Professional feminists: Challenging local government inside out

Gender equality work in local government carried out during the 1980s presents a valuable site to explore the interaction between professional and feminist working. In the history of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) and feminist organizing more broadly in the UK, professional working has often been positioned as antithetical to feminist working, and relatively little scholarship has examined the interface between the two. This article argues that the individuals involved should be considered ‘professional feminists’ as opposed to ‘femocrats’, drawing from across feminist, social movement and organizational theory, and interviews carried out in 2011 and archival texts from three UK councils. It also suggests their work (undertaken between the beginning of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s) serves to blur the boundaries usually marked between social movement and state. This contributes to the existing literature by exploring the specific understandings and practices put to work by those working on gender equality professionally, but not in an elected capacity, within local government, and how their work can be positioned in relation to feminist organizing more broadly.     

Cultural Constructions: Contrasting Theories of Organizational Culture and Gender Construction

This article addresses the relationship of the theorizing of organizational culture and the theorizing of gender construction. It begins by recognizing some of the difficulties of defining and understanding what is meant by the contested concept of culture. Drawing on the work of Smircich (1983) and Linstead and Grafton-Small (1992), an attempt has been made to explore the theorization of organizational culture(s) in terms of the concepts of organizational culture as: responses to human needs, integration, rules, shared symbols and meanings, unconscious projection, text, otherness, paradox, seduction and discourse. The implications of each of the approaches for the understanding of gender in organizations are considered. No one theoretical approach is advocated, but rather the breadth of theoretical possibilities is explored. The article is concluded with the argument that theories of organizational culture need to be much more explicit about their theorizing of gender construction.     

Gendering the inequality debate

In the past 30 years, economic inequality has increased to unprecedented levels, and is generating widespread public concern among orthodox, as well as leftist and feminist, thinkers. This article explores the gender dimensions of growing economic inequality, summarises key arguments from feminist economics which expose the inadequacy of current mainstream economic analysis on which ‘development’ is based, and argues for a ‘gender and equality’ approach to economic and social policy in both the global North and South.     

Women’s Cultures and Social Movements in Global Contexts

This article examines the role that women’s cultures and communities have played in political protest and social change. We argue that women’s cultures, which form around the reproductive roles, labor, and emotional expectations placed on women, have been used to express femininity and as cultural resources or “toolkits” to transform male‐dominated spheres of society. We begin by defining women’s cultures, emphasizing that there is no universal women’s culture because the structural arrangements and cultural meanings of gender vary by race, ethnicity, class, nationality, and political context. We then review research that demonstrates the significance of women’s cultures for the collective identities and tactics deployed in social movements and protest, demonstrating how the study of women’s cultures and gender processes in social movements has contributed empirically and theoretically to understanding social movements. We examine women’s cultures and collective identities in communities as wide ranging as self‐help groups, lesbian communities, feminist organizations, and anti‐feminist groups. We then draw on prevailing theories of cultural change in globalization studies (cultural differentialism, cultural convergence, and cultural hybridization) to understand how women’s cultures have contributed to social change. We conclude by identifying future directions for the study of women’s cultures and social movements.     

‘In the Company of Men’: A Reflexive Tale of Cultural Organizing in a Small Organization

A tale of fieldwork in a small organization is discussed in this article with a view to highlighting how social processes, cultural understandings and expressions of gender are produced during fieldwork interaction. The tale is told reflexively and retrospectively, recording an ongoing conversation about fieldwork experience. Central to the tale is discussion of how the researcher is drawn into ‘culture–making’ within the organization and the ways in which fieldwork interaction creates a ‘space’ through which organizational members engage with, work through and realize work–place values. In this article there are multiple levels of reflection. At one level it is examined how the organizational–researcher role of ‘emotional nurturer’ was constructed during fieldwork. At the same time some cultural insights drawn from ethnographic inquiry and intensive interviewing within the small organization are presented. The analysis is also shaped by a further layer of post–fieldwork reflection and interpretation which draws in emotional issues and expressions of gender. It is argued that a close scrutiny of fieldwork roles is important to organizational research in that it makes explicit how the researcher–‘native’ interaction is central to the theorizing process and how the researcher can become a participant in organizational culture–making.     

On agency and empowerment in a #MeToo world

In the midst of the #MeToo movement sweeping across different societies, what opportunities and challenges exist for changing extant gender structures and systems that have allowed for sexual harassment and assault to take shape? Such a discussion provokes questions around what kinds of feminisms, both as philosophical traditions and as a set of praxis/practices, enable societal and organizational change. This article focuses explicitly on different notions of agency deriving from various feminist traditions to underscore possibilities for engaging in such change. Borrowing from intersectional, decolonial, postcolonial and transnational feminist perspectives, I suggest that a collectivist approach to agency is necessary for gender system change. I coin collective feminism as a way to conceptualize agency that only becomes possible through the work of many and then discuss this mode of feminism in relation to empowerment and social change toward gender equality.     

Off the record: Margaret van Kleffens and the gendered history of Dutch World War II diplomacy

This article makes the case for recovering women’s roles from the forgotten corners of diplomatic history, and for considering the consequences of the gap between feminist and non-feminist research. It shows how ignorance of the gendered nature of diplomatic norms and practices impacts our understanding of diplomatic history, and how specific biographies are hampered by gender blindness in particular. Using the history of Margaret van Kleffens and Dutch World War II diplomacy as an example, the article demonstrates how historians’ continued neglect of the role of women and gender norms has influenced representations of twentieth-century diplomacy. To dismiss the history of gender and of women as by definition irrelevant to the actions of states and of male statespersons is not simply part of a self-appointed focus on the political at the expense of the personal; rather, it omits much of the political history too, reproducing stereotypes and resulting in a skewed understanding of diplomatic history and foreign policy decisions. The article argues that both historians and feminist scholars need to historicize gender in order to recognize women’s roles in diplomacy, and so gain a better understanding of the history of international politics as a whole.     

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.     

Eléments pour une sociologie des études féministes en Europe centrale et orientale

Women's/gender studies were established in the Eastern European post-communist countries during the 1990s, as a new field of academic research and higher education. Works produced in this framework are often used as expert studies and aim to contribute to the improvement of the condition of women in that region, being at the core of the social and political reconstitution programs during the post-communist era. They were established by agents who were simultaneously active in different social spheres (scientific space, civil society associations, or institutionalized politics) and who exemplarily personify the multisituated feminism of the globalization era. These studies criss-cross national and international levels as well as scientific and militant logics. Hence they seem a pertinent entry to study the reconstruction of social sciences, the emergence of new academic topics, the international circulation and the importation of scientific questions and, finally, the recomposition of the academic elites within the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The article begins with a general point about the East-European context of the 1990s, when the socio-economic degradation of women's condition met a widely-spread rejection of feminist ideas due to their ideological manipulation by the socialist regimes. Then a zoom on the Romanian case allows us a reflection on the construction of the ‘women's issue’ during the post-communist transition, when several types of agents involved in the democratization reforms make theirs the transnational concern for women's rights. Finally, on the basis of these preliminary ideas, some research axes and working hypotheses are presented, such as: the sociology of gender studies as a new academic discipline, in a perspective inspired by the social history of social sciences; the sociology of the international circulation of feminist ideas and of the dynamics of East–West intellectual debates on the topic of women's condition in the post-communist countries; the analysis of the multiplying bureaucratic uses of ‘gender’ consequences.     

POLITICAL IDENTITIES AND POLITICAL LANDSCAPES:

This article presents case studies of two men who have a history of political activism on "women's' issues. The aim of my analysis is to describe the interpretive practice (Gubrium and Holstein 1994) through which the respondents construct individual political identities that make sense of their activism. The analysis treats identity as a narrative construction and also demonstrates that the context of this identity work is itself a construction. When respondents talk about their involvement in women's issues, they simultaneously construct an image of the political landscape, their own identities, and a relationship between the two.
In their narratives, the two men constructed very different images of the political landscape and identities in relation to it. One man interpreted the autobiography he constructed in terms of socialization and social learning in an effort to demonstrate an ongoing engagement with feminist concerns. The other man invoked a folk theory, consistent with feminist standpoint epistemology (Harding 1990), that used his gender to "define him out' of activism on women's issues.
I argue that these cases (1) demonstrate that narrative operates as a site at which men negotiate their relationship to gendered politics and women's issues and (2) represent a previously unrecognized dynamic of interpretive practice (Gubrium and Holstein 1995) in which actors assume discretion over the narrative construction of both their identities and the context in which that identity is to be understood.     

Toward a Dialectical Model of Family Gender Discourse: Body,Identity, and Sexuality

The goal of this article is to propose a dialectical model representing gender discourse in families. A brief review of literature in sociology, psychology, and gender studies focuses on three dialectical issues: nature versus culture, similarity versus difference, and stability versus fluidity. Deconstructing gender theories from a postmodern feminist perspective, the authors discuss agency and context in families' gender discourse. Narrative excerpts from interviews with an adolescent daughter and her mother illustrate three emergent themes in the social construction of gender: body, identity, and sexuality. The article concludes with recommendations for family researchers.     

Charisma,collectives, and commitment: hybrid authority in radical feminist social movement organizations

The primary goal of this article is to add to the literature on the role of social movement organizations in facilitating movement involvement and activism. Using Weber’s definition of domination and delineation of ideal types of social action as starting points, my specific focus is on those SMOs that exhibit authority that is situated in the whole (collective) and manifests an extra-ordinary (charismatic) hold on the members/followers. I suggest the term ‘collective charisma’ for this hybrid form of organizational authority exhibited in a subgroup of SMOs. Examples from the radical U.S. feminist movement are used to illustrate how this particular organizational form shapes movement commitment, specifically the creation of collective identity, oppositional consciousness, and culture.     

Bridging the Gap: ‘Doing Gender’, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity’, and the Educational Troubles of Boys

This article reviews popular and social scientific perspectives on the academic gender gap in education, specifically the finding that boys underperform compared to girls. The article highlights the utility of sociology in analyzing the gender gap and in guiding how educators respond to students’ gender. It suggests that contemporary gender theories ‘doing gender’ and ‘hegemonic masculinity’ offer the best lenses through which to view academic gender differences. These perspectives can frame boys’ academic troubles as an important social problem, but one that is rooted in the social construction of masculinity rather than institutional discrimination against boys.     

Magda Mateus Cardenas,director of Centro Amauta,Cusco, Peru: interview

Magda Mateus Cardenas, trained as an anthropologist, is currently director of Centro Amauta, a feminist organization in Peru that addresses issues of gender, class, and culture. In this interview, Mateus Cardenas describes her long involvement with development organizations and grass-roots campaigns to improve women's status. She notes that, although many organizations have adopted a gender perspective, few comprehend its highly political, transformational aspects. Women's rights tend to be viewed by development agencies as just one more factor to be incorporated into development projects rather than as a perspective that changes views of development itself. A genuine gender perspective entails changes in the organizational, social, and political aspects of the themes of autonomy and empowerment, with adaptations of content and methods to local conditions. A precondition to women's emancipation is access to and control of financial and economic resources. This, in turn, requires training in technical skills and access to the marketplace on more competitive terms.     

Women’s Agency in Gender‐Traditional Religions: A Review of Four Approaches

The concept of agency is useful for feminist research on women in gender‐traditional religions. By focusing on religious women’s agency, scholars understand these women as actors, rather than simply acted upon by male‐dominated social institutions. This article reviews the advantages and limitations of feminist scholarship on the agency of women who participate in gender‐traditional religions by bringing into dialog four approaches to understanding agency. The resistance agency approach focuses on women who attempt to challenge or change some aspect of their religion. The empowerment agency approach focuses on how women reinterpret religious doctrine or practices in ways that make them feel empowered in their everyday life. The instrumental approach focuses on the non‐religious positive outcomes of religious practice, and a compliant approach focuses on the multiple and diverse ways in which women conform to gender‐traditional religious teaching. This article concludes by discussing the future direction of scholarship.     

One cleans,the other doesn't

ABSTRACT

The title of this article conveys the idea which shapes it: that the positioning and identities of ‘the one’ and ‘the other’ are affected by the performance of different social practices. The highly symbolic activity of cleaning inverts the distribution of groups that would usually be divided according to the one/other dichotomy, in that gendered, class and racial others usually clean for their social ‘betters’. This redistribution allows for a look at the dynamics of social and psychic identification within an altered or inverted frame. In three different discursive locations — psychoanalytic theory, feminist film and theory, and advertising and popular culture — I examine diverse representations and implications of cleaning scenes. Each scene symptomatically collapses or merges sexual difference with other social distinctions conventionally marked by the labour involved in cleaning. As each of these discourses is concerned with articulations of identity, whether explicitly or critically (psychoanalytic theory and feminism) or implicitly (advertising and popular culture), these scenes reveal crucial links between social and symbolic practices and the vicissitudes of gender identity. In effect, gender emerges as a cleaning strategy, a representational system that masks or obfuscates the significance of other social differences.     

Evidence‐loving rock star chief medical officers: Female leadership amidst COVID‐19 in Canada

This article presents a feminist poststructuralist inquiry perspective on how news and social media discourse around the COVID‐19 pandemic is presenting a potential shift in hegemonic representations of masculine leadership. I am informed by organizational rules and sensemaking theories, and consider how Canadian and international female leaders are showing resilience, emotion and vulnerability as they help lead their countries through these uncertain times. I reflexively ground my observations in my own sensemaking and personal experiences. Despite reservations, I am hopeful. There are indications that the ‘rules of the game’ are starting to be challenged, and feminine frameworks that question traditional gender roles are disrupting conceptions around ‘business as usual’.     

Rethinking organisations: a feminist perspective

Organizational transformation was the theme of a 1996 meeting in Canada of men and women from Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Europe concerned with more equitable power relations between men and women. Gender parity policies and initiatives are necessary but not sufficient as long as the organizational culture remains antithetical to gender equality and adequate resources are withheld. Three salient structural aspects of organizations were identified by participants: the expectation that staff should place their employment rather than family at the center of their lives, a view of power as a finite resource linked with control and hierarchy, and a tendency to focus narrowly on a single purpose and course of action. Recommended, to change these factors, were linkage of the feminist goal of social transformation to the espoused values of the organization, clarification of the multiple meanings attached to the concept of gender and their implications for different organizational contexts, identification of instances of dissonance between an organization's stated values and its actual culture (e.g., pressure on employees to work long hours, to the detriment of family), and an emphasis on process as well as outcome.     

Index of Volume 4, 2002

This article links a theoretical debate within poststructural feminisms – whether feminist politics can be pursued without hegemonic representations of women and gender – to the practice of transnational feminist organizing in the World Conference against Racism (WCAR) in Durban in 2001. It goes beyond the traditional analysis of ‘adding’ gender to a mega world conference and asks the critical question of what

gender signifies in this instance of UN politics. The article argues that feminists’ strategic use of the concept of ‘gender as intersectionality’ marks a paradigm shift from the predominant monolithic representation of gender as women, being equal to or different from men, in international human rights frameworks. It puts the issue of diversity among women at the forefront of the intergovernmental WCAR. Far from entailing an abandonment of feminist politics, as some poststructuralist feminists have suggested, it is argued that opening up ‘gender’ for unlimited signification in

the case of WCAR marks the beginning of a new phase of transnational feminist mobilization.     

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.