of multiple conflicting and contesting relations. Such an account would adhere more consistently to Allen’s own project of understanding subjects to be constituted through both relations of power and relations of interdependence and mutuality, care and solidarity. The development of this account, and of (...) a situated account of desire or motivation, is essential for a feminist critical theory of self and social transformation. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel's discussion of the Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit has provoked ongoing debate about his views on gender. This essay offers an interpretation of Hegel as condemning social arrangements that take the authoritativeness of identities and obligations to be natural or merely given. Hegel criticizes the ancient Greeks' understanding of both the human law and the divine law; in so doing, he provides resources for a critique of essentialist approaches to sex and gender. On (...) this interpretation, Hegel views the conflict between Antigone and Creon as tragic because the gendered identities and obligations inherent to Greek Sittlichkeit are naturalized and withheld from scrutiny and revision. In the conclusion, I suggest how Hegel's criticisms pose a challenge to certain approaches to religious ethics. (shrink)

Ethics and associated values influence not only managerial behavior but also managerial success (England and Lee, 1973). Gender socialization theory hypothesizes gender differences in ethics variables whether or not individuals are full time employees; occupational socialization hypothesizes gender similarity in employees. The conflicting hypotheses were investigated using questionnaire responses from a sample of 308 individuals. Analysis of variance and hierarchical regression yielded unexpected results. Although no significant gender differences emerged in individuals lacking full time employment, significant (...) differences existed between employed women and men, with women appearing more ethical. While occupational socialization predicts an interaction between employment status and gender, these group differences were opposite to those predicted. An implication for the two theories and the current conflicting research support is that these commonly used theories may be of limited usefulness. Some alternative concepts are proposed. (shrink)

Mexican machismo and its vulgar folklore have long been of interest to students of Mexican culture. This article, based on research among a group of undocumented male workers, reexamines one aspect of this folklore - its degradation of women - and proposes that, besides legitimizing the oppression of women, it plays an ideological role in class conflict. The article argues that, as a signifying system unique to working-class male culture, the folklore of machismo symbolically conflates class and gender (...) by shifting the point of conflict from the public domain of the former to the domestic domain of the latter. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel's discussion of the Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit has provoked ongoing debate about his views on gender. This essay offers an interpretation of Hegel as condemning social arrangements that take the authoritativeness of identities and obligations to be natural or merely given. Hegel criticizes the ancient Greeks' understanding of both the human law and the divine law; in so doing, he provides resources for a critique of essentialist approaches to sex and gender. On (...) this interpretation, Hegel views the conflict between Antigone and Creon as tragic because the gendered identities and obligations inherent to Greek Sittlichkeit are naturalized and withheld from scrutiny and revision. In the conclusion, I suggest how Hegel's criticisms pose a challenge to certain approaches to religious ethics. (shrink)

The papers in the following section arose from a roundtable discussion organised by the AHRC Research Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality, titled ‘Law, Gender and Sexuality: The Making of a Field’. Participants in the roundtable were asked to reflect on the challenges confronting law, gender and sexuality (LGS) as an area of research and scholarship, and to ask what benefits, possibilities, risks and dangers accompany the establishment of a research terrain. The papers address such questions as (...) ‘what is a field and how is it made?’; ‘has LGS attained the status of a field?’; ‘what does it mean to locate oneself within the field of LGS?’; and ‘what is the relationship between feminism and LGS?’. They also consider possible future directions for the field of LGS. Together, the papers provide a variety of differing, and sometimes conflicting, perspectives on the developing body of intellectual and political activity that might be labelled ‘law, gender and sexuality’. (shrink)

The fact that the permeability between family and work scopes produces work-family conflict (WFC) is well established. As such, this research aims to check whether the unequal involvement in household chores between men and women is associated with increased WFC in women and men, interpreting the results also from the knowledge that arise from gender studies. A correlational study was carried out by means a questionnaire applied to 515 subjects (63% men) of two independent samples of Spanish men (...) and women without emotional relationship, who lived with their heterosexual partner. As expected, results firstly show unequal involvement in household chores by women and men as it is higher in women that in men, and the perception of partner involvement is lower in women that in men. Secondly, those unequal involvements relate differently to men and women on different ways of work-family interaction. They do not increase WFC in women comparing to men, although there are tangentially significant differences in work conflict (WC) and statistically significant in family conflict (FC). However, perception of partner involvement on household chores increases WFC both in men and in women but not WC nor FC. Nevertheless, increase on marital conflict (MC) by domestic tasks neither affect in a significant way WFC in women nor in men, but increase WC in both women and men and FC only in women. Results also confirm that subject involvement on household chores is not a significant predictor of WFC in women nor in men, and that MC by domestic tasks is a statistically significant predictor in women of WFC and FC, but not in men. Thus, results show that traditional gender roles still affect the way men and women manage the work and family interaction, although the increased WFC due to involvement in housework is not exclusive to women, but also occurs in men. Personal and institutional recommendations are made on the basis of these results to cope with these conflicts. (shrink)

Not much attention has been paid to gender in environmental management and decision-making. This article explores how a gender dimension can contribute to the environmental debate by means of a comparative study of three environmental grassroots organisations in the North of Catalonia. The study shows that gender is significant for distinguishing different priorities between women and men in local conflicts and in environmental interests in general. The analysis of unequal power relations between genders in grassroots organisations leads (...) us to discuss how women have fewer opportunities to influence the environmental debate and to advance their ideas. The concluding thoughts stress the need for developing a gender dimension in environmental management and decision-making, considering the opportunities that are presented by emerging governance practices, and particularly by participatory processes. (shrink)

This essay arises out of a concern to understand how categories of racial, ethnic, and cultural difference--particularly between women--have been constructed in the past, in order to explore how these categories continue to be reproduced in more recent political and ideological conflicts. Until very recently, feminist theory relating to the writing of history has tended to emphasize questions of gender and their articulation with class, with the result that issues of "race" have been overlooked.Focusing on ideas about whiteness and (...) the various constructions of white racial identity can offer new avenues of thought and action to those working to understand and dismantle systems of racial domination. The recognition that the lives of women of color are inescapably prescribed by definitions of race as well as gender can also be applied to women who fall into the category "white."This essay argues for a feminist theory of history that inquires into the construction and reproduction of racialized femininities. Focusing on images and ideas about white womanhood produced at particular points in the past, examples from the author's book Beyond the Pale illustrate a range of questions that flow from having a perspective of race, class, and gender. The essay looks briefly at the idea of historical memory, using a discussion of oral history to consider ways in which social memory of Empire is continually affected and transformed by cultural forms in the present.Finally, by taking apart various constructions of white femininity in two narratives of cultural conflict, the essay demonstrates how a historically informed and "antiracist" feminism might intervene differently in debates about contemporary politics. (shrink)

Activists in feminist, queer, and trans movements share in common a critique of the existing gender order. Yet activists may have different understandings of what is wrong with existing gender arrangements, and different understandings of what might be required to establish greater social equality. Using data from interviews with activists in the feminist, queer, and trans movements in Iceland, this article looks at the ways that gender equality and the gender binary are understood by individuals who (...) identify with feminist, queer, and/or trans activism, and some of their shared and conflicting critiques of the existing gender order. (shrink)

Social scientists have expended substantial effort to identify group patterns of deviant behavior. Yet beyond the ill-conceived treatment of sexual minorities as inherently deviant, they have rarely considered how gendered sexual identities shape participation in deviance. We argue for the utility of centering theories of gender and sexuality in intersectional deviance research. We demonstrate how this intentional focus on gender and sexuality provides important empirical insights while avoiding past pitfalls of stigmatizing sexual minorities. Drawing on theories of hegemonic (...) masculinity, emphasized femininity, and minority stress together with criminological general strain theory, we demonstrate how societal expectations and constraints generate strains among GSI groups that may lead to distinctly patterned deviance, using the case of prescription drug misuse during sex. We employ thematic analysis of 120 in-depth interviews with people who misuse prescription drugs, stratified by GSI. We identify six themes highlighting distinct pathways from strain to misuse during sex for different GSI groups: intimacy management, achieving sexual freedom, regulating sexual mood, performance confidence, increased sense of control, and managing sexual identity conflict. In this article, we demonstrate the empirical and theoretical importance of centering gender and sexuality in deviance research and provide a roadmap for theoretical integration. (shrink)

Gender system can be understood as a cultural system rooted in biological differences. Semiotically speaking, it is a binary sign system (male/female) with some variation involved (transsexuals, homosexuals, etc.). In the process of modernity, the biological motivation of the gender system is being loosened by technological innovations such as contraception and mother's milk substitute. At the same time, the state has replaced family and kin as the organizing structure of society and the cultural ideal of equality has gained (...) a strong position. These and similar changes together have made gender flow in ‘post-traditional’ societies. The paper deals with this process in paying attention to the three theoretically possible constellations in the determination of semiotic identities in social process: functional order in Parsonian sense, formation of struggling parties in the sense of Weber and Bourdieu, and anomie in the sense of Durkheim and Berger and Luckmann. It turns out that elements of all of these three theoretical constellations are present in the current transformation of the gender system. This is elaborated with empirical material drawn from the change of the Finnish gender system from the 1950s to the 1990s. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between truth commissions and gendered citizenship through a case study of Timor-Leste. It examines how, 10 years after the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation has completed its work, women’s citizenship remains constrained by, and negotiated within, deeply gendered narratives of nation-building that are informed by historical experiences of the resistance struggle. The power of these narratives—which foreground heroism rather than victimisation—underscores the need to situate truth commissions as part of an ongoing politics of memory. (...) Despite the power of political elites to shape this politics, the continued marginalisation of sections of society within official narratives is also providing an impetus for alternative truth-telling efforts that seek to broaden public perspectives on the past. By promoting new narratives of women’s experiences of the conflict, these projects might be understood as attempts to negotiate and transform gendered conceptions of citizenship in the present and for the future. (shrink)

The article discusses Berlin’s Poor Relief Policy from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century, posing the question: how can premises of theoretical and political feminist discussion be put into practice? In analysing the shift in poor relief, I have taken up three essential aspects: (1) power relations must be examined in a context that cannot be reduced simply to the opposition between ruler and subject or men and women; (2) when does gender become a principle of social (...) order?; and (3) gender as a construct and women’s way of action need to be linked. I show how a method that combines the different statements made by the texts as conflicts and discourse is useful, in that it facilitates working out the diversity of poor relief politics and historicizing the term ‘poor women’. At the same time it can show how social change in everyday life was structured and established. (shrink)

Virginia Woolf famously wrote 'as a woman I have no country', suggesting that women had little stake in defending countries where they are considered second-class citizens, and should instead be forces for peace. Yet women have been perpetrators as well as victims of violence in nationalist conflicts. This unique book generates insights into the role of gender in nationalist violence by examining feature films from a range of conflict zones. In The Battle of Algiers, female bombers destroy civilians (...) while men dress in women's clothes to prevent the French army from capturing and torturing them. Prisoner of the Mountains shows a Chechen girl falling in love with her Russian captive as his mother tries to rescue him. Providing historical and political context to these and other films, Matthew Evangelista identifies the key role that economic decline plays in threatening masculine identity and provoking the misogynistic violence that often accompanies nationalist wars. (shrink)

After the devastating tsunami hit the northern Sumatran coastline in December 2004, the Indonesian province of Aceh found itself at a crossroad. This crossroad intersected the three-decade-long civil war, the move towards peace and the need for post-disaster recovery. This article analyses the gendered politics embedded in Aceh's navigation through this crossroad. First, it argues that both the conflict and the subsequent peace process were marginalised by the international programmes of post-tsunami recovery. Second, it demonstrates that within this marginalisation, (...) women's investments in both war and peace were further neglected throughout the formal peace process. Third, it highlights how the peace process reflected a narrow, masculinist and public sphere agenda that silenced both women and the gendered issues affecting them. In short, this article seeks to unveil the gendered politics of war and peace in post-tsunami Aceh. It does so with the feminist ambition of demonstrating that sustainable and comprehensive peace in Aceh cannot be secured without recognising and accounting for the impact that the conflict has upon gendered identities. (shrink)

This article looks at two strains of urban community organizing, distinguished by philosophy and often by gender, and influenced by the historical division of American society into public and private spheres. The authors compare the well-known Alinsky model, which focuses on communities organizing for power, and what they call the women-centered model, which focuses on organizing relationships to build community. These models are rooted in somewhat distinct traditions and vary along several dimensions, including conceptions of human nature and (...) class='Hi'>conflict, power and politics, leadership, and the organizing process. The authors conclude by examining the implications of this analysis and questions for further research and practice. (shrink)

The relative age effect is associated with advantages in competitive sports. While the RAE in elite male soccer reveals a skewed birthdate distribution in relation to a certain cut-off date, research of RAE in elite female soccer is affected by small number of samples and conflicting results. The purpose of this study was to investigate the RAE in elite adult German soccer regarding gender and competition level. The sample comprised 680 female and 1,083 male players of the two top (...) German leagues during the 2019/20 season and German national teams. Differences between the observed and expected birthdate distributions were analyzed using chi-square statistics and effect sizes followed by calculating odds ratios. Results showed a statistically significant RAE with small effect size across all players included for both genders. The identified RAE was based on an over-representation of players born at the beginning of the year. According to gender and competition level, RAEs were more pronounced in German male soccer. While significant RAEs were found among males in the first two leagues, the RAE of females was more pronounced in the second league. The analysis of RAE regarding the national teams revealed a statistically significant RAE with large effect size for only the youngest investigated age group of male players. Our data show an RAE in female and male German adult soccer, which could be accompanied by a loss of valuable elite players during the youth phase of the career. Consequently, the pool of talented players at the adult level would be limited. (shrink)

This book review examines the recent publication, Gender and Violence in Haiti: Women’s Path from Victims to Agents by Benedetta Faedi Duramy. Duramy provides an in-depth contextualized discussion of sexual violence in Haiti, where she examines the role that women survivors of sexual violence play as perpetrators of violence. Duramy engages personally with female victim-survivors to gain insight as to the daily threat of violence they experience and their motivations for participating in this widespread conflict. In light of (...) the earthquake in 2010, which has exacerbated the level of risk posed to Haitian women, Duramy provides a number of recommendations that she argues should be implemented urgently. (shrink)

We used social network analysis to examine how adaptive ER strategies and maladaptive ER strategies predict the creation and maintenance of friendship and conflict relationships within a mixed-gender social group. Participants reported on emotion regulation, friendship, and conflict nominations at two time points. Stochastic actor-oriented models revealed that similarity in endorsement of adaptive ER strategies predicted maintenance of friendship and conflict relationships over time. However, new conflict relationships were more likely to form between those who (...) differed in use of adaptive ER. Finally, more frequent use of maladaptive ER strategies was related to termination of existing conflict ties and the creation of new ones. Deploying social network analysis as a methodology for examining social relationships enables the unpacking the dynamics of multiple social relationships, identifying the role of ER for structuring of social relationships among group members. Although cognitive ER is an intra-individual process, it fundamentally occurs within a social environment and our results advance the knowledge of how ER contributes to how this social environment is created in a first place. (shrink)

In this paper the authors deal with the story of Saman Abbas, an 18-year-old girl of Pakistani origin, who disappeared in Italy and was killed by her family after she refused an arranged marriage. The case raised a public debate between right-wing parties, who accused the left-wing parties of being culpably blind to the danger of Islam and too tolerant towards illiberal cultures, and left-wing politicians who responded equating Saman’s murder with the domestic killing of Italian women. We argue that (...) neither position does justice to Saman’s story. We hold that Saman’s case is an example of intersectional oppression where gender oppression is intertwined with the immigrant’s oppression in a Western democracy. Thus, we counter the dilemma posed by Susan Okin, namely that there is an inherent conflict between the rights of minority cultures and the rights of women. In order to rebut Okin’s position, we rehearse multicultural positions concerning the protection of minority cultures, on the one side, and feminist positions regarding the promotion of autonomous choice, on the other. Our conclusion is that (a) multiculturalism cannot be identified with cultural rights, and (b) that what are autonomous choices and what are, instead, adaptive is difficult to ascertain and, especially, difficult to apply in politics. Structural oppression is instead the key normative notion for addressing equality among genders and among citizens at large. The intersectional oppression suffered by women like Saman cannot be addressed by a restriction of toleration for immigrant cultures or simply by security measures. To prevent more cases like Saman’s in the future, the immigrant oppression should be taken seriously as well. In the context of fairer terms of inclusion, conditions of reciprocal trust between minority and majority may develop and the deconstruction of the patriarchal view of family can start. (shrink)

In this collection of her provocative essays on Third World art and culture, award-winning filmmaker and theorist Trinh Minh-ha offers new challenges to Western regimes of knowledge. Bringing to her subjects an acute sense of the many meanings of the marginal, Trinh examines Asian and African texts, the theories of Barthes, questions of spectatorship, the enigmas of art, and the perils of anthropology. In one essay, taking off from ideas raised earlier by Zora Neale Hurston, Trinh considers with astonishment the (...) search by Western "experts" for the hidden values of a person or culture, a process of legitimized voyeurism that, she argues, ultimately equates psychological conflicts with depth , while inner experience is reduced to mere personal feeling. When the Moon Waxes Red is an extended argument against reductive analyses, even those that appear politically adroit. Feminist struggle is heterogeneous. The multiply-hyphenated peoples of color are not simply placed in a duality between two cultural heritages; throughout, Trinh describes the predicament of having to live "a difference that has no name and too many names already." She argues for multicultural revision of knowledge so that a new politics can transform reality rather than merely ideologize it. By rewriting the always emerging, already distorted place of struggle, such work seeks to "beat the master at his own game.". (shrink)

Based on an ethnographic study of women's social groups and networks in a community of Vietnamese immigrants recently settled in the United States, this article explores the effects of migration on gender roles and power. The women's groups and networks play an important role in the exchange of social and economic resources among households and in the mediation of disputes between men and women in the family. These community forms are an important source of informal power for women, enabling (...) them to cope effectively with male authority in the family. Yet, despite their increased power and economic resources, these women supported a patriarchal social structure because it preserved their parental authority and promised greater economic security in the future. (shrink)

For the past several decades, coordinated efforts from within the women’s social movement in Perú have led to groundbreaking legislation surrounding gender equity – for example, the National Gender Equality Policy of 2019 and the Gender Parity Law of 2020. These institutionalized policy changes mark milestones on the path to gender equity, certainly in Perú, but activist efforts that targeted these outcomes can inform women globally. The current study investigated key components of feminist activism by social (...) movement actors themselves through the use of testimonio with nine key leaders in the movement. Using a liberation psychology approach and thematic narrative analysis, the findings suggested three key components of feminist activism: conflict, militant identity, and pluralism that were critical in processes of change. Centering majority world women’s voices contributes to the production of knowledge regarding approaches to gender equity, in particular because much that has been written about feminist action in psychology has been produced among samples of white women in the United States. Implications for understanding how the findings have the potential for global change are discussed. (shrink)

Based on a series of interviews with blue-collar women and their husbands in Istanbul, Turkey, this article examines the negotiation of family work in households in which the wives are major providers. The relationships between provider status, women's expectations, and the actual configuration of family work are complexly mediated by cultural constructions, perception of women as providers, marital dynamics, and extended family relationships. Three different discourses characterize family work. Woman's evaluation of her husband as “responsible” or “irresponsible” informs the construction (...) of the male role in the household. Conflict is heightened when men default on both domestic and economic grounds. This study makes a contribution toward a comparative understanding of negotiation of family work by providing an analysis of how structural conditions and cultural ideology interact to construct a gendered division of family work in the household in the context of continuities and discontinuities in sociocultural patterns. (shrink)

The very rules of our language games contain mechanisms of disregard. Philosophy of language tends to treat speakers as peers with equal discursive authority, but this is rare in real, lived speech situations. This paper explores the mechanisms of discursive inclusion and exclusion governing our speech practices, with a special focus on the role of gender attribution in undermining women’s authority as speakers. Taking seriously the metaphor of language games, we must ask who gets in the game and whose (...) moves can score. To do this, I develop an eclectic analysis of language games using basic inferential role theory and the concept of a semantic index, and develop the distinction between positional authority and expertise authority, which often conflict for members of oppressed groups. Introducing the concepts of master switches and sub-switches that attach to the index and change scorekeeping practices, I argue that women’s gender status conflicts with our status as authoritative speakers because sex marking in semantics functions as a master switch—“the F-switch”—on the semantic index, which, once thrown, changes the very game. An advantage of using inferentialism for understanding disregard of women’s discursive authority is that it locates the problem in the sanctioned moves, in the deontic structure of norms and practices of scorekeeping, and not primarily in the individual intentions of particular people. (shrink)

Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real conflicts playing out in contemporary universities. This paper focusses on a set of issues at the front line of these conflicts, namely, questions regarding sex, gender and gender identity. We document the ways in which the work of academics has been affected by political activism around these questions and, drawing on our respective disciplinary expertise as a sociologist and a philosopher, elucidate the costs of curtailing discussion (...) on fundamental demographic and conceptual categories. We discuss some philosophical work that addresses the conceptual distinction between academic freedom and free speech and explore how these notions are intertwined in significant ways in universities. Our discussion elucidates and emphasises the educational costs of curtailing academic freedom. (shrink)

This article examines the development of a gender mainstreaming strategy in the EU by illustrating how this strategy was shaped by other than gender equality policy goals. Gender mainstreaming was originally launched in 1996 to promote gender equality in all EU policies, in the context of international and European mobilization on women’s issues. It was aimed to transform mainstream policies by introducing a gender equality perspective. However, it has been largely used as an alibi for (...) neutralizing positive action. The successful implementation of positive action in political decision-making had challenged the gender distribution of political power over policy institutions and technical, human and financial resources. This led to policy softening and institutional weakening due to counteracting by the EU political and administrative hierarchies. The argument is based on text analyses of relevant Community acts and on direct observations of the policy process, based on personal working experiences in the European Commission. (shrink)

As men take on more family responsibilities over time, with women still shouldering considerably more childcare and housework, an important ethical matter facing organizations is that of providing a supportive environment to foster employee well-being and balance between work and family. Using conservation of resources theory, this multi-source study examines the association between perceived family responsibility discrimination and work–life conflict as mediated by emotional exhaustion. Employee gender and power distance values are tested as moderators of the perceived family (...) responsibility discrimination to emotional exhaustion relationship. Results suggest that male employees who perceive family responsibility discrimination from their supervisor and hold high power distance values experience increased emotional exhaustion and work–life conflict. Female workers who perceive family responsibility discrimination from their supervisor experience increased emotional exhaustion and work–life conflict regardless of whether they have high or low power distance. Findings are consistent with theory-based predictions from conservation of resources theory: resources that are valued and not provided in the work context deplete emotional energies and ultimately trigger work–life conflict. Findings build on the work–life literature by introducing gender and power distance as factors that shape when employees feel the draining effects of family responsibility discrimination. (shrink)

The presence of Muslims in the European public spheres has raised a hoist of debates concerning issues of neutrality, tolerance, and secularism. All over Europe, Muslims are the target of specific forms of hostility, a phenomenon rising substantial questions about the real inclusivity of European democratic spaces. The category of ‘Islamophobia’ has emerged as a valid heuristic tool to identify specific processes of racialization of religion. However, its validity has been fiercely questioned, and the use of this term has been (...) defined as a pretext to bar the way to any form of criticism and objection to Islam. This paper will use the case of Islamophobia to reflect on the new set of conflicts between freedom of religion and freedom of speech, in the perspective of constructing post secularist, pluralistic public spheres. This paper adopts gender as a privileged lens to identify the mechanisms of essentialization and reification at work in the case of Islam. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 556-567, May 2022. The presence of Muslims in the European public spheres has raised a hoist of debates concerning issues of neutrality, tolerance, and secularism. All over Europe, Muslims are the target of specific forms of hostility, a phenomenon rising substantial questions about the real inclusivity of European democratic spaces. The category of ‘Islamophobia’ has emerged as a valid heuristic tool to identify specific processes of racialization of religion. However, its validity (...) has been fiercely questioned, and the use of this term has been defined as a pretext to bar the way to any form of criticism and objection to Islam. This paper will use the case of Islamophobia to reflect on the new set of conflicts between freedom of religion and freedom of speech, in the perspective of constructing post secularist, pluralistic public spheres. This paper adopts gender as a privileged lens to identify the mechanisms of essentialization and reification at work in the case of Islam. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 556-567, May 2022. The presence of Muslims in the European public spheres has raised a hoist of debates concerning issues of neutrality, tolerance, and secularism. All over Europe, Muslims are the target of specific forms of hostility, a phenomenon rising substantial questions about the real inclusivity of European democratic spaces. The category of ‘Islamophobia’ has emerged as a valid heuristic tool to identify specific processes of racialization of religion. However, its validity (...) has been fiercely questioned, and the use of this term has been defined as a pretext to bar the way to any form of criticism and objection to Islam. This paper will use the case of Islamophobia to reflect on the new set of conflicts between freedom of religion and freedom of speech, in the perspective of constructing post secularist, pluralistic public spheres. This paper adopts gender as a privileged lens to identify the mechanisms of essentialization and reification at work in the case of Islam. (shrink)

The presence of Muslims in the European public spheres has raised a hoist of debates concerning issues of neutrality, tolerance, and secularism. All over Europe, Muslims are the target of specific forms of hostility, a phenomenon rising substantial questions about the real inclusivity of European democratic spaces. The category of ‘Islamophobia’ has emerged as a valid heuristic tool to identify specific processes of racialization of religion. However, its validity has been fiercely questioned, and the use of this term has been (...) defined as a pretext to bar the way to any form of criticism and objection to Islam. This paper will use the case of Islamophobia to reflect on the new set of conflicts between freedom of religion and freedom of speech, in the perspective of constructing post secularist, pluralistic public spheres. This paper adopts gender as a privileged lens to identify the mechanisms of essentialization and reification at work in the case of Islam. (shrink)