Why Do African Households Give Hospitality to Relatives?

This empirical article describes a widespread African phenomenon—hospitality given to relatives—and explains why African households often provide long-term hospitality. A budget and consumption survey carried out in Gabon in 1994 is used to compare the characteristics of households that provide hospitality and the characteristics of guests and the members of nuclear households. A two-step procedure is proposed to determine whether hospitality decisions are made mainly by heads of household or by the extended family. The data suggest that hospitality decisions are made partly by the extended family.     

Money management and control in the Indian joint family across generations

Studies of money management and control will have more cross‐cultural relevance if the family context of money across generations is taken into account. The study of money management and control in middle‐income nuclear and joint family households in urban India illustrates the importance of examining money flows within the wider family context because there is a two‐way flow of money beyond the married couple – between parents and adult children, siblings and other members of the extended family. In the three or four generational joint family, control and management at the household level is not necessarily duplicated for the constituent couples. We draw on open‐ended interviews of 40 persons from 27 urban middle‐income households in North India, between November 2007 and January 2008, to show that the male control of money is the dominant pattern. This pattern is linked to the ideology of male dominance that is found among the middle, lower middle and struggling households, particularly in non‐metropolitan households. The upper‐middle‐class households predominantly in metropolitan households show a pattern of joint or independent control. The focus is on the couple's money decisions within the context of the wider family.     

Gender and housing : The provision of accommodation for young adults in three Mexican cities

The literature on gender and housing is oddly distorted, for it is dominated by research on households which are ‘women-headed’, even where the majority of women may live in households conventionally regarded as being headed by men. This literature shuns the ‘traditional’, male-headed, nuclear household and regards ‘non-traditional’ households as being those headed by single mothers or women living alone. The first part of this paper argues that it is important not to restrict discussion of gender and housing to the problems facing single mothers or women living alone, because there is a danger of rendering the majority of women, once again, invisible.Equating ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ households with ‘nuclear’ and ‘women-headed’ households, respectively, confuses structure with headship and overlooks cultural variations in what constitutes a ‘traditional’ household — the nuclear household is not necessarily the traditional norm. The second part of this paper explores a little-documented housing arrangement in which large numbers of women are involved in urban Mexico: sharing. ‘Sharing’ occurs when two or more households occupy the same plot of land; one household owns the plot, allowing the other(s) to live there rent-free. Sharing mostly involves the adult sons or daughters of the plot owners, and may be regarded as a variation on the extended household structure. Sons are more likely to be allowed to bring their wives to their parents' home, whereas daughters are more likely to leave. Women living with their in-laws lack security of tenure and there is often conflict between wives and members of their husband's family of origin, particularly their mothers-in-law.The anthropological literature has identified gender relations as the source of conflict between women in extended households. Sharing reduces the potential for conflict by giving the younger household greater autonomy. Furthermore, concern for their daughters' welfare leads many parents to offer accommodation to married daughters as well as sons. Single mothers, however, are more likely to live as part of their parents' household than to share. In this respect, the nuclear household norm is reinforced, since sharing seems to be a privilege accorded only to those who are married.     

Remittances and inequality in Cape Verde: the impact of changing family organization

There is a risk that remittances exacerbate socio‐economic inequality among the recipients. In this case study of a Cape Verdean community I explore how variations in family organization interact with the distribution of remittances and their effects on local social stratification. Formerly, the typical migrant was male and directed the main part of his remittances to a nuclear household he had left behind. Households that included a male migrant were able to raise their standard of living over that of households without a migrant member. Today, relationships between women and men have become increasingly unstable and long‐lasting transnational family ties are now rarely based on a conjugal relationship. Both women and men migrate and they often start up a new family abroad. Consequently, when migrants send remittances to Cape Verde they do not invest in their own future lives as they did in the past. Instead, they try to support ageing parents and young children left behind. This means that migrants often have economic obligations to several households and that they are therefore only able to send limited amounts of money to each. This implies, first, that many households are recipients of remittances and, second, that they normally only receive small sums. In conclusion, it may be said that these changes in family organization have reduced the risk that remittances will exacerbate inequality.     

Re‐inventing the Gendered Organization: Staff Attitudes towards Women and Gender Mainstreaming in NGOs in Malawi

Gender inequality within non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) is constructed on a daily basis through the gendered norms, attitudes and practices of individuals within them. The continual re‐invention of a gendered organization ensures the maintenance of the status quo and therefore the privileging of male/masculine interests over female/feminine interests. Gender mainstreaming is an approach designed to alter the status quo and facilitate women's empowerment. In Malawi, many NGOs have adopted gender mainstreaming as a strategy to address gender inequality both within their organizations and with the communities where they work. Gender mainstreaming initiatives involve a variety of activities including hiring more women staff members, designing policies within the organization to promote gender equality and educating staff members about gender issues through training workshops. While these strategies represent important steps forward for gender equality, it is not clear to what extent these policies and initiatives are translating into meaningful change within the organization.     

Changing households in Britain: do families still matter?

The decline in traditional nuclear family households, and the marked increase in the proportion of people living alone, or alone with dependent children have led some to claim that individualism has replaced the importance of family life. In this paper we use data from a large household panel study of Britain to suggest that this is not true. Regardless of people's own household circumstances, family issues and events are clearly top of the agenda of what people consider matter most in their lives. Moreover, in talking about events that mattered, people are almost as likely to talk about something that happened to other family members, as they are to talk about themselves. Surprisingly, people living alone or alone with children are as likely to mention other family members as those who live in family households. Yet the importance of family does vary considerably by gender and age. Women give more importance to family events and events in the lives of other family members than do men. Young people are far more self-centred than older people but whether this is a generational or life-stage difference is open to question.     

Married to the Military: Filipinas Negotiating Transnational Families

Women migrating transnationally as "entertainers" within Asia are particularly exposed to the possibility of forming relationships in these transnational sites. This is because the nature of their work, which entails chatting and dancing with customers and various forms of sexual labour, including fondling, kissing and sometimes sex, often leads to romantic liaisons with customers in the clubs where they are deployed. This possibility is even more pronounced for women who are trafficked (that is, deceptively recruited and employed) as entertainers, as they often counter the severe vulnerabilities associated with their positions by relying on customers-cum-boyfriends for support and assistance. Marriage is one common result of these liaisons. This paper considers the multiple impacts of such marriages for foreign female entertainers on family. I focus particularly on the ways such marriages can both constrain existing family responsibilities and facilitate new ones. The paper draws on the case of Filipinas married to American soldiers in Korea as a case study for discussion. I suggest that migrant women who become involved in such marriages are often pulled between the potentially conflicting demands of old (within their home countries) and new (with their American soldier husbands) family ties and responsibilities. I also suggest that these women's new families, whilst outwardly displaying elements of traditional gendered household roles and structures, are often characterised by long absences of the husband (to other countries or within the country of residence) and long-term patterns of transnational migration that can have a highly disruptive impact on family arrangements.     

Queering the Home

Abstract

In the West, the private sphere of the home is traditionally associated with the heterosexual nuclear family. Through social, cultural, and legal processes, the heterosexual bond has been constructed as central to the family home. Despite these dominant discourses, the home is also a space in which heteronormativity (or the unacknowledged assumption that heterosexuality is the natural and normal form of sexuality) may be subverted. This article considers how the domestic lives of lesbian and gay couples in England challenge the heteronormativity prevalent in dominant discourses of the home. Drawing on in-depth interviews with lesbians and gay men, the article continues to extend and build on the existing literature on queer domesticity by focusing on how lesbian and gay couples divide and understand domestic labor in their homes. The perceived normativity of coupled domesticity and childrearing means that on the one hand the lesbian and gay participants in this study could be seen to fit in with normative ideals of domestic family life. On the other hand, I show how these couples subvert heteronormative assumptions about gendered household practices through their approaches and attitudes towards domestic labor and parenting. In particular, the article focuses on the complex ways in which lesbian and gay couples destabilize traditional domestic gender roles and queer the spaces of the home through the seemingly unremarkable, mundane practices and negotiations of domestic labor and childcare.     

Migration and Transnational Families in Fiji: Comparing Two Ethnic Groups

In the past two decades, international migration patterns out of Fiji have undergone changes with important implications for the formation of transnational families. The focus of this paper is on a comparison between the formation of Indo-Fijian transnational extended families and indigenous Fijian transnational nuclear families. These are discussed within the framework of "transnational corporations of kin."
For several decades, Indo-Fijians have permanently migrated to the Pacific Rim as a consequence of the economic and political situation in Fiji. They have resettled in complete nuclear family units and have subsequently attempted to sponsor the migration of their extended family members. Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of indigenous Fijians migrating temporarily for work. In contrast to Indo-Fijians, indigenous Fijian migrate as individuals, leaving their spouses and children behind in Fiji. Women migrate autonomously as caregivers and nurses while men find employment as soldiers and security officers. The main purpose of their mostly temporary migration is to send remittances. However, these economic benefits have to be contrasted with the social and psychological costs associated with the separation of nuclear families. The paper also discusses policy implications arising from the comparative analysis, especially in the light of the current situation in Fiji which is characterised by a lack of policies addressing the implications of migration.     

Begrenzte Wahl – Gelegenheitsstrukturen und Erwerbsmuster in Paarhaushalten im europäischen Vergleich

This article investigates employment patterns in couple households—and in particular their variability according to the presence and age of children. The aim of the comparative analysis of ten European countries, using data from the European Social Survey (2004/05 and 2006/07), is to explain the pronounced cross-country differences with regard to empirically relevant household employment patterns—focusing on their variability across an ideal-typical family life-cycle. Explanatory factors include the social policy framework (family and tax policies), socio-economic and labor market conditions (wage level, unemployment, the availability of part-time work) as well as national gender cultures (societal ideals regarding gender roles and childcare). The article discusses the relationship between these structural and cultural factors, on the one hand, and actual practices of gendered employment behaviour, on the other. It concludes that, in order to account for the complexity of causal relations, the explanation of gendered employment patterns ought to be country-specific.     

Analyzing Politics and Change in Women's Organizations

Research on women's political action too often passes over women's organizations that do not officially adopt a feminist ideology and do not explicitly set out to change gender power relations. Based on implicit notions that such women's organizations are nonpolitical (or less interesting), the research often supports a false dichotomy between feminist and nonfeminist organizations rather than illuminates women's common political ground. This study addresses women's collective action, politics and change by focusing on the case of Nicaraguan Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs - women who lost a son or daughter in the revolution or Contra War. Although some members in Matagalpa critiqued male domination, the organization itself did not set out to challenge the gendered division of labor; indeed, their collective demands relied upon and in many ways reinforced traditional gender identities. I argue that such movements are important to feminist political analysis. As I demonstrate in this article, an organization's lack of an official feminist ideology does not mean that individual members do not express interests, identities and ideals that challenge the gendered status quo. Such research, however, requires a nuanced approach, recognizing women as both accommodating and resisting gendered social structures. Thus, this study challenges the dominant feminist-feminine dichotomy by demonstrating that women's collective action is not only per se political (and politically important) but may also challenge as well as reinforce gendered power structures.     

Keeping the Farm in the Family Name: Patrimonial Narratives and Negotiations among German‐Heritage Farmers

Sociologists tend to view rural culture as an inertial force, committing members to past cultural patterns which, in turn, inform their present courses of action. By emphasizing such cultural stasis, we obscure how members of cultural enclaves negotiate, recommit to, or revise certain cultural traditions. This article explores how rural culture is in dialogue with changing external contexts. Drawing on interviews I conducted among a small group of German‐heritage farmers in southern Wisconsin, I find that farmers select legal arrangements, entrepreneurial actions, and traditional male succession in order to fulfill the “yeoman” goal of keeping the farm in the family name. I explore how the narratives farmers develop about the cultural priority of transferring the home‐farm to a new generation allow sociological insight into their creative negotiations between cultural traditions and a greatly altered context of agricultural production. I argue that this dialogue between a historically persistent cultural tradition and very present pressures of agricultural production makes a significant contribution to the dynamics of modern rural life.     

Making It In and Making Out: Women in Professional Occupations in Britain and France

The relationship between gender, work and organization in professional occupations can be shown to vary according to different work environments and national contexts. The career patterns of women in chartered accountancy and law in Britain and France are explored in different types of organization in order to determine whether the societal structuring of these occupations is gendered and whether women fare better in small professional practices or large bureaucratic organizations. The findings are derived from a comparative study which combined macro-level data with in-depth qualitative analysis of work and family life histories of a small number of women professionals. While women in the two countries and two occupations were found to share many of the same problems in establishing and pursuing a career, the evidence suggests that women in France may have a marginal advantage over their British counterparts, not so much because they have access to more extensive statutory employment rights but rather because they are more often employed in small practices where they are able to use their independence and their control over working conditions and work-time arrangements to structure their careers according to their own requirements and interests.     

Gender Issues on Change Agenda – Practising Intersectionality in Action Research

This article investigates how intersectionalities are handled in the orientations and positions of organization members when conducting feminist action research in workplaces. The Finnish Defence Forces are used as an empirical example of a hierarchical and gendered organization. The article employs the work conference method based on democratic dialogue with the aim of bringing together the divergent experiences and perspectives of the organization's members. Our interpretation is that the intersectional application of the work conference method reveals issues that would not have otherwise arisen. The method helps to highlight the habits and routines that are taken for granted in organizations. We suggest the use of the method both for identifying patterns of inequalities and for seeking remedies for them. The experiences gained from the empirical study support a multi‐method approach to action research. A more theory‐based consciousness of social positions and their interconnections will serve the development process. As a result, action research efforts might also become better anchored in organizational structures and practices.     

Assessing the Relationship Between Gender,Household Structure,and Net Worth in the United States

This paper examines wealth disparities by gender and household structure in the United States using data from the 1998–2013 Survey of Consumer Finances. Following studies of economic insecurity, we placed households at the center of our analysis to highlight the interconnected nature of wealth with multiple aspects of family structure. We investigated net worth by both gender and household structure, which includes variation by partnership status and the presence of other adult relatives and their roles within the household. We found that wealth disparities were largest among single adult households, but these varied by gender. Female single adult households held some of the lowest levels of net worth, but after accounting for key explanations of wealth inequality, single male households actually held greater wealth than two-adult partnered households. This relationship further depended on the presence of extended family members, where gender disparities were smaller among households with other relatives present.     

Who's a good boy then? Anthropocentric masculinities in veterinary practice

Veterinary surgeons (vets) provide us with a fascinating platform to study anthropocentric and zoocentric beliefs, which we argue are gendered in both their genesis and practice. Gendered in the sense of the double meaning of our title ‘who's a good boy then?’, which reflects both a default male gender and a patronizing masculine claim to mastery over the animal. In addition, veterinary practices are organized in specifically masculine ways that, despite the demographic feminization of the profession, are oblivious to distinctively gendered practices and concerns and thus to the reproduction of gendered inequalities. The research also focuses on how there is a tendency for vets to neglect their own bodies for the sake of the animal's welfare (zoocentrism) but, at the same time, this reflects and reproduces masculine anthropocentric demands for human supremacy involving linear rational and effective control over the animal as a necessary part of their commercial and career success. In the empirical presentation, we show how organizational gendering within the gendered organization of veterinary surgery occurs at all levels, sometimes openly and explicitly, but also covertly and implicitly. In seeking to interrogate the covert and implicit in gender asymmetry, we draw on post‐humanist feminist philosophical perspectives that facilitate our challenging of the gendered anthropocentric organization of veterinary work.     

Gender,Space, and Place

ABSTRACT

The boundary between home and work was very blurred in early modern England. Domestic production was an essential element of early modern life and many families had servants and apprentices living and working with them under the same roof. But, to date, little investigation has been conducted into the impact that these practices had on the character of domestic space and how experience varied between different household members. This article attempts to redress the balance by focusing on the ways in which early modern middling householders organized eating and sleeping in the spaces that they shared with their servants. It argues that fixed social patterns were not inscribed upon early modern homes. Rooms were multifunctional; their use and meaning constantly shifted. Moreover, lack of space in most households meant that separation or segregation according to rank or gender was not possible or practical. Nonetheless, the organization of space for these everyday activities played an important role in the expression of the social, age, and gender hierarchies that ordered the early modern domestic world.     

‘Why Do All the Women Disappear?’ Gendering Processes in a Political Science Department

The article provides an in‐depth analysis of the gendering processes among PhD candidates in a political science department. It uses Joan Acker's theory of gendered organizations operating through four dimensions: the gendered division of labour, gendered interaction, gendered symbols and gendered interpretations of one's position in the organization. The article combines this approach with theories of hidden discrimination. The key theoretical aim is to contribute to gendered organizational theory by examining the ways in which hidden discrimination and the gendered organization work together. This generates detailed and differentiated knowledge about the mechanisms of hidden discrimination that produce gender inequalities in the department. The findings presented in this article point to the role of gendered division of labour and the lack of information about departmental practices. PhD supervision by men is a particularly strong structural barrier for women because of the gendered nature of interaction in supervision and the difficulties that female PhD students have in a male‐dominated environment. The article further contributes to debates on gendered organizations by focusing upon the gendered symbols of expertise in political science. These symbols reproduce the man as the political scientist norm and result in women interpreting their own position as marginal or as outsiders.     

Editorial

A gender perspective requires examining how gender roles affect the ways in which various family members can participate in the wider community, economy, and state. It is important to recognize the disparity between perceptions about the family as a benign institution and the reality that many families consist of a paradoxical blend of love, support, friction, domination, and even cruelty. Definitions of family reveal the social implications of the belief that families are centered on children and the need of patriarchs to control female sexuality. Notions about households are generally more concrete, and many households include people who are not family members and are not nuclear in nature. Many development initiatives have floundered because of the assumption that households distribute resources according to individual needs. Instead, household members use bargaining power to get their way, and women are generally in weaker bargaining positions than men. Linking men solely with production and women solely with reproduction ignores the realities of most women's lives, although the unpaid reproductive work women do influences their access to paid employment. In order to assure family stability and to find ways to provide social welfare, women's workload in the family must be reduced. Family life must not be hidden in a "private" sphere where injustices and violence are ignored. Unconscious biases against families of various types must be rooted out and overcome, and policy-makers must recognize that families evolve to meet changing needs. Finally, the notion of the nuclear family as the ideal family type must be challenged.     

Non‐job work/unpaid caring: Gendered industrial relations in long‐term care

This article explores the operation of gender and industrial relations in long‐term care work or nursing home work, ‘from within’ the experience of the predominantly female workforce in seven unionized facilities in Canada. Drawing on qualitative case study data in non‐profit facilities, the article argues that the main industrial relations challenges facing long‐term care workers are that their workplace priorities do not fit within existing, gendered, industrial relations processes and institutions. This article starts from the experience of women and threads this experience through other layers of social organization such as: global and local policy directions including austerity, New Public Management, and social and healthcare funding; industrial relations mechanisms and policy; and workers’ formal [union] and informal efforts to represent their interests in the workplace. The strongest themes in the reported experience of the women include: manufacturing conditions for unpaid work; increasing management and state dependence on unpaid care work; fostering loose boundaries; and limiting respect and autonomy as aspects of care work. The article extends the feminist political economy by analysing the links between the policies noted above and frontline care work. Building on gendered organizational theory the article also introduces the concept of non‐job work and suggests a fourth industrial relations institution, namely the needs and gendered expectations of residents, families and workers themselves, operating within the liminal spaces in care work.