Human capital,family structure and religiosity shaping British Muslim women’s labour market participation

Economic activity among Muslim women in the UK remains considerably lower and their unemployment rate significantly higher than among the majority group even after controlling for qualifications and other individual characteristics. This study utilises two data sets to explore possible factors underlying these differences, such as overseas qualifications, language skills and religiosity. It reveals that while religiosity is negatively associated with labour market participation among British Christian-White women, economic activity among Muslim women are not negatively affected by high religiosity. Furthermore, family structure and the presence of dependent children were among the most important factors explaining the latter’s labour market participation, although these relationships were moderated by qualifications. More women with higher qualifications were economically active even if married and with children, although some of them experienced greater unemployment, probably due to discrimination in recruiting practices and choices and preferences on religious grounds.     

Visibly ageing femininities: women’s visual discourses of being over-40 and over-50 on Instagram

Abstract

This article explores visual discourses about over-40 and over-50 femininities that emerge from women’s own Instagram accounts. It analyses women’s visual and textual rhetoric of what over-40 and over-50 looks like, and whether it could interrupt the ageist, sexist, and body-normative discourses of female ageing and visibility. Intertextual visual discourse analysis of images, captions, and hashtags reveals two dominant themes (fitness and fashion) and two repeating rhetorical elements (motherhood and self-sufficiency) through which women make themselves visible as over-40/50. A few explicitly subversive discourses (i.e., over-40 fatshion account) exist, but a discourse of a healthy, fit, fashionable, independent, self-sufficient, and happy mother over-40/50 is prevalent. It easily lends itself to being interpreted as an insidious reproduction of post-feminist ideology, but I argue that there are moments of critique and subversion within. Thus, a reparative reading that acknowledges moments of disconnect from the discourse that normalizes ageing women’s limited or non-existent visibility is offered.     

The female aging body: A systematic review of female perspectives on aging,health, and body image

While most body image research has focused on young female populations, evidence has shown that as few as 12% of older women are satisfied with their body size. Recent studies have also highlighted how anti-aging discourses are promoting unrealistic body norms, which have shown to contribute to poor body image and altered health behaviors. A systematic review of empirical studies focused on older women’s perspectives of health, body image, and the aging body is presented. Findings support that body image is a persistent, lifelong issue for women and should be considered when implementing healthy aging policies and practices.     

“We wouldn’t say it to their faces”: online harassment,women sports journalists,and feminism

In April 2016, a US-based independent sport media organization Just Not Sports launched #MoreThanMean, a digital media campaign to raise awareness about online harassment of women in sports journalism. The video quickly reached 3.7 million views and generated widespread coverage in mainstream news media, sports media, and online-only outlets. Using the #MoreThanMean campaign as a case study, this study assesses how discourses circulate in the sports media environment and, in particular, how feminist messages travel as the content moves from social media to mass media. This study engages with post-feminism in order to examine how various producers of media content position online harassment and sexism in sport and society. While the campaign positioned online harassment as gendered workplace discrimination, the mainstream and sports media coverage typically centralized men in the discussion. Feminist perspectives were constrained to platforms with a progressive, women-centered, and/or explicitly feminist take. Implications for digital feminist activism in the context of sport are discussed.     

When women veterans return: The role of postsecondary education in transition in their civilian lives

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the current state of postsecondary educational settings’ outreach to military women who become students postservice. Participants: Data for the present cross-sectional study were obtained from the American College Health Association’s (ACHA) 2011–2014 National College Health Assessment II (NCHA). Methods: Demographic characteristics of the study sample were explored by calculating frequencies and percentages by military service status. Research questions were explored with Fisher’s exact test, maximum likelihood multiple logistic regression, as appropriate. Results: Women service member and veteran students received health information from their university/college less often than women students with no military experience on the following topics: alcohol and other drug use, depression and anxiety, sexual assault and relationship violence prevention, and stress reduction. Conclusions: The findings of this research identified clear gaps in service provision for women student veterans on college campuses and provided some possible models for intervention development.     

Is prenatal sex selection associated with lower female child mortality?

I examine whether prenatal sex selection has substituted postnatal excess female mortality by analysing the dynamics of child sex ratios between 1980 and 2015 using country-level life table data. I decompose changes in child sex ratios into a ‘fertility’ component attributable to prenatal sex selection and a ‘mortality’ component attributable to sex differentials in postnatal survival. Although reductions in numbers of excess female deaths have accompanied increases in missing female births in all countries experiencing the emergence of prenatal sex selection, relative excess female mortality has persisted in some countries but not others. In South Korea, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, mortality reductions favouring girls accompanied increases in prenatal sex selection. In India, excess female mortality was much higher and largely stable as prenatal sex selection emerged, but slight reductions were seen in the 2000s. In China, although absolute measures showed reductions, relative excess female mortality persisted as prenatal sex selection increased.     

Cisgendered Organizations: Trans Women and Inequality in the Workplace

This article responds to calls to better understand how intersecting “inequality regimes” operate in organizations. Through in‐depth interviews with 25 white trans women about their workplace experiences, my analyses highlight how trans women navigate relational practices that are simultaneously gendered and cisgendered—that is, practices that maintain cultural connections between sex and gender and maintain gender as immutable. Findings demarcate three distinct mechanisms by which cisgenderism, a system that devalues women and trans people, operates and strengthens hierarchical privileges at work: (1) double‐bind constraints; (2) fluid biases of cissexism and sexism; and (3) group practices of privilege and subordination. In the first regard, analyses reveal unique double binds that trans women face—binds that dictate contradictory feminine and masculine ideal worker expectations but also expectations of gender authenticity. Second, I find that trans women often hover between two subordinate statuses (i.e., gender and transgender status) in a given workday, a fact that prods a more fluid conception of cisgenderism. Finally, this study highlights how cis men collectively mobilize through group practices to repair cisgender system breaches. All three dimensions are critical for understanding the production of workplace inequality between not only trans women and cis men, but all feminine‐identified workers.     

“Open to all and everybody”? The Irish Film Board: accounting for the scarcity of women screenwriters

Despite the many social and cultural changes that have occurred in Irish society since the Irish Film Board was re-established in 1993, the Irish film industry remains strongly male dominated. Specifically, Irish women constitute a minority of produced screenwriters and writer/directors. This article contributes to an understanding of the discursive resources that key decision makers in the Irish Film Board draw upon in order to talk about gender. A number of interpretative repertoires are used to rationalize its position in relation to the dearth of women screenwriters, four of which are examined here: evasion and deflection; gender neutrality; project-led funding; and a difficulty making sense of entrenched gender issues, articulated here as “I don’t know.” Within the respondents’ repertoires an ideological dilemma can be identified in the conceptualization of gender as both relevant and irrelevant.     

Women Elite Leaders Doing Respectable Business Femininity: How Privilege is Conferred,Contested and Defended through the Body

This paper offers a theory of respectable business femininity. Respectable business femininity is theorized as a discursive and relational process that explains tensions women elite leaders experience at the nexus of being both One and Other and sometimes privileged, embedded notions of leadership as masculine and wider expectations of acceptable embodied femininity. Such tensions manifest through a disciplining of women leaders’ bodies and appearance by self‐and‐others, as a means of appraising women as credible elite leaders and respectable women. Through a qualitative study we show how, within sites of ambiguity, embodied leadership and subjectivities are both enabled and constrained. Accounts highlight how privilege is fluid and (de)stabilized in that it is conferred, contested and defended through women's bodies and appearance. We advance understandings of contemporary respectable femininity, privilege at work, and body work, and consider practical implications for women leaders and management education.