Configurations of gender inequality: the consequences of ideology and public policy1

This paper gathers a wide range of indicators into distinctive profiles to show how configurations of gender economic inequality are shaped by both welfare state strategies and gender role ideologies. When multiple aspects of gender inequality are assembled together, it becomes evident that all societies exhibit both gender‐egalitarian and inegalitarian features. These tradeoffs can best be understood through the ideological and institutional contexts in which they are embedded. Empirical illustrations are provided for fourteen advanced societies by analysing the major expressions of gender inequality; from women's economic wellbeing and financial autonomy, through labour force participation and continuity of employment, to occupational attainments and economic rewards. The analysis confirms the existence of distinctive profiles of gender inequality and their affinity to normative conceptions of the gender order and ideal types of welfare state institutions.     

An Analysis of the Political Activities of NASW State Chapters

Abstract

NASW state chapters provide a mechanism through which members can become involved in formal political and community advocacy practice. However, there is little understanding of the strategies and processes undertaken by NASW to affect legislative and electoral outcomes. Through a mailed survey to state NASW chapters, this paper describes the scope of chapters' political practices, their policy goals and priorities, and their perceived effectiveness in advocacy work.     

Gender,visuality and violence: visual securitization and the 2001 war in Afghanistan

Visual securitization (the discursive processes by which images are assigned security implications) is integral to understanding how war and political violence is made possible. However, its insights have yet to be coupled with feminist international relations (IR) scholarship, which is alert to the connections between gender and (in)security. This article synthesizes these two research areas through Lene Hansen’s (2011) framework of visual securitization to investigate the gendered logics that underpinned the 2001 war in Afghanistan. By analyzing 123 photojournalistic images alongside American media texts and foreign policy discourse, I argue western images of Afghan women enacted a specific visuality through which they became constructed as a legitimate matter of security. The article makes two important contributions through this analysis. Firstly, it extends feminist understanding of the war in Afghanistan by demonstrating how the interplay between the visual and textual, and the gendered and racial logics operating within such interplay, visually produced Afghan women as a referent object of security. Secondly, this argument illustrates how gender can be critical in enabling the acceptance of visual securitizations, and how such securitizations can be enacted through gendered representations of insecurity and threat.     

Gender and professional identity: A qualitative study of social workers practising as counsellors and psychotherapists

This article presents an analysis of the interactions between gender and class in the career pathways of social workers practising as counsellors and psychotherapists. Gender is one of the strong patterns found in the empirical data generated by a qualitative study of the professional identity of practitioners in social work. Gender was found to have a strong influence on the career choices made by men and women in social work. Women in the sample have pursued career directions that continue to have a strong clinical focus, combined with other roles such as management, supervision and training. They are more likely to express the need to balance their working lives with the needs of their families. Men are more likely to single-mindedly pursue careers in management and to express feelings of responsibility to provide for their families once children are born. However, the analysis of data also found that men were more likely to identify their family origins as working class, while women identify their family backgrounds as middle class. This patterning shows the complex interactions between gender and class in determining life outcomes. These differential pathways and work preferences need to be recognised and addressed to work towards more equitable outcomes for practitioners within social work, so that structural disadvantages on the basis of gender and class are challenged rather than replicated.     

DPR Debate: Growth Identification and Facilitation: The Role of the State in the Dynamics of Structural Change

This DPR Debate is based on the contribution by Justin Lin, Chief Economist at the World Bank, and his colleague Célestin Monga, on ‘Growth Identification and Facilitation: The Role of the State in the Dynamics of Structural Change’. The article under consideration is important and timely as it articulates a number of new policy implications from Justin Lin's earlier work on New Structural Economics, which was discussed in a previous DPR debate (Lin and Chang, 2009). This symposium contains the article and comments on it from five distinguished specialists, and closes with a rejoinder by Lin and Monga. This introduction discusses the article, the comments and the rejoinder. The historical record indicates that, in all successful economies, the state has always played an important role in facilitating structural change and helping the private sector sustain it across time. This article puts forward a new approach to help policy‐makers in developing countries identify those industries that may hold latent comparative advantage, and recommends ways of removing binding constraints to facilitate private firms' entry into those industries. Two types of government interventions are distinguished: first, policies that facilitate structural change by overcoming information, co‐ordination and externality issues, which are intrinsic to industrial upgrading and diversification; and second, policies aimed at protecting certain selected firms and industries that defy the comparative advantage determined by the existing endowment structure.     

Formation of Identity in Wartime El Salvador: Protective and Harmful Factors

In a qualitative study of the effects of war on identity in rural postwar El Salvador, 11 interviews from data collected 3 years after the war were analyzed for social and individual identity factors. Subjects had been adolescents during the civil war. Prolonged war experiences, especially for those who became combatants at a very early age, had a negative impact on identity formation. Those who had the greatest identity problems felt a deep sense of betrayal, abandonment, and/or a general lack of trust. This included those who felt betrayed by their group, which in war consisted of an armed political one.     

A social policy model for the reconciliation of employment and family life from a gender equality perspective

The issue of family–employment reconciliation has rapidly evolved from being ignored to a certain dejá vu perception in public debate, as a result of its media success during the last decade. This is even more the case in Spain, where it was only in the late 1990s, when a law was passed to regulate and extend parental and other leave for workers with close relatives in need of care, that reconciliation policies began to be generally discussed and considered. In a context of quick population aging as a consequence of low fertility, concern on labor force supply in the middle term is high on the agenda. Women are increasingly considered to be necessary both as workers and mothers (of future workers), thus raising awareness of the importance of social policies to make their double presence in both worlds possible. There is now general agreement from the right to the left on the urgency to develop family–employment policies. But what is not generally addressed is the impact of such policies on gender equality, a dimension which tends to be either ignored or taken for granted. Not all reconciliation measures have the same effects on the women and men relationship. Some of them push forward equality, whereas others go backwards. Efficiency in making job and family responsibilities compatible does not always go hand in hand with increasing equality. The paper presents a theoretical model for the reconciliation of work and family life from a gender equality perspective. The three main kinds of instruments available in social policy – services, leave, and cash – are examined in four different cases: care of under-threes, care of sick children, coordination of work and school schedules, and care of children during school holidays. Each case is looked at considering its effects on social and gender equality, as well as child welfare. The model includes as active agents of the system the State (promotes and regulates), families and individuals (those directly implicated), and the market as labor market, on the one hand, and supplier of private services, on the other.     

State Building as a Source of Islamic Political Organization1

Previous research on political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa has been limited in providing a generalizable theory of its origins and systematically account for the cross‐national variation in the prevalence of Islamic movements. Following a state‐centered approach, this study argues that state‐building activities are a primary origin of Islamic movements. Regimes adopt religious symbolism and functions that legitimate the role of Islam in the public sphere. State incorporation of religion thus creates Islam as a frame for political action, with increased access to mobilizing resources and better able to withstand repression and political exclusion. To provide an explicit and systematic test of cross‐national variation, data on 170 political and militant organizations across the region are analyzed. Results indicate that state incorporation of religion is a crucial factor in the religiosity of movement organizations. Mixed effects of political exclusion and repression are found. No support is found for theories of economic grievances or foreign influence as causes of Islamic mobilization. In sum, analysis suggests that a state‐centered perspective is the most fitting account of political Islam.     

War and Peace: Social Work and the State of Chemical Dependency Treatment in the United States

SUMMARY

In recent decades, treatment for alcohol and drug problems in the United States has been influenced by a number of factors. This article discusses several of these factors, including the “War on Drugs,” with its emphasis on law enforcement and interdiction, and managed health care, which has compromised access to treatment. In spite of these factors, the U.S. invests a goodly amount in alcohol and drug prevention and treatment services and research. Efforts are being made to ensure that research findings are being translated into improved clinical practice. Among the controversial issues in the treatment arena are recent efforts by the Bush administration to promote public funding of faith- or religious-based groups in delivering chemical dependency services. Social workers commonly see people with alcohol and drug problems in their practices, but only a small number of social workers are well prepared to treat this group of clients.     

Gendering the Research Self: Social Practice and Corporeal Multiplicity in the Writing of Organizational Research

This article examines the problems inherent in taking a reflexively gendered position in writing research accounts. Such socially constructed accounts typically require researchers to do one of two things: to suppress the feminine and write implicitly as male, or to adopt a textual position as ‘woman’ that fails to do justice to the complex and unstable multiplicity that underpins the research self. It is argued that this shifting multiplicity is stabilized by the relationship between self and research text being corporeally grounded and gendered in practice. Three possible approaches to gender are considered: the discursive/textual approach (as developed by Foucault); the performance/social practice approach (as developed by Judith Butler) and the corporeal multiplicity approach (as developed by Elizabeth Grosz and Dorothea Olkowski). The article concludes by suggesting a tripartite approach to writing self‐multiplicity in research to extend the possibilities opened up by the social practice approach: re‐citing (redeploying discursive resources in intertextuality); re‐siting (changing the positioning of the self in power relations by reinscribing) and re‐sighting (opening up new, virtual visions of possibility).     

Constructing Gender and Occupational Segregation: A Study of Women and Work in Fishing Communities

Based on data from in-depth interviews and field work in rural fishing communities, this article examines how the process of gender construction works to keep women from being fisher[men]. A number of common explanations for occupational sex segregation are considered to explain why women do not fish, including biology, gender role socialization, cultural traditions, and discrimination. The article then presents a complementary explanation, the social construction of gender. In fishing communities, where man is defined as a fisherman, women maintain boundaries between themselves and fishing as they construct gender. They define their work as not fishing, even when they work on fishing boats. The consequence is that women do not aim to work or succeed in one of the few and most lucrative industries in a rural community. When examined from this perspective, occupational segregation appears to be more difficult to eliminate than prevailing explanations suggest.     

“Where the Danger Lies”: Race,Gender, and Chinese and Japanese Exclusion in the United States, 1870–19241

Race too often is used as the explanatory variable for understanding immigration exclusion, marginalizing the significance of race making, ethnic differentiation, and gender construction in particular. This article explores these processes by examining exclusionary policies implemented against Chinese and Japanese immigrants from the mid‐1870s to 1924, the year the National Origins Act was passed. Politicians, intellectuals, and moral reformers used a gendered logic—the construction of idealized gender norms, roles, and sexual propriety and the attachment of these meanings to male and female bodies—to distinguish Japanese immigrants from the Chinese immigrants they followed, allowing for ethnic differentiation and dissimilar policies. The convergence toward exclusion rested on a racialized logic—the construction and attachment of inferior status and meanings to immigrant groups through discourse, formal and informal categorization, or social closure—which claimed that the Japanese were unassimilable and racially undesirable like the Chinese. Exclusionists focused on the immigrant women, decrying their sexual and gender impropriety as evidence of the groups’ threats to the sanctity of white families, which imperiled the nation. Gender and race both mattered in these logics and their meanings were constructed as their salience interconnected.     

Gender ideology, division of housework, and the geographic mobility of families

The paper studies the relevance of gender ideology for the geographic mobility of families using data from the German Socio-economic Panel. The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, it is shown that single men and women—who are in some sense “unconstrained” optimizers—reveal identical mobility patterns. There are no fundamental gender differences in the inter-regional mobility of German singles. Second, I focus on dual-earner households and split this group into “traditional” and “egalitarian” couples using information on their factual division of housework rather than their reported gender ideology. Separate migration analyses for both groups reveal important differences indicating the significance of gender ideology in families’ migration behavior: job-related characteristics of men statistically dominate those of women in traditional couples, whereas in egalitarian couples, male and female characteristics have the same effect on family migration behavior, i.e. there is no gender bias. Failure to account for the heterogeneity in gendered family roles across families thus misses an important explanatory factor in migration research.      

Framing and counter-framing a Peace March in Russia: the use of Twitter during a hybrid war

ABSTRACT

Framing is vital to the capacity of social movements to enlist popular support and sustain contentious collective action. Using the case of a Peace March held in Moscow on 21 September 2014, the article examines how antiwar activists and their opponents framed a protest against Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. The study argues that different interpretations of patriotism underpinned divergent evaluations of the conflict and the construction of opposing identities. An analysis of Twitter posts on the eve of the march shows that peace activists positioned themselves as citizens with high moral standards and a healthy dose of patriotism, criticized the Russian government for military intervention in Ukraine, and called for a peaceful conflict resolution. In turn, opponents of the march considered themselves as real patriots and their adversaries as national traitors, denied Russia’s military presence in Ukraine, and fomented an attack on critics of Russian foreign policy. The study contributes to social movement literature by analyzing the framing of antiwar activism on a social media platform in the midst of a hybrid war, marked by a great deal of ambiguity and deception about causes, dynamics, and consequences of military operations by state and non-state actors.     

Interlegislator Relations and Policy Making: A Sociological Study of Roll‐Call Voting in a State Legislature1

Legislative roll‐call voting is crucial in policy making. Standard approaches to studying roll‐call voting focus on legislator attributes, ignoring how social factors, such as legislator relations, may drive voting. Using original data based on a state legislature, I adopt a relational approach to examine how legislator relations impact roll‐call voting net of attributes. Results show that relations strongly influence voting, adding significantly to the explanatory power of the models. These results imply that standard approaches to studying roll‐call voting should incorporate consideration of social factors, suggesting the value of social influence models in studies of political phenomena.     

Certainty,Fairness, and Balance: State Resonance and Environmental Justice Policy Implementation1

Little research has examined how and why institutional context and framing dynamics shape the institutionalization of movement claims into the state’s formal policies, and what the implication of these processes might be for movements attempting to mobilize on the same conceptual terms after institutionalization. In this study, I explore the role institutional context and framing play in the institutionalization of movement claims in a case: the implementation of environmental justice policy in the California Environmental Protection Agency from 2002 to 2007. I ask: How and why were aspects of the environmental justice frame institutionalized into regulatory policy while others were not? I use ethnographic field methods and content analysis of archival data to answer this question and offer two contributions to previous research. First, I add to previous scholarship on the environmental justice movement by identifying the character of newer problems faced by movement actors as they engage in regulatory policy processes with opponents in the United States. Second, I extend social movement framing theory by developing the notion of “state resonance” to understand how and why a collective action frame is institutionalized and implemented in regulatory policy.     

The Role of the Developmental State and Interethnic Relations in Singapore

Singapore is a city-state in Southeast Asia which, like much of the rest of the region, has a population that is ethnically and culturally diverse because of migration before and during colonial rule. Migration has continued with the rise of modern nation-statehood, particularly as the countries in the region sought to integrate more closely with the global economy. So for some centuries now, Singapore's polyglot population has lived often cheek by jowl in relatively high-density urban conditions generally without major problems. There have, however, been incidents of racial rioting that have been stimulated as much by political opportunists as well as the political tensions arising from transitional periods in the government particularly during the changeover from colonial regime to self-rule in the 1950s to the 1960s.

Singapore's multi-ethnic population comprises a majority of Chinese, 77 per cent and two smaller ethnic groups, the Malays, 15 per cent and Indians 8 per cent together with other small groups like the Eurasians and Arabs. The state has played a major and dominant role in the management of interethnic relations in Singapore. This paper discusses the role that the state has played and the status of relations between the Chinese and Malays.     

Gendered and classed activist identity in the Russian oppositional youth movement

This article examines how activist identity is constructed in the Russian opposition youth movement Oborona. The research is based on fieldwork among youth activists in Moscow and St Petersburg. The author analyses how activist identity is classed and gendered, as well as its relations to the Russian civic field. The article suggests, first, that the activist identity is marked by an affiliation with the intelligentsia: activists have grown up in intelligentsia families and articulate their activities through the intelligentsia's ‘markers’, such as intelligence, discussion skills and education. Secondly, activists follow a dissidents' cultural model, by emphasizing the importance of non‐conformism and traditional dissident values, and draw parallels between the contemporary government and the totalitarian Soviet state. Thirdly, this traditional intellectual dissident identity is associated with cosmopolitanism through the movement's international connections and appropriation of the forms of action of global social movements. Sometimes the activist practices and aspirations conflict with the group's ideals. Furthermore, the activist identity is gendered and embodied in the right activist ‘look’, which is defined by masculinity. Regardless of the movement's liberal ideals in regards to democracy, questions of gender and sexuality are not discussed, and activists do not question traditional understandings of gendered divisions of labour.     

Racial and Ethnic Differences in Experiences of Discrimination in Accessing Social Services Among Transgender/Gender-Nonconforming People

Members of the transgender/gender-nonconforming (GNC) community experience higher rates of discrimination based on their gender compared to their cisgender counterparts. Similarly, people of color experience higher rates of discrimination than White people. This study examines the difference in experiences of discrimination among transgender/GNC individuals in accessing social services providers by race/ethnicity (White and people of color). The data collected in a national cross-sectional survey (N = 6,451) and analyzed via chi-square test of independence and binary logistic regression demonstrate the disproportionate prevalence of discrimination based on race/ethnicity within the transgender/GNC population when accessing social services such as drug treatment centers, mental health clinics, domestic violence shelters, and rape crisis centers. Social workers are the most common provider of social services to the community, and have an ethical commitment to provision of services without discrimination. High rates of discrimination in accessing social services among transgender/GNC people, with even higher rates of discrimination for transgender/GNC people of color, highlight the need for improvement in social work education and practice.     

Cute Masquerade and the Pimping of Japan

This essay will consider gendered aspects of Cool Japan ideology as found in government‐sponsored texts and imagery, as well as in other international arenas. Although scholars have recently offered critiques of Cool Japan as a form of nationalistic nation branding, uses of an objectified femininity have rarely been included in these analyses. By displacing female innovations and creativity in cultural production to the margins, Cool Japan reifies and officially promotes male geek culture. We find general dematerialization of the producers of Cool Japan ideology, which in turn becomes characterized as creative, quirky, edgy, and benign, thus masking the way Cool Japan has been produced, critiqued, imagined and endorsed primarily by male elites in Japan and internationally. This discussion suggests that Cool Japan's otaku ethos does not include women and girls who fail to conform to a narrow model of cute femininity, thus maintaining and promoting structures of gender stratification. In addition, the global spread and government exploitation of uncomplicated cuteness (kawaii) often confounds a flat understanding of the aesthetic with a gendered perspective and its expressions in girl culture. Women and girls are contained in Cool Japan ideology, and are not usually represented as shaping, resisting, creating or critiquing Japanese popular culture.