Oppositional Girlhoods and the Challenge of Relational Politics

Over the last five years, scholars from a wide variety of disciplines have problematized the discourse of “adolescent female exceptionalism” (Switzer in Fem Theory 14(3):345–360, 2013, p. 4) popularized by the NIKE Foundation’s Girl Effect. Arriving at similar conclusions, scholars point to the artificial neocolonial divisions between ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’ of the world animated by an ‘invest in girls’ logic. This paper endeavors to move beyond the “oppositional girlhoods” (Bent in Sociol Stud Child Youth 16(1):3–20, 2013a, p. 7) bind of girl effects discourse to propose that differentially positioned and experienced girlhoods might be better understood as transnational, relational cultural formations. Drawing from our empirical research with girls in North America and Sub-Saharan Africa, we consider the implications of girls’ increasing global visibility as the ‘saviors of humanity’ from different geopolitical contexts. We then go further to suggest the oppositional girlhoods frame assumes reductive, apolitical, and ahistorical claims of divergence between girlhoods in the Global North and Global South “with highly unequal effects” (Gonick et al. in Girlhood Stud 2(3):1–9, 2009, p. 3). By countering the normative construction of global girlhoods as mutually exclusive forms of personhood and historical experience, our project authorizes a new understanding of girlhoods as mutually constituted and relationally contingent. It is from within this relational framework that we propose new directions for thinking about girlhoods transnationally.     

Camera-Related Behaviors during Video Recorded Medical Interactions

Video recording provides an objective record of the content of medical interactions. However, there is concern that cameras may be reactive measurement devices that alter what normally transpires during interactions. This study addressed potential reactivity of cameras in medical interactions. Interactions between 45 patients and 14 medical oncologists were video recorded and coded for camera-related behaviors. Eleven of 45 patients performed none of the behaviors. Among the other patients, camera-related behaviors were infrequent and, on average, constituted about 0.1% (one-tenth of one percent) of total interaction time. Behaviors occurred most often in very early stages of interactions, and when physicians were absent from the room. Seven physicians showed camera-related behaviors, comprising less than 0.1% of the time they were in the interaction. Results suggest video recording can provide nonreactive means of studying medical interactions.

Doing it from your heart: the role of older women as informal volunteers

This paper explores the contributions made by older women to the community as informal volunteers. It argues that ageing policy is not gender neutral and tends to ignore the contributions made by women outside paid work. As well as being ignored in policy, women's unpaid roles have been denigrated by some feminist commentators, who suggest that these roles subordinate the position of women. The aim of the present paper is to explore the lived experiences of older women in relation to their informal volunteer roles, using role identity theory as a framework. The study utilizes data from a qualitative study using focus group methodology. Findings demonstrate that informal volunteering contributes to the women's identity and gives their lives meaning. These findings suggest that a more positive policy framework around ageing is needed to ensure that the worth of these contributions is recognised.     

A Troubling Presence: Indigeneity in English‐Language Canadian Sociology

Over the past decade Canadian sociology has engaged in spirited debates on the sociology of sociological research, but it has barely begun to address its relation to Indigenous theorizing, scholarship, and politics. How does the discipline deal with the settler colonial history and current realities of Indigenous social lives, and where is the place in our field for Indigenous voices and perspectives? Drawing on Coulthard's politics of recognition and Tuck's damage‐centered research, we present here the first systematic empirical analysis of the place of Indigeneity in the Canadian Review of Sociology and the Canadian Journal of Sociology. We situate the presence of Indigeneity in Canadian sociology journals in the sociopolitical context of the time, and examine how imperialism, statism, and damage are oriented within the two journals. Most importantly, we challenge the silence in the discipline's intellectual frames and research programs with respect to Indigenous theorizing about the social world.     

Does mother’s employment conflict with child development? Multilevel analysis of British mothers born in 1958

Does maternal employment, while children are very young, affect their development? We link cognitive and behavioral scores of school-aged children to mothers’ employment during preschool years using virtually unique data for two generations in the 1958 British birth cohort. Our multivariate, multilevel model controls for mothers’ own cognitive and behavioral scores in childhood. Results are mixed and minor, confirming other British studies at mid-childhood. Reading is, significantly, slightly poorer where less educated mothers work in the child’s first year of life. We found few other interactions with employment but did detect intergenerational transmission of behavioral and cognitive characteristics.     

Cultural Sexism is Ordinary: Writing and Re‐Writing Women in Academia

When we ‘write women’ in academia, the focus in much of the literature to date has been to write about women. The focus of this article is the writing of women themselves; to give voice to women's experiences as constructors of knowledge. Through so doing this article uses writing as praxis; as a mechanism to disrupt, challenge and open a space for renegotiation of cultural norms within academic institutions. Based on qualitative data collection over a six‐year period, this article writes women's experiences and unpacks the way in which cultural sexism has become an ordinary feature of women's academic lives. It also considers ways in which the underlying cultural interpretations of hegemonic masculinized structures may be re‐written.