These are not ‘regular places’: women and gender studies classrooms as heterotopias

This article questions the transformative potential of women and gender studies classrooms through a discussion of student experiences of privilege and oppression in these spaces. Using in-depth interviews with 22 undergraduate students from two contrasting Canadian universities, this article explores how women and gender studies classrooms function as heterotopias or ‘other places’ – sites that challenge ‘regular’ places outside of the academy. Critically analyzing student experiences illustrates to how the intersections of space/location, power, and identities inform notions of privilege and oppression within these classrooms. Analysis of the participants' reflections points to how it is through these ‘other places’ that students are able to recognize identities that were once unknown to them, become conscious of their embodiments via feelings of worry and discomfort, and question their sense of place in the classroom. It is because of these findings that this research functions as a call to instructors regarding the need to prioritize student experiences, so as to be able to critically reflect upon the social and academic significance of women and gender studies classrooms.     

Everyday articulations of prostitution: how some Filipina migrants in rural Japan describe sexual–economic relationships

This article draws attention to ‘everyday articulations of prostitution’: the diverse, performative ways that people reproduce and rework meanings of ‘prostitution’ as they mobilize the term in their day-to-day lives. The article offers an ethnographic illustration of this process by exploring why and to what ends a group of Filipina wives of rural Japanese men referred to the behavior of another Filipina woman in their community as ‘prostitution.’ It demonstrates that when mobilizing this term, these Filipina women were not categorizing sexual–economic relationships (like ‘prostitution’) in terms of payment systems, as other scholars have assumed. Rather, geographical and cultural factors, such as the stigma associated with these women's migration histories and their long-term residence as wives and mothers in the small rural communities where they had worked in bars, led Filipina women in Central Kiso to describe such relationships according to the sentiments motivating them, the ways one utilized gifts or money from a sexual partner, and whether or not one demonstrated appreciation of this financial support. The article maintains that attention to everyday articulations of prostitution such as these expands our understandings of the situated meanings people can invest in this term. It illustrates how culture and geography shape the ways discourses of prostitution are mobilized to stigmatize some intimate-economic behaviors and, thereby, legitimize others.     

Mothers' business,work/life and the politics of ‘mumpreneurship’

Heralded by some as ‘the new feminism’, the new, internationally widespread phenomenon of ‘the mumpreneur’ represents a hotly contested and contestable subject identity. This article explores the debate, arguing that its themes drive to the heart of current issues regarding changing working practices, locations and gender identities in affluent societies. The analyses of women entrepreneurs' views presented here (n = 330) reveal that practitioners are sharply polarised on ‘the mumpreneur’. This article explores these views and progresses research agendas by asking whether such information and communication technology-enabled transformations in working practices (embodied in the figure of the ‘mumpreneur’) have the potential to deliver greater choice for mothers' labour, or whether, conversely, they re-enable iniquitous gender role expectations and arrangements within families.     

The Ethics of Gender and Globalization: Military Madness and Ecological Stress

Abstract

Globalization has an impact on gender relations in complex and contradictory ways. The consequences are neither solely detrimental nor the same everywhere. Globalization may offer new opportunities to women, but overall globalization from above has exacerbated gender inequality. Globalization disperses local and national decision-making powers. Flexible labor laws weaken worker protections and job security. All of these threaten advancement in women's interests. The oft-accompanying environmental degradation directly affects women responsible for domestic necessities and caring labor, which is the situation of most women within the Pacific Rim. Military activities around the Pacific Rim continually erode women's rights. This paper discusses the ethics of globalization, adopting micro, macro and global categories.