Food behaviors, both private and public, are deeply affected by gender norms concerning both masculinity and femininity. In some ways, food-centered activities constitute gender relations and identities across cultures. This entry provides a non-exhaustive overview of how gender norms bear on food behaviors broadly construed, focusing on three categories: food production, food preparation, and food consumption.

Trans and gender-nonconforming people sometimes say that certain gender norms are authentic for them. For example, a trans man might say that abiding by norms of masculinity tracks who he really is. Authenticity is sometimes taken to appeal to an essential, pre-social “inner self.” It is also sometimes understood as a moral notion. Authenticity claims about gender norms therefore appear inimical to two key commitments in feminist philosophy: that all gender norms are (...) socially constructed, and that many domains of gender norms are both morally and prudentially bad. I argue that that this apparent tension is illusory. Concordant with existing trans narratives of authenticity, I articulate an existentialist view that understands authenticity as a socially embedded, constructive project undertaken in a non-ideal social world, rather than a reflective uncovering of a pre-given, essential self. I then show that authenticity and morality can come apart; what is authentic for someone need not be either morally good or good for them. I conclude that the authenticity of gender norms does not cut against the feminist commitments that I identify. This conclusion enables a theoretical space that is both respectful of trans experience and critical of dominant gender norms, an important liberatory goal. (shrink)

The debate over the benefits of female representation in top management is ongoing, with some arguing it enhances decision-making quality by bringing diverse perspectives, while others seeing it as symbolic or even detrimental. To make progress on the debate, this study takes an institutional perspective to develop a theoretical account examining the gender norms that constraining the effect of female representation in top management teams (TMTs) on corporate financial fraud. We offer two main insights: (a) female TMT representation (...) is associated with lower incidence of corporate fraud, and (b) the relationship becomes weaker for firms domiciled in regions with gender inegalitarian norms or gender stereotypical norms that are more gender stratified. Results based on archival data about Chinese public firms, and simultaneous estimation of fraud commitment and detection probabilities, support our predictions. Several alternative econometric specifications, including (but not limited to), instrumental variable analysis and matched sample analysis, enhance confidence in the robustness of our findings. The findings of this study make important contributions to the literatures of managerial diversity, corporate fraud, and institutional norms. (shrink)

In this study, we explore the dimensions of local gender norms across U.S. commuting zones. Applying hierarchical cluster analysis with four established indicators of gender norms, we find that these local cultural environments are best conceptualized with a multilevel framework. Commuting zones can be differentiated between those that are egalitarian and those that are traditional. Within these general categories, however, exist more complex dimensions. Gender-traditional areas may be distinguished between traditional-breadwinning and traditional-essentialist, while egalitarian areas (...) are separated into those that are liberal-egalitarian and egalitarian-essentialist. Examining the factors sustaining this spatial variation, we test the role of compositional and contextual effects. We find limited support for compositional effects because commuting zone demographic makeup explains little variation in gender norm indicators. Instead, we find evidence that local gender norms are sustained through contextual effects where the experience of living in a particular environment shapes residents’ attitudes and behaviors. Contextual effects are exceptionally strong in areas with traditional gender norms, where residents who would otherwise hold gender-egalitarian perspectives have more traditional outlooks than those who share the same characteristics but reside in places with egalitarian gender norms. (shrink)

This paper argues that participating exclusively or predominantly in heterosexual romantic or sexual relationships is prima facie morally impermissible. It holds that this conclusion follows from three premises: (1) gender norms are on-balance harmful; (2) conforming to harmful social norms is prima facie morally impermissible; and (3) participating exclusively or predominantly in heterosexual romantic or sexual relationships is a way of conforming to gender norms.

Foreign nationals who marry U.S. citizens have an expedited track to naturalization. U.S. immigration officials require that “green card” petitioning couples demonstrate that their relationships are “valid and subsisting” and not fraudulent. These requirements are ostensibly gender and racially neutral, but migration itself is not; men and women petitioners seek partners in different regions and solicit advice from similar others about the potential obstacles to their petitions’ success. Using an online ethnography and textual analysis of conversation threads on a (...) large online immigration forum where U.S. petitioners exchange such information, I examine how gendered standards of legitimacy are applied to family and sexuality and used discursively among petitioners to achieve genuineness and define red flags indicating potential marriage fraud. I argue that forum members police immigration requests even before cases reach an immigration officer. Petitioners use the formal criteria of U.S. immigration in ways that reveal gender ideologies, expectations for conformity to a gendered hegemonic family ideal, and sexual double standards surrounding sexual agency, fertility, and desirability. These intersectional norms shape members’ online discussions about the suitability of marriages and of the migration of noncitizen partners to the United States. (shrink)

Biology is seen not merely as a privileged oppressor of women but as a co-victim of masculinist social assumptions. We see feminist critique as one of the normative controls that any scientist must perform whenever analyzing data, and we seek to demonstrate what has happened when this control has not been utilized. Narratives of fertilization and sex determination traditionally have been modeled on the cultural patterns of male/female interaction, leading to gender associations being placed on cells and their components. (...) We also find that when gender biases are controlled, new perceptions of these intracellular and extracellular relationships emerge. (shrink)

This paper investigates interdiscursivity in talk about gender norms in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer community. Drawing from field work conducted among gay and lesbian parents, transgender people, and the Drag King community, I show how accounts like les hommes sont comme ça or les femmes sont comme ça emerging in discourse about pregnancy reveal gender-based norms and their relationship to social conditions. Adopting a linguistic anthropology perspective, while paying particular attention to agency, categorization, circulation, (...) and recontextualization processes, I show how gender norms are constructed and deconstructed through interactional, semantic, and morphosyntactic patterns found in a variety of multisemiotic mediums and in a diversity of contexts. In addition to its contribution to the study of gender and language, this article takes new steps in the ongoing development of membership categorization analysis and queer linguistics. (shrink)

Abstract Under the realm of neurocultures the concept of the cerebral subject emerges as the central category to define the self, socio-cultural interaction and behaviour. The brain is the reference for explaining cognitive processes and behaviour but at the same time the plastic brain is situated in current paradigms of (self)optimization on the market of meritocracy by means of neurotechnologies. This paper explores whether neurotechnological apparatuses may—due to their hybridity and malleability—bear potentials for a change in gender based attributions (...) that have been historically legitimized by apparently natural differences between women and men. Or, in contrast, which gendered ascriptions are (again) produced in theories and applications according to the normative demands for the bio-techno-social cerebral subject situated in neoliberal power relations. An exploration of three main fields of current developments, the neurotechnological apparatus of brain-computer-interfaces, the technologies for brain tuning and the discourses in neuroeconomics, reveals first insights on these gender aspects in reliance with the ethical/political debate. Moreover, this paper concretizes questions for further research on gender and ethical aspects in the field of neurotechnologies. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-14 DOI 10.1007/s12152-011-9129-1 Authors Sigrid Schmitz, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Vienna, Alserstraße 23/22, 1080 Vienna, Austria Journal Neuroethics Online ISSN 1874-5504 Print ISSN 1874-5490. (shrink)

There are important similarities between moral thought and talk and thought and talk about gender: disagreements about gender, like disagreements about morality, seem to be intractable and to outstrip descriptive agreement; and it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be a woman in terms of particular social, biological, or other descriptive features, just as it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be good or right in terms of any (...) set of descriptive properties. These similarities give us reason to investigate the idea that, like moral thought and talk, gender thought and talk is inherently normative. This paper proposes a normative account of gender thought and talk in terms of fitting treatment. On this fitting treatment account, to judge that A is gender G is just to judge that it is fitting to treat A as a G. This account is a descriptive or hermeneutical account of our gender thought and talk rather than an ameliorative account of our gender concepts or a metaphysical account of gender properties in social metaphysics. This paper argues that other descriptive accounts of gender thought and talk face problems that the fitting treatment account overcomes. (shrink)

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is fraught with controversies over the role of values and politics in regulatory science, especially with drugs in the realm of reproductive health. Philosophers and science studies scholars have investigated the ways in which social context shapes medical knowledge through value judgments, and feminist scholars and activists have criticized sexism and injustice in reproductive medicine. Nonetheless, there has been no systematic study of values and gender norms in FDA drug regulation. I (...) focus on three questions about values in regulatory science. First, how have societal values and gender norms shaped the way that the FDA regulates drugs in the realm of reproductive health, specifically with drug labels? Second, what are the ethical, epistemic, and social consequences of these influences on regulation for women and other marginalized groups? Third, which societal values and gender norms ought to influence drug regulation about reproductive health, and how ought this happen? Integrating philosophical analysis with historical archival research and in-depth interviews, I conduct three case studies of drug labeling about reproductive health: (1) the “drug fact” about the mechanism of the morning-after pill; (2) the package inserts for patients about the health risks of oral contraceptives; and (3) the special physician labels made for prescribing drugs to pregnant women. I identify three challenges for the FDA and suggest ways to reduce the influence of sexist values and facilitate feminist alternatives. First, across these cases, I have found that there are many ways in which other concerns in reproductive medicine (such as zygotic life, fetal health, and population control) have devalued women’s health. Second, both knowledge and ignorance xvi about their reproductive health have contributed to women’s oppression, especially poor women and women of color. Finally, by avoiding the epistemic dimensions of ethics, powerful, mostly male parties in medicine (such as doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and religious institutions) have misused “informed consent,” “religious freedom,” and “paternalism” for unethical purposes. For improvement, I suggest extracting sexist values and gender norms from regulatory science that cause epistemic injustices, and I point to success stories for reforming sexism with feminism at the FDA. (shrink)

Traditional courtship norms delineate distinct gendered behaviors for men and women based on the model of a dominant, breadwinning male and a passive, dependent female. Previous research shows, however, that as women have increased their access to earned income, there has been a rising ideological and behavioral commitment to egalitarian relationships. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 38 college-educated women, this article explores how women negotiate these seemingly contradictory beliefs in order to understand how and why gendered courtship conventions persist (...) even as heterosexual romantic relationships become more egalitarian. My findings show that while the women reference essentialist beliefs about men’s “nature” to explain their commitment to courtship conventions, they draw on narratives of choice, individualism, and personal autonomy to assert that the symbolic gendering of courtship will not interfere with their desire for an egalitarian marriage. However, women’s behaviors and narratives reinforce notions of gender difference, potentially providing support for other forms of gender inequality. (shrink)

Verbal fluency is a basic function of language that refers to the ability to produce fluent speech. Despite being an essentially linguistic function, its measurements are also used to evaluate executive aspects of verbal behavior. Performance in verbal fluency (VF) tasks varies according to age, education, and cognitive development. Neurodevelopmental disorders that affect the functioning of frontal areas tend to cause lower performance in VF tasks. Despite the relative consensus that has been reached in terms of the use of VF (...) tasks for the diagnosis of dyslexia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, few studies have considered regional variations in Brazil. The present study sought to provide normative data on VF tasks in children by considering gender, age, education, and geopolitical region of origin with auxiliary purposes in neuropsychological diagnosis of disorders that occur with executive changes The study included 298 participants, 7-10 years of age of both genders, who performed three letter fluency tasks and three category fluency tasks. The data were subjected to correlational and variance analyses, with age and gender as factors. No effect of gender on the children’s performance was found. However, significant differences between age groups were observed, with better performance in letter tasks in older children and better performance in letter tasks compared with category tasks. Significant regional differences in performance on the letter VF task were observed. These results reinforce the importance of regional normative data in countries with high regional cultural variations, such as Brazil. (shrink)

Les sages-femmes en France incarnent une subtile synthèse du cure et du care, entretenant une ambiguïté qui fonde une partie de leur identité professionnelle et qui brouille les pistes des stéréotypes de genre. En fonction du contexte social et politique qui conditionne leur mode d’exercice, ces professionnel.le.s développent spontanément des stratégies pour équilibrer les tensions qui existent entre ces deux pôles. Elles/ils vont ainsi promouvoir tantôt leurs compétences dans le care comme valeur ajoutée par rapport aux autres acteurs médicaux, tantôt (...) leur expertise médico-technique et leur autonomie de pratique, affirmant ainsi leur appartenance au monde médical et scientifique. Cet article s’inscrit dans une double approche d’analyse en sciences sociales et d’expérience professionnelle de trente années en tant que sage-femme. (shrink)

In chapter one I firstly critique some contemporary family-resemblance approaches to the category woman, and claim that they do not take sufficient account of dis-semblance, that is, resemblances that people have in common with members of the contrast category man. Second, I analyze how the concept of woman is semantically contestable: resemblance/dissemblance structures give rise to vagueness and to borderline cases. Borderline cases can either be included in the category or excluded from it. The factors which incline parties in a (...) dispute about membership to include or exclude depend on metaphysical, ethical, or political background assumptions. In chapter two, I begin by considering the harms suffered by transgender persons through “misgendering”, the deployment of gender terms which inflict psychological harms upon transgender persons, place them in situations of injustice, or diminish their self-respect. Such deployments are morally contestable: they can be challenged on ethical grounds. Several characterisations of the term ‘woman’ proposed in the feminist literature are critiqued from this perspective. In chapter three, I elaborate a broadly liberal approach to gender pluralism. The approach involves: i) the public toleration of gender practices and beliefs which contest prevalent gender norms; and ii) state-gender neutrality. Public toleration allows gender non-conforming practices and beliefs within public space. State gender-neutrality consists mainly in the removal from law and government policy of provisions which assume compliance with prevalent conceptions of gender. (shrink)

Les normes religieuses des Mongols s’ancraient dans le culte des ancêtres patrilinéaires, qui accordait une valeur supérieure au masculin, et assignaient aux individus des statuts et des rôles sexués, réservant en particulier aux hommes la sphère socio-politique. Elles ont orienté par la suite les pratiques bouddhiques des Mongols. Le régime révolutionnaire instauré en 1924 sur le modèle soviétique leur a substitué jusqu’à 1990 un nouveau modèle normatif neutralisant les différences sexuées entre citoyens, imposant l’égalité des droits politiques, promouvant l’accès des (...) femmes à l’éducation et à une activité sociale et professionnelle extérieure. L’urbanisation et l’industrialisation ont participé à la mutation du cadre socio-économique et des relations de parenté et affaibli l’emprise de la tradition sur les individus. Pourtant la valence différentielle des sexes n’a pas été aussi profondément remise en question qu’il y paraît, en particulier dans l’action politique, comme en témoigne a posteriori la société postcommuniste où la question de la subordination du féminin dans ce domaine reste d’actualité. (shrink)

Many disputes about gender are normatively charged. To account for this, some suggest building normativity into the semantics of gender terms. I propose an alternative, pragmatic account. When speakers utter gender-attributing sentences of the form ‘Person A is of gender G’, they often pragmatically convey normative content about whether A should be categorized as G. After critically discussing the semantic approach, I motivate and discuss in detail this novel pragmatic view and elaborate on its compatibility with (...) a number of semantic options. (shrink)

We present a study comparing, in English, perceived distributions of men and women in 422 named occupations with actual real world distributions. The first set of data was obtained from previous a large-scale norming study, whereas the second set was mostly drawn from UK governmental sources. In total, real world ratios for 290 occupations were obtained for our perceive vs. real world comparison, of which 205 were deemed to be unproblematic. The means for the two sources were similar and the (...) correlation between them was high, suggesting that people are generally accurate at judging real gender ratios, though there were some notable exceptions. Beside this correlation, some interesting patterns emerged from the two sources, suggesting some response strategies when people complete norming studies. We discuss these patterns in terms of the way real world data might complement norming studies in determining gender stereotypicality. (shrink)

This article integrates research on gendered organizations and the work-family interface to investigate an innovative workplace initiative, the Results-Only Work Environment, implemented in the corporate headquarters of Best Buy, Inc. While flexible work policies common in other organizations “accommodate” individuals, this initiative attempts a broader and deeper critique of the organizational culture. We address two research questions: How does this initiative attempt to change the masculinized ideal worker norm? And what do women’s and men’s responses reveal about the persistent ways (...) that gender structures work and family life? Data demonstrate the ideal worker norm is pervasive and powerful, even as employees begin critically examining expectations regarding work time that have historically privileged men. Employees’ responses to ROWE are also gendered. Women are more enthusiastic, while men are more cautious. Ambivalence about and resistance to change is expressed in different ways depending on gender and occupational status. (shrink)

버틀러는 『젠더 트러블』이후, 규범적 젠더 수행을 넘어, 젠더를 단지 규범적(normative) 일뿐 아니라 규제적(regulative)이라 설명한다. 규제(regulation)는 표준적인 사람으로 만들어지는 과정의 제도화를 뜻하며, 구체적인 법과 규칙과 정책을 동반한 표준화(normalization)로 실행된다. 특히 『젠더 허물기』에서는 젠더가 규제적이라는 점을 강조하여, 규제를 통해 젠더가 젠더 규범으로 재생산되는 구체적 과정에 주목하고, 규제적 담론이 개인을 관리하고 활용할 뿐 아니라 개인을 적극적으로 구성한다는 의미에서 젠더는 사회 권력의 형식이자 젠더 이분법이 제도화되는 장치(apparatus)가 된다는 점을 강조한다. 이러한 장치 개념을 거치면서 젠더는 규범의 차원에서가 아니라 주체화에 관여하는 권력 장치로 설명된다.BR규범과 규범화라는 이중적 (...) 작동을 통해 규제적으로 발휘되는 젠더 장치의 의미는 다음과 같다. 젠더가 규범적으로 작용할 뿐 아니라, 이분법적 젠더 체계를 유지하는 전제에 도전하고 변화할 가능성을 연다는 것이다. 특히, 버틀러의 젠더 개념의 변화는 신체를 생성의 양식으로 이해하고, 이로부터 젠더 장치의 변화 역량을 끌어낸다는 것이다. 이는 규범의 재생산이 신체의 실천을 통해 환기되고 인용되며, 신체의 실천이 그 인용과정에 규범을 변화시킬 능력도 갖기 때문이다. 또한, 사회 권력의 형식인 젠더 장치는 ‘개인(individual)’이자 주체로 개별화하는 동시에 ‘인구(population)’로 전체화하는 주체화와 생명 정치의 기술이다. 이 점에서, 젠더 장치의 급진적 작동은 주체화에 개입하는 방식, 정상성을 주조하는 방식에 도전하는 일이며, 삶의 경계를 정하는 규범, 그리고 이러한 규범들이 벌어지는 다양한 신체의 상황에서 벌어지는 생존에 개입할 뿐 아니라, 퀴어 정치의 퀴어링이 주장하는 권력의 불안정성 및 변화 가능성으로 확장될 수 있다. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to the critiques of my book, The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, made by Nikolas Kompridis, Paul Patton, Allison Weir and Moira Gatens. My response is organized around three overlapping themes that are raised in these four astute papers: a defence of my account of normativity, of my reading of Foucault’s conception of power, and of my analysis of gender subordination/identity.

A monosexual configuration of sexuality assumes that sexual desire is directed at either men or women. Bisexuality resists a choice between oppositional categories and is often theorised as having a transgressive potential to destabilise binary logic, not only in relation to sexuality but also to gender. There is, however, a lack of empirical work exploring how this potential might be realised in the accounts of bisexual individuals. Drawing on interviews with South African bisexual women, we use a narrative-discursive lens (...) to examine the discursive resources employed by participants to trouble or resist hetero-gendered norms. Our findings demonstrate how resistance to the gender binary hinges on citational politics that are fundamentally gendered and linked to sexuality. Instead of entirely destabilising hetero-gendered norms, participants draw on gendered scripts that simultaneously expand norms to accommodate their sexual difference and, through processes of othering, function to reiterate hetero-gendered norms. While complete subversion of gender binaries is not possible in participants’ discursive contexts, what does occur is a ‘slow bending’ of norms. Theorising bisexuality as transgressing oppositional categories closes off opportunities to interrogate the pervasive influence of gender binaries in contexts that remain marked by pervasive heteronormativity and heterosexism. Significantly, it also obscures more modest improvisations of gender scripts that hold potential for destabilising gender binaries. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article highlights the salient educational insights concerning the roles and identities of women from four Confucian classics known as the Four Books for Women. Written by w...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gender Ideology and the “Artistic” Fabrication of Human Sex: Nature as Norm or the Remaking of the Human?Michele M. SchumacherUntil quite recently,” the famous English novelist C. S. Lewis remarked in 1959, “it was taken for granted that the business of the artist was to delight and instruct his public”: that is to say, to address simultaneously their passions and their intellects. “There were, of course, different publics.... (...) And an artist might lead his public on to appreciate finer things than they had wanted at first; but he could do this only by being; from the first, if not merely entertaining, yet entertaining, and if not completely intelligible, yet very largely intelligible.” This constraint—let us call it intelligent (or purposeful) design, in keeping with a basic analogy that we will draw upon in these pages—had however been lost, Lewis observed. Hence, even “in the highest aesthetic circles one now hears nothing about the artist’s duty to us. It is all about our duty to him. He owes us nothing; we owe him ‘recognition,’ even though he has never paid the slightest attention to our tastes, interests, or habits.”1 In short, the artist of modernity need not pay the slightest attention to an intention, not even his own. Modern art need not be an expression of intelligence or [End Page 363] understanding; it is expression as such (tout court): personal and autonomous.2Lewis’s remarks do not point merely to the increasingly relativist tendencies of art in the Western world, to the lack of objective criteria or norms governing the artistic disciplines. They also point to the growing disregard among artists for the sociocultural expectations of their publicum. Mediating between the two is, without a doubt, the basis upon which both artistic and social norms were traditionally founded: nature, which served as a classic analogy for both art (understood in the broad sense, so as to include not only the fine arts, but also technology and practical sciences) and ethics in virtue of nature’s intrinsic inclination towards its defining end and perfection.With regard to the first of these analogies (that of art and nature), Mark Schiefsky explains that although art does bring about “results that nature itself cannot,” it does so in the classic understanding “by acting in a natural way—the way nature would act if it could generate the products of art.”3 As for the difference between the two, nature is moved to its specifying end by way of intrinsic inclinations that are implicit to it, whereas a work of art is moved to its end extrinsically, and thus with more or less violence.4 A sculptor, for example, who introduces a form into a piece of marble, does so by chiseling [End Page 364] and hammering away at the fine stone.5 “Art is,” Aristotle explains, “the principle and form of the thing that comes to be [let us say, a sculpture]; but it is located elsewhere [in, for example, the artist’s mind or in a sketch that he has made] than in that thing, whereas the movement of nature is located in the thing itself that comes to be [a tree, for example, or a baby], and is derived from another natural organism [a tree or human parents] which possessed the form in actuality.”6This classic distinction between art and nature parallels the distinction between art and ethics. Ethics “does not affect human action in the same way as do art and technique,” Servais Pinckaers explains. Unlike art and technique, which are concerned with “the external work produced by human action”—this painting or that machine, for example—ethics is concerned with an immanent principle, qualifying the actor as such: the stable dispositions (or habitus: virtues or vices) at the origin of “the active willing that is the principle source of the action.”7 This immanent principle at the source of ethical action is—to complete our analogy—creative in only a limited sense. The human person is indeed free to choose, but he or she is not free to decide “what is good or evil” as such, nor what is “good or bad for... (shrink)

This article proposes, with a focus on discussions around norms and bodies, to expose the conceptions of power, as well as the application of its concept, in Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. It begins by exposing the conception of power found in Foucault. After that, the connection between Foucault's thought and Butler's thought begins, explaining how Foucault's conception of power is inserted in the North American philosopher's theory of gender. Finally, the appropriations made by Butler of Foucault's thought (...) regarding the productive aspects of power in the fabrication of intelligible genres are exposed. (shrink)

Changing social norms has become the preferred approach in global efforts to prevent gender-based violence (GBV). In this article, we trace the rise of social norms within GBV-related policy and practice and their transformation from social processes that exist in the world to beliefs that exist in the minds of individuals. The analytic framework that underpins social norms approaches has been subject to ongoing critical revision but continues to have significant issues in its conceptualisation of power (...) and its sidelining of the political economy. These issues are particularly apparent in the use of individualised measures of social norms that cannot demonstrate causation, and conflation of social norms with culture. Recognising that the pressure to measure may be a key factor in reducing the complexity of the social norms approach, we call for the use of mixed methods in documenting the factors and processes that contribute to GBV and the effectiveness of interventions. As social norms approaches are increasingly prioritised over addressing the non-normative contributors to GBV (such as access to and control over productive resources), awareness of the limitations of social norms approaches is vital. (shrink)

The book constitutes a reconsideration of her earlier view on gender performativity from Gender Trouble. In this work, the critique of gender norms is clearly situated within the framework of human persistence and survival.

Decisions about whether or not to become a parent are significant parts of normative human development. Many studies have shown that married different-sex couples are expected to become parents, and that many social pressures enforce this norm. For same-sex couples, however, much less is known about social norms surrounding parenthood within marriage. This study examined injunctive norms and descriptive norms for the pursuit of parenthood as a function of age, gender, and sexual orientation. Participants in an (...) internet survey included 1020 cisgender people from across the United States Findings showed that norms, especially descriptive norms, for the pursuit of parenthood for heterosexual people were much stronger than those for lesbian women and gay men, and that norms for lesbian women were stronger than those for gay men. These differences were more pronounced for older, heterosexual, and male participants. However, lesbian and gay participants, especially gay men, reported that lesbian and gay people ought to become parents to the same extent as heterosexual people. Overall, the results indicated that, regardless of sexual orientation, adults report that lesbian and gay married people ought to become parents, but that they expect only a minority of these couples will pursue parenthood. This research provided a glimpse into how Americans are envisioning family formation among same-sex couples today. (shrink)

Talk of gender identity is at the core of heated current philosophical and political debates. Yet, it is unclear what it means to have one. I examine several ways of understanding this concept in light of core aims of trans writers and activists. Most importantly, the concept should make good trans people’s understanding of their own gender identities and help understand why misgendering is a serious harm and why it is permissible to require information about people’s gender (...) identities in public life. I conclude that none of the available accounts meets these essential criteria, on the assumption that the gender norms of femininity and masculinity are unjustified. But we can, and should, pursue the feminist project without “gender identity”. Such feminism can include trans people because it is possible to account for the specific harm of misgendering without assuming a claim to the recognition of our gender identities. I conclude that we should eliminate the concept of “gender identity.” To understand the phenomena that are putatively captured by “gender identity,” we are better off employing other concepts, such as “sexual dysphoria,” (assigned or aspirational) “gender roles,” and (internalised or endorsed) “gender norms”. These concepts can usefully replace “gender identity” in an individual evaluation of each of the trans people’s claims to inclusion into particular spaces. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

AI systems have often been found to contain gender biases. As a result of these gender biases, AI routinely fails to adequately recognize the needs, rights, and accomplishments of women. In this article, we use Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition to argue that AI’s gender biases are not only an ethical problem because they can lead to discrimination, but also because they resemble forms of misrecognition that can hurt women’s self-development and self-worth. Furthermore, we argue that Honneth’s (...) theory of recognition offers a fruitful framework for improving our understanding of the psychological and normative implications of gender bias in modern technologies. Moreover, our Honnethian analysis of gender bias in AI shows that the goal of responsible AI requires us to address these issues not only through technical interventions, but also through a change in how we grant and deny recognition to each other. (shrink)

Charlotte Witt has argued that gender is essential to women and men, in a way that unifies them as social individuals but precludes each of them from being identified with the corresponding person or human organism. We respond to Witt’s modal and normative arguments for this view, and we argue that they fail to support anything stronger than a moderate version of kind essentialism, which generally allows women and men to be identified with people. We finish by pointing out (...) that several of Witt’s central claims about gender roles and gender norms could be endorsed while rejecting her ontology of coincident individuals. (shrink)

BackgroundIn gender-affirming medical care (GAMC), ethical challenges in decision-making are ubiquitous. These challenges are becoming more pressing due to exponentially increasing referrals, politico-legal contestation, and divergent normative views regarding decisional roles and models. Little is known, however, about what ethical challenges related to decision-making healthcare professionals (HCPs) themselves face in their daily work in GAMC and how these relate to, for example, the subjective nature of Gender Incongruence (GI), the multidisciplinary character of GAMC and the role HCPs play (...) in assessing GI and eligibility for interventions. Given the relevance and urgency of these questions, we conducted a qualitative study among HCPs providing GAMC to transgender adults in the Netherlands.MethodsIn this qualitative research, we conducted 11 semi-structured interviews between May 2020 and February 2021 with HCPs (six mental health professionals, two HCPs in endocrinology, two in plastic surgery, and one in nursing) working in two distinct GAMC settings. We purposively sampled for professional background and years of experience in GAMC. We analyzed our interview data using thematic analysis. As some respondents were more inclined to speak about what should or ought to be done to arrive at good or right decision-making, we identified both ethical challenges and norms. Furthermore, in our analysis, we differentiated between respondents’ explicit and implicit ethical challenges and norms and ascertained the specific context in which these challenges emerged.ResultsRespondents’ ethical challenges and norms centered on (1) dividing and defining decisional roles and bounds, (2) negotiating decision-making in a (multidisciplinary) team, and (3) navigating various decision-making temporalities. These themes arose in the context of uncertainties regarding (1) GAMC’s guidelines, evidence, and outcomes, as well as (2) the boundaries and assessment of GI.ConclusionsThis interview study provides detailed empirical insight into both the explicit and implicit ethical challenges that HCPs experience and their ethical norms regarding decision-making. It also describes how uncertainties and (implicit) normativities concerning GAMC and GI pre-structure the moral environment in which these challenges and norms manifest. We provide normative reflections and recommendations on handling these ethical challenges in a way that is sensitive to the context in which they arise. (shrink)

Strengthening the abilities of smallholder farmers in developing countries, particularly women farmers, to produce for both home and the market is currently a development priority. In many contexts, ownership of assets is strongly gendered, reflecting existing gender norms and limiting women’s ability to invest in more profitable livelihood strategies such as market-oriented agriculture. Yet the intersection between women’s asset endowments and their ability to participate in and benefit from agricultural interventions receives minimal attention. This paper explores changes in (...) gender relations and women’s assets in four agricultural interventions that promoted high value agriculture with different degrees of market-orientation. Findings suggest that these dairy and horticulture projects can successfully involve women and increase production, income and the stock of household assets. In some cases, women were able to increase their control over production, income and assets; however in most cases men’s incomes increased more than women’s and the gender-asset gap did not decrease. Gender- and asset-based barriers to participation in projects as well as gender norms that limit women’s ability to accumulate and retain control over assets both contributed to the results. Comparing experiences across the four projects, especially where projects implemented adaptive measures to encourage gender-equitable outcomes, provides lessons for gender-responsive projects targeting existing and emerging value chains for high value products. Other targeted support to women farmers may also be needed to promote their acquisition of the physical assets required to expand production or enter other nodes of the value chain. (shrink)

According to some philosophers, gender is a social role or pattern of behavior in a social context. I argue that these accounts have problematic implications for transgender. I suggest that gender is a complex behavioral disposition, or cluster of dispositions. Furthermore, since gender norms are culturally relative, one’s gender is partially constituted by extrinsic factors. I argue that this has advantages over thinking of gender as behavior, and has the added advantage of accommodating the (...) possibility of an appearance/reality dissonance with respect to one’s gender. (shrink)

This study establishes the influence of sex-based grammatical gender on gendered violence. We demonstrate a statistically significant relationship between gendered language and the incidence of intimate partner violence in a cross-section of countries. Motivated by this evidence, we conduct an individual-level analysis exploiting the differences in the language structures spoken by individuals with a shared religious and ethnic background residing in the same country. We show that speaking a gendered language is associated with the belief that intimate partner violence (...) is justifiable. Our results are consistent with the theoretical possibility that gendered language activates gender schemata in the minds of speakers, increasing the salience of gender distinctions and existing gender norms which legitimize gendered violence. (shrink)

Seminal work by Knobe, Prasada, and Newman (2013) distinguished a set of concepts, which they named “dual‐character concepts.” Unlike traditional concepts, they require two distinct criteria for determining category membership. For example, the prototypical dual‐character concept “artist” has both a concrete dimension of artistic skills, and an abstract dimension of aesthetic sensibility and values. Therefore, someone can be a good artist on the concrete dimension but not truly an artist on the abstract dimension. Does this analysis capture people's understanding of (...) cornerstone social categories, such as gender, around which society and everyday life have traditionally been organized? Gender, too, may be conceived as having not only a concrete dimension but also a distinct dimension of abstract norms and values. As with dual‐character concepts, violations of abstract norms and values may result in someone being judged as not truly a man/woman. Here, we provide the first empirical assessment of applying the dual‐character framework to people's conception of gender. We found that, on some measures that primarily relied on metalinguistic cues, gender concepts did indeed resemble dual‐character concepts. However, on other measures that depicted transgressions of traditional gender norms, neither “man” nor “woman” appeared dual‐character‐like, in that participants did not disqualify people from being truly a man or truly a woman. In a series of follow‐up studies, we examined whether moral norms have come to replace gender role norms for the abstract dimension. Implications for the evolution of concepts and categories are explored. (shrink)

I propose, defend and illustrate a principle of gender justice meant to capture the nature of a variety of injustices based on gender:A society is gender just only if the costs of a gender-neutral lifestyle are, all other things being equal, lower than, or at most equal to, the costs of gendered lifestyles.The principle is meant to account for the entire range of gender injustice: violence against women, economic and legal discrimination, domestic exploitation, the gendered (...) division of labor and gendered socialization. The sense of “costs” employed is similarly wide. Costs can be material, psychological and social.I defend the principle by appeal to the values at the core of liberal egalitarian justice: equality of access and the good of individual choice. I illustrate my case through a discussion of the injustice of a gendered division of labor. Some feminists doubt that liberal egalitarianism has the theoretical resources to recognize the unjust nature of the gendered division of labor. I argue that it does.If the principle advanced here is correct, then gender injustice is pervasive. At the same, it does not affect only women but also men. Liberal egalitarianism is capable of acknowledging this fact without denying that, overall, gender norms oppress women more than they oppress men: Arguably, women who wish to lead a gender-neutral lifestyle have to pay higher costs that men who wish to do the same. (shrink)

Women continue to be in charge of most childrearing; men continue to be responsible for most breadwinning. There is no consensus on whether this state of affairs, and the informal norms that encourage it, are matters of justice to be tackled by state action. Feminists have criticized political liberalism for its alleged inability to embrace a full feminist agenda, inability explained by political liberals’ commitment to the ideal of state neutrality. The debate continues on whether neutral states can accommodate (...) two feminist demands: to enact policies aimed at dismantling the feminization of caregiving, especially childrearing, and to compensate women for some of the disadvantages they incur by being primary care-givers. I contribute to this debate with three arguments in support of policies meant to de-gender care-giving and compensate care-givers. The first appeals to equality of opportunity to positions of advantage and justifies policies that prevent or mitigate statistical discrimination and implicit biases. The second draws attention to a possible causal relationship between the specialization of women in early childcare and misogyny; since the latter is incompatible with political liberal justice, it yields the conclusion that political liberals ought to further investigate the causal hypothesis with the aim of establishing or refuting it. The third argument concludes that legitimate childrearing prohibits adults from socializing children or, at least girls, into gender norms; it justifies duties of justice on the side of parents, educators, and economic agents, and state policies meant to offset foreseeable breaches of some of these duties. (shrink)

Because gender norms shape the content and application of the law, feminist scholarship has a lot to contribute to the study of law. Gender is also relevant to several problems in normative jurisprudence, and to some problems in special jurisprudence (the study of concepts in the law). But gender has no relevance to general jurisprudence for there is no sense in which the concept of law is ‘gendered’, and no answer to leading problems in general jurisprudence (...) depends on any thesis about gender. Yet some feminist scholars, including prominently Joanne Conaghan, argue that gender is pervasively relevant to jurisprudence, though its relevance has been screened out by methodological errors that characterize what she calls ‘the analytical jurisprudential mind’. I argue that this is incorrect, by examining the relationship between gender and law, the relationship between sex and gender, and the place of sex in the legal concept of marriage. The methodological charges against ‘the analytical jurisprudential mind’ prove unfounded. I also suggest that hostility to analytical methods is likely to be damaging to feminist legal theory, and urge feminist scholars to look again at the resources of analytic legal philosophy. (shrink)

Most normative theorists of public apology agree that, while apologies may have multiple purposes, central to most of them is the apology’s narrative power; that is, its ability to tell new stories of wrongdoing, responsibility, and accountability. We judge political apologies by whether they correctly identify the harms in question and the apologizer as the responsible party, whether they acknowledge the effects of this harms on the recipients of apology, and whether they successfully address those recipients as persons deserving respect. (...) The narrative power of official public apologies can also alter legal and political record, as well as media discourse nationally and internationally. Drawing on multiple examples of public apologies to women that were offered (or demanded and not offered), I identify three ways in which attention to gender complicates our understanding of public apology, and the narrative power they hold. These include the difficulties of articulating the nature of gendered harm, given the depoliticization of women’s roles and the stigma surrounding sexual violence, the complexities of traversing the public/private divide by bringing private stories of gendered harm to public attention, and the ways in which attending to gendered and sexual violence reframes our understanding of both political responsibility for wrongdoing, and how apologies express and affirm that responsibility. (shrink)

Gender is a form of "divided reason" (la raison partagée) which, in its turn, is an instrument of hegemony. The paper redefines both the concept of gender and such concepts as reason, in that it sees them as normative. The hegemonic project of reason divided (le partage de la raison) aims to compensate for the unstable process of differentiation and sexuation. Similarly it reinterprets the often contested sex/gender divide beyond the impasse of the nature/culture distinction and analyses (...) it instead as dynamics between the différend (that which makes the difference) and hegemonic identity. The point to be made is a re-interrogation of the sex/gender essentialising distinction and taking it beyond the concepts of différend and hegemony. The dichotomy is inherent to the process of dividing reason and it is the very way of being of reason. It aims at comprehending & governing any pattern of hierarchy. The paper shows how the subordination of women, through the “sexuation”/”gendering” of all human institutions starting with language and thinking, is used as a means to legitimate and justify all other social and political inequalities and injustices. At the same time, violence is shown to arise from the rejection of the fact that we are born of the other. It is a desperate attempt at self-generation. (shrink)

Many social gradients in health appear steeper for men than for women. I refer to this as the “Steepness Puzzle.” This paper explores the ethical implications of this Puzzle. First, it identifies potential explanations for the Steepness Puzzle, including methodological problems. Second, it highlights two harms associated with the methodological explanation: the consequences of biased epistemic practices and the marginalization of women. It also demonstrates how attempts to flatten the gradients in health could disproportionately favor men or reinforce troubling gendered (...) norms. Finally, I suggest ways to address the methodological problems underlying the Puzzle. (shrink)

Extant research suggests that supportive work–family policies promote gender equality in the workplace and in the household. Yet, evidence indicates that these policies generally have stronger effects on women’s preferences and behaviors than men’s. In this article, we draw on survey-experimental data to examine how young, unmarried men’s gender ideologies and perceptions of normative masculinity may moderate the effect of supportive work–family policy interventions on their preferences for structuring their future work and family life. Specifically, we examine whether (...) men’s prescriptive beliefs about what work–family arrangements most people ought to prefer and whether men’s descriptive beliefs about what work–family arrangements most of their male peers actually do prefer influence their responses to supportive policies. Our analysis shows that men’s responses to supportive work–family policy interventions are highly dependent upon their beliefs about what their male peers actually want, rather than on their beliefs about what others should want. Specifically, men who believe that their male peers ideally want gender-egalitarian or counternormative relationships are themselves more likely to prefer a progressive relationship structure when supportive work–family policies are in place. These findings provide novel support for sociological theories of masculinity and hold important implications for designing policies that promote gender equality in the workplace and at home. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse some of the representations of intersectional gender that materialise in activism against genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It uses the case of Hawai'i as a key node in global transgenic seed production and hotspot for food, land and farming controversies. Based on ethnographic work conducted since 2012, the article suggests some of the ways that gender is represented within movements against GMOs by analysing activist media representations. The article shows how (...) class='Hi'>gender, understood intersectionally, informs possibilities for movement-identification, exploring how themes of motherhood, warrior masculinities and sexualised femininities are represented within these movements. The article suggests that some activist representations of gender invoke what could be considered as normative framings of gender similar to those seen in other environmental, food and anti-GMO movements. It is suggested that these gendered representations may influence and limit how different subjects engage with Hawai'i anti-GMO movements. At the same time, contextual, intersectional readings demonstrate the complex histories behind what appear to be gender normative activist representations. Taken together, this emphasis on relative norms of femininities and masculinities may provide anti-GMO organising with familiar social frames that counterbalance otherwise threatening campaigns against (agri)business in the settler state. Understood within these histories, the work that gender does within anti-GMO organising may offer generative examples for thinking through the relationships between gendered representations and situated, indigenous-centred, food and land-based resistances. (shrink)

Research on migrant care and domestic workers has focused on their multiple dislocations and exclusions in the diaspora, analysing a highly gendered global economy of care and domestic work. This article investigates the role of ritual performance and spirituality in female care workers’ projects of migration and in the emergence of their feminized and racialized subjectivities. On the basis of anthropological research in Israel and the Philippines, it analyses Filipina care workers’ narratives of migration to Israel as a form of (...) spiritual transformation, investigating their spiritual practices and emphasis on Christian morals like ‘compassion’ and ‘patience’ for their work. Israel, a country that has recruited Filipinos as carers for the elderly since the 1990s, is a destination country highly valued among Filipino Christians as the ‘Holy Land’. Focusing on evangelical Christians, the article portrays four women for whom migration to Israel signifies an ethical career: turning into ‘Holy Land’ pilgrims, Christ-like activists and missionaries, they are engaged in a deeply self-transforming journey. Rooting themselves in Christian spiritualities and morals, these women negotiate and ‘inhabit’ rather than openly challenge existing gender norms. Engaged in corporeal disciplining of their selves during affectively demanding care work, and in migration more generally, their moves are analysed as a form of ethical formation. (shrink)