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This article seeks to examine the representation of masculinities and femininities in the renowned South Indian drama film The Great Indian Kitchen. The research construes the manner in which the two dominant genders promote and/or modify patriarchal norms within the institution of family. The functioning of women as ancillary members of patriarchy, the interplay between masculinities and femininities, their evolution in contemporary times, etc., are also critically engaged in the paper. The paper argues that the movie The Great Indian Kitchen not only illustrates different masculinities and femininities but also reconstructs the patriarchal family structure which institutionalises gender inequality. It further argues that the movie proposes an alternative image of the family based on gender equality, where men and women live with mutual respect and complementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There appears to be a globally unifying discourse that suggests Muslim communities are not supportive of girls' education12. This paper aims to destabilize such a discourse by inserting the narratives of Muslim parents pursuing girls' education in Assam's Nagaon district. By paying attention to the concepts of bhal suwali (good girlhood) and bhal ghor (good family) articulated by parents in my study, this paper connects the performances of certain types of gender practices with the pursuit of class aspirations. It shows that good girlhood works as symbolic capital that helps Muslim parents to culturally authorize their daughters as legitimate actors in the field of education, while legitimizing themselves as good family. This paper draws attention to three practices of respectable femininity through which good girlhoods are enacted in the field of education, namely: negotiating poverty respectably, prioritizing gendered discipline, and merging career aspirations with marital prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns physicality and the tendency to operate within bounds of familiar repertoires of embodiment. It questions the degree to which habitual ways in which we pose, repose, and action our bodies are authentic as opposed to constructed artifacts of our enculturation. With reference to notions of 'neutrality' as raised in Lecoq training and the Feldenkrais Method, this paper aims – though suggested autoethnographic exploratory practice – to bring awareness to habitual ways in which each of us embody gender. It highlights means by which educators can direct the focus of those with whom we work toward recognizing and deconstructing aspects of embodied gender behaviors that may be inherently, but not obviously, inequitable. Attending to these issues within spheres of education has the scope to safeguard the social and emotional well-being of those not inclined to embody in accordance with hegemonic gender norms and to broaden attitudes toward embodied expressive possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using femme theory, Foucault, and queer failure as analytical frameworks, the current paper demonstrates the role of feminine failure in resisting and subverting systems of oppression, subsequently providing the minute shifts in power necessary to expand the terms of patriarchal femininity. More specifically, the current paper draws on contemporary modes of art and aesthetics to examine the productive potential of failing to embody patriarchal femininity, positing this failure as a form of femme resistance. By hijacking cultural signifiers of adornment, femme and feminine failure celebrate that which is culturally shamed (queer, fat, disabled, variant, poor, and racially minoritised bodies), expose systems of erasure, challenge binary systems of meaning, and promote feminine growth. Examining each of these themes in turn, the current paper argues that feminine failure challenges the pillars of patriarchal femininity and discursive systems of normativity. To this end, femme as a theoretical framework demonstrates the freedom of failure by exposing the heterogeneous multiplicities of femininity, and offering possibilities that normativity never could. This critical discursive essay contributes to the emergent application of femme as a theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sub-Saharan Africa, water insecurity is intertwined with gender and sociocultural norms. While extensive scholarship exists on gender-water relations in the region, it predominantly focuses on women's roles and responsibilities, seldom considering the role of masculinities. This paper examines masculinities, gender relations, and women's embodied experiences of water insecurity. It situates women's embodied experiences of water insecurity within household and community masculinities. The study was conducted in Lilongwe, Malawi, and data were drawn from interviews, focus groups, observations, and household surveys. The findings advance the gender-water literature in at least three significant ways. First, they demonstrate how gendered labour underpins women's embodied experiences of water insecurity. Second, they show that women's decisions and strategies for coping with water insecurity are themselves an embodied consequence of water insecurity. Finally, they illuminate how men's perceptions and constructions of masculinity, expressed through marital expectations of femininity, shape women's embodied experiences of water insecurity. Together, the findings reveal intricate intersections between masculinities, gender relations, and women's everyday embodied experiences of water insecurity, validating the body as a significant site of geographic inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to explore young children's construction of femininities in a kindergarten in Indonesia. Using a postdevelopmentalist and postcolonial approach, this paper seeks to understand how young children in the school develop, negotiate and resist existing gender construction. This paper is based on an ethnography research conducted in 2010 for eight months. Findings of this study reveal that discourse of femininities in the school is situated in the discourse of a princess. This paper argues that there are multiple meanings attached to the discourse of a princess. It does not only become a signifier for femininity, but it also acts as a signifier for social class. The findings also suggest that the discourse perpetuates the legacy of colonisation in the school. It is, then, recommended that, in order for kindergarten teachers to be able to disrupt the construction of femininities, they need to be able to understand multiple meaning of femininities as well as power relation embodied in the construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Australian Chinese diaspora's digital dating experiences afforded by both Chinese-language and global English digital dating/hook-up services. Digital dating offers an interesting context for an analysis of the Australian Chinese diaspora's interracial romantic and sexual engagements, through which we can examine how race, and its intersections with ethnicity, gender and sexuality is represented, consumed, and practised. We were able to reach three conclusions from the participant experiences presented in this article. First, digital dating and its constitutive norms play a role in maintaining certain tropes of cultural representation of racial subjects and securing cultural power within an overarching system of white racial entitlement. Second, we found that agency is key to understanding the female participants' dating experiences. Third, the male participants tended to form negative and sometimes distorted social perceptions of white Australian women as a result of being neglected on English-language dating sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper complicates notions of Black girlhood by examining the dual experiences of gendered racism that result in both strength and sadness in Black girls’ educational experiences. I highlight the need for a curriculum of liberation to combat historical and current social conditions negatively impacting school-aged Black girls, such as harsh disciplinary practices, low academic expectations, and sexual objectification. The Super-Girl phenomenon serves as a metaphor illustrating the balance and imbalance of multiple social constructs. Utilising constructivist grounded theory [Charmaz, K. 2006.Constructing Grounded Theory. London: Sage], the key concepts in the research derived directly from the voices of 18 school-aged girls (8–13) as well as my observations, interpretations, and related experiences. Data collection utilising observation notes, interviews, written responses, and activity products provided from monthly sessions over the course of two years, offer critical insight into some of the complexities of Black girlhood. The most striking common themes abstracted from their voices were concepts related to ‘strength’ and ‘sadness’ in their lives. Thematic narratives were found to be most relevant to (1) negative teacher–student relationships, as well as, (2) policed bodies and sexual objectification. This work offers specific recommendations for future girl empowerment programming, curriculum, and evidence-based intervention development that can aide in liberating Black girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this paper is to explore how female players of Basque pelota (pelotaris) construct their gender identity in a traditionally masculine sport. The theory of performativity is used to understand how females negotiate, resist or challenge the dominant gender discourse. Data were collected through 10 in-depth interviews with players. Through inductive analysis we found that the sociocultural context surrounding Basque pelota reinforces the binary system of gender embodiment, which includes hegemonic masculinities and idealised femininities. However, our findings also suggest that whilst some players adhere to this dominant discourse, others actively resist and transgress it through the embodiment of alternative identities. In doing this, these players create new and inclusive identities, therefore escaping a simplistic binary and embracing a multiplicity of gender identities. As a result, they can become active agents in the promotion of equity in sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a critical discourse analysis of teacher resource materials about girl bullying. The ‘mean girl’ phenomenon has been widely taken up as one of the current key narratives about schools and school girls. This paper argues for the importance of understanding the origins of this discourse within behavioural psychology, which coined the term ‘relational aggression’ to describe what is purported to be a uniquely female form of aggression. Our analysis problematises the ways in which this discourse reinforces gendered binaries and pathologises girls’ aggression. We trace the emergence of an ‘expert culture', exemplified by the texts we analyse, which disseminates this discourse and limits the range of ways in which girls’ aggression and friendships may be understood. We critique the raced and classed ways in which these texts establish hegemonic forms of white, middle-class girlhood. We show how the texts draw on neo-liberal ideologies of idealised forms of subjectivity and function as a mechanism for shaping these subjectivities within schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mainstream nightlife has traditionally been a space marked by compulsory (hetero) sexuality and heteronormativity, making it a key arena for exploring gendered power relations and sexual harassment. In this paper, women's experiences of unwanted attention in nightlife are explored to shed light on these gendered power relations in contemporary nightlife. The article is based on 50 in-depth qualitative interviews with Norwegian women aged 18–34 years. Three discourses of gender relations in nightlife are identified: a vulnerability discourse, constructing nightlife as a dangerous space for women; an equality discourse, emphasizing women's equal rights in nightlife; and a feminine power discourse, presenting women's role as objects of sexual desire as a source of gendered power for women. This article points to both changes and continuities in the norms governing women's participation in nightlife and the patterns of heterosexual interactions in Norwegian nightlife. These changes seem to be closely connected to the performances of different and new femininities in nightlife settings. Despite the prevalence of an 'egalitarian' femininity in nightlife, the article argues that this comes with its own restraints on women participating in nightlife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science education has a seemingly intractable gender problem and remains largely the reserve of White, middle-class men and boys, especially in the physical sciences. In this paper, taking an intersectional approach to Butler's idea of identity as performance, we explore the affordances and limitations of a specific science learning space (a science museum) for girls. We discuss four types of performance, one based on 'good' behaviour, one combining masculinity and 'race'/ethnicity, one of silence and one based on being 'cool'. We focus on the experiences of 25 girls aged 12-13, from a mixture of ethnic backgrounds, from two inner-city, state-run, co-educational London schools, in the UK. We argue that the museum space put girls in a difficult position for both learning science and enacting the identities they were invested in. We conclude by reflecting on the implications for science learning spaces that disrupt rather than reproduce social inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teaching of young children or Foundation Phase (FP) teaching as it is known in South Africa continues to be regarded as 'women's work'. Lately South African research has focused on encouraging men's participation as FP teachers. In this paper, we offer a critical examination of how South African primary school teachers 'embrace' the need for men in FP by drawing on discursive strategies that view men as vital male role models for young girls. This contrasts more common role modelling discourses which call for male teachers to act as role models for boys. One argument put forth was that male FP teachers could help shape acceptable ways of 'doing girl'. Secondly, a 'daddy's girl' discourse was used to construct male teachers as favourable role models for girls. Lastly, male teachers were considered as role models in order to expose girls to alternate, non-violent and caring masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the postion of feminine boys in the literature on gender and childhood. I argue that there has been little systematic research carried out on feminine boys, and that this is the case for several reasons. I start by discussing how researchers tend to focus on dominant narratives, with the result that alternative positions are either ignored or treated as straightforwardly subordinate. Following that, I consider some of the problems associated with how we define femininity in boys, and difficulties related to naming a boy as feminine. I then call into question the assumption that feminine boys are always subordinate in schools and related settings, and discuss spaces of resistance. Finally, I suggest ways in which research could move forward in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are striking gaps between Roma and non-Roma higher education (HE) participation rates, with less than 1% of Roma possessing a tertiary-level qualification [United Nations Development Programme, World Bank and European Commission. 2011a. "The Situation of Roma in 11 EU Member States." Accessed 3 April 2015. http://issuu.com/undp_in_europe_cis/docs/_roma_ at_a_glance_web/1#download]. As the Decade of Roma Inclusion (2005-2015) closes, this renders the present a salient moment to reflect on Roma students' HE experiences. Widening educational access for marginalised groups raises specific questions about where responsibility for doing so lies - with tensions between individualised articulations of raising aspiration and notions of collective responsibility framed in a social justice agenda. Drawing on interviews with five Roma women students, this paper unpacks the contradictions between desiring access to HE for individual self-betterment and concurrent pulls towards educating for the wider benefit of 'improving' Roma communities. Using Ahmed's [2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press] work on institutional belonging, we explore the specifically gendered nature of these narratives in how 'doubly' marginalised bodies are positioned as outsiders, in receipt of an educational gift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper turns to debates in post-critical public pedagogy to focus on how a small body of films might potentially work as vehicles for teaching and learning about youth, gender and space. It is argued that representations of the rural shape what is possible for girlhood, being both enabling and constraining for the subject. Framed by discourses around the politics of representing the rural, a range of popular Australian films will be analysed to think about how popular film might use representations of the rural to educate spectators about girls as ‘successful’, ‘in crisis’ and/or as girls asserting ‘girlpower’. The films include four key Australian ‘coming of age’ films about girls growing up in rural/rural coastal locales:Peachesset in a sleepy town on the banks of the Murray River,Somersaultset in the frozen wilderness of Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains,Caterpillar Wishset in the coastal town full of secrets and lies, and in Indigenous film maker Ivan Sen'sBeneath Clouds, showing the Country passed through during a rural New South Wales road trip. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores how opposite sides of the abortion debate employ a discourse of endangerment to mobilise political support for their ideologies about black women’s bodies. I examine the role of black women within that rhetorical strategy through various rhetorical artefacts. To analyse these artefacts, I employ the theoretical framework of ideological or ideographic criticism. This framework helps us see how the artefacts used by both pro and anti-choice movements ‘condition’ the audience not merely to adopt a set of ‘beliefs and behavior, but a vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior and belief’. Though the two sides of the abortion debate differ in their overt political views, they turn out to share an implicit ideology about black women. This ideology prevents the voices of black women from being heard and valued in a debate that is nonetheless focused on black women’s bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural stories provide us with a repertoire of narratives through which we interpret and construct our understandings of the world, including our gendered understandings of the early childhood teacher. Through her notion ofécriture feminine, Cixous [1976. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Trans K. Cohen and P. Cohen.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society1 (4): 875–893] wrote of countering systems of cultural texts that inscribe women as ‘other’. In this paper, I conduct a critical analysis of Disney’sMaleficent(2014), a recent and often deemed feminist adaptation of theSleeping Beautytale, to inform our understanding of the challenges faced in rewriting public perceptions of the childcare teacher in Canada today. The early childhood teacher is often constrained within gendered expectations and attempts to revise the ways society values their professional status have yet to be achieved. The analysis suggests thatMaleficentoffers positive directions for change, however persistent constraints on feminine identities may be particularly difficult to retract in women whose work involves significant caring and other-directedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the spatial component of gender relations through an analysis of contemporary gender relations in rural Sweden. We use the concept of local gender contracts, analysing their nature and transformation in various contexts. When gendered practices are analysed at local level, negotiations about the gendering of everyday practices become visible. The focus is on analysing the (informal) strategies in such negotiations and how people act and react in relation to them. The results point to two alternative strategies. Women and men either adapt to the mainstream gender contract of the region, and adhere to it regardless of changes in society’s demands, or challenge existing norms, practices and representations in their public and/or private lives, according to changes in local conditions. The local context is thus active in reproducing and maintaining, as well as transforming, gender relations and thereby reshaping the gender contract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws attention to gendered inequalities in relation to pedagogic participation, the politics of difference and the concept of ‘shame’. I use the term ‘pedagogic participation’ to illuminate the relationship between formations of difference, policy concerns to improve ‘equity’ and higher education participation in and across contested pedagogical spaces. Engaging feminist critiques and analyses of pedagogical practices and ‘inclusion’, I consider possibilities for creating ‘parity of participation’ in relation to the social justice struggles of redistribution, recognition, representation and embodied subjectivities. How might students and teachers create spaces for the parity of participation across and among these three inter-related social justice domains and formations of difference in ways that acknowledge the lived and embodied politics of emotion and shame? Through exploring this question, I aim to re/imagine difference as a critical resource for opening up ethical, praxis-based pedagogical spaces and relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Irish mental health policy and care provision is criticised for being gender-neutral despite gender being present in almost every aspect of illness; from risk to protection; symptom interpretation; diagnosing, ideology and knowledge of illnesses. The aim of this paper was to present the views of Irish service users and providers in relation to symptom expressions, gender awareness and care provision. A qualitative social realist design was used using Layder's (1998) adaptive theory and social domains theory. In-depth interviews (n = 54) with 26 service users and 28 service providers were conducted within one mental health service in Ireland. Dominant societal expectations for men and women are described in response to symptom expressions that reflect ‘categorical’ and ‘performative’ understandings of gender. A return of interest to symptoms-based research and practice from a gendered perspective is argued for. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the role that gender and age play in female crime and delinquency in Portugal, drawing on the voices of female offenders across different generations—childhood, youth, and adulthood. Based on the analysis of 49 interviews with female offenders, it explores the ways in which these girls and women construct and account for their own criminal behavior. The results reveal a kaleidoscope of changes cutting across generational groups, punctuated by increasing involvement of younger groups in offending as a form of emancipation. Young and older female offenders show different patterns of offending, which reflect multiple and ambivalent old and new forms of femininity. Girls' and women's paths both to and in offending have their own idiosyncrasies. They also reflect the way gender is being constantly reconfigured and reconstructed through time, and in different social and institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The past two decades has seen widespread academic and public concern about boys' academic achievement and the emergence of discourses that identify girls as academic 'winners' in the primary classroom; however, this article aims to problematise these trends. Drawing on ethnographic research carried out in a primary school classroom in London, this article draws attention to 'boysplaining,' a set of behaviours carried out by certain boys which constituted a form of hegemonic masculinity in this classroom. Boysplaining, a younger version of mansplaining, manifested both verbally and physically, and appears to affect how girls navigate the classroom. This research indicates how boysplaining disadvantages girls, raising questions about the extent to which girls are 'winning' in primary school classrooms today. The article calls for further research on boysplaining in other classrooms, in particular to examine the academic, social and emotional consequences of these behaviours on girls and non-hegemonic boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The undervaluing of early years educators reflects entrenched societal beliefs. We analyse representations of early years educators in 32 popular media texts through the lens of scholarship on care work and Bourdieu's notion of symbolic capital, with the view that working conditions for educators and symbolic representations of educators reinforce one another. The majority of the texts present images that reinforce societal assumptions about the early years educator as relatively unskilled and peripheral. One media text, Little Acorns [2016a. Bad Parents [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/%5fqrdruNu768; 2016b. Sleazy Dad [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/8NIlvNIl1lU], offered portrayals of female educators as complex characters with varied capacities and agencies. We argue that Little Acorns provides a beginning point for imagining forms of feminist success that are inclusive of educators, namely by placing educators and their work as central to the narrative, and that interrogating these popular media representations can contribute to attending to the rights of the predominantly female, working-class, and diverse early childhood workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the history of stock-car racing in South Africa's capital city until 1968. By reconstructing the histories of two raceways in Pretoria, it shows how stock-car and oval-track racing helped to (re)inscribe the cityscape. It draws attention to the contentious, at times symbiotic, relationship between the city council and the sport of stock-car racing in the context of shifting ideas around the respectable consumption of automobiles. It also analyses the entwinement of this history with other pastimes/subcultures. Finally, it shows that involvement (whether as participants or spectators) in oval-track racing created the conditions necessary for the production of alternative yet completely viable scripts of how to be white in Pretoria during the 1950s and the 1960s. Evidence is drawn from archival sources, popular print media, and ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a study of selfies posted on Instagram by a group of predominantly white, college women at a large public university in the US South. Selfies are used as data to explore how performances of traditional femininity are legitimated, authorized, and reinscribed through photo-posting practices. The authors argue that these performances circulate a public pedagogy of femininity and contribute to notions of traditional gender roles and physical attractiveness that reinforce classed and raced norms of beauty. The selfies, which idealize the southern lady [McPherson, Tara. 2003. Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South. Durham: Duke University Press], characterize a particularly regionalized type of self-promotion in the visual economy facilitated by Instagram. Drawing on theorizations of postfeminism, the authors describe how the hyperfemininity performed in these selfies can be interpreted within the morass of neoliberal discourses that on one hand encourage women's adoption of traditional gender practices while at the same time discourage the critique of systems that marginalize women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents, especially mothers, have been increasingly positioned as a central determinant of children's educational outcomes. Analysing articles from a Canadian parenting magazine, this study explores and compares understandings of what it means to be an involved parent in a child's education during two time periods: 1993–1995 and 2013–2015. Findings suggest that involved parenting with respect to children's education is complex and intensive, occurring in both the home and the school. Over time the necessity of parental involvement became more taken-for-granted and the ideal parental role moved from one of providing direct assistance to children to one of creating the right environment for children to take self-responsibility; a shift that involved more emotion management on the part of mothers. These changes are analysed in the context of neoliberal understandings and intensive mothering with attention paid to class and gender implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report discusses feminist and gender geographies in Ireland. We first focus on the ways in which gender constructs Irish geographies, updating numbers of women in academic positions across Ireland. This shows that women are increasingly in secure positions, but remain under-represented in more senior positions. We then turn to research. We discuss how femininities and women, and masculinities and men, have been addressed in Irish geographies. The focus on femininities and women is crucial given recent strides towards gender and reproductive justice. We then briefly summarise sexualities work. The report concludes by arguing that Ireland not only has vibrant gender/feminist geographical scholarship, it also has significant potential for emerging research and developing new theorisations and research agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an overview of feminist and gender research over two decades, this article reflects on feminist geographies in Norway within a wider political and social context. We identify eight broad, partly overlapping themes of feminist geography: rurality; development policies and practices; entrepreneurship and economic change; migration and mobility; children and youth; sexuality and health; landscape and place; and emotions and autobiography. We find that much of the research has been collaborative, interdisciplinary, multicultural, and transnational. Feminist geographies in Norway are characterized by increasing emphasis on multiple realities and situatedness, and focus on rights and power relations among men and women in all spheres of society, including academia. Yet the gender dimension has tended to focus on geographies of women, with few studies of masculinity. Inspired in part through feminist critiques of research practices in social sciences, a recent development has been autobiographical approaches examining the significance of personal lives and emotions for the research process. We conclude that feminist geographies in Norway are diverse, empirically and contextually informed, and have become embedded within several fields of human geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular romance fiction was thought to carry a patriarchal ideology and was often dismissed as a manifestation of ingrained prejudice and bigotry against the female sex. However, there appears to have been influence from feminism, particularly where Harlequin Mills and Boon stories use the contemporary world and 'reality' as a touchstone. In this article I will discuss how the heroines of Harlequin Mills and Boon postmillennial 'Modern' novels display various expressions of feminism which contribute to the construction of their identities but that ultimately these tales rely on the dismantling of these autonomous identities sine the heroine is still required to be 'swept off her feet'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on data from an ethnographic case study that examined how pupils’ gendered identities are constructed in one rural secondary school in Scotland. We utilise the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to provide theoretical insight into how and why pupils take up particular gendered positions in school, focusing on the influence of teacher-pupil interactions. The findings suggest that some teachers reinforce traditional constructs of masculinities and femininities, and fail to disrupt boys’ views of girls as objects of desire. Teachers are also seen to reinforce gender stereotypes in their understandings of the rural landscape as an exclusive site for constructing masculine identities. We claim that this potentially limits pupils’ educational experiences. We conclude by suggesting that there is a need for teachers to develop deeper, more sophisticated understandings of gender, an area currently neglected in Scottish educational policy and teacher education programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the implementation of a full-day kindergarten programme in Ontario, Canada. Key to the implementation of this programme has been a new kind of educator team consisting of a certified teacher and a registered early childhood educator and a complementary partnership in which each team member contributes equally. Our research examined team members' perceptions and practices related to their roles and responsibilities. Findings suggest that the care work for which early childhood educators are disproportionally responsible is accorded less value and status than the work of educating children. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the care/education split, the social reproduction of care work and social inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the perspectives of 10 White British girls eligible for Free School Meals as they transfer from English primary to secondary schools. Having identified the discourses relevant to the girls at transition -good girl, girl power, hyper-femininity, authenticity, 'challenges at home', 'friends as family' and standards -the article uses Foucault to theorise these examples, reflecting on the complexity of associated power, resistance and resilience. The article continues by drawing on the multiplicity of resistance to these discourses to identify the girl's developing intrinsic strengths and argues that these should be used both a starting point and a structure for supporting them through discourse negotiation at secondary transition and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis in this article contrasts indigenous irrigation systems with modern water engineering in Peru to denaturalize and de-normalize the binary gendered associations through which the modern engineering water profession has come to be defined. We present evidence that suggests a gradual historical change in the main source(s) and bearers of water authority in Peru; from the divine to science and from priests to modern engineers. This change has gone accompanied with a distinct masculinization of formal water rights and powers. Yet, remnants from the earlier and more gender-dual past remain visible in actual water distribution and governance processes, which mix and combine more modern engineering knowledges with insights from Inka and pre-Inka histories. By not a priori singling out men as the privileged bearers of water expertise or authority, these hybrid forms of water management in Peru may provide promising entry-point for designing and constructing systems that are better attuned to the combined goals of environmental sustainability and social equity, while also helping make the water engineering profession more hospitable to women and ‘non-modern’ men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the cognitive behavioural rehabilitation programmes run by the probation service in the UK. Drawing on Judith Butler's assertion that both sex and gender are discursively produced and Becky Francis' notion of gender monoglossia and heteroglossia, the article seeks to analyse and problematise the gendered discourses of facilitation that were mobilised by policy-makers and practitioners in this setting. The dominant institutional model of heteronormative facilitation promoted the ideal of each programme being delivered by one female and one male facilitator in order to provide a gender ‘balance’. But underpinning this ideal lay the binarised and essentialist notion that ‘masculinity’ arose naturally from the male body and ‘femininity’ from the female body. Female facilitators were positioned as bringing a calming and non-threatening atmosphere to the group and as naturally possessing skills of ‘empathy’ and ‘warmth’. Male facilitators were highly valued by managers, but were also under pressure to perform masculinity in very specific ways that were linked to notions of intellectual, rational, ‘middle-class’ masculinity. Through an analysis of interviews with probation practitioners and session observations, the article highlights that despite these dominant institutional constructions, a variety of complex and contradictory performances of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ were mobilised in this environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on findings from an auto/biographical study about relationships with food to demonstrate how everyday foodways continue to be influenced by the intersectionalities of gender and class. Following Bourdieu [1984.Distinction, a social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge] how ‘foodies’ use food and foodways (the production, preparation, serving and eating of food) as a material and cultural display of capital (Johnston, J., & Baumann, S. 2010.Foodies, democracy and distinction in the gourmet kitchen. London: Routledge) or even ‘culinary capital’ (Naccarato, P., & LeBesco, K. 2012.Culinary capital. London: Berg) has been demonstrated. There has been less work exploring how mothers use ‘feeding the family’ (DeVault, M. I. 1991.Feeding the family. London: University of Chicago Press) as a source of cultural capital for themselves. Three-quarters of the 75 respondents in my UK study were parents andallmothers with dependant children fed their family ‘healthy’ food as a means of performing a particular middle-class habitus. I therefore examine how mothers engaged in ‘healthy’ foodwork as a means of positioning themselves as ‘good’ mothers or ‘yummy mummies’ (Allen, K., & Osgood, J. 2009.Studies in the Maternal,1). Indeed, despite decades of gender equality in the public sphere and neo-liberal assertions regarding individualism, ‘feeding the family’ (DeVault, 1991) continues to be a highly gendered activity, with the added pressure of now having to provide ‘healthy’ food cooked from scratch. In these accounts, convenience foods and/or ‘unhealthy’ family foodways were vilified and viewed with disgust, with an adherence to ‘healthy’ family foodways used as a means of drawing boundaries within fields of ‘organised striving’ (Martin, J. 2011.On the explanation of social action, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Savage, M., & Silva, E. B. 2013.Cultural Sociology,7, 111–126). This article considers ‘healthy’ foodwork as a significant aspect of ‘good’ middle-class mothering, whereby ‘healthy’ family foodways become significant in the performance and display of ‘proper’ middle-class femininity that pathologises alternative family foodways and ‘other’ femininities. This serves to illuminate continuities within the intersectionalities of gender and class, with a commitment to ‘healthy’ family foodways central to ‘future oriented’ (middle classed) maternal identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We theorise an interdisciplinary arts practice university course and consider the forms of educational imaginary challenged by our curriculum. We argue for the disruptive and generative potential of what we call diffractive pedagogy as an example of the type of learning that can take place when materiality and entanglement are considered as vital constituents. Through self-expression and interweaving across disciplinary boundaries, the potential to produce, embody and theorise simultaneously can be realised. Student bodies do not exist in isolation from one another, or from the environment. It is indeed impossible to separate the dancer from the dance, the teacher from the student, and the bodies from the environments and objects to which they relate. This being true, our student body reproduced our teaching bodies as abject, as messy and peripheral to their imaginings of university education. Materially, student bodies remade the limits to which their consciousness was imaginatively drawn. Through our embodied work, unconscious change began the processes of affecting students’ imaginaries of university education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is based on a study of young people's understandings and experiences of body work (or body modification) in relation to gender and health. Drawing on feminist and Deleuzian–Spinozan approaches to the body, the article explores the embodied sensations, or affects, associated with the body's physical modification through cosmetic surgery as one practice of body work. This approach pursues a non-dualist analysis of the body and contributes to new understandings of body-modification practices such as cosmetic surgery as processes influenced, and informed, by affect. Through examples of differing experiences and trajectories relating to the practice of cosmetic surgery, which has long been a contentious issue in feminism, the article makes evident what a feminist Deleuzian approach means in practice and what it can contribute to analyses of the body in/and society. This approach can assist in exploring the complex ways in which gendered embodiments assemble, and in understanding the dynamics and processes informing differing bodily possibilities related to gender. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Through the use of feminist poststructural discourse analysis (Baxter 2003), the author examines the gendered discourses created and reified by a group of preservice secondary social studies teachers (n = 25). Because gender is socially constructed, it is important for future teachers to examine their own gendered identities in order for them to be able to see how they contribute to the greater society. Findings reveal discourses of ‘having it all', ‘being a superwoman', ‘female struggle', and ‘gender not playing a key role in culture’ being advanced by both male and female identified individuals. Intersections of race and social class with gender added to the complexity of the different discourses. Implications for teacher education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the part that gender negotiations are playing in the making of Sudanese identity in Athens at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In an attempt to define the Sudanese version of the Athenian story, Sudanese men and women who undertake collective action rework differentiate them from newcomers and other Africans. The vindication of Arabness requires boundary work in which women and men perform different tasks in order to get recognition and elaborate their mobility story. The positioning of the Sudanese in the ethnic constellation of Athens is made possible through a gendered division of symbolic and material labor that takes place within the frame of the Sudanese Women’s Association. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In South African society, the custom of bridewealth [in Zulu:ilobolo] is widely upheld, although its current practice may constrain marriage in African society. The custom is persistent particularly in South African Zulu society and has been understood as symbolising a man’s masculinity and role as economic provider. In this article, we focus on how a sample of Zulu women views bridewealth, and on the role that women play in the practice and maintenance of the custom. Drawing from extensive qualitative data recently collected in KwaZulu-Natal, we illustrate how the women in our study construct multifaceted femininities throughilobolo.The custom sustains a widely desired and respected notion of womanhood based on “traditional” conceptions of Zulu female propriety, dignity and cultural pride. Socio-economic considerations and complex gendered power dynamics also explain why women actively contribute to upholding the custom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, a feminist poststructuralist approach to discourse analysis is applied to examine the accounts of 35 Vincentian women and men on men's enactment of a range of violent, controlling and coercive acts in heterosexual relationships. The social languages participants employ in their explanations of men's abusive practices, and how these implicate particular gendered subject positions are discussed. Nested within this discussion is an exploration of how women's personal autonomy is regulated and contested in the context of violent intimate unions. Acts of violence by men, coupled with the threat of violence and other forms of control, serve to limit women's ability to navigate between the so-called private/domestic and other social spaces. Similar limits do not exist for men in these unions. This double standard is often presented as an effect of traditional and/or transcendental arrangements of gender in men's narratives, while women range between subverting and affirming dominant scripts of womanhood and manhood in speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]