“Doing” Gender in Context: Household Bargaining and Risk of Divorce in Germany and the United States

Gender relations remain embedded in their sociopolitical context. Compared here using event-history analysis is how household divisions of paid and unpaid labor affect marital stability in the former West Germany, where policy reinforced male breadwinner families, and the United States, where policy remains silent regarding the private sphere. In Germany, any moves away from separate gendered spheres in terms of either wives' relative earnings or husbands' relative participation in housework increase the risk of divorce. In the United States, however, the more stable couples are those that adapt by displaying greater gender equity. These results highlight that policy shapes how gender gets done in the intimate sphere, and that reinforcement of a gendered division of labor may be detrimental to marital stability.

Being female doing gender:narratives of women in education management

The paper explores gender relations in academia and discusses how gender is constructed within academic institutions. It is based upon the study of a business school, part of a British university. The construction of gender relations within this institution was of special interest because the majority of managerial roles were occupied by women. All female academic managers (dean, associate deans and heads of department) and a random selection of female and male academics were interviewed. The process of construction of gender relations is investigated through the analysis of the discrepancy between the ‘masculine culture’ of high education institutions and the dominance of women managers within this organization. It is suggested that the numerical dominance of women managers may create tensions between their individual identities as women and their managerial identities, due to the predominance of masculine practices and values within the organization. Additionally, it emerged that the maintenance of masculine ideals and practices is also associated with downplaying women’s achievements.

Initiation into engineering : stability and change in gender orders

This article examines processes of doing gender during the initiation of students into engineering programs at university level in Sweden. The article draws on interviews with students, focusing on their understandings of gender. The aim is to explore difficulties with and challenges to traditional gender roles in an academic male dominated arena, by using theories of doing and undoing gender. The empirical material reveals the initiation period or ‘reception’ as a phenomenon both reinforcing and challenging traditional orders. The attempts to challenge norms meet resistance, revealing two paradoxes and one dilemma. In the first paradox the formal purpose of the reception (inclusion) is partly at odds with its informal consequence (exclusion of deviations). The second paradox concerns the contradictory effects of the reception. Even though the reception ensures participation of women, it reinforces existing hierarchies including gender inequality. This results in a dilemma, since in order to protect individual safety, there is a taboo on harassing women which then reproduces stable gender stereotypes. So while harassment taints the respect senior students must earn during the reception, the fact that female students exist in the engineering field challenges the established order and opens the way for change.

Facets of Gender : Analyses of the Family and the Labour Market

This thesis contains four different studies on the dynamics of gender in households and workplaces. The relationship between family life and work life is in focus, particularly in the paper on labour market outcomes after divorce. In the introductory chapter, the Swedish context is briefly described. The description focuses on gender differences in the labour market and in the home. Theories concerning the division of work in the household are discussed, as are two theories on labour market discrimination, viz. taste discrimination and statistical discrimination. The theory part is concluded with a discussion of social closure processes and gendered organizational structures. The Reproduction of Gender. Housework and Attitudes Towards Gender Equality in the Home Among Swedish Boys and Girls. The housework boys and girls age 10 to 18 do, and their attitudes towards gender equality in the home are studied. One aim is to see whether the work children do is gendered and if so, whether they follow their parents’, often gendered, pattern in housework. A second aim is to see whether parents’ division of work is related to the children’s attitude towards gender equality in the home. The data used are taken from the Swedish Child Level of Living Survey (Child-LNU) 2000. Results indicate that girls and boys in two-parent families are more prone to engage in gender-atypical work the more their parent of the same sex engages in this kind of work. The fact that girls still do more housework than boys indicates that housework is gendered work also among children. No relation between parents’ division of work and the child’s attitude towards gender equality in the home was found. Dependence within Families and the Household Division of Labor – A Comparison between Sweden and the United States. This paper assesses the relative explanatory value of the resource-bargaining perspective and the doing-gender approach in analysing the division of housework in the United States and Sweden from the mid-1970s to 2000. Data from the Swedish Level of Living Survey (LNU) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) were used. Overall results indicate that housework is truly gendered work in both countries during the entire period. Even so, the results also indicate that gender deviance neutralization is more pronounced in the United States than in Sweden. Unlike Swedish women, American women seem to increase their time spent in housework when their husbands are to some extent economically dependent on them, as if to neutralize the presumed gender deviance. Divorce and Labour Market Outcomes. Do Women Suffer or Gain? In this paper, the interconnected nature of work and family is studied by looking at labour market outcomes after divorce. The data used are retrospective work and family histories collected in LNU 1991. A hazard regression model with competing risks reveals that women’s chances of improving their occupational prestige appear to be better after divorce compared to before. Increased working hours and perhaps also increased energy invested in the job may pay off in better occupational opportunities. Worth noting, however, is that the outcome among women with a less firm labour market attachment is more often to a job of lower prestige than one of higher prestige. Hence, the labour market outcome for women after divorce is to some extent conditioned by their labour market attachment at the time of divorce. Men, on the other hand, in most cases seem to suffer occupationally from divorce. For separated men the risk of negative changes in occupational prestige is greater than for cohabiting men. Formal On-the-job Training. A Gender-Typed Experience and Wage- Related Advantage? Formal on-the-job training (FOJT) can have a positive impact on wages and on promotion opportunities. According to theory and earlier research, a two-step model of gender inequality in FOJT is predicted: First, women are less likely than men to take part in FOJT and, second, once women do get the more remunerative training, they are not rewarded for their new skills to the same extent as men are. Pooled cross-sectional data from the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions (ULF) in the mid-nineties were used. Results show that women are significantly less likely than men to take part in FOJT. Among those who do receive training, women are more likely to take part in industry-specific training, whereas men are more likely to participate in general training and training that increases promotion opportunities. The two latter forms of training significantly raise a man’s annual earnings but not a woman’s. Hence, the theoretical model is supported and it is argued that this gender inequality is partly due to employers’ discriminatory practices.

Gender und Kommunikation

In diesem Artikel werden die Zusammenhänge zwischen Gender und Kommunikation erörtert, an Fallbeispielen und Untersuchungen erläutert und reflektiert. Der Begriff Gender beschreibt das soziale Geschlecht. Der Prozess der Kommunikation besteht aus Encodieren und Decodieren auf der nonverbalen, paraverbalen und verbalen Ebene. Dies wird unter anderem von Gender beeinflusst. Durch das Konzept des Doing Gender werden Wahrnehmungen, Kommunikationsverhalten sowie die statistischen Gegebenheiten und Rahmenbedingungen, in denen sich die Kommunikation abspielt, analysiert. Geschlechtstypische kommunikative Muster werden beschrieben und deren Grenzen durch Rahmenbedingungen reflektiert.

Análisis de la cultura de género en el ámbito educativo

El estudio del sexismo en el contexto educativo tiene una enorme importancia debido a que sus consecuencias se traducen en una educación desigual que genera inequidad en las oportunidades de desarrollo personal y social tanto de chicas y chicos. Desafortunadamente, vemos que el contexto educativo actúa como un medio más que transmite y perpetúa la condición de desigualdad entre hombres y mujeres que existe en nuestra sociedad. Sin embargo, la responsabilidad de que el contexto educativo sea un espacio que garantice la igualdad entre mujeres y hombres es mucho mayor que cualquier otro dado que existe una obligatoriedad por parte del Estado en que todos los ciudadanos y ciudadanas permanezcan durante un largo período de la vida inscritos en el sistema educativo. Además, es un período de la vida altamente condicionante para el desarrollo de la personalidad del ser humano. Como base teórica para este estudio ha sido utilizado el modelo de análisis de Cultura de Género Doing Gender, elaborado por West & Zimmerman (1986). Este modelo incorpora diferentes planos que permiten analizar los elementos que dibujan la Cultura de Género y que hemos analizado en el contexto educativo. Estos planos -sociocultural, relacional y personal- consiguen aunar todos los elementos, actores, receptores, etc., que pueden proporcionar un abordaje de la realidad educativa desde la mirada de género en la actualidad.

What made him change? an individual and national analysis of men's participation in housework in 26 countries

We offer new evidence on multi-level determinants of the gender division of housework. Using data from the 2004 European Social Survey (ESS) for 26 European, we study the micro and macro-level factors which increase the likelihood of men doing an equal or greater share of housework than their female partners. A sample of 11,915 young men and women is analysed with a multi-level logistic regression in order to test at individual level the classic relative-income, time-availability and gender-role values, and a new couple conflict hypothesis. At individual level we find significant relationships between relative resources, values, couple's disagreement, and the division of housework which support more economic dependency than "doing gender" perspectives. At the macro-level, we find important composition effects and also support for gender empowerment, family model and social stratification explanations of cross-country differences.

El profesorado de Educación Física como agente en la coeducación : actitudes y buenas prácticas para la construcción de género en la escuela.

Reconocer las actitudes del profesorado en Andalucía ante el proceso School Doing Gender (SDG). Explorar las actitudes del profesorado de Educación Física hacia la construcción de una cultura de género en la escuela. Comparar las puntuaciones obtenidas por el profesorado de Educación Física y el profesorado en general. Examinar Buenas Prácticas Coeducativas dentro del área de Educación Física. Se desarrolla con profesorado en activo y en formación universitaria de la Comunidad de Madrid y de Andalucía, sigue una metodología de investigación evaluativa, se caracteriza por una combinación de metodologías cuantitativa y cualitativa. Respecto a la metodología cuantitativa, se emplea técnicas de encuesta instrumentalizadas para la contrastación de las hipótesis comparativas y objetivos. La metodología cualitativa utiliza un enfoque metodológico cualitativo, interpretativo, crítico aplicando para ello un estudio de casos, la muestra participante corresponde a 1610 profesores y profesoras, de los cuales el 43,7 por ciento son hombres y el 56,3 por ciento son mujeres. El profesorado seleccionado imparte docencia en el 14,4 por ciento de los casos en Infantil en el 41,7 por ciento en Primaria, en el 33,7 de los casos en Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (ESO) y el 10,2 por ciento en Bachillerato. En cuanto al tipo de centro, el 18,3 por ciento del profesorado proviene de centros concertados y el 81,7 de centros públicos. Para la realización del estudio se utilizan diferentes recursos. Por un lado, una escala válida y fiable para la medición de las actitudes del profesorado. Por otro lado un recurso, de carácter informático para la selección y análisis estadísticos de datos. Finalmente cuenta con recursos económicos del proyecto de excelencia de la Junta de Andalucía, TEONXXI. Para la recogida de datos de la Comunidad de Madrid se realiza una estancia de investigación del profesor-autor en el Departamento de Expresión Musical y Corporal de dicha Universidad. Se ha establecido cuatro grandes líneas de conclusiones : con respecto al profesorado general, con respecto al profesorado de Educación Física, en relación a la comparativa entre ambos grupos de docentes, y finalmente sobre las buenas prácticas coeducativas en Educación Física. Con respecto al profesorado general se demuestra que el profesorado de Educación Física que participa, de una u otra, manera en actividades de coeducación, muestra actitudes más coeducativas que el profesorado que no lo hace, suele participar libremente en estas actividades el profesorado más inclinado actitudinalmente a favor de la perspectiva de genero. El profesorado de Educación Física alcanza puntuaciones que lo posicionan como un profesorado adaptativo, mientras que el profesorado general muestra una actitud coeducativa. Se confirma que existen Buenas Prácticas Coeducativas en el área de Educación Física, a pesar de que no siempre cumplen todos los criterios teóricamente establecidos para considerarlas 'Buenas Prácticas', obtienen unos beneficios positivos para la construcción de una cultura igualitaria en la escuela. Por un lado da visibilidad a las desigualdades y discriminaciones que se producen en la escuela y en el deporte; por otro lado, son actuaciones que, de una manera u otra, envuelven a toda la comunidad educativa; por último, las propuestas son inclusivas y se dirigen tanto a las mujeres como a los hombres, buscando construir nuevos modelos de feminidad y masculinidad compatibles con el marco de igualdad y acción social comentado y libre de violencia que la teoría de género propugna.

G??nero y educaci??n f??sica : an??lisis de buenas pr??cticas coeducativas

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