Los roles de género en un mundo globalizado, ¿hacia una convergencia?

Este trabajo examina la evolución de los roles de género en diferentes regiones del mundo. Usando datos para 12 países de los tres últimos módulos del ISSP “Family and Changing Gender Roles” (1994, 2002 and 2012), se compara la evolución de los roles de género en lo que se refiere a la maternidad y su relación con la extensión de la incorporación laboral de las mujeres en todo el mundo: cuatro países europeos occidentales, representantes de diferentes regímenes de bienestar (Alemania, Reino Unido, Noruega y España), Estados Unidos, dos países de Europa del Este (Polonia y República Checa) y Rusia, dos países latinoamericanos (Chile y México) y dos asiáticos (Japón y Taiwán). Los datos muestran que el cambio en la familia (medido tanto en términos de actitudes como de prácticas sociales) se está expandiendo desde los contextos occidentales hacia otras regiones del mundo, aunque el ritmo de este cambio varía de un país a otro, dependiendo de factores políticos, culturales y económicos.

ANALYSIS OF GENDER RELATIONS IN THE INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITY OF AGUIRRE, PUERTO RICO

This thesis is a study of the gender relations of the residents of Aguirre, Puerto Rico, between 1940 and 1991. The primary goal of the project was to explore how gender roles and relations in the Aguirre community were impacted by the social class system introduced by the Aguirre Sugar Company. This project was based on the interpretation of the past and present situation of the Aguirre community using oral history, by conducting a series of interviews among its residents. The interviews resulted in three main themes. First, the concepts of `normal and natural' were used to distinguish gender roles. Second, Aguirreños identified `family as community', since through the family individuals built their gender identity and learned the basic rules of coexistence within the social hierarchy of the community. Third, although the gender and class roles were clear in the community, `resistance and negotiation' occurred in the home and at the Company between those of different gender and social classes. The Aguirre Sugar Company was one of the principal influences on the construction of the Aguirreños identity, and left a mark on the past, present and future generations.

Undressing Kellerman, Uncovering Broadhurst : the modern woman and "un-Australia"

This article explores the contributions of two unique Australian women, Annette Kellerman and Florence Broadhurst, to global fashion and aesthetics through subverting and challenging female gender roles of the early twentieth century. These two women are brought together here as a means of highlighting their markedly contrasting social tactics: undressing versus layering. Kellerman's body became an instrument in her quest for global fame, engaging in daring public "undress" in swimming and diving performances around the world that served to show case her innovative swimwear design. In contrast, Broadhurst, through repeated reconstructions of her persona and constant relayering of identities, concocted versions of herself in order to pass through Shanghai, London, and Sydney societies. Their lives exist as binaristic parallels, expressing contrasting values of un-Australianness - the disavowal of national identity; and Australianness - the promotion of national identity. Both Kellerman and Broadhurst tested the limits of body, dress and national identity as vehicles for global recognition. The recent interest in their historical roles is evidenced in the films "The original Mermaid"( 2004) and "Unfolding Florence" (2005) in addition to numerous books and journal articles. Despite this resurgent public recognition of their lives and achievements, scholarly analysis of their legacies in the fields of fashion and design are still relatively neglected. This article explores their contributions to celebrity and modernity, fashion and gender as modern un-Australian women.

Adapting to the work-life interface : the influence of individual differences, work and family on well-being, mental health and work engagement

Bronfenbrenner.s Bioecological Model, expressed as the developmental equation, D f PPCT, is the theoretical framework for two studies that bring together diverse strands of psychology to study the work-life interface of working adults. Occupational and organizational psychology is focused on the demands and resources of work and family, without emphasising the individual in detail. Health and personality psychology examine the individual but without emphasis on the individual.s work and family roles. The current research used Bronfenbrenner.s theoretical framework to combine individual differences, work and family to understand how these factors influence the working adult.s psychological functioning. Competent development has been defined as high well-being (measured as life satisfaction and psychological well-being) and high work engagement (as work vigour, work dedication and absorption in work) and as the absence of mental illness (as depression, anxiety and stress) and the absence of burnout (as emotional exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy). Study 1 and 2 were linked, with Study 1 as a cross-sectional survey and Study 2, a prospective panel study that followed on from the data used in Study1. Participants were recruited from a university and from a large public hospital to take part in a 3-wave, online study where they completed identical surveys at 3-4 month intervals (N = 470 at Time 1 and N = 198 at Time 3). In Study 1, hierarchical multiple regressions were used to assess the effects of individual differences (Block 1, e.g. dispositional optimism, coping self-efficacy, perceived control of time, humour), work and family variables (Block 2, e.g. affective commitment, skill discretion, work hours, children, marital status, family demands) and the work-life interface (Block 3, e.g. direction and quality of spillover between roles, work-life balance) on the outcomes. There were a mosaic of predictors of the outcomes with a group of seven that were the most frequent significant predictors and which represented the individual (dispositional optimism and coping self-efficacy), the workplace (skill discretion, affective commitment and job autonomy) and the work-life interface (negative work-to-family spillover and negative family-to-work spillover). Interestingly, gender and working hours were not important predictors. The effects of job social support, generally and for work-life issues, perceived control of time and egalitarian gender roles on the outcomes were mediated by negative work-to-family spillover, particularly for emotional exhaustion. Further, the effect of negative spillover on depression, anxiety and work engagement was moderated by the individual.s personal and workplace resources. Study 2 modelled the longitudinal relationships between the group of the seven most frequent predictors and the outcomes. Using a set of non-nested models, the relative influences of concurrent functioning, stability and change over time were assessed. The modelling began with models at Time 1, which formed the basis for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to establish the underlying relationships between the variables and calculate the composite variables for the longitudinal models. The CFAs were well fitting with few modifications to ensure good fit. However, using burnout and work engagement together required additional analyses to resolve poor fit, with one factor (representing a continuum from burnout to work engagement) being the only acceptable solution. Five different longitudinal models were investigated as the Well-Being, Mental Distress, Well-Being-Mental Health, Work Engagement and Integrated models using differing combinations of the outcomes. The best fitting model for each was a reciprocal model that was trimmed of trivial paths. The strongest paths were the synchronous correlations and the paths within variables over time. The reciprocal paths were more variable with weak to mild effects. There was evidence of gain and loss spirals between the variables over time, with a slight net gain in resources that may provide the mechanism for the accumulation of psychological advantage over a lifetime. The longitudinal models also showed that there are leverage points at which personal, psychological and managerial interventions can be targeted to bolster the individual and provide supportive workplace conditions that also minimise negative spillover. Bronfenbrenner.s developmental equation has been a useful framework for the current research, showing the importance of the person as central to the individual.s experience of the work-life interface. By taking control of their own life, the individual can craft a life path that is most suited to their own needs. Competent developmental outcomes were most likely where the person was optimistic and had high self-efficacy, worked in a job that they were attached to and which allowed them to use their talents and without too much negative spillover between their work and family domains. In this way, individuals had greater well-being, better mental health and greater work engagement at any one time and across time.

Acculturation stress in South Sudanese refugees : impact on marital relationships

A qualitative approach was used to explore the impact of acculturation stress on the marital relationships of South Sudanese refugees settled in Brisbane, Australia. Thirteen refugees, who were currently or previously married, participated in three gender specific focus groups. The perceived causes and possible solutions of conflict were thoroughly explored. Hypothetical scenarios were used to facilitate group discussion. Major issues causing conflict between couples were identified as: the management of finances and lack of family and social support. Several other areas of acculturation stress also emerged as factors associated with marital stress. There was a dissonance regarding the adherence to cultural gender roles. Freedom provided to women in Australia caused tension between the couples. Law enforcement officers were perceived as lacking cultural understanding and misinterpreting the couple distress. Finally, limited information provided to refugees pre and post migration was considered to hinder adjustment. The participants suggested a number of practical solutions to these issues which are potentially useful in guiding future refugee settlement programs.

Nonprofit organisations face a restructuring state : the case of local social services in the Hunter region of New South Wales

This paper is concerned with certain of the characteristics of local social services, and their role in a restructuring Australian welfare state. I am particularly concerned with the distinctive gender characteristics of these organisations, because in comparison with most other organisations they have a feminised quality. This partly mirrors women's traditional role of undertaking the major part of the caring labour of society. However, simultaneously work in these organisation deviates from more traditional patterns where employed women occupy subordinate positions. In many community organisations, women occupy leadership roles. The analysis here is concerned with the apparently paradoxical nature of these organisations in their capacity to entrench traditional gender roles and to challenge these by allowing women to fill management positions. It is also concerned to examine whether changes that have been occurring in the community services sector over the last two decades are likely to enhance women's general position in the society, or diminish the power exercised by women. The paper draws in a preliminary way on a study of local services in the Hunter Region of NSW undertaken in the latter half of 1992. These preliminary findings are set against the broader picture of developments in the contemporary welfare state.

Bioecological factors influencing women's alcohol consumption across the life span

Background Substantial changing trends in women’s alcohol consumption show increased proportions women drinking at risky/ high risk levels. Not confined to the younger female population, these increases are also occurring in older female age groups (aged 35 and over), posing a set of risks differing to those of their male counterparts. However, little research investigates the influences behind these changing trends. The current research examined multiple level influences (i.e. cultural, social and psychosocial on women’s drinking across a range of age groups. Methods Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with thirty-five women (aged 18-55) residing in Australia. Interview development was guided by an adaptation of Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model of Development to assess multiple areas of influences from cultural through to psychosocial (i.e. intra-individual). Each interview took approximately 1 hour to complete. Findings Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model could account for multiple-level factors impacting women’s drinking with multidirectional influences interacting across each level. Cultural influences included gender roles and national identity. Exosystem influences (e.g. infrastructure, legislation, and media) and microsystem influences (e.g. drinking context, family, partner and peer influence) were clearly identified as impacting drinking behaviours. Finally, at the psychosocial level, attitudes and expectations around the disinhibiting effects of alcohol and social facilitation emerged as key influences. Discussion The outcomes indicated the importance of these influences as women’s alcohol-related attitudes and behaviours changed across a woman’s life span and across age cohorts. Future research will build on these initial findings in order to underpin targeted interventions of the key factors influencing women’s drinking.

Exploring cultural, social and psychosocial influences on women's drinking across the life span

Background Changing trends in women's alcohol consumption have demonstrated that women, in both younger and older cohorts, are drinking at increased levels than previously. However, little research investigates these changing trends or the influences behind them. Aims The current research aims to identify influences on women's drinking across a range of age groups, with a focus on multiple level influences (i.e. cultural, social and psychosocial). Methods One hour semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted, in 2011, with 35 women (aged 18-55) residing in Australia. Interview development was guided by an adaptation of Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model of Development (BBMD) to assess multiple areas of influences from cultural through to psychosocial. Results Interview findings highlighted the existence of multiple levels of influence on women’s drinking and thus provided support for the BBMD framework. Cultural influences identified related to gender roles and national identity. Exosystem influences (e.g. legislation, infrastructure, and media) and Microsystem influences (e.g. immediate social networks) were also identified. A range of psychosocial factors, such as identity, normative influence and attitude were also found as influencing drinking behaviours. Finally, changes across a woman’s life span, and intergenerational differences, were Chronosystem constructs that also emerged as key influences. Discussion and conclusions This study has provided an in-depth understanding into the key factors, occurring across multiple levels of influence, impacting upon women's drinking across younger and older cohorts. The findings also highlight changes in alcohol-related attitudes and behaviours across a life span and across generations. Future research should extend upon these findings based on larger, quantitative studies based on representative samples. The findings do provide key insights into the influences that need to be addressed within targeted interventions.

Jane McCredie - Making Girls and Boys : Inside the Science of Sex [Book Review]

Activists, Feminists, queer theorists, and those who live outside traditional gender narratives have long challenged the fixity of the sex and gender binaries. While the dominant Western paradigm posits sex and gender as natural and inherent, queer theory argues that sex and gender are socially constructed. This means that our ideas about sex and gender, and the concepts themselves, are shaped by particular social contexts. Questioning the nature of sex can be puzzling. After all, isn’t sex biology? Binary sex – male and female – was labelled as such by scientists based on existing binary categories and observations of hormones, genes, chromosomes, reproductive organs, genitals and other bodily elements. Binary sex is allocated at birth by genital appearance. Not everyone fits into these categories and this leads queer theorists, and others, to question the categories. Now, “some scientists are also starting to move away from the idea of biology as the fixed basis on which the social artefact of gender is built” (5). Making Girls and Boys: Inside the Science of Sex, by Jane McCredie, examines theories about gender roles and behaviours also considering those who don’t fit the arbitrary sex and gender binaries.

Psychological stress and employee engagement

“The challenge today is not just retaining talented people, but fully engaging them, capturing their minds and hearts at each stage of their work lives” (Kaye & Jordan-Evans, 2003, p. 11). Engaged employees produce positive work outcomes such as increased productivity satisfaction, and reduced turnover (Kahn, 1990, 1992; Saks, 2006). Engaged employees also impact on customers and co-workers’ positive experiences such as increased customer satisfaction (Wagner & Harter, 2006). Further, engaged employees demonstrate higher levels of trust in management and share more positive experiences with co-workers than disengage employees (Payne, Cangemi, Fuqua, & Muhleakamp, 1998). Past studies show that having a high proportion of engaged employees increases organizational performance, such as profitability and reputation (Wagner & Harter, 2006; Fleming & Asplund, 2007; Ketter, 2008). Having experienced the benefits of having engaged employees, organizations have become more aware of this issue and have been focusing on facilitating engagement climate within workplaces. Recently, an interest in positive psychology, instead of negative aspects of human behaviours, has become a focus for both scholars and practitioners. The trend towards positive psychology has led to the emergence of the concept of work engagement(Chughtai & Buckley, 2008). This article reviews literatures in the area of positive psychology and psychological stress, and discusses how organizations can increase work engagement among their organizational members. The remainder of this article is organised in four sections. First, we define work engagement as used in this article and psychological outcomes of work engagement. Second, we identify ways to increase work engagement among employees. Following this, we further discuss how gender roles influence individuals’ engagement at work. The final sections conclude the paper with a discussion of the practical implications.

Butterfly: the dark fluidity of suburban life

The American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS) Annual Conference, Forth Worth, Texas, 9–11 April 2015. The dark fluidity of Melbourne suburbia in Sonya Hartnett’s Butterfly Sonya Hartnett’s Butterfly (2009) is a fictional account of the suburban family life of the Coyles in 1980’s outer suburban Melbourne written from the perspective of teenager Plum Coyle. The Coyle family at first glance appear to be living a textbook example of the suburban lifestyle developed from the 19th century and sustained well into the twentieth century, in which housing design and gender roles were clearly defined and “connected with a normative heterosexuality” (Johnson 2000: 94). The Australian suburban space is also well documented as a place where people often have to contend with oppressive rigid social and cultural ideals (ie Rowse 1978, Johnson 1993, Turnbull 2008, and Flew 2011). There is a tendency to group “suburb” as one monolithic space but this paper will argue that Hartnett exposes the dark fluidity and the complexity of the term, just as she reveals that despite or perhaps because of the planned nature of suburbia, the lives that people live are often just as complex.

Will supermarkets go the extra aisle?

The drastic social and demographic changes of the past few decades have radically changed traditional gender roles within the family structure in Australia.In the process, they have also changed the way we shop.

Neighborhood Shopkeepers in Contemporary South Korea: Household, Work, and Locality

This is an ethnographic study of the lived worlds of the keepers of small shops in a residential neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea. It outlines, discusses, and analyses the categories and conceptualizations of South Korean capitalism at the level of households, neighborhoods, and Korean society. These cultural categories were investigated through the neighborhood shopkeepers practices of work and reciprocal interaction as well as through the shopkeepers articulations of their lived experience. In South Korea, the keepers of small businesses have continued to be a large occupational category despite of societal and economic changes, occupying approximately one fourth of the population in active work force. In spite of that, these people, their livelihoods and their cultural and social worlds have rarely been in the focus of social science inquiry. The ethnographic field research for this study was conducted during a 14-month period between November 1998 and December 1999 and in three subsequent short visits to Korea and to the research neighborhood. The fieldwork was conducted during the aftermath of the Asian currency crisis, colloquially termed at the time as the IMF crisis, which highlighted the social and cultural circumstances of small businesskeeper in a specific way. The livelihoods of small-scale entrepreneurs became even more precarious than before; self-employment became an involuntary choice for many middle-class salaried employees who were laid off; and the cultural categories and concepts of society and economy South Korean capitalism were articulated more sharply than before. This study begins with an overview of the contemporary setting, the Korean society under the socially and economically painful outcomes of the economic crisis, and continues with an overview of relevant literature. After introducing the research area and the informants, I discuss the Korean notion of neighborhood, which incorporates both the notions of culturally valued Koreanness and deficiency in the sense of modernity and development. This study further analyses the ways in which the businesskeepers appropriate and reproduce the Korean ideas of men s and women s gender roles and spheres of work. As the appropriation of children s labor is conditional to intergenerational family trajectories which aim not to reproduce parents occupational status but to gain entry to salaried occupations via educational credentials, the work of a married couple is the most common organization of work in small businesses, to which the Korean ideas of family and kin continuity are not applied. While the lack of generational businesskeeping succession suggests that the proprietors mainly subscribe to the notions of familial status that emanate from the practices of the white-collar middle class, the cases of certain women shopkeepers show that their proprietorship and the ensuing economic standing in the family prompts and invites inversed interpretations and uses of common cultural notions of gender. After discussing and analyzing the concept of money and the cultural categorization of leisure and work, topics that emerged as very significant in the lived world of the shopkeepers, this study charts and analyses the categories of identification which the shopkeepers employ for their cultural and social locations and identities. Particular attention is paid to the idea of ordinary people (seomin), which shopkeepers are commonly considered to be most representative of, and which also sums up the ambivalence of neighborhood shopkeepers as a social category: they are not committed to familial reproduction and continuity of the business but aspire non-entrepreneurial careers for their children, while they occupy a significant position in the elaborations of culturally valued notions and ideologies defining Koreanness such as warmheartedness and sociability.

Doing marriage and parenthood: The division of household labour across two life course events

The current study is a longitudinal investigation into changes in the division of household labour across transitions to marriage and parenthood in the UK. Previous research has noted a more traditional division of household labour, with women performing the majority of housework, amongst spouses and couples with children. However, the bulk of this work has been cross-sectional in nature. The few longitudinal studies that have been carried out have been rather ambiguous about the effect of marriage and parenthood on the division of housework. Theoretically, this study draws on gender construction theory. The key premise of this theory is that gender is something that is performed and created in interaction, and, as a result, something fluid and flexible rather than fixed and stable. The idea that couples ‘do gender’ through housework has been a major theoretical breakthrough. Gender-neutral explanations of the division of household labour, positing rational acting individuals, have failed to explicate why women continue to perform an unequal share of housework, regardless of socio-economic status. Contrastingly, gender construction theory situates gender as the key process in dividing household labour. By performing and avoiding certain housework chores, couples fulfill social norms of what it means to be a man and a woman although, given the emphasis on human agency in producing and contesting gender, couples are able to negotiate alternative gender roles which, in turn, feed back into the structure of social norms in an ever-changing societal landscape. This study adds extra depth to the doing gender approach by testing whether or not couples negotiate specific conjugal and parent roles in terms of the division of household labour. Both transitions hypothesise a more traditional division of household labour. Data comes from the British Household Panel Survey, a large, nationally representative quantitative survey that has been carried out annually since 1991. Here, data tracks the same 776 couples at two separate time points – 1996 and 2005. OLS regression is used to test whether or not transitions to marriage and parenthood have a significant impact on the division of household labour whilst controlling for host of relevant socio-economic factors. Results indicate that marriage has no significant effect on how couples partition housework. Those couples making the transition from cohabitation to marriage do not show significant changes in housework arrangements from those couples who remain cohabiting in both waves. On the other hand, becoming parents does lead to a more traditional division of household labour whilst controlling for socio-economic factors which accompany the move to parenthood. There is then some evidence that couples use the site of household labour to ‘do parenthood’ and generate identities which both use and inform socially prescribed notions of what it means to be a mother and a father. Support for socio-economic explanations of the division of household labour was mixed although it remains clear that they, alone, cannot explain how households divide housework.

Doing marriage and parenthood: The division of household labour across two life course events

The current study is a longitudinal investigation into changes in the division of household labour across transitions to marriage and parenthood in the UK. Previous research has noted a more traditional division of household labour, with women performing the majority of housework, amongst spouses and couples with children. However, the bulk of this work has been cross-sectional in nature. The few longitudinal studies that have been carried out have been rather ambiguous about the effect of marriage and parenthood on the division of housework. Theoretically, this study draws on gender construction theory. The key premise of this theory is that gender is something that is performed and created in interaction, and, as a result, something fluid and flexible rather than fixed and stable. The idea that couples 'do gender' through housework has been a major theoretical breakthrough. Gender-neutral explanations of the division of household labour, positing rational acting individuals, have failed to explicate why women continue to perform an unequal share of housework, regardless of socioeconomic status. Contrastingly, gender construction theory situates gender as the key process in dividing household labour. By performing and avoiding certain housework chores, couples fulfill social norms of what it means to be a man and a woman although, given the emphasis on human agency in producing and contesting gender, couples are able to negotiate alternative gender roles which, in turn, feed back into the structure of social norms in an ever-changing societal landscape. This study adds extra depth to the doing gender approach by testing whether or not couples negotiate specific conjugal and parent roles in terms of the division of household labour. Both transitions hypothesise a more traditional division of household labour. Data comes from the British Household Panel Survey, a large, nationally representative quantitative survey that has been carried out annually since 1991. Here, data tracks the same 776 couples at two separate time points - 1996 and 2005. OLS regression is used to test whether or not transitions to marriage and parenthood have a significant impact on the division of household labour whilst controlling for host of relevant socio-economic factors. Results indicate that marriage has no significant effect on how couples partition housework. Those couples making the transition from cohabitation to marriage do not show significant changes in housework arrangements from those couples who remain cohabiting in both waves. On the other hand, becoming parents does lead to a more traditional division of household labour whilst controlling for socio-economic factors which accompany the move to parenthood. There is then some evidence that couples use the site of household labour to 'do parenthood' and generate identities which both use and inform socially prescribed notions of what it means to be a mother and a father. Support for socio-economic explanations of the division of household labour was mixed although it remains clear that they, alone, cannot explain how households divide housework.