Constructions of Rural Women's Voluntary Work

This article examines the nature and circumstances of women's voluntary work in rural communities. Drawing on original research conducted in two villages in Avon, England, it focuses on three main themes. Firstly, it considers theoretical debates on the conceptualisation of rural women's labour, arguing that traditional divisions between public and private forms of work provide an inadequate basis for understanding either women's labour participation or their domestic lives. The notion of voluntary work as a third sphere is discussed as it relates specifically to the rural labour market and community. Secondly, the article examines voluntary work in terms of the empowerment of women. It addresses issues of women's role and status in the rural community, questioning whether the state's use or reliance on voluntary work in rural areas represents an exploitation of women's position or an opportunity for women to gain influence and power. Thirdly the article evaluates the contribution of women's voluntary work to the conceptualisation and representation of rurality. The focus here is on the way in which voluntary activity supports a particular form and image of the rural community and, in turn, the implications this has for gender divisions and women's identity in contemporary rural England.     

Women's Work in Urban Bangladesh: Is there an Economic Rationale?

The general phenomenon that women in Bangladesh engage less frequently in market work than men is commonly explained as the lack of response of female labour to economic imperatives due to the overarching influence of purdah. However, this emphasis on a cultural rationale for gender-differentiated work behaviour diverts attention away from the deep-rooted economic inequalities at the societal level. This article examines women's work in urban Bangladesh from a female labour supply and demand perspective that is rooted in the socio-economic institutional context. The study finds that, despite the strong gender segregation of economic roles, women's roles are more flexible and lend themselves to changing household strategies more easily compared to men's. The evidence indicates that female labour market participation is largely the outcome of the supply effect shaped by the pattern of gender roles and gender-specific access to human capital. Consequently, women are relegated to low-skill market activities and have lower earnings than men, even without any overt discrimination in labour demand. The covert discrimination that leads women to pursue a different pattern of labour use than men is the fundamental gender bias of socio-economic institutions that govern household allocational decisions and dictate gender-specific behaviour.     

‘For the Elections,We Want Women!’: Closing the Gender Gap in Zambian Politics

This article examines the causes of women's rising political participation in Zambia. It argues that women's historical paucity in politics was largely the result of widely‐shared gender stereotypes. These are now weakening due to growing flexibility in gender divisions of labour, which has been catalysed by worsening economic security. By performing work previously presumed to be beyond their abilities and valorized because of its association with masculinity, such women are increasingly perceived as equally capable of leadership. This gradual erosion of gender beliefs has fostered women's political participation and leadership in Zambia.     

Gendering the Black Death: Women in Later Medieval England

This review article of Mavis Mate's Daughters, Wives and Widows after the Black Death: Women in Sussex, 1350–1535 (1998) locates Mate's work within the broader context of the debate about changes in women's social position caused by the collapse in population following the Black Death. Was demographic decline accompanied by growing social and economic opportunities for women or should historians emphasise the continuity of female work as low‐skilled, low‐status and low‐paid throughout the late medieval and early modern periods? How did women's role in the labour market affect the age of marriage, fertility rates and long‐term population change? In general, Mate's conclusions offer support to the ‘pessimists’: women's work was vital to the household but economic centrality did not bring a commensurate social power or legal rights and the ideology of female subordination remained firmly in place. The main problem with Mate's case is, inevitably, a lack of evidence, for family structure, for the sexual division of labour and, above all, for affective relations. Nevertheless, this detailed, empirically based local study shows how successfully women's history has moved into the historical mainstream.     

The ‘invisible scars’ of breast cancer treatments (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Drawing on 38 fieldwork interviews with women living with breast cancer conducted in Spain between 2006 and 2008, I draw attention to the significance of what Ludica (2013) refers to as the “invisible scars of cancer” for a holistic understanding of women's experiences. I highlight two under acknowledged thematic concerns that emerged during our conversations: (1) the impact of treatments on women's ability to experience sexual pleasure; (2) the pain caused by axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) or armpit surgery. The present article is a timely reminder of the fact that for a shockingly high number of women diagnosed, the experience of breast cancer is emotionally and physically painful and quite often disabling. An understanding of women's experiences is essential to provide resources more sensitive to women's needs.     

‘Writing’ Black Womanhood in the Early Cuban Republic, 1904–16

This article explores the intersection of race, class and womanhood during the early years of the Cuban Republic. It focuses on the writings of elite women who published in the black press between 1904 and 1916. While legal reforms and the expansion of the educational system facilitated new gender expectations, racial ideologies positioned upper‐class white women as the standard of ideal womanhood. I argue that elite women of African descent employed modernising gender norms in order to counter anti‐black racism and to affirm their identification with upper‐class whites. In particular, they published articles that promoted the dominant values regarding marriage, education and public comportment. They disparaged unmarried unions and the practice of African cultural traditions among the labouring poor. Elite black women's writings drew from the model of the enlightened caretaker also to engage broader debates regarding feminism and black civic unity. Yet their emphasis on ideals that promoted white superiority helped reinforce the anti‐black tenets of Cuban citizenship they hoped to undermine. By analysing elite black women's articles, poetry and letters, the article demonstrates the importance of understanding how women of African descent forged an intellectual trajectory, and thus contributes to the historiography of gendered racial ideologies in Latin America and the Caribbean.     

Transitions to Work: Masculine identities,youth inequality and labour market change

In this article, the initial transitions of white working-class male post-compulsory school leavers in two British cities are investigated. In the context of economic restructuring, the decline of manufacturing employment, and the rise in young women's educational achievements, it has been argued that poorly educated young men are increasingly disadvantaged in the labour market. Indeed, this may be the first generation of young men in the post-war period that will experience downward mobility compared to their fathers. In an earlier article, the author explored the labour market aspirations of white working-class boys living on peripheral local authority estates in Cambridge and Sheffield and in their final year at school. Despite the decline of manufacturing employment, they hoped to enter typically 'male' jobs in, for example, the car industry in both cities and in the steel industry in Sheffield. In this article, the author explores their labour market experiences in the year since they left school and their sense of themselves as masculine workers in the context of debates emphasising a growing 'crisis' of masculinity.     

Beyond ‘State Ibuism’: Empowerment Effects in State‐led Development in Indonesia

This article examines the ways women's processes of self‐formation are indicative (or not) of new possibilities for women's gendered selves in the post‐Reformasi period in Indonesia. It focuses on the development arena to reveal how shifts in state rhetoric, from top‐down guidance based on a patriarchal familial model to bottom‐up, inclusive development based on empowerment, have transformed what is referred to as the ‘topography for self’. The article draws upon theories of personhood a) to show how gendered selves emerge and are contested within particular historical conditions; and b) to develop an alternative framework of ‘empowerment’ that focuses not on capabilities and choice, but on an expansion in the possibilities for self. It argues that models of community‐driven development have provided new opportunities for women to hold and enact socially recognizable subject positions. This constitutes a form of empowerment for individual women but does not necessarily reflect challenges to patriarchy in Indonesia.     

Gendered divisions of labour in urban crop cultivation in a Kenyan town: implications for livelihood outcomes

This article highlights the labour contributions of men and women in urban crop cultivation in Eldoret, Kenya. Divisions of labour in urban gardening were mediated by social constructs of masculinity and femininity, gender differentials in entitlements and farming knowledge and intra-household power relations. The resulting labour distribution patterns manifested itself in the type of crops men and women took responsibility for, the specific agricultural tasks they performed and the spatial segregation of men's and women's activities and tasks. Traditional gender-related labour boundaries were also challenged and reworked. With regard to livelihood outcomes, women's labour contributed more directly to household food security, although men were increasingly getting involved in subsistence farming, which held prospects for improved productivity and therefore enhanced household food security.     

The Moral Politics of Gendered Labour in Artisanal Mining in Sierra Leone

Drawing on current anthropological approaches to labour, this article examines some of the moral politics mobilized around women and artisanal mining in policy-inflected scholarship with reference to particular gold mining zones in Tonkolili district, Sierra Leone. In so doing, the article proposes that such a focus on labour not only allows one to appreciate how sentiments concerning (im)proper behaviour infuse wider policy proposals to amend social arrangements in regard to what is called ‘artisanal mining’, but it also offers insight into some of the enduring moral politics helping to constitute women as ‘family workers’ in the actual artisanal gold mining zones. The article suggests that examining the overlapping moral politics constituting women's labour practices provides a more supple understanding of the contested economic possibilities for women in this livelihood practice.     

‘Homes’ and being ‘at home’ in New Zealand: women's place-making in internationalised higher education

Research on students' experiences in internationalised higher education largely assumes students' autonomy and privileges their public selves. New Zealand research is no exception. Little attention has been paid to students' lives beyond classroom contexts; how national policy and institutional practices shape students' everyday experiences and ‘home’ lives similarly and differently. In addition, gender is afforded scant attention or considered only as a secondary concern, and people whose partners or family members are international students are invisible. This article endeavours to address the relative inattention to gender in international education research and the invisibility of women whose partners are international students. It draws on data from interviews with 17 women involved in a broader doctoral research project during 2005 and 2006. The women were either migrant or international students or had partners enrolled as international students. The article uses ‘home’ as a lens for examining women's situated and transnational place-making and factors that promoted or precluded a sense of belonging in New Zealand. It draws connections between women's accounts of ‘home’ and feeling ‘at home’, and broader politics, policies and institutional practices in New Zealand higher education.     

Women's Work and Market Hierarchies Along the Border of Lao PDR

Contrary to claims by some neo‐liberalists that international borders are becoming irrelevant, market liberalisation can actually enhance the effect that borders have on the lives of the people living along them. This study examines how the opening of border trade between Laos and Thailand has influenced gender divisions of labour, and definition of women's work along the border zone. Studies were undertaken in two border areas in Lao PDR—Sayaboury province and Kammoune province. In the former, cotton‐weaving activities were studied and in the latter, sticky rice box production. The production and trading of these commodities brought crucial cash income to the women studied and their households. How the women benefited from these activities in terms of income and status depends on how other members of the family perceived these activities. However, the formalisation of the border trade has changed women's ‘sense of space’ and their relations with men and other women.     

‘I arranged my own marriage': arranged marriages and post-colonial feminism

This article looks at the practice of arranged marriage among women of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin resident in Britain. It examines the conflation of arranged marriages with forced marriages and the assumption that arranged marriages are examples of cultural practices that thwart individual agency. Drawing upon original empirical data, this article will argue that in the practice of arranged marriage, some South Asian women are able to exercise agency while choosing their marriage partner. They adapt traditional arranged marriage practices to navigate their way around strict cultural expectations and to negotiate with their family members the choice of a match that is favourable for them. It provides a corrective account of arranged marriages by challenging the stereotype of the ‘oppressed third world women' and their experiences of such marriages. The article will do this by employing the idea of post-colonial feminism and by highlighting two long-standing issues in feminist debates: the idea of agency and the conception and role of power in the struggle for women's rights. It will make a case for a post-colonial approach to feminism as one way of reconciling feminism with the politics of multiculturalism.     

‘Shades of grey’: spaces in and beyond trafficking for Thai Women involved in commercial sexual labour in Sydney and Singapore

In this article I explore the migration trajectories of some Thai women trafficked internationally for commercial sexual exploitation, suggesting that many figuratively ‘cross the border’ between coerced and consensual existence in volatile migrant sex industries during the course of their migration experiences, thus complicating debates around the notion of choice in ‘sex’ trafficking. In exploring these women's transitions I seek to understand why women who had either never previously been sex workers or who were sex workers operating without duress, but who were then trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation remain in, or re-enter volatile forms of migrant sex work at a later point under voluntary arrangements. In answering this question I focus on the temporal and spatial aspects of individual women's experiences in migrant sex industries drawing in detail on the narratives of two Thai women trafficked to Sydney, Australia and Singapore. I make some suggestions about methodologies used in trafficking research that can assist in bringing to light some of these complex time–space dimensions of women's experiences through their shifting positions in commercial sexual labour. The article also reflects on the implications of these women's trajectories for the ‘prostitution debate’ as it relates to trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation by suggesting that many trafficked women occupy ambiguous or in-between positions in migrant sex industries, neither easily distinguishable by the label of victim of trafficking or migrant sex worker.     

Resettlement in Lao PDR: mobility,resistance and gendered impacts

Villagers in northern Laos have been on the move for generations. Recent changes, however, in the location of their village and their daily mobility patterns differ from what they have experienced before; the government's resettlement programme has changed their livelihoods and made them more socially and economically vulnerable. The ethnic groups we studied have decided to use mobility to resist state control and seek livelihood security for themselves. By using the concept of motility, this article analyses how this household and community choices have a gender-differentiated impact. The mobility patterns of men and women have changed. While men attend to long-term investments, women are forced to make ends meet on a day-to-day basis. Men visit the market and public places more frequently, while women spend more time looking for non-timber forest products and working as hired labour. Although women now support the family and their mobility has increased, their say in the household seems to be on the decline, resulting in weakening women's motility.     

Women and Peace Building: Local Perspectives on Opportunities and Barriers

The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 has made strong provisions to include women in peace‐building interventions and actions. This is, however, rarely observed in practice beyond local‐level activities. This article discusses new qualitative evidence on the opportunities and barriers to women's participation in peace‐building processes, based on a comparative analysis of case studies conducted in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal and Sierra Leone. The findings show that women's engagement in peace‐building activities, beyond their immediate social relations, is restricted by institutional, economic, cultural and social obstacles. These barriers prevent the realization of gender equality objectives in peace‐building initiatives. Moreover, local understandings of peace typically place family relations at the centre of how women engage with peace‐building processes, and how other community members perceive women's roles in peace building.     

‘To Women in the Year 2000’: Norwegian Historians of Women,c.1900–c.1960

The lives and writings of three women who during the first half of the twentieth century wrote books on women's history are the subject of this article. Ragna Nielsen, a teacher and an amateur historian, in 1904 published her account of women's lives during the first part of the nineteenth century, stressing the sad consequences of patriarchal attitudes, but also the importance of women's contribution to the maintenance of a national identity. Anna Caspari Agerholt and Mimi Sverdrup Lunden, both with masters' degrees in history, belonged to the next generation. Agerholt is mainly remembered for her impressive book of 1927 on the Norwegian women's movement, while Lunden's books of 1942 and 1948 on women's work were important contributions to social history. The writings of these three women's historians are related to dominant positions within Norwegian historiography of their times, highlighting how they helped change central concepts by adding gender to class analysis and to the process of constructing a national identity, stressing the importance of voluntary organisations to the formation of politics and widening the concept of work.     

Constructing a Gender Policy for Joint Forest Management in India

Policy makers and advocates of joint forest management (JFM) agree that women should be full participants and that their involvement is especially important because of the nature of women's work. This article examines how JFM policy has addressed gender in India. It argues that policy has been informed by instrumentalist positions in the debate over women's relationship to the environment. Consequently, gender planning in JFM has focused on two issues: formal representation for women in local institutions, and identifying women's ‘special’ values, knowledge and uses of forest resources. The scant evidence suggests that the impact of JFM on women has generally been negative. Finally, the article suggests that gender policy in JFM needs to be based on a more sophisticated understanding of gender relations and a wider examination of the gendered context of JFM processes.     

Women's Organizations,Voluntarism, and Self‐Financing in Solomon Islands: a Participant Perspective

Arguing that the capacity to organize is not foreign to Solomon Islands women, this paper demonstrates their resourcefulness, resilience, and significant but neglected national potential by focusing on a key domain of women's practice and management expertise ‐ women's groups, organizations, and associations, most of which are church‐based, and government programs or projects directed to women. The paper surveys the establishment and operation of different categories of women's groupings before and since independence in 1978. It highlights the commitment to voluntarism and self‐financing that has enabled many groups and organizations to function and even flourish despite recent armed conflict and the resultant near collapse of the economy and the state, especially in the capital, Honiara. It exemplifies the priority shift which has seen many women and their organizations supplement the traditional concerns of home economics, health, education, and community service with overt attention to questions of economic development, political participation, and human rights. The paper concludes by considering the problems facing women's groupings in Solomon Islands, including those generated by women's own attitudes and behaviour as well as gendered and other external constraints.