Gender and emergent water governance: comparative overview of neoliberalized natures and gender dimensions of privatization,devolution and marketization

This article provides a critical reading of some of the gendered dimensions of emergent water governance regimes, specifically those related to the privatization, marketization and devolution of water resources management. After first providing an overview of recent nature–society contributions related to neoliberalization processes, the article comparatively evaluates insights with respect to the gender dimensions of recent shifts in water governance. I make several arguments at the intersection of relevant literatures. First, there is a need for gender theorists interested in water resources and nature–society debates to engage more with issues, theories and processes associated with neoliberalization. Second, there is a need for more attention to gender, feminist theory and approaches to inequality and socio-spatial difference in discussions of neoliberalized natures. Third, reading these literatures together reveals that there is a need to be self-reflexive and critical of elements of the gender and water literature that implicitly endorse foundational elements of the neoliberal turn in resource governance. Finally, there are particularities with respect to gender theory and politics, and water materialities that hold importance for understanding recent water governance shifts in the broader context of political and economic changes associated with neoliberalization.     

Producing liminal space: gender,age and class in northern Ontario's tree planting industry

Drawing upon qualitative data, this article examines how tree planters in northern Ontario, Canada engage with liminality in terms of gender, class, age and space. In doing so, it provides insight into concepts of gender liminality and the variegated experiences of males and females in liminal space. The article focuses on four aspects of the liminal engagement. First, the spaces of tree planting are liminal as they are marked by homelife and worklife, but dominated by neither. Second, gender performances are liminal, as males perform masculinities seldom necessary or appropriate – yet often valorized – in their permanent communities, while females (who make up nearly half of the workforce) are offered opportunities to work and succeed in a traditionally male industry. However, success often requires that they adopt certain masculine traits. Third, most tree planters are in the interstitial age of ‘youth’, somewhere between adolescence and adulthood. Finally, tree planters are generally members of affluent urban middle-classes, yet the work they perform is more readily associated with rural or peripheral working-classes.     

Female subjugation and political resistance: from literati to entrepreneurial masculinity in the globalizing era of postsocialist China

Drawing on 24 months of ethnographic research on karaoke bar hostesses and male clients, in this article I seek to illustrate the ways in which entrepreneurial masculinity is constructed, enacted and performed in the space of bars, in the location of Dalian, during the globalizing era of China. This article not only examines the historical processes that have helped produce the entrepreneurial masculinities in postsocialist China, but also the nuanced ways in which the place of Dalian, the Chinese state, and the space of bars have facilitated the production of entrepreneurial masculinities articulated in everyday activities. Such an exploration contributes to the literature on the spatial politics of geographic knowledge production and the geographical understandings of the salience of masculinities and femininities, the potency of place and the impact of the politics and the economy on social relationships.     

Cougar figures,gender, and the performances of predation

This article considers how nonhuman animals are enrolled in the construction of gendered identities. Specifically, I interrogate two gendered figures with which I was repeatedly confronted over the course of researching cougar–human relationships on Vancouver Island, home to what is estimated to be North America's densest population of cougars. The first figure, Cougar Annie, was a woman ‘settler’ on western Vancouver Island, reputed to have killed over 100 cougars in her lifetime and now celebrated as a strong, independent female. The second figure is a contemporary trope, an older woman who expresses interest in younger men, known in slang speech as a ‘cougar’. Both figures are intimately bound to a third figure, the animal cougar, Puma concolor, whose material–semiotic relationship to humans both performs and is performed by ‘cougars’ and Cougar Annie. Haraway's conception of figures as embodied and performative mappings of power is central to this article's discussion, which lies at the intersection of animal studies, more-than-human geographies, posthumanism, and feminist science studies. Methodologically, I draw on interviews and archival research to trace the historical and contemporary specificities of these two figures – Cougar Annie and ‘cougars’ – revealing how they are informed by, and simultaneously produce, uphold, and perform, gendered understandings of the relationship between humans and cougars, predator and prey, humans and animals, and culture and nature.     

The friend,the loner and the independent traveller: Norwegian midlife single women's social identities when on holiday

This article explores the social identities available to Norwegian midlife single women when on holiday. As inherent in their habitus, the social identity of a friend is a way of tackling tourism spaces that accommodate bonding. With friends women feel socially included as tourists and seldom disempowered by the surveillance of the tourist gaze. However, the sustenance of friendships is also about discerning what matters; bonding in holiday spaces contributes to maintaining interpersonal relationships in everyday life. Nevertheless, this social identity also requires that women disidentify with being midlife singles, a strategy which is sometimes problematic. The social identity of the loner is linked to fears of solo holidays. This fear is associated with social exclusion, especially when eating out alone in a resort of an evening. In such spaces women dislike being midlife singles; they feel somehow suppressed by the tourist gaze and become aware of their lack of bonding. The social identity of the independent traveller, however, is about enjoyable solo holidays. It is their way of resisting, contesting and negotiating tourism as about sociability with significant others, thereby transforming habitus and manoeuvring the tourist gaze in public holiday spaces, such as restaurants. It is additionally about positive identification with being a midlife single woman.     

Mapping race and gender in the academy: the experiences of women of colour faculty and graduate students in Britain,the US and Canada

This paper examines the experiences of women of colour in geography. An analysis of qualitative, open‐ended questionnaires with women of colour geography faculty and graduate students in North America and Britain suggests that policies and practices within geography departments continue to reflect a pervasive persistence of racialized and gendered inequities in the workplace. There has been relatively little application of theoretical work on race and gender to the minority experience within geography. Some strategies suggested to challenge racialized and gendered barriers that limit women of colour's full participation in geography include a proactive recruitment programme, diversification of the curriculum and development of mentoring.     

Feminist Perspectives on the Internationalization of The State

Abstract: The state is often described in transition: public spaces are rearranged by private companies, national social welfare is being privatized to some extent, and supranational institutions have more influence on national policies. “A view from the kitchen” (Diane Elson) is helpful for understanding the changing dynamics of states and societies because different women are affected by these policies in different and often ambiguous ways: women of the globalized South migrate to the North, creating global care chains, while women in Western industrialized countries are confronted with changing welfare regimes, leaving mainly highly educated women to profit from this situation. This article contributes to feminist debates on economic globalization and state internationalization. Our feminist materialist perspective allows a critical view on dominance and power in “governance”. Thus, the article adds to feminist debates on globalization from the perspective of state transformation and to debates on governance from the perspective of state transformation grounded in gendered social relations.     

IS THE GENDER DIVISION OF LABOUR CHANGING IN JAPAN?

The paper examines potential changes in housework and employment among married couples in Japan. The data are from national surveys in 1994 and 2000 of persons aged 20–49. Wives’ housework hours decreased and the proportion of husbands doing any housework increased. A majority of wives are employed, many work full-time and husbands work long hours and many return home late in the evening. While wives do less housework if they are employed, husbands’ housework does not respond to their wives’ employment. Large gender differences persist, with wives’ employment associated with family constraints. In general, changes were the same across categories of the population, though three of five significant interactions with time involved wives’ education. A positive relationship between wives’ education and any housework by husbands becomes stronger over time. The results suggest gender inequality in housework may decrease in the future, with potential relevance to future marriage and fertility.