‘Working fathers' in Japan: Leading a change in gender relations?

Does the emergent phenomenon of ‘working fathers' herald a process of change in gender relations in Japan? Against the background of the current discourse in Japan about new modes of fathers' participation in the family, the article focuses on the small group of working fathers — men who explicitly organize their working lives around family responsibilities — to examine the potentiality of change. This supposed change in the roles of men (and women), at home and in the workplace, is considered in terms of latency, as a ‘slow‐dripping' process. The qualitative research focuses on Fathering Japan, Japan's leading fathering movement, its ideology, its members and their families. The article offers a critical perspective, juxtaposing gender ideology with practice. Exploring the real‐life experiences of working fathers caught between family and work, especially against Japan's gendered corporate culture, the article also addresses the persistence of gender inequality in Japan.     

“Tractorettes” or Partners? Farmers' Views on Women in Kansas Farming Households

In the United States, for various reasons, fewer farm families rely solely on their farming operations for their livelihoods. As the structure of agriculture changes and farm families adjust their livelihood strategies, do the discourses around gender relations in households also change? This article analyzes the portrayal of women's roles in farming households by drawing on interviews with Kansas field crop farmers, primarily regarding their land‐use decisions, but also inquiring about their farms and communities. The article addresses the following question: How do farmers' discourses compare to Brandth's (2002a) categorizations of three dominant discourses in the literature on gender in European family farming—the discourse of the family farm, the discourse of masculinization, and the discourse of detraditionalization and diversity? While Brandth finds the discourse of the family farm prevalent in the literature, overall, the discourse apparent from 30 farmer interviews is more characteristic of detraditionalization and diversity. Although men are primarily the principal operators in farming, overall, women were not portrayed simply as helpers. Rather, their roles are depicted as diverse and important to farm operations.     

‘Putting an ocean between them’: Gender relations among Italian immigrant families in twentieth‐century Argentina

The article starts from the premise that dominant research paradigms of both ‘melting pot’ and ‘multiculturalism’ have concentrated almost exclusively on the institutions of ethnic groups in the study of one of the twentieth century's principal immigrant nations, Argentina. The article makes a case for refocusing the study of immigration in more individual categories. It takes as its example gender, and analyses the role of women in two Italian family networks who emigrated to Argentina. The findings demonstrate that women's roles changed significantly in the migratory process and that women were, in fact, crucial in offering the prospect of social mobility for newly immigrated men. The article concludes by advancing a view beyond the issues of gender on the continuities and discontinuities of political ideologies in the new society.     

Reconceptualizing Motherhood,Reconceptualizing Resistance

Female labour migrants face contradictory expectations. On the one hand, they are expected to be their families' and communities' economic saviours. On the other hand, they are expected to meet their maternal responsibilities even while they are abroad; otherwise, they face charges of maternal neglect. My goal in this article is to highlight how female migrant workers handle these conflicting demands. I discuss how migrant women simultaneously adapt to and challenge imposed family separation through the case study of Filipina live-in caregivers in Canada. They do this in two ways. First, they exhibit transnational hyper-maternalism which allows them to overcome accusations of neglect. They ‘mother across borders’ by providing for their families and by using technology to supervise, monitor and communicate with their children. In doing so, they reify and contest established gender roles. Second, they are active in civil society. In doing so, they highlight the negative consequences migrant women and their families face. Reconceptualized notions of motherhood characterize migrant women's transnational parenting, while the desire to ameliorate the negative consequences of family separation and reunification explain their activism.     

Women,work, and family in the Czech Republic—and comparisons with the West

What are the work-family experiences of Czech women, and to what extent are there similarities and differences with women in the West? Drawing on a cross-national survey and other findings, this paper points out that unlike the extensive part-time employment of many Western European women, most Czech women in the post-Communist era have continued to combine full-time employment with family roles. Maternity and parental leaves, kindergartens, and other policies have been important supports. It is argued that employment and economic independence remain important to Czech women, and although gender differentiation in women's domestic activities and men's preponderance in upper-level jobs in the economy and government is recognized, Western attributions of patriarchy have been resisted. Since family life is highly valued, many have seen women as advantaged in their greater family involvement and integration of both family and employment roles. Rather than opposition between men and women, Czechs generally point to partnership and overall social equality. During Communism Czechs learned that ‘time at work’ does not equal productivity, and women practiced an informal flextime to aid work-family integration. This ‘self-management’ of work time and of work and family activities is cited as a component of Czech women‘s sense of efficacy and gender equality. An interesting question for the post-Communist success of Czech women and work organizations is whether women's interest in self-management will be met by the support of managers and of workplace cultures and structures.     

Gendering the Management of Change in Higher Education: A Case Study

This article reports an investigation into the influence of gender at a pre-1992 UK university. Interviews with Heads of Departments and others defined as occupying ‘middle management’ positions reveal three distinct stances to the new higher education, of ‘collaboration’, ‘resistance’ and ‘transformation’ and the article explores how gender influences these stances. It attempts to move beyond a simple focus on gender differences, towards answering Bacchi's (1990) call for ‘a more useful political analysis (which) would draw attention to the way in which the current economic system encourages certain behaviours and discourages others’. It shows that women academics are taking a transformational stance, but that the stances are not gender-specific. Gender is institutionally embedded with other organizational characteristics, such as academic discipline, departmental size, compatibility with external commercial activity, and the ability or otherwise to generate funds. Questions are raised about the contribution of such stances to the future of the new educational order.     

Source‐Country Gender Roles and the Division of Labor Within Immigrant Families

The authors examined the relationship between source‐country gender roles and the gender division of paid and unpaid labor within immigrant families in the host society. Results from Canadian Census of Population (N = 497,973) data show that the 2 indicators of source‐country gender roles examined—female/male labor activity ratio and female/male secondary education ratio—are both positively associated with immigrant wives' share in their family labor supply and negatively associated with their share in housework. The association between source‐country gender roles and women's share in couples' labor activities weakens over time. Moreover, the relationship between source‐country female/male labor activity and immigrant couples' gender division of labor is reduced when immigrant women have nonimmigrant husbands, indicating that husband's immigration status matters.     

Australian Family Therapy: Have We Lived Up To Our Mission Statement?

In 1983 the Fourth Australian Family Therapy Conference had the theme ‘Merging the Streams — Integrating Trends in Family Therapy’. In his keynote address Brian Stagoll outlined concerns regarding the nature of family therapy as it was then developing in Australia. This article revisits some of these themes to see where we have come from, where we are heading and which topics continue to be ignored. Evidence is drawn from articles that stood out for me in the Australian Journal of Family Therapy (later the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy) and selected relevant papers from the 1983 conference itself. Finally, I speculate upon possible reasons for the absence of discussion on certain issues, most strikingly: systemic influences upon indigenous Australians, farm families, working with children in families, certain aspects of gender, the systemic implications of addiction; and environmental impacts on families now and for the future. The danger for family therapy is becoming stuck in a closed system that ignores the wider system.     

Postmodern rural geography? A reply to Murdoch and Pratt

Jonathan Murdoch and Andy Pratt's thoughtful response (Journal of Rural Studies9, 411–427) to Philo (1992) (Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies8, 193–207) is considered. Their suggestions about the engagement between rural studies and the intellectual currents of ‘postmodernism’ are important ones, and offer both an extension of the claims made by me and a critique of my own lack of self-reflexivity. I outline my partial agreement with their analysis, but offer certain qualifications arising from a different understanding of ‘postmodernism’. I indicate my approval of their call for a ‘sociology of postmodernism’ alert to the making of ‘the rural’ as a concept in circulation, but argue that central to this call is the necessity of investigating the senses of rurality held by all manner of ‘other peoples’ beyond the academy. In this respect, then, the approach of Murdoch and Pratt may be more consistent with my own ‘postmodern rural geography’ than it might first appear.     

Gay Fathers Expanding the Possibilities for Us All

Abstract

This article describes a qualitative research study of 21 men who became fathers as openly gay men. The fathers were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire in a focus group format. The data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. The narrative data depict the men's paths toward fatherhood. The themes elicited from their narratives suggested how gay men are changing traditional cultural norms for fathers, families, and masculinity. The authors propose that by degendering parenting, reconceptualizing family, and reworking masculine gender roles, gay fathers are expanding role norms in novel ways that may serve as alternative models for all families.     

‘Ass‐kicking’ Women: Doing and Undoing Gender in a US Livestock Auction

Using in‐depth interviews with farm operators and participant observation at a livestock auction, this article explores how women in conventional agriculture in the USA ‘do gender’ in a male‐dominated world. In particular the ways that space, both public and private, alters the performance of gender are analysed. Given that agriculture in the USA has traditionally been tied to masculinity and that more and more women are entering the field, the article examines the strategies women employ to negotiate the tension between being women and being farmers. The findings suggest that in general women's success is intricately tied to their ability to reproduce the masculinity that spells success for their male counterparts. These women dress in masculine clothing, swear and are ‘tough as nails’. Furthermore, women's mere presence as farm operators does not necessarily subvert the relationship between masculinity and agriculture. In many ways this notion is reinforced by the presence of these women and so the performance of gender ultimately reinforces rather than subverts the ties between hegemonic masculinity and agriculture.     

‘Here and There’: Children and Youth’s Perspectives of Borders in Mexico–United States Migration

This article explores children’s perspectives regarding migration and family separation on both sides of the Mexico‐U.S. border. ‘Transnational care constellations’¹ that connect separated siblings allow children to imagine the other side of the border and to explore their thoughts and perspectives through the lenses of inequality, as well as through a sense of belonging and family. This article presents ethnographic data of families that capture the dynamism of families that are both ‘here and there’ as children assemble their ideas and narratives of how transnational lives exist.     

Redoing Gender: How Women in the Funeral Industry Use Essentialism for Equality

Although some research considers women's participation in traditionally male‐dominated jobs as an ‘undoing’ of the gender system, other scholars argue that women's participation in non‐traditional roles can actually maintain hegemonic masculinity. Because women have recently entered the funeral industry in unprecedented numbers, the profession offers a unique context to study how women negotiate a sense of belonging in male‐dominated fields. I draw on 22 interviews with women in the funeral industry to reveal how gender is done and undone in an occupational context. In what Hughey ( 2010 . Social Problems, 57, 653–679) refers to as a ‘paradox of participation’, I argue that women in the funeral industry redefine the image of the ideal funeral director by using gender essentialist logic, which originally acted as a barrier to their entry to the field, to justify their participation. By showing how gender essentialism and egalitarianism can constitute reinforcing logics instead of an opposing binary, this research contributes to the literature concerning women in non‐traditional roles.     

Teachers as good mothers,mothers as good teachers: Functional and ideological work–family alignment in the South Korean teaching profession

As one of the largest women‐dominated employment niches in many national contexts, the teaching profession has been widely studied, yet the gender, work and family negotiations within this profession deserve fuller attention. The case study of South Korean teachers, one of the most highly qualified teaching workforces in the world, illuminates how particular professions create specific challenges as well as supports for work and family that can counter national patterns of women's low labour force participation. This study engages with theoretical debates regarding ‘work–family conflict' and ‘work–life balance' to develop the alternative framework of ‘work–family alignment' giving greater attention to cultural, ideological and functional dimensions within specific occupations and national contexts. However, rather than expanding opportunities for women, work–family alignment often depends on conformity to normative gender roles — both at work and within families. Nonetheless, the framework of work–family alignment can inform policy implementation by demonstrating that both functional and ideological supports are needed for workplace and state policies to be effective.     

Dialogue under Occupation

This article critically examines the World Bank's report entitled The Other Half of Gender: Men's Issues in Development published in 2006. The Bank publication covers a range of topics on men and masculinities, and ultimately argues for ‘men-streaming’ development. Using an intersectional analysis, this article expands upon recent feminist scholarship in the field of Men and Development in order to take a closer look at race, culture and representation. In this article, I demonstrate how the World Bank's focus on the social construction of masculinities in the ‘men-streaming’ report places Third World men into a specific realm of visibility that renders them culpable for a wide range of development issues. In representing African men as homogenous, culturally inferior and individually culpable for the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in particular, the Bank's promotes ‘gender-adjustments’, which obscures the Bank's complicity in a variety of development disasters.     

‘Workaholics’ and ‘whingeing women’: Theorising intimacy and emotion work — the last frontier of gender inequality?

In a variety of discourses and empirical studies it has been argued that compared with women, men show more reluctance to express intimate emotion in heterosexual couple relationships. Our paper attempts to theorise this gender asymmetry in intimate emotional behaviour as a sort of ‘emotional power’, within the wider context of continuing gender inequalities of resources and power in society. To the extent that men's role as breadwinner becomes their central life interest (they become ‘workaholics’), women are left with emotional responsibility for the private sphere, including the performance of the ‘emotion work’ necessary to maintain the couple relationship itself. Increasingly women's dissatisfaction in relationships (which men dismiss as unjustified ‘whingeing’) stems mainly from this unequal division. Yet many women still collude with male power by living the family ‘myth’ and ‘playing the couple game’; they perform emotion work on themselves to convince themselves that they are ‘ever so happy really’, thereby helping to reproduce their own false consciousness. This suggests that gender asymmetry in relation to intimacy and emotion work may be the last and most obstinate manifestation and frontier of gender inequality.     

Social work students' conception on roles within the family in Greece

The present article is based on a small-scale research that took place with third-year students in the department of social work at Technological Educational Institute of Patras. During class the students, who undertake the laboratory course ‘Social Work with Families’, were asked to discuss family roles and depict them on drawings. Analysing their drawings in a qualitative approach the findings suggest that students adopt traditional views on family issues and the family roles. Various gender stereotypes and prejudices were reflected in students' drawings and this is alarming for both social work education and practice.     

Looking for the Holy Grail: Publishing and advertising strategies and contemporary men's magazines

Recent work in gender/queer theory has developed J. L. Austin's notion of performativity to account for the compulsive and repetitive construction of gender as a kind of ‘performance’. This work has failed to examine the role of ‘sound’ in Austin's theory, with important consequences for our understanding of the basis of such an ‘ordinary’ communicative event. This article compares the problems which Austin raises for the securing of communicative events through a concept of sound with the sound experiment in the 1970s pornographic film, The Opening of Misty Beethoven. By linking this complex filmic disruption of the interrelation between desire, sexual performance and sound with a non-Derridean exploration of Austin, this study suggests that theories of the communicative event can be much enriched by examining ideas underlying ‘ordinary sexual intercourse’.     

Young people and the division of labour in farming families

The family farm has been identified as the main unit of agricultural production in Britain and it has been widely studied as an economic unit in agricultural research. However, it is also a social unit: one with a division of labour based upon gender and generation. Here we will consider a relatively unexplored area of agricultural production: the contribution of children to the family farm, based upon a quantitative survey of young people in a rural area and detailed qualitative interviews. The approach is to look at the farm family in terms of a ‘household work strategy’ although in the paper we argue that this should take into account the importance of moral obligation and patriarchal ideology. The importance of gender and generation are explored as intersecting factors in the division of labour.