Showing papers on "Women's work published in 2015"

Does mother tongue make for women's work? Linguistics, household labor, and gender identity

Abstract: This paper studies the formation and persistence of gender identity in a sample of U.S. immigrants. We show that gender roles are acquired early in life, and once established, persist regardless of how long an individual has lived in the U.S. We use a novel approach relying on linguistic variation and document that households with individuals whose native language emphasizes gender in its grammatical structure are significantly more likely to allocate household tasks on the basis of sex and to do so more intensively. We present evidence of two mechanisms for our observed associations – that languages serve as cultural markers for origin country norms or that features of language directly influence cognition and behavior. Our findings do not appear to be driven by plausible alternatives such as selection in migration and marriage markets, as gender norms of behavior are evident even in the behavior of single person households.

Masculinity and Non-Traditional Occupations: Men's Talk in Women's Work

Abstract: Occupation segregation is a persistent aspect of the labour market, and scholars have often researched what happens when women and men enter into what are seen to be ‘non-traditional’ work roles for their sex. Research on men within women's roles has concentrated mainly on the challenges to a masculine identity, while research on workplace language has focused on women's linguistic behaviour in masculine occupations. To date, there has been relatively little research into the linguistic behaviour of men working in occupations seen as women's work (e.g., nursing, primary school teaching). To address this gap, this article focuses on men's discursive behaviour and identity construction within the feminized occupation of nursing. Empirical data collected by three male nurses in a hospital in Northern Ireland is explored using discourse analysis and the Community of Practice paradigm. This paper discusses how the participants linguistically present themselves as nurses by performing relational work and creating an in-group with their nurse colleagues by actively using an inherently ‘feminine’ discourse style.

Men in Female-Dominated Vocations: a Rationale for Academic Study and Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract: This introduction to the special issue on men in female-dominated vocations provides a rationale for examining this topic. To date, this topic has garnered relatively little research attention even though work is often identified as a central aspect of men’s identity. Although millions of men perform “women’s work” in a broad range of fields, the extant database around the world focuses primarily on male nurses and teachers and tends to focus on ways to recruit and retain men in these professions. We argue that studying men in female-dominated vocations is important because it furthers our understanding of the workplace in general, as well as the ways in which men experience, understand, and navigate challenges to their masculinity. Moreover, expanding our knowledge of men in female-dominated vocations has important theoretical implications for theories addressing gender-based equality and power dynamics, the psychology of men and masculinity, and intersecting identities (or intersectionality). After a brief overview of the literature and establishing this rationale, we introduce the articles in the special issue. The majority of the papers in this special issue are based on U.S. samples, with one exception from the U.K.

The political economy of ‘lap dancing’: contested careers and women’s work in the stripping industry

Abstract: The visibility of striptease (‘lap dancing’) as a workplace and site of consumption has grown significantly over the past 15 years in the UK. This article draws on the first large scale study of stripping work in the UK, exploring original empirical data to examine why women continue to seek work in an industry that is profoundly precarious and often highly exploitative. It suggests that rather than either a ‘career’ or a ‘dead end’ job, many women use lap dancing strategically to create alternative futures of work, employment and education. It is argued that precarious forms of employment such as lap dancing can be instrumentalized through agentic strategies by some workers, in order to achieve longer term security and to develop opportunities outside the sex industry. As such, it is averred that engagement in the industry should instead be understood in a wider political economy of work and employment and the social wage.

Crossing Over: Interdisciplinary Research on “Men who do Women’s Work”

Abstract: This commentary discusses three themes that are addressed by this collection of articles on men in female-dominated occupations: (1) the characteristics of men who cross over into female-dominated occupations; (2) how men fare in university programs where they are in the minority; and (3) the on-the-job advantages and disadvantages that accrue to men who do women’s work. Suggestions are made for additional research, and the importance of interdisciplinary approaches is emphasized.

Book review: gendered commodity chains: seeing women's work and households in global production

Abstract: Gendered Commodity Chains: Seeing Women’s Work and Households in Global Production, edited by Wilma A. Dunaway Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. 285 pp. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780804789080. One of the highlights of this superb collection of essays on gendered commodity chains, a highlight partly because it draws on the historically seminal work on commodity chains by Immanuel Wallerstein (who is also responsible for the Foreword), is that the authors make liberal reference to pioneering scholars in the fields of women’s paid and unpaid work such as Lourdes Beneria, Diane Elson, Ruth Pearson, Veronika Bennholdt-Thompson, and Maria Mies. These writers broke critical new analytical ground in the 1970s and 1980s in emphasizing the ways in which “production” and “reproduction” were profoundly interlinked with one another. To revisit their perspectives on the myriad forms of female labor that contribute to the accumulation of capital makes for a volume that does serious—and justifiably due —service to feminist theorizing and knowledge over nearly 50 years. Yet while avoiding the all too common fetishization to cite “just published” papers, the collective contributions to Wilma Dunaway’s Gendered Commodity Chains also provide an impressively up-to-the-minute conceptual and empirical mapping of the various ways in which contemporary global capitalism profits from the externalization of so many of its costs to women and their households, and especially the poorest on the periphery of the international economy. …

Growing up to do ‘women’s work’Exploring two generations of mothers’ relational narratives of household work over the life course

Abstract: This thesis explores the ways in which women make sense of their experiences of household work over the life course and in the context of various relationships, with a particular focus on mother/daughter relationships. Using in-depth interviews with 24 heterosexual women (comprising 12 pairs of mothers and their adult daughters, who themselves were mothers of young children), this research investigates the role household work plays in women’s personal narratives and the construction of relational narrated selves and narrative identities. By moving away from a ‘snapshot’ approach to housework that focuses on the division of tasks within heterosexual couples, this thesis positions household work as part of our personal lives (Smart, 2007), and something that is made sense of relationally, despite dominant discourses of individualism. Similarly, conceiving of people within personal timescapes in which multiple dimensions of time intersect allows for an understanding of household work as part of our personal lives over the life course, as well as inter-generational relationships and broader historical change. Considering multiple social dimensions of gender, heterosexuality and family, allows for an understanding of how accounting for one’s household practices in relation to various discourses can be understood as doing gender, heterosexuality and family. The construction of relational narrated selves in process show how growing up as a woman is shaped particularly by discourses of emphasised femininity (in the context of normative heterosexuality) and good motherhood, and constructing narrative identities in relation to these discourses involves demonstrating acceptable femininity and maternal responsibility, which works to (re)produce gender, heterosexuality and family. By focusing on the themes of relationality, temporality and the interplay between gender, heterosexuality and family across multiple social dimensions, this thesis uses household work as a lens to draw out useful theoretical links between these key themes.

Decolonizing Britain and Domesticating Women: Race, Gender, and Women's Work in Post-1945 British Decolonial and Metropolitan Liberal Reform Discourses

Abstract: This article deploys an intersectional, transnational, and postcolonial approach to uncovering what is repressed and connoted in recent pronouncements that multiculturalism in Britain has failed and that it is time for Britain to return to a lost, indigenous, “active, muscular liberalism,” one that must now reassert its authority at home and abroad. To grasp what is at stake in calls for the reinvigoration of an active, muscular liberalism as simultaneously the indigenous personality and identity of not only the British “people” and nation, but indelibly of the West, they must be located within the history of British colonialism and its intersections with white, Western, imperial patriarchy. This article does so by explicating the intersections of gender, race, and class in the post-1945 double-inscription of metropole and colony in British liberalizing social reform and national reconstruction projects, symbolized by two major British government reports published in the 1940s. These are the Moyne Report (GBCO 1945), which shaped the transition of Britain’s Caribbean territories from colonial to independent nations, and the Beveridge Report (Beveridge 1942), which shaped the modern British welfare state. What becomes apparent in both reports is how ethnically and racially differentiated categories of women were produced, targeted, and deployed in British metropolitan and colonial state discourses concerning the management of women and reform of racial rule at home and abroad.

Women's work in industry and agriculture in Wales during the First World War

Abstract: During the First World War, thousands of Welsh women became involved in the production of munitions and food for the war effort. This thesis examines attitudes towards and experiences of women workers employed in munitions and agricultural production in Wales during the war. It explores the organisation and recruitment of women in these areas, the employment of women in both fields, the organisation of welfare and leisure within and outside the workplace, and women’s experiences of demobilisation. Throughout, it considers women’s motivations for undertaking war work, as well as their experiences, including their involvement in strike action and in sporting activities, and how these were affected by class, age, and locality. The thesis argues that while the war lasted, women gained greater self-confidence and started to forge a collective identity as workers, but their contribution to the labour market was always viewed as temporary and valued less than men’s work. After the Armistice, women were forced back to the home or to traditional ‘feminine’ occupations. This thesis therefore contributes to long-standing historiographical arguments about the extent to which the war brought about lasting social change for women. It makes a significant contribution to the under-researched field of Welsh women’s experiences in the First World War.

Close the gap! The cost of inequality in women's work

Abstract: ActionAid-supported garment workers in Savar, Bangladesh demand their rights under the country's labour laws. Executive summary Today, hundreds of millions of women will collect firewood and water for their families, cook and clean, take care of the elderly, the young and the sick; all the while scratching a living from the poorest paid and most precarious jobs. Women's labour – in and outside the home – is vital to sustainable development, and for the wellbeing of society. Without the subsidy it provides, the world economy would not function. Yet it is undervalued and for the most part invisible. To reveal the scale of the crisis, ActionAid has calculated the economic value of addressing gender inequality in work in developing countries. Our findings show that women in developing countries could be US$9 trillion better off if their pay and access to paid work were equal to that of men. This huge price tag illustrates the magnitude of the injustice and represents a vast mine of untapped potential for poor women to improve their own lives, and those of their families. And these costs are not only to women's finances; women's economic inequality limits their life choices too – such as their sexual and reproductive health and rights – leaving them vulnerable to violence and other forms of discrimination and exploitation. But gender inequality in work not only has consequences for women; it carries major costs for all, including businesses and the wider economy. in 2012 the international labour Organisation (ilO) estimated that globally an additional US$1.6 trillion in output could be generated by reducing the gap in employment between women and men. 1 ensuring that women's work, both in and outside the home, is valued and rewarded fairly is a key factor in fighting poverty and driving prosperity for all. Recognition is growing worldwide that our economic system needs profound reform. There is also increasing understanding that economic growth alone is not going to lead to gender equality, alleviate poverty and reduce inequality for all. A few governments have taken bold steps to address gender inequality in work, while some progressive businesses have shown greater understanding that giving decent work opportunities 2 to women goes hand in hand with sustainable business and economic returns. The challenge remains to spread this vision from the champions to the mainstream. ActionAid calls on governments, international institutions and businesses to: 1. Guarantee women's access to …

Gendered Societal Transitions: The Shifting Role of Women in the Table Grape Production Network from Archanes, Greece to Europe

Abstract: There have been major changes taking place in export horticulture over time that have been compounded by the recent economic crisis. Women and men have been affected differently by these changes. Women have played a major role as waged and unwaged labour but have also been significantly affected by these shifts. Although we know about the effects of the supermarket-led global production network (GPN) expansion on gender relations existing literature does not explore theoretically and empirically the gender implications of changing production networks. The thesis addresses this research gap by investigating the shifting role of women in the table (fresh) grape GPN from the town of Archanes in Crete, Greece to the European market and the implications for women?s labour agency across three periods. Thus, it addresses the research question: How has the relationship between women?s waged and unwaged work in the table grape GPN shifted across periods and what are the implications for gender and GPN analysis? It investigates changes across: 1) the period of the producer-led export market; 2) the period of the buyer-led GPN expansion; and 3) the period of crisis. A qualitative case study approach is used, utilising primarily interviews, focus groups and participant observation.This research builds on the GPN, feminist political economy and intra-household bargaining literatures to further develop a Gendered Global Production Networks (Gendered GPN) approach. An evolving Gendered GPN approach combines the GPN approach with a concept of gendered societal embeddedness which captures the interaction between commercial drivers and gendered societal relations. The thesis draws from the intra-household bargaining literature to incorporate a household level analysis of labour bargaining and fall-back positions to ?unpack? the concept of women?s labour agency. The thesis finds that while in the period of the producer-led export market women were unskilled labour, the expansion of supermarkets in period 2 offered skills and economic opportunities, enabling them to bargain in crisis even as unwaged labour in table grapes. Hence labour agency becomes more important in shaping women?s position in production networks than in the producer-led export market. Ultimately the GPN was still able to get high quality at low costs through female labour. Therefore commercial pressures influence gendered societal relations but also gendered societal relations influence commercial transitions. The findings show complex and non-linear forms of change characterised by tensions between commercial and gendered societal relations in a process of transition underpinned by shifts in women?s work and agency. I capture this with the concept of ?gendered societal transitions?. This helps to further develop a Gendered GPN approach to advance knowledge of non-linear gendered transformations as GPNs evolve.

`Sex' - It's not only Women's Work: A Case for Refocusing on the Functional Role that Sex Plays in Work for both Women and Men.

Abstract: Mention of the term sex work often invokes images of marginalized women at risk for HIV infection. Such images, however, are counterintuitive to the functional role intended by the movement that spawned use of the terms ‘sex work’ and ‘sex worker.’ This article looks at the sexual practices of men in urban China to argue for a return to a functional definition of ‘sex work’, which was originally meant to legitimize the role sex plays in work. The progenitors of this movement intended to use ‘sex work’ as a means to legitimize sex as an income-generating activity for women involved in prostitution. I show that sex can also serve a functional role in the work-related duties of men seeking economic and political success in contemporary urban China. Men in China utilize sex as one way for demonstrating the loyalty necessary to access state-owned and controlled resources in a market economy governed under a Leninist system. Overall, the article demonstrates that reclaiming perception of sex work as a functiona...

Inter-generational co-residence and women's work and leisure time in Egypt

Abstract: 1. IntroductionThe patriarchal nature of Egyptian society leads to a high prevalence of intergenerational co-residence, where aging parents, especially mothers-in-law, live with their eldest son and daughter-in-law (Yount 2005; Yount et al. 2012). The higher fertility regimes of the past distributed the stewardship of parents and senior kin among more offspring. Fertility has fallen in Egypt in recent years, although it increased from 3.0 to 3.6 in the 2014 compared to the 2008 Demographic and Health Survey (Ministry of Health and Population, El-Zanaty and Associates, and The DHS Program ICF International 2014). Lower fertility combined with Egypt's rapidly aging population will result in more seniors and fewer younger adults in the future (United Nations 2011; United Nations World Statistics Pocketbook). Although there has not yet been a significant change in the co-residence structure of older adults, declines in fertility and increases in life expectancy may lead to younger generations having higher exposure to seniors in households in the near future (Yount and Sibai 2009).Co-residing elderly parents may contribute to the household in terms of income, assets, or caregiving for children; or they may require care, especially as they age and experience disabilities. Most often, the burden of caregiving for co-residing kin falls on women in Egypt, as elsewhere (Yount 2005). There is a growing body of research on intergenerational flows of care and resources, and old age disability in Egypt and the Middle East. Most of this research looks at the relationship between biological children and their own parents (Yount et al. 2012). There is limited research on the impact of coresidence, care giving, and old-age disability on daughters-in-law.The goal of this paper is to estimate how work and leisure time for childbearingage women vary with the disability status of co-residing mother-in-laws. We focus on two main competing uses of women's time which may be affected by caring for disabled parents-in-law: women's work and leisure time. Past literature on Egyptian families has suggested that co-residence with sons is much more common for older women than for older men, and although women might also provide care for their own parents, they are unlikely to co-reside with them (Yount 2005). Hence, this analysis focuses on the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law dyad. Below we discuss the literature motivating our focus on co-residence, care giving, leisure time, and work among women of reproductive age in Egypt.1.1 Family structure, aging, and caregivingAcross the life course, the effect of parents on children's labor supply changes. Most parents are in their 40s and 50s when their children are entering the labor force and starting families. At this point in time, they themselves could be working, but may have the flexibility to assist with the care of grandchildren and thereby facilitate the labor supply of their daughters and daughters-in-law. The presence of parents with disabilities when women first become eligible to join the labor force remains rare, but senior-parent disabilities are likely to grow in frequency later in the life course. The parents of adults may first supply caregiving (for grandchildren), enabling young adult labor supply, and then, if disabilities increase, seniors may demand care during their children's 4th and 5th decades.Past literature has suggested that one of the roles of a mother-in-law is to enforce traditional gender norms on her daughter-in-law (Vatuk 1998). Selective co-residence choices may partially account for this observation. Especially due to the role of families in match-making, more traditional women may marry more traditional men (with more traditional parents), who then make a choice to move in with the husband's family, and are already less predisposed to work outside the home. In the case of Egypt, marital matching norms may lead more traditional families to marry their children to each other, thereby ensuring that more traditional mothers-in-law have more traditional daughters-in-law. …

Synergy or trade-off between agricultural growth and nutrition: women's work and care

Abstract: This paper examines the implications of women’s work in agriculture and children’s nutritional outcomes in Pakistan. Agricultural growth is an important element of overall economic growth and poverty reduction. It is generally presumed that growth in agriculture will also lead to better nutrition through the higher availability of nutritious foods and increased incomes for the poor. Growth, however, might also imply changes in the amount of time and effort women expend in agricultural work. This may have positive outcomes for nutrition if women have access to their own income, but might also have negative consequences if women’s agricultural work diminishes their ability to provide nutrition-related care for themselves and their children. The cotton sector which relies very largely on women’s labour, particularly in harvesting (Siegmann and Shaheen, 2008), can serve as a key vantage point for observing the link between women’s agricultural work, care and nutrition outcomes in Pakistan. This paper develops a framework for understanding the linkages between women’s work in agriculture and nutrition outcomes, and reports on preliminary findings from qualitative research at a site in rural Pakistan. We first set the context for our research by discussing the problem of under nutrition in Pakistan and why agriculture can play a role in improving nutritional outcomes (Section 2). In Section 3, we introduce a framework for our research and argue that a standard labour supply model in which agents optimize over possible choices between income and leisure provides a useful point of departure for extending our understanding of household decision-making with respect to work and care. We then focus on the concept of care in literature to show that care needs to be recognized as an essential input into nutrition (Section 4). Empirical findings from qualitative research in a cotton-growing region in Pakistan are reported in Section 5. The paper concludes in Section 6 with discussion on how growth in agriculture can be made more inclusive.

Is Women's Work a Pathway to their Agency in Rural Egypt?

Abstract: Whether work is performed for household members’ consumption (subsistence work) or for sale to others (market work), it may be an enabling resource for women’s agency, or their capacity to define and act upon their goals. The present paper asks: Do women who engage in market work have higher agency in the three domains of economic decision-making, freedom of movement, and equitable gender role attitudes, compared to those who engage in subsistence work and those who do not work? To address this question, we leverage data from a probability sample of ever-married women in rural Egypt. We use latent-variable structural equation models with propensity score matching to estimate the influence of women’s work on three domains of their agency. We find no effect on gender attitudes or decision-making. However, women’s subsistence and market work are associated with increasingly higher factor means for freedom of movement, compared to not working.

"Women Want to Work": Shifting Ideologies of Women's Work in Franco's Spain, 1939–1962

Abstract: In the first years of the Franco dictatorship, the regime and the fascist women’s organization, the Seccion Femenina (Women’s Section), worked to change the norms for working women in the new state Women’s work was redefined and moved toward the domestic, and the regime’s discourse endowed it with new social value This new ideology did not reflect the reality of many working class Spanish women who found themselves working outside the home or the economic realities of Franco’s Spain In the 1950s, however, women’s economic role began to change as they became consumers Women carved out their own spaces of economic significance despite the regime’s plan for them and their new economic identities, spurred on by consumerism and a reintegration with the larger world, forced the regime to recognize their contributions with the 1961 “Law of Political, Professional, and Labor Rights for Women”

Diplomatic Implications of Women’s Work in American Consumer Society

Abstract: American foreign policies have observed guiding principles of democracy, yet an overemphasis on political values leads to more conflicts than mutual understandings in today’s world. Therefore, this paper proposes that exploring diplomatic implications of “women’s work” provides new insights into cultural values of the Four Freedoms—major pillars supporting modern American liberalism. This paper foregrounds the domestic and diplomatic significance of “women’s work” by analyzing women’s contributions as laborers at home, in the labor force, and in American consumer society. As American women participated in the paid labor force and took up most consumptive activities, women outside America also worked hard to provide food and care for families. This paper argues that a more comprehensive definition of “women’s work” is not only indispensable for the development of American industry, consumer society, and the expansion of marketplace, but integrates a system of dualisms separating wage labor and housework, or divisions between spheres of men and women. Moreover, investigations into hidden values of women’s work alleviate worries arising from information revolution and economic globalization. Moreover, placing women’s work in perspective enables diplomats to see through factors leading to international hostilities, to reduce conflicts arising from information revolution and economic globalization, and to understand America’s soft power pertinently.

Women's work: The professionalisation and policing of fortune-telling in Australia

Abstract: In the early twentieth century, fortune-telling was being heralded by Australian newspapers as the nation’s latest fad. It was enjoyed as a popular form of entertainment, particularly by women. For other women though, fortune-telling represented a source of income, and sometimes their sole means of support. At the same time, fortune-telling was actually a criminal offence, leaving women who practised it vulnerable to police prosecution. Yet while fortune-telling had long been illegal and associated with a variety of criminal practices, the federation period witnessed a growth in legal activity against it. This was due in part to the increased visibility brought about by the practice’s professionalisation, which prompted innovations in policing that opened up other areas of work to female involvement. This article thus probes some of the changes that took place in the culture of women’s work during this crucial era.

Dancing double binds : feminine virtue and women’s work in Kinshasa

Abstract: i Acknowledgements x List of Figures viii Dedication ix Introduction 1 Feminist Scholarship 5 Sexuality and Gift Economy 8 Women and Work 10 The Body 12 Performance and Gender 14 Plan of Dissertation 17 Chapter 1: A Brief History of Women in the City 21 Christianity in the Leopoldville 22 From the Congo Independent State to the Belgian Congo 24 Urbanization and Gender Relations 27 La Femme Libre and L’Evolue 31 Muses for a New Urban Popular Culture 35 La Kinoiserie & Nganda Love 39 Authenticite and the Female Body 47 Debrouillardisme 49 Pentecostalism in Kinshasa 51 Chapter 2: Methodology /Research site 55 Ethnicity 57 Research Site 59 Research Periods 59 Initial Points of Contact 61 Research Participants 66 Performative Contexts 76

Milliners and Marchandes de Modes: Gender, Creativity and Skill in the Workplace

Abstract: This chapter examines their influence on urban fashion industries and on the gender debates that permeated the competition between men and women in corporate towns where artisan solidarity was under challenge. The debate over the needle trades demonstrates how status and exclusivity were important in artisanal trades, while skill was a contested terrain. The chapter draws on evidence from three medium-sized eighteenth-century towns: Aberdeen or Scotland, Colchester or England and La Rochelle or France and demonstrates how complex the pattern of demographic and commercial growth was. Several debates, constructed first around luxury and secondly around commercial competition, and ultimately situated in Enlightenment discourses on female nature, converged on the high-status needle trades. Thus women became the milliners and marchandes de modes of European towns, producing the high-class haberdashery and dresses which fashion demanded. Partnerships were important to many women in business, since sharing costs gave them an edge in the business world, as well as the potential for successful independence.

Women's work orientations : a study of young women without dependent children

Abstract: This article explores women's work orientations, and how these vary between social classes. Empirically it focuses on women who do not (yet) have dependent children. The first part of the article r ...

From Sex-war to Factory Floor: Theatrical Depictions of Women’s Work during the First World War

Abstract: Women’s labour during the First World War underwent a period of extraordinary change, while the theatrical representation of women’s work during the conflict was largely characterized by continuity, reaching back to genres and tropes of previous decades and reflecting the radically altered landscape only tangentially. The vast demand for armaments and transport vehicles, the blockades on imported goods which required an increase in domestic food production, and the millions of jobs left vacant by soldiers at the Front, all combined to necessitate the recruitment of women into a wide range of new occupations. The Women’s War Procession in London in July 1916 celebrated the full range of women’s war-time occupations, including station masters, porters, navvies and dock labourers, bus drivers, sheep dippers, coalmine pithead workers, doctors, and, of course, munition workers, including the so-called ‘canary girls’, their skin dyed deep yellow for life from contact with TNT.1 At the end of the war, Helen Fraser, a suffragist who became a government spokesperson for war-time recruitment of women, recorded that 1,250,000 women had directly replaced men in industry, 1,000,000 had been employed in munitions, 83,000 in government departments, and a further 258,300 women had been full- or part-time workers on the land.2

Seeing Mission Work through a Gendered Lens: Nellie Arnott’s Personal Portrayal of Women’s Work in Angola

Abstract: Nellie Arnott, who served as a Congregational mission teacher in the highlands of Angola from 1905–1912, left a rich archival record of her personal experiences, including private diaries and publications for women’s mission magazines. Her writings trace her evolving attitude toward gender roles for missionaries and for Umbundu women whom she taught. Arnott provides a highly personalized and feminized glimpse into a changing central Angola, as Portuguese authority extended into the region. As Arnott left Angola in 1912, her goal was to establish a girls’ boarding school there, but, while home on furlough, she married her long-time fiance and did not return to Africa. Her candid personal writings allow a window into the development of her own social agency and a glimpse into the lives of Umbundu women (and men) as they negotiated evolving gender roles within an environment shaped by Portuguese political control as well as Congregational mission work.

How do gender logics underpin women’s work ‘choices’? Case study of women and men in part-time employment

Abstract: This dissertation, informed by post-structuralist feminist theory, discusses the impact of gender upon women’s occupational ‘choices’. Specifically, it argues that women’s employment ‘choices’ are not, in truth, freely made. Rather, it asserts that gender logics -through a variety of means including the breadwinner model, occupational and domestic work segregation, the treatment of women within part-time work and normative guidelines of femininity and motherhood- shape women’s work ‘choices’ to fundamentally stabilise the gender binary and thus the subordination of women. In theorising this, this dissertation concentrates on the particular experiences of women within part-time work since, worldwide, it is significantly female-dominated. However, uniquely, this dissertation also focuses on the experiences of men within this domain as investigating both sides of the co-dependent gender binary has enabled this dissertation to, primarily, shed further light on women’s work ‘choices’. To facilitate this comparative discussion, this dissertation draws upon the research method of triangulation -comprised of questionnaires, interviews and observation- alongside qualitative interview analysis and post-structural discourse analysis. Through the combination of these methods, this dissertation answers the research question by illustrating how women’s labour ‘choices’ are constructed within an inescapable web of discursive gender logics, which mutually co-constitute the suppression of women’s power and the preservation of men’s in both the private and public spheres.

Tertiary Educated Muslim Women's Work Decision

Abstract: The participation of women in the labour force has been steadily rising over the years, especially with tremendous human capital investment in educating more women at tertiary levels. However, the tertiary educated women labour participation remains low, particularly among Muslim women. Therefore, this paper explores how tertiary educated Muslim women make their decision to work. This study surveyed 139 tertiary educated women and found their decisions to work are affected by their families’ needs and/or responsibilities, and may not be due to their lives’ goals and dreams. The majority of them work for the sake of money and hence will work if offered jobs meet their expectations in term of salary and position. Furthermore, they will leave the workforce if they need to fulfil their responsibilities at home. Therefore, to retain or to encourage more women especially those with high qualifications to be in the labour market, stakeholders must provide family-friendly jobs and suitable work environment such as flexible working arrangements. More importantly, stakeholders must be able to convince the family members of tertiary educated women to release them to the labour market.

Gendered Commodity Chains: Seeing Women’s Work and Households in Global Production. Edited by Wilma Dunaway

Abstract: This collection’s subtitle aptly captures the editor’s objective: to make visible the diverse ways in which women’s labor is woven into the production networks that structure the world capitalist e...