What It Feels Like for a Whore: The Body Politics of Women Performing Erotic Labour in Hong Kong

This article seeks to investigate the complexity of the working experiences of female prostitutes in Hong Kong, using an oral history approach. Based on 13 in‐depth interviews, I depict my respondents as performing the skilled emotional labour of sex in exchange for their clients’ money. Looking at the ways in which the women manage the job, the self and the business, I argue that their major problem is not with the commercial transaction (that is, the content of the work itself), nor with the ‘conflict’ between their personal and work selves, but with the social stigma, surveillance and dangers at their workplaces. Inspired by a post‐structuralist conception of power and identity formation, I propose a women‐centred lived‐experience feminist approach in the hope of filling the gap between the bipolar imageries of ‘sexual slavery’ or ‘sex radical’ that have been thrown up in the feminist debate over the meaning of prostitution. This approach emphasizes the inter‐relationships among women’s lived experiences, the micro‐sites of social surveillance and the macro‐condition of wider society. Although Hong Kong female prostitutes are not ‘political’ in fighting for their rights and benefits, they have tended to take the path of micro‐resistance in combating societal domination. They negotiate an identity of the ‘prostitute’ that is sensitive and flexible to different institutional areas that seems to jeopardize the neat binaries of madonna/whore, good girl/bad girl, victim/warrior, conformist/radical. This allows them to create their own space to work and survive.     

Men,masculinities, and the politics of development

Gender identity is clearly as much of an issue for men as it is for women. However, that fact is just beginning to be recognized in development practice and mainstream development still takes men's gender identities for granted. While some women may benefit from their position in a patriarchal society, some men are disadvantaged. Certain men benefit more than others in society since gender identity cuts across other forms of social differentiation, including race, age, and economic class. Each man has varying success in conforming to the norms of masculinity, depending upon experience, upbringing, and external context. Agencies and analysts should seriously consider how men's self-perception in society affects development outcomes and challenges existing approaches to work on gender issues. Including men and masculinities in the gender perspective should broaden and deepen the understanding of power and inequality between both men and women as well as in other social relationships, increasing the effectiveness of development interventions.     

Constructing Masculinity in the Building Trades: ‘Most Jobs in the Construction Industry Can Be Done by Women’

Construction is one of the most gender‐segregated sectors of the UK economy; men constitute over 99 per cent of the employees in the building trades. This article focuses on the role of discourse in reflecting and reproducing the absence of women in the construction trades. A small excerpt from an industry report is described, interpreted and explained using critical discourse analysis. The analysis takes as its starting point one phrase, ‘most jobs in the construction industry can be done by women’ and places it in its structural, institutional and historic context, showing its dependence on presuppositions about women's abilities, and the ideological basis of those assumptions. Male construction workers' masculine identity is defined in relation to their ‘tough’ job. The culture of taking safety risks, and working long hours in primitive working conditions suits some employers very well. The report's assertion that women can do ‘most jobs’ in construction appears to challenge the dominant ideology but it actually reproduces it, helping to maintain gender segregation. Thus it contributes in a small way to sustaining existing power relations by containing potentially transformative movements.     

Gender Labor,Assimilationism, and Transformative Practices: The Relational Negotiations of Cisgender Women and their Transgender Men Partners

Despite the rise in research on the experiences of transgender men (female‐to‐male, FTM) in recent years, little academic attention has been paid to the partners of these individuals. The experiences of a large portion of this population, cisgender women whose partners transition from female to male, provide a unique perspective on how individuals negotiate performances of normative gender ideals and heteronormative practices in transitioning non‐normative relationships. Research has shown that when these cisgender women find themselves in relationships that are socially defined as heterosexual, they often begin questioning their sexual orientation in relation to their partner's gender identity as well as the role and applicability of their beliefs regarding gender equality and anti‐heteronormative practices. This article provides an overview of the current literature that addresses the enactment of gender labor, the practice of reaffirming another person's gender through physical, emotional, and sexual care, by cisgender women whose partners transition from female to male. Specific focus is given to how, in some situations, the performance of gender labor manifests in assimilationist ways that adhere to typically heteronormative frameworks as well as how, in others, the performance of gender labor manifests in potentially transformative and destabilizing ways that serve to challenge normative structures. Gaps in the existing literature as well as directions for future research are also explored.     

Social work and prostitution: an approach to educational practices

Female prostitution is a diverse, complex reality. And migratory processes are multiple and differ greatly. The conjunction of prostitution and immigration generates new challenges in the professional field of social work; but it is a field that has been able to adapt to the versatility and diversity of this reality. This article sets out to explore the educational dimension developed by social work in this context and to highlight its contents and characteristics: a dimension that takes shape in practices and tasks that enable women who engage in prostitution to realise their capability to manage their life in the way they would like.     

‘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.     

New York State's Prostitution Statute:

In 1978, New York State upgraded its "patronizing a prostitute" statute from a violation to a misdemeanor offense. It was expected that upgrading the law would accomplish essentially two goals: deter prostitution by giving the police incentive to arrest patrons, and end the disparity that existed between the prositution and patronizing statutes, as prostitution had been a misdemeanor offense since 1969. These goals were not accomplished. An analysis of prostitution arrest information from Buffalo, New york, for the years 1977 through 1980, shows that the Buffalo city police arrest practices did not change despite the 1978 reform of the prostitution statute. In particular, women continued to be singled out for prostitution arrests more often than men. In addition, despite constitutional prohibition of gender based discrimination, New York State courts have not been persuaded to find unconstitutional the differential enforcement practices of the prostitution statute. One Buffalo criminal court, for example, approved gender based discrimination on the basis of insufficient police staffing. The end result was that while the new statute was to be gender neutral, the application of the law was not; police nonenforcement of patron activity perpetuated discrimination against women.     

From attitudes to social networks: National gender-role attitudes and gender differences in late-life social relationships

Studies often find gender differences in social networks in later life, but are these findings universal, or do they differ in various cultural contexts? To address this research gap, the current study examines the association between gender differences in social relationships and country-level gender-role attitudes. We combined data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) of individuals aged 50 years and older with country-level data on gender-role attitudes from the European Values Survey (EVS) for 15 European countries. We estimated a series of multivariate hierarchical regression models that predicted the size of the personal social network, its emotional closeness, and the proportion of the spouse, children, and friends in the network. The results indicated gender differences in social network characteristics. Women reported larger social networks and were more likely to have larger proportions of children and friends but smaller proportions of the spouse in their social networks. The magnitude of gender differences was associated with country-level gender-role attitudes. In countries with more egalitarian gender-role attitudes, women had larger networks with a larger proportion of friends compared to men. In countries with more traditional gender-role attitudes, women had larger proportions of their children and spouse in their social networks and had emotionally closer networks. Our findings suggest that the societal context and opportunity structures for social interactions play an important role in shaping the structure of women’s and men’s social relationships in later life.     

Transition to fatherhood: New perspectives in the global context of changing men's identities

The proposed thematic session aims to highlight the main challenges that the cultural and structural changes within the families and in gender relations and the changing social expectations about men's involvement in the care of children and about fatherhood pose to men's and fathers’ identity. Fathering in contemporary society requires men to be simultaneously provider, guide, household help and nurturer. The difficulties of these roles, and the tensions they sometimes produce, challenge men's relationships with their female partners, the meaning and place of work in their lives and their sense of self as competent adults. We will also explore the relationship between transitions to fatherhoods and the challenges of balancing work and family obligations. How to balance paid work, other interests and relationships with responsibilities, anxieties and pleasures of childrearing are today concerns for both men and women.     

Doing Gender in the Conference Hall: Do Men and Women Behave Differently in Engineering Scientific Environments?

The literature on women in STEM areas displays the barriers that women face at scientific workplaces, showing important interaction where they do and undo gender. However, there is a lack of research about the extent men and women do and undo gender in networking environments. This is a participant observation at Human-Computer Interactions annual conferences in a mainly male-dominated environment. It explored how researchers are ‘doing’ and ‘undoing’ gender focusing on two main dimensions: the gender roles adopted by men and women during the presentations and social activities, and the gender contents exposed in their research talks. A first result shows that sex and gender issues are trivialized in research contents by both men and women researchers. A second result reveals that men and women unintentionally and successively ‘do’ and ‘undo’ gender as a strategy to fit into a neutral and accepted identity of engineering and computer scientists.     

One size fits all? The social construction of dis-employ-abled women

This article is based on an evaluation of a labour-market training programme for women with ‘mental health problems’ in a social workplace in Belgium. The research team explored the retrospective insider perspectives on the work aspirations of the women involved in the programme to identify critical dynamics in their high drop-out from the social workplace. The central findings provide evidence of a prevalent one-size-fits-all discourse in these practices wherein complex and interrelated processes of discrimination take place that are based on both disability and gender. The findings demonstrate that the social workplace functions as a male bastion, in which the oversized overalls that women are forced to wear are symbolically relevant. In conclusion, we discuss and challenge the dominance of the neo-liberal norm of economic productivity and employability.     

Between Representations and Subjectivity: Gender Binaries and the Politics of Organizational Transformation

The distinction between male and female and masculinity and femininity continues to polarize relations between the sexes in ways that generally subordinate, marginalize, or undermine women with respect to men. The gender literature has recently challenged the singular and unitary conception of gender identity, arguing that there are a multiplicity of masculinities and femininities that are often fragile, fragmented and fluid. Despite this, the binary relationship between men and women continues to obstruct the development of sexual equality. This article is concerned with focusing critically on this binary and, in particular, its association with hierarchy, where men dominate women and masculinity assigns to femininity a marginal or ‘Other’ inferior status. It suggests that hierarchy is a condition and consequence of the reification of the binary that is difficult to challenge from within a representational epistemology that continues to dominate even studies of gender, let alone social science more generally. Deconstructing the gender binary is simply to challenge the reification of the terms wherein the divisions between male and female, masculine and feminine or men and women are treated as absolute and unchanging. The article examines conceptions of masculinity and the debate between Foucauldian and anti‐Foucauldian feminists as a basis for developing its argument. It then concludes that gender analysis can only deconstruct the hierarchical content of the gender binary by disrupting masculine hegemony at work. One way of facilitating this is temporarily to occupy a space between representations of gender and the conditions of subjectivity and language that make them possible.     

What’s Gender Got to Do With It? Sexual Double Standards and Power in Heterosexual College Hookups

Although college hookups are typically enjoyable for both men and women, heterosexual hookups often involve inequitable power dynamics that privilege men (e.g., women perform sexual acts to please partners and/or succumb to pressure for intercourse). Some scholars have attributed this power imbalance to the traditional double standard. However, recent studies have indicated college students typically endorse egalitarian standards—and some endorse a reverse double standard in which they negatively judge men more than women for engaging in the same sexual behavior. Using Online College Social Life Survey data (N = 11,077) I examined relationships between endorsement of double standards and power in hookups. Because contemporary students often believe double standards exist in society but not in their own minds, I also examined relationships between feeling negatively judged for hooking up and power. Most respondents endorsed egalitarian standards, but women were more likely than men to feel judged for hooking up. Feeling judged was a significant predictor of power disadvantages for women and men; endorsing a double standard disparaging one’s own gender was significant among men. Findings suggest contemporary relevance of the traditional double standard and highlight differences between women’s and men’s endorsement of double standards disparaging their own gender.     

Youth prostitution: a literature review

This article reviews the academic literature on young people involved in prostitution. The prevalence and aetiology of youth prostitution and its links with drug use and criminal careers are explored. It argues that whatever the power of personal experiences which incline a person towards prostitution, prostitution can still only be possible in specific cultural conditions. The phenomenon of prostitution has the sexual double standard, poverty and an unequal labour market as prerequisites. We should not expect prostitution to either disappear or occur with equal frequency in men and women while these aspects of inequality continue. This article reviews debates on the particular challenges for service delivery and working together with this vulnerable group. In a civilized society, we should organize that the burden of inequalities which underlie prostitution should not be carried by children. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotional Intimacy Power Predicts Different Sexual Experiences for Men and Women

Those who are more emotionally invested in relationships have less power than their partners. Furthermore, less powerful individuals may attempt to equalize power imbalances by offering rewards to their partner and using sex and condom use as exchange resources. Australian young adults reported their condom use and pressured sex experiences in both romantic (n = 708) and casual (n = 118) relationships. Results showed that greater power (lower relative emotional investment) predicted more condom use among those wanting to use condoms. In casual relationships, an interaction with gender showed that women in particular used condoms more when they had more power. Power also interacted with gender for pressured sex and, unexpectedly, men who had more power experienced more pressured sex. The possibility that condom use and pressured sex have different meanings for men and women is explored.     

Male and Female Civility: Toward Gender Justice

This article examines the concept of civility in American society taking into consideration the influence of gender and gender roles, especially that of women in 20th–century America. This was a century in which social roles, especially those of women, changed or expanded dramatically, influencing not only individual rights and relationships but also the structure of almost every organization from the family to the classroom, from corporations to statehouses. As women have transformed themselves and their presence in our culture, men have also been forced to examine their relationships with women and, more subtly, the role of men in our society. A study of male and female civility must take into consideration the history of relationships between the genders at the both the micro level (i.e., interpersonal relationships) as well as the macro level (organizational behavior). As we move forward into the 21st century, we must not only reflect on the progress made during the last several decades but also continue to explore strategies that will continue to advance a climate where gender civility becomes more entrenched in our cultural values. Some of the issues and possible solutions that must continue to be explored in terms of creating a more civil society for gender relations are discussed.     

‘Maturing out’ as normative standard: qualitative interviews with young adult drinkers

Framed within a life-course perspective, this paper analyses the contents of the phenomenon ‘maturing out’ of adolescent drinking. We identify five dimensions of change that young adults’ drinking habits are expected to undergo when they reach their mid-twenties: using alcohol to maintain and develop existing relationships instead of building new relationships; drinking in differentiated ways instead of always to get drunk; controlling one’s intoxication instead of transgressing limits; considering the day after drinking instead of ‘living for the night’; and drinking to ‘chill’ and not to ‘cope’. Maturing out, as described by our interviewees, is only loosely connected with the taking on of adult roles and responsibilities (related to e.g. work and family). Rather, maturing out is a powerful social norm urging young adults to change their drinking habits, regardless of their individual life situation – a status-forcing mechanism casting those who do not adapt as deviants. The analysis centres on 24 qualitative interviews with Danish 25–27-year-olds identified as ‘heavy drinkers’ in a preceding population survey.     

How Women Engineers Do and Undo Gender: Consequences for Gender Equality

The image of engineering as a masculine profession has reproduced the perception that engineering is unsuitable for women. While various strategies have been used to try to increase the number of women entering engineering education and employment, their success has been limited. At the same time it has been argued that the way gender is ‘done’ in work can help diminish or increase inequality between the sexes. Using empirical research exploring women engineering students’ workplace experiences, this article considers how gender performance explains their behaviour and attitudes. Butler implied that doing gender can result in our being ‘undone’. This was specifically found to be the case for the women students in this study, who performed their gender in a particular way in order to gain male acceptance. In doing this they utilized certain coping strategies: acting like one of the boys, accepting gender discrimination, achieving a reputation, seeing the advantages over the disadvantages and adopting an ‘anti‐woman’ approach. These strategies are part of women's enculturation and professionalization in engineering, yet they also fail to value femaleness. In ‘doing’ engineering, women often ‘undo’ their gender. Such gender performance does nothing to challenge the gendered culture of engineering, and in many ways contributes to maintaining an environment that is hostile to women.