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In conflict and post-conflict settings, the international community operates with the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda supporting gender equality. During and after war, gender roles are often deeply contested as part of larger societal transformations and uncertainties. In Somalia since the 1960s, gender identities and roles have undergone substantial changes, influenced by contemporary political systems, the women’s movement, civil war and religious transformations. The international community’s role in these societal transformations should not be over-estimated. Life history research with Somali women shows that debates on women’s roles in the public sphere are taking place irrespective of the international agenda. Somali women have, at least since the 1960s, held civil-political leadership positions, despite substantial disagreements on the public role of women in Somalia. Furthermore, the “international” and “local” are difficult to disentangle. The Somali female elite have often spent years abroad and introduced new gender perspectives from places as divergent as Egypt, Russia and the United States. Global cultural and religious trends are influencing post-war Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland. In this complex socio-cultural landscape, the international WPS agenda can support – but also risk delegitimizing – Somali processes and perspectives. The article illustrates the gap that exists between global norms and local realities by focusing on Somali discourse on women’s public roles and political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article accounts for and problematizes the process and development with the research tool and method, "the Life-Line", which we used in our project Gaming Moms. Juggling Time, Play and Everyday Life (Enevold & Hagström 2008a) to involve our informants in the production, outcome and consumption of research beyond merely being respondents to interview-questions. We propose to call the collaborative ethnography which resulted from this work "engaged cultural analysis". The Life-Line was one out of several methods employed in the study, conducted between 2008 and 2012. It combined Feminist Cultural Analysis with Scandinavian Ethnology and Game Studies to study how gaming restructured human lives and roles, and how roles and lives were restructured according to gaming, in everyday family life. We show here, how we used the Life-Line to reconstruct the "gaming lives" of a selection of informants, to illustrate the interweaving of gaming mothers' everyday work, play, and family life. We focused on the everyday digital playing practices of adult female gamers, because digital gaming is traditionally a highly-gendered leisure practice, dominated by maleidentified gamers. By studying non-traditional gamers, "gaming moms", the project aimed to nuance the common stereotype of the young male gamer in his bedroom and the stereotyped (non-gaming, often policing) mother, and take a measure of gender equality as regards play, work and time, in everyday life. This article, however, focuses on one of the methods used - the Life-Line. While we discuss the difficulties encountered and the remedial modifications made to our method, we also explain how this process was integral to the female players, who came out of the gaming closet to collaborate with us, realizing that they too are gamers. This newfound awareness was a significant goal of the project, and essential for the research to be engaged, an engaged cultural analysis; it enabled us to participate in creating a more equal game-cultural landscape accessible to players of all ages and genders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This essay analyzes the video games in the popular Diner Dash franchise, paying specific attention to the games' protagonist Flo. While on its surface, the series appears to be a number of simple games about a waitress, they reflect more complex themes about gender, empowerment, work, and play. Ultimately, I argue that the game series can be seen as an open-ended (producerly) text that invites several possible interpretations (and negotiations) of femininity. By understanding the games in this open-ended manner, we are able to see how different meanings can potentially reinforce beliefs about feminism and femininity with women players—rather than advocating specific kinds of feminisms, means to empowerment, or lifestyles. All of these issues coexist simultaneously within the Dash games, creating a rich potential for media studies analysis, and a better understanding of women's leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]