Syrian refugee men as objects of humanitarian care

Critical feminist scholars of conflict and displacement have demonstrated that “womenandchildren” (Enloe 1993) have become an uncontroversial object of humanitarian concern in these contexts (Carpenter 2003; Hyndman and Giles 2011). Yet very little scholarly work has attempted to understand the position of refugee men as a demographic within humanitarianism. Through an analysis of the Syria refugee response in Jordan, this article investigates how humanitarian workers relate to refugee men and think about refugee masculinities. It argues that refugee men have an uncertain position as objects of humanitarian care. Seeing refugee men as objects of humanitarian care would disrupt prevailing humanitarian understandings of refugeehood as a feminized subject position and of gender work as work that “helps women” (Cornwall 2007; Johnson 2011). It would furthermore challenge prevailing binary visions of refugee men as agential, political actors, and refugee women as in need of “empowerment” through the implementation of technocratic programming. In the context of the Syria refugee response, these gendered and racialized understandings of refugee men and masculinities are mediated by particular conceptions of “Arabness.” This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews with humanitarian workers and Syrian refugees, which was undertaken in Jordan in 2015–2016.     

‘Survival Employment’: Gender and Deskilling among African Immigrants in Canada

Recent research points to a growing gap between immigrant and native‐born outcomes in the Canadian labour market at the same time as selection processes emphasize recruiting highly educated newcomers. Drawing on interviews with well‐educated men and women who migrated from countries in sub‐Saharan Africa, this paper explores the gendered processes that produce weak economic integration in Canada. Three‐quarters of research participants experienced downward occupational mobility, with the majority employed in low‐skilled, low‐wage, insecure forms of “survival employment”. In a gendered labour market, where common demands for “Canadian experience”, “Canadian credentials” and “Canadian accents” were uneven across different sectors of the labour market, women faced particular difficulties finding “survival employment”; in the long run, however, women’s greater investment in additional post‐secondary education within Canada placed them in a somewhat better position than men. The policy implications of this study are fourfold: first, we raise questions about the efficacy of Canadian immigration policies that prioritize the recruitment of well‐educated immigrants without addressing the multiple barriers that result in deskillling; second, we question government policies and settlement practices that undermine more equitable economic integration of immigrants; third, we address the importance of tackling the “everyday racism” that immigrants experience in the Canadian labour market; and finally, we suggest the need to re‐think narrowly defined notions of economic integration in light of the gendered nature of contemporary labour markets, and immigrants’ own definitions of what constitutes meaningful integration.     

Intersections on the Class Escalator: Gender,Race, and Occupational Segregation in Paid Care Work

As U.S. manufacturing and production industries have declined, the growth of the care sector has increasingly become an important source of jobs for workers without a college degree. Often requiring some form of postsecondary credentialing, many care occupations can provide better wages, job stability, and possible upward mobility for less educated workers. However, employment patterns in paid care work are both gendered and racialized: women and workers of color are overrepresented in care occupations with fewer entry barriers, benefits, and lower pay. Although these patterns are well documented, the mechanisms producing them are less well understood. Using event history analysis and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), this study evaluates the explanatory power of neoclassical economic, status attainment, and social closure theories of occupational segregation for black women’s and men’s greater hazard or “risk” of entering care occupations, relative to white workers. Net of individual and closure mechanisms, significant residual effects suggest labor market discrimination remains a primary explanation for the over-representation of black workers in less credentialed care jobs with fewer benefits.     

Recession,austerity and gender: A comparison of eight European labour markets

The collapse in GDP brought about by the global economic crisis in 2008 affected female employment less than male employment, whereas austerity has been particularly harsh on women, a gendered impact described in the literature as “he‐cession to sh(e)‐austerity”. This article analyses gendered trends in the labour markets of eight European countries, decomposing quarterly changes in labour participation of women and men and in employment by sector. The “he‐cession to sh(e)‐austerity” scenario is not observed in all countries. Other channels through which austerity policies can jeopardize gender equality and women's rights are identified with reference to a typology of such policies.     

Motherhood Motivations: African Refugee Women Resettled in Australia and Return Visits to a Country of First Asylum

This article expands on conceptualizations of refugee “return” by examining why African women resettled as refugees in Australia return to visit the country of first asylum from which they were previously resettled. I show that their return visits do not relate to attachment to place, but are motivated by social obligations to practise “motherhood” to family members who, due to conflict‐induced displacement, remain in a country of first asylum. I argue that the phenomenon of refugee “return” cannot be conflated exclusively with return to country of origin but is, for African women in particular, centred on the reinvigoration of care relationships across diasporic settings of asylum in which family remain. Building on an emergent focus on feminization in migration studies, I show how these gendered dynamics of refugee “return” are an entry point from which to re‐consider how scholarship and policy take into account “family” in contexts of forced migration.     

Misery Has Company: The Shared Emotional Consequences of Everwork Among Women and Men

Everwork—defined as a combination of overwork, face time, constant availability, and unpredictability—is becoming an increasingly common form of work, especially among highly skilled service workers. While such an environment would seem to disadvantage mothers in particular, I find that employees of all genders and parental statuses suffer in such intensive work environments. Through 50 in‐depth interviews with management consultants, I examine how employees reconcile their personal lives with the realities of everwork. I characterize young childless men and women as “quit intenders,” mothers as “tightrope walkers,” and fathers as “reluctant sacrificers.” This article offers new insight into the tensions employees face between their parenthood ideals and everwork expectations, the strategies they engage in to manage those tensions, and the emotional impacts they experience as a result. Because employees use career–life strategies that accommodate rather than challenge the fundamental nature of everwork, everwork environments may persist despite the negative consequences.     

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.     

Discounted labour? Disaggregating care work in comparative perspective

This article contrasts the earnings of high‐ and low‐status care workers in Canada, the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan (China) using the micro‐data files of the Luxembourg Income Study. By disaggregating existing definitions of care work, the author identifies occupations with lower and higher degrees of “social closure”, revealing the associated care penalties and care bonuses cross‐nationally. She also empirically measures the extent of similarities (and differences) between and within care economies in “liberal” and “productivist developmental” welfare regimes, offering support for the argument that globalization has fostered substantial convergence within the international care market.     

Why Do Women Want Children? The Case of Hong Kong,China: A Lowest-Low Fertility Context

ABSTRACT

Governments in low fertility countries tend to tackle low birth rates by addressing macro-level factors rather than the meaning that having a child holds for men and women. Yet whether or not an individual decides to have a child depends in part on what they think having a child will mean for their lives. This study examines the meanings that constitute reasons for wanting a child among a sample of middle-class, married, Hong Kong Chinese women who wanted children. These women were living in Hong Kong when it had one of the lowest total fertility rates in the world and the lowest in its history. Using semi-structured, in-depth interviews, it finds that for these women, to have a child makes one’s family complete; is the next stage of life; provides happiness, fun, and enjoyment; brings care and company in old age; and children are “lovely” and “cute.” Governments concerned about low birth rates can use research on what having a child means for women to improve policy so as to make having a child more attractive, and to create messages that hold greater appeal to women.     

Der Einfluss der beruflichen Geschlechtersegregation auf den „Gender Pay Gap“

Occupational sex segregation is generally seen as an important determinant for the gender specific wage differential (“gender pay gap”). Therefore, the present study examines factors explaining wage penalties in typical women’s occupations in Germany. Dealing with sociological and social psychological status theories it is assumed that women’s occupations are paid less because of typical feminine work content that is devalued on the labor market—whereas typical masculine work content dominating in men’s occupations is monetary highly valued. Hypotheses are tested with data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) 2000–2010 applying linear fixed effects models. Occupational characteristics, like gendered work content, are merged from the BIBB/BAuA-Erwerbstätigenbefragung (Employment Survey) 2005/2006 and the Microcensus to the SOEP. The analysis reveals the mediating effect of gendered work content on wage penalties in gross hourly wages for employees in women’s occupations—but only for men. This gender specific effect is explained with different expectations for competence and effort concerning gendered work content with which women and men are confronted. Lower norms for overwork in women’s occupations partly explain wage penalties in those occupations especially for women. Finally, an Oaxaca/Blinder decomposition shows that gendered work content explains the “gender pay gap” significantly.     

Family Flexibility in Response to Economic Conditions: Fathers' Involvement in Child‐Care Tasks

Recession‐related increases in men's child care are well documented, but supporting evidence describes the last several decades of the 20th century. Changes in family life and in the association between families' economic conditions and the macro economy provide reason to question the continued existence of a “recession effect.” This article evaluates the frequency of married and cohabiting fathers' engagement in the day‐to‐day tasks of child care during the so‐called Great Recession, using data from male respondents to the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth. Results indicated an increase in men's frequency of engagement in physical care and feeding, starting in 2008 and continuing into 2010. The share of men engaged in daily play fell sharply at the recession's onset but rebounded in subsequent years. These results suggest that, even with a narrowing of the gendered division of domestic labor, room remains for families to respond flexibly to economic shifts.     

“Back There We Had Nothing to Eat”: The Case of Transnational Food Insecurity

This article discusses migrant food insecurity in the United States from the perspective of Mexican and Central American migrant women. Many describe migrating because they had nothing to eat in their countries of origin. Migration is thus framed as a necessary strategy for overcoming food insecurity. I argue that these women's perspectives are unique in the migration literature because food security comprises a gendered labour from which men are frequently spared. Unfortunately, food insecurity still prevails in these women's households in the US. Assuming a “double‐duty” workday of earning wages and overseeing care within households, these women experience the added burden of ensuring food security of households “back there.” Thus, I argue that the food practices of Mexican and Central American migrant women provide a unique lens through which to understand the increased feminization of transnational migration from Latin America to other regions of the world.     

Becoming ‘Real’ Entrepreneurs: Women and the Gendered Normalization of ‘Work’

This article focuses on the way in which women entrepreneurs legitimate their place in a gendered economy by reifying a divide between ‘real work’ and ‘not‐real work’. Using ethnographic approaches to follow the everyday lives of several women who own and operate small businesses in the USA, our article documents three gendering practices the women use for ‘becoming real workers:’ embodied, spatial and temporal. The study shows that women entrepreneurs become ‘productive workers’ by recasting reproductive work as non‐productive or not‐real work. At the end, we explore two possible alternative conceptualizations of ‘work’ that could contribute to dissolving this gendered divide.     

Making it on the Outside: Understanding Barriers to Women’s Post‐Incarceration Reintegration

The increasing rate of imprisonment in the United States over the past few decades resulted in record numbers of individuals reentering society upon release. As men and women exit through prison gates, they encounter a range of obstacles that complicate their efforts to “make it” on the outside. Given the gendered impact of recent punitive prison policies, this essay focuses on women and traces their steps as they navigate the many complex, interrelated, and competing obstacles to successful reintegration post‐incarceration. In particular, this essay describes how many barriers, and women’s reentry experience more broadly, are shaped by gender, race, and class. Further, drawing on the feminist pathways perspective, we examine women’s reentry in light of their pathways into offending focusing, in particular, on their victimization history.     

Greedy Spouse,Needy Parent: The Marital Dynamics of Gay,Lesbian, and Heterosexual Intergenerational Caregivers

It is well established that married heterosexual women do more intergenerational caregiving for aging parents and parents‐in‐law than married heterosexual men do. However, gay men and lesbian women's recent access to marriage presents new questions about the gendered marital dynamics of intergenerational caregiving. We use dyadic data with gay, lesbian, and heterosexual spouses to examine the marital dynamics of intergenerational caregivers. Results show that gay and lesbian spouses provided intensive time and emotional support for an intergenerational caregiver. In contrast, heterosexual women described their intergenerational caregiving as rarely supported and at times even undermined by their spouse. Dyadic data on heterosexual men corroborate women's accounts; heterosexual men rarely reported providing intergenerational caregiving, and thus heterosexual women rarely described providing spousal support. These findings provide new insight into the intermingled roles of “greedy” marriages and “needy” parents, wherein marital negotiations around caregiving vary by gender for gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marital dyads.     

Husbands' Participation in Housework and Child Care in India

The authors tested theories of housework among tea plantation workers in India, where women comprise the main part of the workforce and are breadwinners in their families. Analysis of 49 semistructured interviews and survey data from 3,181 female workers revealed that although women were mainly responsible for domestic labor, more than half of husbands usually or sometimes helped their wives with cooking, fuel wood collection, and child care. The analyses revealed a curvilinear relationship between husbands' earnings share and their participation in each task, supporting theories of bargaining and gender display. The probability of male participation decreased to its lowest level when men earned less than their wives. Husbands rarely helped with clothes washing—considered the most feminine task—and their participation did not respond to changes in relative earnings. These results support the authors' argument that patterns of bargaining and gender display will vary depending on the gendered nature of housework tasks within a particular society.     

Contradictions concerning care: Female surgeons' accounts of the repression and resurfacing of care in their profession

Surgery is a high‐status, distinctly embodied, profession, dominated by men and saturated with masculine ideals of individual heroism, manual skill and detachment. In this study, we focus on exploring how surgery both represses, but also requires, caring work, creating gendered contradictions for the women that enter its ranks. Based on interviews with eighteen female surgeons from Australia and New Zealand, we apply a ‘rationality of caring work’ lens to explore how they experienced these contradictions through training, socialization and in everyday interactions. Our findings show inter‐related mechanisms whereby female surgeons are required to become more independent and self‐reliant than comparable men, but also make up for the systemic lack of care shown to junior staff and students. In particular, their pregnancy and motherhood challenge the ideal of the detached, independent, heroic agent. We conclude by discussing how a ‘rationality of caring’ lens could help unpack the gendered contradictions women experience in other elite professions.     

Trans Men: Embodiments,Identities, and Sexualities

This article examines the experiences of 25 persons who were assigned female status at birth but do not wish to live as women and take on a masculine or queer gender identity. We employ the concept of “gendered embodiment” and introduce the concept of “sexualized embodiment” to highlight what is involved in this process. We ask how experiencing a masculine gender identity is reflexively tied to a trans man's sexuality and the ways in which these two embodiments are tightly, moderately, or loosely coupled. For example, a tight coupling appeared when trans men began to use testosterone and obtained surgery such as breast removal; a moderate coupling was found where gender validation was sought from a sexual partner (with this being related to sexual preference identities as well as the interpretation of vaginal penetration); the loosest coupling of the gender‐sexuality embodiments was linked to the liberality of the locale and whether “queer” identities could be easily adopted. In sum, our research demonstrates the link between gender and sexuality as a result of the body work trans men do and the historical and geographical situations in which they find themselves.     

Revanchist Masculinity: Gender Attitudes in Sex Work Management

Pimps, or male managers of female sex workers, are commonly represented in popular culture as hypermasculine and as a ubiquitous part of sex work. However, there is little empirical scholarship on pimps or the construction of their masculinity. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, this article demonstrates how pimps produce a “revanchist masculinity” that seeks to reclaim power from women and establish status over other men. Pimps are suspicious of sex workers’ motives and deny them decision‐making power and profit sharing—processes that highlight how work practices can structure gender identity construction.