Gender equality in housework among professional Filipinas in Melbourne: painfully slow and illusory?

This article analyses how professional Filipinas in Melbourne negotiate housework with their partners in the absence of the domestic workers they were accustomed to in the Philippines. To some extent, the absence of maids revealed the informants’ escape from classism and sexism. I argue that as a result of the women’s persistent strategising, household work division did eventually become more egalitarian although variously insufficient to be able to relieve them from extreme stress. The women’s ambitions and career demands were important drivers in renegotiating the domestic realm. Yet the slow change towards gender egalitarianism is seen as a response to changed circumstances rather than to commitment to ideals of gender equity.     

Building a Venture Capital Market in Vietnam: Diffusion of a Neoliberal Market Strategy to a Socialist State

Abstract

Vietnam’s venture capital (VC) industry took shape in the late 1990s during a period of exceptional economic growth in the country and the development of its high-technology sector. High growth rates and technological advances have typically coincided with both strong VC market activity and state support of equity financing. This, however, has not been the case in Vietnam. In this article a policy diffusion framework is used to investigate the international and domestic origins of Vietnam’s nascent VC policies, and how they became part of the agenda of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) as credit-based, rather than equity-based, solutions. The article argues that Vietnam’s heterodox approach to VC policy results from both external forces from donors and from domestic factors. In particular, Vietnamese policymakers have a preference for credit-based SME financing solutions and Vietnam’s official development assistance providers diffuse expertise on loans, not equity investments, to the Socialist Republic. The only donors recommending VC and equity-based financing in Vietnam have gone “around the state” rather than through it by working directly with the private sector. As a result, Vietnam’s SME financing initiatives have significantly diverged from international VC policy patterns.     

Resisting popular feminisms: gender,sexuality and the lure of the modern

Abstract

This article tracks discursive and political use of gender and sexual equality in nationalist and popular accounts of feminism, focusing on the ways in which such discourses produce a particular linking of time and space in the articulation of ‘the Modern’ in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. It further explores the increasing popularity of feminism in some media and celebrity contexts that have historically been so hostile to it, asking for care in tracking how and under what conditions feminism is cited as ‘universally desirable’ in light of this history. I suggest that feminism is partly reframed in this way insofar as it is newly sutured to femininity rather than masculinity, but also to singular rather than multiple or intersectional understandings of women’s oppression. A related claim of this article is that this shift of affective association with feminism is only possible when that singular cause of gender oppression is firmly understood as sexual oppression. I will be suggesting that if feminism is understood primarily or even only a fight against sexual oppression by men then the oppositional gendered roles that allow for its tethering to nationalism remain intact yet simultaneously obscured. In conclusion the article calls for an appreciation of feminism as a minority pursuit attentive to multiple power relations and histories.     

Farm women and femocracy

While rural and farm women have a long history of interaction with the Australian state, it is only recently that Commonwealth government departments have established specifically dedicated policy machinery to address their needs. What is notable is that this has occurred at a time when other gender equity infrastructure is being disbanded. This article examines this anomaly. To begin, it documents the material and discursive changes in terms of equity for women which have occurred since the election of the Howard government in 1996. Following this, it details the emergence of a state agenda for rural and farm women in Australia and explains some of the definitive elements of this agenda. In the final section, the article gives attention to explaining why equity for farm and rural women has been emphasised by government in a period marked by the erosion of state-sponsored equity initiatives.     

Transnational (Counter) Topographies

Noting that much of the literature on transnationalism is gender blind, we consider what a focus on gender brings to understanding transnationalism. Tracing a feminist itinerary shows that there is nothing inherently transgressive or emancipatory about transnationalism. Rather, the effects are contradictory and complex, and must be assessed within specific times and places. Gender relations are often transformed through transnational migration, although 'gains' in gender equity tend to be uneven, hard fought for, and sometimes impermanent. Rather than weakening the nation-state, transnationalism is bound up with remaking the nation, often within renewed patriarchal norms of national belonging. So too, while transnationalism can open up new spaces of belonging, we argue that this is accomplished through specific connections between places rather than through (an often romanticised) deterritorialised mobility. Finally, we consider what feminist counter topographies can bring to transnational feminist politics.     

Gender,Traditional Authority,and the Politics of Rural Reform in South Africa

The new South African Constitution, together with later policies and legislation, affirm a commitment to gender rights that is incompatible with the formal recognition afforded to unelected traditional authorities. This contradiction is particularly evident in the case of land reform in many rural areas, where women’s right of access to land is denied through the practice of customary law. This article illustrates the ways in which these constitutional contradictions play out with particular intensity in the ‘former homelands’ through the example of a conflict over land use in Buffelspruit, Mpumalanga province. There, a number of women who had been granted informal access to communal land for the purposes of subsistence cultivation had their rights revoked by the traditional authority. Despite desperate protests, they continue to be marginalized in terms of access to land, while their male counterparts appropriate communal land for commercial farming and cattle grazing. Drawing on this protest, we argue that current South African practice in relation to the pressing issue of gender equity in land reform represents a politics of accommodation and evasion that tends to reinforce gender biases in rural development, and in so doing, undermines the prospects for genuinely radical transformation of the instituted geographies and institutionalized practices bequeathed by the apartheid regime.     

Rural–Urban Migration and Gender Disparities in Child Healthcare in China and India

This article assesses the impact of rural–urban migration on gender disparities in children's access to healthcare in China and India. Much research has shown widespread discrimination against girl children in both countries, including in health investments, contributing to the well‐known problem of Asia's ‘missing’ women. Much less clear is the impact of the massive rural–urban migration now occurring in China and India on discrimination against daughters. Migration is usually thought to have a positive effect on child health, because of improved access to healthcare facilities, but this is not necessarily equally beneficial for both sons and daughters. Based on fourteen months of fieldwork with rural migrant families in Shenzhen (China) and Mumbai (India), this article argues that where migration improves access to healthcare, it may increase rather than decrease the gender gap in treatment of child illness in the short term, as resources are concentrated on the treatment of sons. Furthermore, it is not the case that rural–urban migration necessarily leads to better access to healthcare even for sons: some forms of migration may actually have an overall negative effect on child health outcomes. For these two reasons, development strategies focusing on large‐scale rural–urban migration should not be seen as a short‐term solution to problems of gender inequity in child health.     

Bigamy: A Male Crime in Medieval Europe?

Crime is often gendered. This article argues that the crime of bigamy was a male crime in the fifteenth‐ and sixteenth‐century Catholic world. Courts prosecuted male bigamists far more often and more harshly than female offenders. However, drawing in particular on records from the fifteenth‐century bishop's court of Troyes, I argue that women also committed bigamy. Judicial and social gender biases identified only male bigamy as fully criminal behaviour.
The reasons for this gender difference lie in the different roles of spouses as prescribed in Christian law, theology and culture. For a man to commit bigamy fundamentally violated his responsibilities as a husband. Female bigamy, by contrast, was to an extent tolerated as a lesser evil. Better a woman have two living husbands, one present and one absent, than no husband at all.     

'That Beijing Thing': Challenging transnational feminisms in Kampala

How does the representation of gender in the transnational 'gender and development' discourse shape lived social relationships? This article draws on research carried out in Kampala, capital of Uganda, a site of extensive development initiatives over the last 15 years. Analysing the way gender is discussed within the local print media and in a series of interviews and focus groups, the article shows how Ugandans interpret the 'gender and development' discourse as a European feminist agenda. The article demonstrates that middle-class Ugandans localise these 'transnational feminisms' by rejecting overt labels such as 'activist' or 'feminist'. Insisting that a 'Ugandan' approach to gender issues should be based on the principle of consensus rather than conflict, women and men negotiate appropriate masculinities and femininities in response.     

Masculine hegemony,the state and the incorporation of gender equity discourse: The case of Australian sport

Although the impact of affirmative action, equal opportunity and gender equity programs on the lives of Australian women have been explored in a number of areas, state interventions related to sport have received scant attention from public policy analysts. This paper examines how the Australian Sports Commission has framed its gender equity policy in the mutually reinforcing hegemonic discourses of masculinity and corporate managerialism. It is argued that the Commission's articulation of gender equity policy in terms of ‘market‐oriented individualism’ is both constituted by, and constitutive of, the shift from a ‘patriarchal‐welfare state’ to a ‘patriarchal‐managerial state’ in Australia. The paper also provides an example of the tensions between bureaucratic and feminist discourses in the state sphere.     

"Abortion will deprive you of happiness!": Soviet reproductive politics in the post-Stalin era

This article examines Soviet reproductive politics after the Communist regime legalized abortion in 1955. The regime's new abortion policy did not result in an end to the condemnation of abortion in official discourse. The government instead launched an extensive campaign against abortion. Why did authorities bother legalizing the procedure if they still disapproved of it so strongly? Using archival sources, public health materials, and medical as well as popular journals to investigate the antiabortion campaign, this article argues that the Soviet government sought to regulate gender and sexuality through medical intervention and health "education" rather than prohibition and force in the post-Stalin era. It also explores how the antiabortion public health campaign produced "knowledge" not only about the procedure and its effects, but also about gender and sexuality, subjecting both women and men to new pressures and regulatory norms.     

Peasant Women and Economic Transformation in The Gambia

Contemporary agricultural development strategies in The Gambia are centred on irrigated rice and vegetables—crops traditionally cultivated by women. Irrigated agriculture, however, is opening up new avenues to capital accumulation at the national, regional and household levels. This article examines the contradictions for women of donor-funded schemes that combine gender equity with productivity objectives. The gender conflicts rife in Gambian irrigation projects point to the significance of female labour for contemporary patterns of agrarian transformation as well as the linkage between women's access to land for independent farming and forms of project participation.     

Gender mainstreaming and the Common Agricultural Policy

While there are many case studies looking at gender mainstreaming in national contexts, this article offers a pan-European perspective to examine how a stated commitment to gender equality at this meta-level works in practice. The European Union's (EU) stated commitment to gender mainstreaming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is critically reviewed. The article reviews theoretical literature on gender mainstreaming, considers the position of women in agriculture across Europe, and examines efforts by the EU to gender mainstream the CAP. It argues that at best, gender mainstreaming focuses on the symptoms of gender inequality in agriculture rather than the causes. Because of this, gender mainstreaming cannot be transformative in this context. Little thought has been given to the practical difficulties of actually gender mainstreaming a policy such as the CAP. The EU's priority for the CAP focuses on the mainstream business goal of a viable agricultural industry and does not pay any heed to gender inequalities in agriculture. In short, the stated commitment to gender mainstreaming is empty rhetoric.     

Drought policy in Australia: gender mainstreaming or gender blindness?

Australia is experiencing a major drought, one that has devastated the landscape and people for up to ten years. This major disaster has accelerated ongoing rural restructuring and created changes in the way farm family members order and live their lives. Yet despite evidence that drought is a gendered experience, that is, that generally women and men experience and respond to drought differently, and despite a rhetorical move to gender mainstreaming in Australian policy circles, drought policy remains significantly gender blind. In this article I use the example of emergency support to poverty stricken farm families to show how agricultural departments that attend to a notional norm of family farming as a unitary male pursuit can actively discriminate against women in their efforts to preserve the farm and support their families. The article exposes gender mainstreaming as an ‘empty signifier’ that is contextually grounded and that its success is highly dependent on making these issues transparent. For gender equity efforts to reach women at local levels, I argue that gender mainstreaming requires international collaboration by gender specialists to facilitate greater attention to gender assessments by national bodies. It also requires national coalitions of gender expert units, women's organisations and academics to work together to expose culturally specific gendered issues and discriminatory outcomes.     

Gendering normative power Europe: lessons of the Women,Peace and Security agenda

The European Union is seen to operate at the international level by promoting ideas and values, rather than by exerting military or economic power. As a gender actor, the EU has played a key role in the development of formal equality, which is presented as a foundational principle of European integration. It therefore follows that normative power Europe should seek to promote these values in external affairs. This article interrogates the role of the EU as a normative gender actor in relation to its implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, set out in UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and related resolutions. Documentary analysis will be supplemented by a detailed assessment of speeches and public statements about the role of the EU as a gender actor in external affairs. This data will be used to assess whether there is a disjuncture between the dominant narrative about gender equality as a fundamental value of the EU and the actions of the organization. It will also allow us to assess whether gender mainstreaming is a tool for public diplomacy or has made a significant change to the way the external relations agenda is formulated and implemented. Additionally, the article will draw attention to the institutional obstacles to the EU performing a role as a gender actor in external affairs. It identifies a critical tension between framing the WPS resolutions as an extension of the EU's equality on the one hand, and understanding that gender mainstreaming is a mere policy tool in international affairs. In doing so, it highlights how competing institutional demands can ultimately undermine core values (e.g. equality) when they are used instrumentally.     

Slavery in black and white: the racialisation of (male) slavery in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and/vs. Toni Morrison’s A Mercy

This article revisits Frederick Douglass’s 1845 slave narrative as illustrative of the ‘birth’ of whiteness as ideology and, in particular, of the subordination of class to race interests in antebellum America. To do so, it compares Douglass’s text to Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008), which traces the origins of the slave trade back to the seventeenth century, when American slavery was not fully ‘racialised’ yet. While Morrison focuses on the earliest stage of the increasing (class) animosity among different types of servants and slaves, black and white, Douglass’s nineteenth-century Narrative already reveals the explicitly racialised association of human bondage with non-whiteness. I argue that Morrison’s novel may thus be interpreted as a ‘prequel’ to Douglass, whose Narrative illustrates the increasing racialisation of slavery throughout the nineteenth century, but also elaborates on its class and gender biases. In this sense, the essay concludes that Douglass shows how the assertion by white workers, especially males, of their racial and gender supremacy over both black men and women entailed, paradoxically enough, their class subjugation, which, if not in form, ended up transforming them into virtual ‘slaves’.     

Support for Women Officeholders in a Non-Arab Islamic Democracy: The Case of Indonesia

Recent work argues that the relationship between Islamic faith, the lack of support for gender equality and democratization is spurious. This paper analyzes the correlates of individual support for increasing the number of women serving in Indonesian legislatures. Indonesia is a relevant case because it is an emerging democracy, outside of the oil-rich Middle East, where over 85% of the citizenry registers a Muslim faith. We find that the willingness of Indonesians to support or oppose gender equity in politics is only minimally rooted in their faith or culture. This result buttresses the conclusions of cross-national studies that question the appropriateness of treating predominantly Muslim nations in the same way when studying questions of gender equity and democratization.     

False knights and true men: contesting chivalric masculinity in English treason trials, 1388–1415

The treatment of high-status traitors in later medieval England intrigues historians, who have sought explanations for increasingly brutal penalties and analysed degrading punishments that undid the traitor's knighthood. Recent scholarship incorporates gender into this analysis, suggesting rituals of degradation feminised the traitor and thereby preserved the coherence and integrity of elite masculine identity. This article uses the framework of homosociality to expand the analysis of gender in politically motivated cases of treason where traitors were characterised as ‘false’ knights. In these cases, treason was conceived of as the corruption of knightly manhood because the potential for treason was intrinsic to chivalric values of love and loyalty through which knightly masculinity was performed. The knight and the traitor were mutually constitutive rather than oppositional gendered identities, which meant the traitor's punishment could destabilise rather than reinforce elite masculinity as embodied in the knight.     

These Bars Can't Hold Us Back: Plowing Incarcerated Geographies with Restorative Food Justice

Mass incarceration entrenches racial and class inequality and segregation. Before, during, and after low‐income people of color enter prison, they experience a range of barriers and biases that make it difficult to break out of the prison pipeline. This article investigates food justice and restorative justice activists in Oakland, California who are intervening at the point of reentry. I argue for the significance of teasing out the connections between food and carceral politics as a way to expand the practice and understanding of food justice. Specifically, I show how the incarcerated geographies of former prisoners, that is, perspectives and experiences that result due to the prison pipeline, motivate the formation of a restorative food justice. The associated healing and mutual aid practices increase social equity by creating spaces to overcome the historical trauma of mass incarceration, produce living wage jobs, rearticulate relationships to food and land, and achieve policy reforms.     

Equity and Efficiency in Public Facility Location

In designing a system of urban public service centers, planners should consider both equity and efficiency effects in selecting the size of each center and the spacing between centers. The paper establishes theoretical and operational concepts for evaluating equity and efficiency, as affected by size and spacing alternatives. No objective means exists for determining the relative importance of equity and efficiency, so the decision, ultimately, is subjective. However, theoretical, empirical and simulation evidence indicate that equity is more sensitive than efficiency to the selection of size and spacing, within a wide range of alternatives. This suggests that the equity criterion is important in the design of public service systems, and deserves more attention in the public facility location literature than it has received in the past.