Breaking Patterns? How Female Scientists Negotiate their Token Role in their Life Stories

Building upon token theory, this paper analyses coping behaviours of women in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) through a professional identity perspective. It proposes that female scientists need to negotiate and balance conflicting aspects of their professional and gender identities throughout their career. A reconstructive biography analysis of Leitmotif and Gestalt of 15 life stories reveals that gender is the structuring element of the female scientists' self‐presentation. The paper presents two key cases which exemplify two alternative coping strategies: the women either use a similarity strategy, relying on full assimilation to the masculine norms in SET, or a difference strategy, highlighting their otherness and their struggle for equality. The in‐depth analysis reveals that both strategies cannot ‘break patterns', but instead leave the dominance of masculine norms in SET unchallenged. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Parental Emotional Support,Science Self‐Efficacy,and Choice of Science Major in Undergraduate Women

Former participants in a high school enrichment program for girls interested in science careers were surveyed 1 to 2 years after high school graduation. After reporting their college major, they completed measures of science self‐efficacy and quality of emotional bonds with parents. Of the 41 women, 5 were not enrolled in college. Those actually majoring in science (n = 23) reported significantly higher science self‐efficacy than those who were undecided or had chosen nonscicnce majors (n = 13). Science self‐efficacy was significantly negatively associated with recollections of fathers as having been highly controlling and likely to use a “love withdrawal” parenting style.     

Engineering Identity: Gender and Professional Identity Negotiation among Women Engineers

This article considers how women in a gendered profession, engineering, construct their professional identity in response to workplace interpersonal interactions that marginalize it. Using data from interviews with women engineers, it also explores how these interactions influence the engineers' sense of self and belonging in engineering. The interpersonal interactions place professional identity on the periphery and can overly validate gender identity. I discuss two types of identity construction strategies employed by the participants in response to these marginalizing interactions: impression management tactics and coping strategies. Although the data demonstrate that participants may be left feeling devalued or ambivalent towards their identity or fit in engineering, some interactions are more validating and offer a sense of belonging. This article also reflects on how the engineers' actions may, in fact, represent forces for change in the gendered culture of engineering.     

Career resilience of female professionals in the male-dominated IT industry in Sweden: Toward a process perspective

Sweden is known to be one of the most gender-equal societies in the world. Thus, it remains as an enigma why a large discrepancy continues to exist regarding the gender balance in career choice and progression in many professions. Drawing on Hirdman's (1988) theory of gendered systems, in this paper, we explore the role of career resilience in the career progression of women who choose to work in the male-dominated IT sector. We draw attention to how the day-to-day process of practicing career resilience in a gendered workplace tends to evolve as women progress in their careers. Based on an interview study with 50 female IT professionals as well as a discourse analysis of 502 newspaper articles on women in this sector, we develop a process model of career resilience in gendered professions, outlining different coping strategies that allow women to develop and enhance such resilience over time. We conclude the paper by providing some practical recommendations.     

The influence of risk and protective factors on burnout experienced by those who work with maltreated children

The aim of the study was to explore the degree (and type) of burnout and trauma symptoms, personal histories and coping strategies retrospectively reported by those who work with maltreated children and their families. A self‐selected sample of workers (N = 44) completed a self‐report questionnaire assessing childhood maltreatment, family background characteristics, current adjustment, coping strategies and burnout. Workers reported high levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and a low to moderate sense of personal accomplishment. Family background characteristics predicted the occurrence of maltreatment and current adjustment, and a personal history of maltreatment predicted current trauma symptoms, but not burnout. Workers most frequently used problem‐focused coping strategies and sought social support; however, coping strategies were not associated with the level of either trauma symptoms or burnout. Despite employing positive coping strategies, their efficacy may be affected by other interpersonal, intra‐individual and job resource issues. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Who Benefits from Production Outcomes? Gendered Production Relations among Climate‐Smart Agriculture Technology Users in Rural Ethiopia

The use of agricultural technologies is generally expected to increase production and household incomes. Gendered disparities in making use of agricultural outcomes could result in inequitable agricultural development. However, too little is known about whether the use of agricultural technologies improves gendered production relations, particularly in the Global South. This study investigates the question of gender‐equitable production relations by drawing on empirical data from women and men smallholders involved in conservation agriculture and small‐scale irrigation schemes in three study areas in Ethiopia. Findings show that the use of agricultural technologies does not improve unequal gendered production relations; rather, gender norms that exist within patriarchal social structures continue to influence production relations in at least three ways. First, societal norms restrict women from asserting their self‐interest in gendered bargaining. Second, there is a customary law in all the study areas that allows men (but not women) to inherit land—thus providing men with better bargaining and decision‐making positions over production outcomes, as they bring land to the marriage. Third, the restricted access of women to rural institutional services further contributes to unequal gendered production relations, as these services support men more than women in the use of agricultural technologies for enhanced production.     

Privileged Japanese transnational families in Hawaii as lifestyle migrants

This study of privileged Japanese families in Hawaii revisits the claim that East Asian transnational families relocate overseas either to improve their well‐being or to enhance their status through their children's international education. Existing scholarship has focused mainly on the second pattern of status‐seeking migration, conceptualized as ‘education migration’. By employing Benson and O'Reilly's concept of ‘lifestyle migration’, I consider the less widely studied case of migration strategies designed to increase well‐being. The central difference between the two types of migrants lies in the way that migrant women construct their gendered identity through their transnational split‐household arrangement – a freer self (lifestyle migrants) or a sacrificial self (education migrants). In conclusion, I call for further research on this neglected topic and propose an important dimension to facilitate lifestyle migration, gender.     

Building Career PATHS (Postschool Achievement Through Higher Skills) for Young Women With Disabilities

The PATHS (Postschool Achievement Through Higher Skills) curriculum is designed to address the career development needs of young women with disabilities and other barriers. Participants (N = 110) in a pilot test of the curriculum showed increases in vocational self‐efficacy, social efficacy, and awareness of disability/gender issues related to career planning, whereas those in the comparison group did not make similar gains. Qualitative findings from focus groups (N = 68) revealed that PATHS participants improved in self‐confidence, self‐awareness, ability to identify strengths, knowledge of multiple career options, and the capacity to set goals and plan for future careers.     

Gendered expectations of the biographical and social future: young adults’ approaches to short and long-term thinking

Numerous studies have found that although young adults are arguably less constrained by gendered norms and expectations than previous generations, they have nevertheless continued to imagine their biographical futures in highly gendered ways. In this paper I draw on an analysis of 28 in-depth interviews in which 16 women and 12 men (aged 18–34) were asked to discuss their expectations for both the biographical and social future. The results of this study largely confirm the findings of previous scholarship, with young women often viewing childbearing and caring responsibilities as compulsory, while young men largely viewed these commitments as complementary to their chosen careers. This paper extends existing findings in this area by examining, firstly, whether these perceptions of the biographical future are mirrored in the participants’ views of the long-term, social future, and secondly, what implications such views may have when they are extended into this register. In so doing it ultimately finds that the gender norms that shape young adults’ expectations for their own futures are echoed in their outlooks upon the social future.     

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.     

Women leaders,self‐body‐care and corporate moderate feminism: An (im)perfect place for feminism

This article offers self‐body‐care as an aspect of corporate moderate feminism and a manifestation of postfeminism for women leaders. It explains how postfeminism as a bodily practice surfaces through women leaders' body work and how women ‘top' leaders strategize to stabilize their credibility by identifying their own and other women' body work needs and the steps they take to meet these. Self‐body‐care extends understandings of body work as part of postfeminist governmentality and contributes to understandings of moderate feminism as that which deflects and reflects feminism and constrains and empowers subjects. As such self‐body‐care offers an (im)perfect space for disruption and for Gender and Organization Studies (GOS) scholars to pursue the implications and potential of postfeminism. We call for women elite leaders to be part of feminist futures and illustrate self‐body‐care as an aspect of corporate moderate feminism by highlighting complexity in the postfeminist thesis and reflexively re‐examining two of our previous published empirical studies of women ‘top' leaders.     

Narrative Manhood Acts: Batterer Intervention Program Graduates' Tragic Relationships

We analyze how twenty graduates of a Batterer Intervention Program constructed autobiographical stories about their relationships with women they assaulted. We focus on the presentation of gendered selves via narrative manhood acts, which we define as self‐narratives that signify membership in the category “man” and the possession of a masculine self. We also show how graduates constructed self‐narratives as a genre that was oppositional to organizational narratives: rather than adopting the program's domestic violence melodrama or preferred conversion narrative, graduates used the larger culture—especially “bitch” imagery and sometimes racialized discourse—to construct tragedies. Our study demonstrates the usefulness of narrative analysis for research on batterers' accounts and manhood acts, and also shows how oppositional genre‐making can be a method to resist organizational narratives.     

Fabrications of self: Identity formation in the Odyssey

Abstract

This interpretation of the Odyssey challenges conventional readings in a way that recaptures the strangeness in a text that has been colonized by interpretative strategies, interpretations that impose certain cultural and gendered stereotypes. My reading inverts and subverts some of these stereotypes, without claiming to reveal, or aiming to establish, true identities. Rather, my point is that identities are unstable and unpredictable; the main characters in the Odyssey can be understood best by analysing their characteristic style of dealing with these uncertainties. In this light, Odysseus appears as much less stable and much less ‘in control’ than in standard readings. His presumed, and famed, autonomy is shown to be largely a product of self‐deception, deriving from an inability to confront himself. The women in the Odyssey, on the other hand, are stronger characters, both less helpless, and more helpful, than standard readings allow for. Calypso and Circe play a positive role in liberating and educating Odysseus. Penelope, for her part, turns out to be involved in a much more subtle and elusive form of self‐fabrication than Odysseus. Rather than applying stereotypes of cunning' or ‘faithful’, we should understand both Odysseus' and Penelope's actions as the product of their own idiosyncratic way of dealing with contingency, within the bounds set by cultural and natural circumstance.     

On the Receiving End: Women,Caring, and Breast Cancer

Gendered definitions of care influence breast cancer survivors’ coping strategies, sense of entitlement to care, and ultimately their capacity to receive care. Using qualitative data from 60 intensive interviews, this study examines how gendered definitions of care influence women’s experiences as care-receivers. Findings indicate that negotiating gender boundaries to care for the self is both empowering and stigmatizing. Women with breast cancer are required to break gender norms that stress compliance, nurturing, and putting the needs of others first to prioritize their own needs for care. Concurrently, they take on additional nurturing roles to provide support to other women with breast cancer, relinquishing to some degree the individualistic approach to life they found necessary to cope with their illness in the first place.

Rebooting and Rerouting: Women's Articulations of Frayed Careers in Science,Engineering and Technology Professions

This paper expands on previous work about women's non‐linear and frayed careers by examining the experiences of women who have attempted to return to science, engineering and technology (SET) professions in the UK and Republic of Ireland after taking a career break. These women potentially offer an important perspective on gender and career, because of the deep‐rooted, gendered associations of science and technology with masculinity. Drawing on qualitative interviews with women SET professionals, the paper identifies three narratives — Rebooting, Rerouting and Retreating — which women use to talk about their careers. Some of these women present themselves as career changers, having often made compromises and trade‐offs, while others, who have returned to their substantive professions, focus on continuity in their career narratives. The precarious nature of their careers is also apparent and in some cases leads to opting out or retreating. The paper concludes by exploring how women's scientist and technical identities persist, even among those who had not returned to work, and are drawn on in narratives of return and career change.     

Explaining Gender Gaps in Legislative Committees

ABSTRACT

Legislative committees are often the epicenter of parliamentary influence, so their composition matters. Men are widely overrepresented in prestigious, influential committees, with women concentrated in low-status committees. These gender gaps have repercussions for power, visibility, careers, and policy outcomes. Yet the puzzle of why committees are gendered remains unsolved. Combining insights from quantitative and qualitative methods, we offer two major advances. We develop the literature on committee allocations, providing the first comprehensive gendered analysis. And we show how gender permeates all aspects of political careers from socialization to the political summit, leading to deep-rooted inequalities of power, influence, and opportunity.     

“It's Just a Lot of Work”: Adolescents’ Self‐Presentation Norms and Practices on Facebook and Instagram

We explored adolescents’ (12‐ to 18‐year‐olds; n = 51) awareness of their audience and subsequent self‐presentation practices on Facebook and Instagram through focus group discussions. Findings suggest that teens, who are developmentally able to perceive a situation from the third‐person perspective and who value peer approval, purposefully share content to appear interesting, well liked, and attractive. Some teens invested great effort into posting by these norms, even asking their friends to help; however, this was more common among girls. Older teens especially discussed taking the perspective of their audience when deciding what to post, which is consistent with the finding that perspective taking continues to develop throughout adolescence. These findings suggest that perspective taking skills and need for peer approval influence self‐presentation online.     

Gambling and the family: From the stress‐coping‐support Perspective 1

Abstract

Aims: To apply the stress‐coping‐support perspective to the study of the effects of problem gambling in the family. Specifically, to examine the ways in which family members cope and the nature and sources of support they receive. To compare coping strategies of family members of gamblers with those of individuals living with other addictive behaviour in the family. Design: Cross‐sectional interview and questionnaire study of close relatives of problem gamblers. Participants: Sixteen close family members of gamblers from separate families, mainly parents and partners. Data: Semi‐structured interview; adapted version of the Coping Questionnaire (CQ). Findings: Data from the CQ and qualitative analysis of interview data suggested considerable use of ‘engaged’ (specifically controlling) ways of attempting to cope with such problems, comparable to the use of such strategies by relatives of people with alcohol or drug problems, but little use of ‘tolerant‐accepting’ and ‘withdrawal’ ways. Interview data on the support received (or not) by family members confirmed previous research showing that relatives of people with addiction problems often feel unsupported, but particularly appreciate positive emotional and practical support for themselves and their problem gambling relatives. Conclusions: The stress‐coping‐support perspective, previously applied to families with alcohol and drug problems, also offers an appropriate framework for understanding problem gambling and the family.     

A Push Toward Equality: Processes Among Dual‐Career Newlywed Couples in Collectivist Culture

This study examines gender construction among dual‐career newlywed couples in a collectivist culture. A qualitative analysis of in‐depth interviews with 20 heterosexual Singaporean couples reveals aspects of the collectivist norms (e.g., doing family, we‐consciousness, marrying one's equal) that are favorable toward the development of gender equality. Additionally, as couples respond to the political and social pulls of economic development, they begin to organize their relationship around both careers. Incorporating egalitarian values becomes a pragmatic move carried out through five direct processes: (a) career as central to the relationship, (b) flexible allocation of household duties, (c) open dialogue regarding conflict, (d) equal say in decision making, and (e) internal self‐reflection. Implications for future research are addressed.     

Doing gender,modestly: Conceptualizing workplace experiences of Pakistani women doctors

Using the theoretical framework of inequality regimes, this article offers a reconceptualization of purdah as it is practised, lived and experienced by women doctors of Pakistan. Based on an ethnographic study of Pakistani women doctors, this research indicates that practising purdah in the workplace is perceived as doing femininity within the hegemonic masculine workplace culture of Pakistan. In Pakistani organizations, individual and institutionalized practices of purdah create a gendered substructure which marginalizes women doctors by dictating the norms of conduct, international ethics, organization of physical space and work allocation. Patriarchal interpretations of religious doctrines of modesty provide legitimacy to the existence of these inequality regimes. Based on this, the article argues for a system‐level theorization of purdah that accounts for both individual and institutional norms of veil. Such conceptualization contributes to our understanding of how religion intersects with gender, class and race to create complex systemic inequities in organizational structure.