Search Results (7)

This article examines the ways in which lesbians explore opportunities and navigate constraints in their family and work lives in urban China. It not only reveals Chinese lesbians’ difficulties in gaining equal access to the labour market and developing their desired family lives, but also discusses possible ways of enhancing the applicability of the adult worker model for sexual minority women. Previous research has indicated a shift from the male breadwinner model to the adult worker model, suggesting that both men and women are expected to join the labour market, and that women should not carry all the care responsibilities within the family. However, the model largely overlooks the interplay of gender and sexuality factors in shaping work and family lives. This article adopts a qualitative mixed-methods approach, including interviews with 20 Chinese lesbians and social media analysis, to examine lesbians’ experiences of taking part in the family as adults and in the wider economy as workers. It shows how gender norms, heteronormativity, and policy intersect in generating obstacles for Chinese lesbians to thrive as respectable adult workers. This has important implications for attempts to improve the adult worker model to fit better with people’s diverse work/family needs. Full article

This paper investigates how young Japanese women in contemporary Soka Gakkai (SG) navigate Japan’s continuous gender stratified society that remains culturally rooted in the ‘salaryman-housewife’ ideology. How are young SG members reproducing or contesting these hegemonic gender norms that few seek to emulate? While SG has long proclaimed that it stands for gender equality, its employment structure and organization in Japan until recently reflected the typical male breadwinner ideology that came to underpin the post-war Japanese nation-state and systemic gender division of labor. As shown here, this did not mean that SG women were without power; in fact, in many ways they drove organizational developments in the Japanese context. The recent imposition of the global framework for Sustainable Development Goals of 2015 has enabled SG to more substantially challenge its own patriarchal public front. Based on long-term fieldwork, in-depth interviews and multiple group discussions with SG members in their 20s, this article explores how SG-Japan is being challenged to follow its own discourse of ‘globalism’ and ‘Buddhist humanism’, promoted by Daisaku Ikeda since the 1990s. Using Bourdieu’s analysis of symbolic power, the research shows how Japan’s powerful doxa of ‘genderism’ that held sway over earlier generations is currently being challenged by a glocalized Buddhist discourse that identifies Nichiren Buddhism as ‘humanism’ rather than Japanese ‘genderism’. Full article

Scholars have assumed that as gender revolutions are completed and societies achieve advanced levels of gender egalitarianism, married persons become happier, and marriages become stable. This study investigates how the norms about gender roles are associated with marital instability. The analysis is based on two propositions: (1) marital dissolution is an outcome of two rather distinct processes, deterioration of marital quality and formation of a decision to leave a marriage, and (2) the antithesis of advanced gender egalitarianism is a set of lingering male breadwinner norms, not gender inequality often manifested by working women performing second shifts. The data are from 68 national surveys conducted in 2002 and 2012 through ISSP coordination, and the sample of person-level analysis is restricted to ages 30–49, supposedly in the life cycle stages of family formation and expansion. The norms of gender roles are classified into four types: traditional norm, prescribing gendered division of labor; lingering male breadwinner norm, emphasizing men as the primary breadwinners while allowing flexibility of women’s roles; super woman norm, prescribing women to perform double roles; and egalitarian norm, emphasizing equal sharing of roles. At the country level, aggregate variables were constructed by calculating the percentage of adults who held each type of norm. The results strongly support the prediction that the male breadwinner norm at the societal level is detrimental to marital quality, while persons holding the egalitarian norm are most satisfied with their family lives. Full article

In China’s labor market, the traditional patterns of “male breadwinners, female housewives” have been changing noticeably, whereas such patterns remain unchanged in the household production field. This phenomenon greatly affects gender equality and social sustainability. Until now, most of the studies have focused on the attribution of micro-factors (e.g., individual income, education level, and time availability) to the formation of this pattern. However, the effect of macro-region factors (e.g., the regional economic development, population composition, employment, and gender norms) on the distribution of housework have been rarely studied. In this study, the data from the China General Social Survey (2015CGSS) and the China Genuine Progress Indicator Survey (2017CGPiS) of Beijing Normal University were comprehensively analyzed. On that basis, a gender norms index was first constructed to measure regional differences in gender concepts. Moreover, this study, by considering macro-region-varying factors, suggested that the synergetic effect between all of the mentioned factors could significantly impact the distribution of housework, especially in eastern China. Nevertheless, in western China, the effect of male gender norms on the distribution of housework is significantly more serious than that of female gender norms, which inspires the authors of this study to strengthen the male’s family consciousness education. All of the mentioned findings could help formulate region-differentiated policies and strategies to achieve more reasonably and sustainably distributed housework in China. Full article

Since the early 1990s, the diversity of work–family arrangement models has increased in Spain. It is difficult to understand this phenomenon without attending to the Spanish population’s preferences for such models. This article analyses the attitudes towards gender roles, and family model preferences within a normative and socio-structural framework. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme 2012, we developed descriptive and explanatory analyses. The findings reveal contradictions between attitudes towards the mother’s and father’s work intensity and gender roles that seem to be resolved through preferences for a “hybrid” or “adaptive” family model. We also identified the determinants of family model preferences for both men and women. The results show that gender plays a significant role in explaining preferences (women are less likely than men to prefer the male-breadwinner family model) and that socio-structural factors such as age, education level, immigrant condition, religious status and social class influence the preferences of men and women differently. Ultimately, these results contrast with Hakim’s Preference Theory, which emphasises individuals’ choices over socio-structural factors as determinants of family models, and align with Crompton’s and Pfau-Effinger’s theories. Full article

In the last decade, a growing empirical work has focused on adaptation processes of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries who live in the West, particularly Muslim youth born and/or educated in Western countries. The current study explored how Muslim boys and girls immigrated from Morocco, Egypt and Pakistan negotiate their identity on the base of interiorized social and cultural in-group norms associated to the representation of a “good” son and a “good” daughter within the resettlement society. Participants were 45 Muslim immigrant adolescents (30 females, 15 males) coming from Morocco, Egypt and Pakistan, who were interviewed through an in-depth semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis carried out on the interview transcripts permitted to identify four themes and thirteen subthemes, revealing interesting differences based on participants’ gender and country of origin. The quality of being obedient and respectful of parents’ desires was a significant common topic among all participants, although it was differently articulated by girls and boys. For girls, norms and expectations were strictly modeled around staying at home and preserving heritage culture. For boys, a heavy mandate—that is, gaining educational success in order to become the breadwinner—weights on them. Implications of these gender-based challenges are discussed in relation to specific vulnerabilities experienced by young Muslims living in Western society. Full article

This paper contributes to the understanding of gender aspects in the intra-household sharing of income. I estimate models of differences in financial satisfaction between household partners using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, which allows one to account for household-level fixed effects. The paper adds to the literature a further convincing rejection of the equal sharing hypothesis. What is more and novel, the results imply that unequal income sharing is asymmetric and triggered by the relative employment statuses of the partners: in male breadwinner households, the women’s well-being is affected by the distribution factor; in double full-time couples, it is the man’s well-being. Full article