Male out-migration from rural to urban areas has amplified worldwide in the face of economic globalisation. Migration literature for long has engaged with the life of migrants at the destination and ...their support for the left-behind families in the form of remittances. Explicit scholastic undertaking for the left-behind women and their life experiences has started to receive attention only recently. We take stock of the existing literature to examine this social process and debate it within a women empowerment-disempowerment framework. Following a systematic review of the ‘migration left-behind nexus’ literature, we find a clear trend of transformation in the gender role of women everywhere, especially in the form of ‘feminisation of agriculture’. This process is largely moderated by the nature and amount of remittances received at source. The resultant well-being and empowerment of women is shaped by the socio-cultural context within which migration takes place. Both positive and/or negative outcomes for left-behind women are recorded in the literature, although its choice as a conscious decision and its subsequent permanence in a society is debatable. We expect a deeper engagement of future research that takes up the migration-led women empowerment issue within the context of the general social transformation process.
Women farmers’ experiences are not necessarily homogeneous between contexts, and overall different social structures might have different spillover effects into agriculture. Despite the so‐called ...‘feminisation’ of Greek agriculture—manifested as an increase in the proportion of officially registered farm heads being female and recognition of female contribution to farming—the question remains of how fast these changes do transform the role of women in Greek agriculture and how far they reach in terms of changing contested gender identities in a still male‐dominant sector. This article, inspired by the recent work on Feminist Agri‐Food Systems Theory (FAST), tries to shed light on these transformations by collecting official data, working with local experts–informants and conducting in‐depth qualitative interviews with 71 women farmers in Greece. We advocate for indicators of transformation by using women's life stories and the FAST as a theoretical lens. According to our results, the increasing visibility of women in agriculture did not activate any dynamic renegotiation of the hierarchical and pre‐defined gender roles within the family and local society. Overall, multiple roles and tasks remain still challenging in the daily routine of women farmers. However, in contrast to the past, there are different pathways to enter agriculture, and despite all barriers, women's self‐perception as farmers is quite empowered in the study area. They are younger than the national average, their farm size is larger than average, they prefer value‐added production and they seek tailored agricultural extension services and peer‐to‐peer knowledge through informal networks. For the further theoretical development of the FAST model, and advancing the state of the art, we reflect on some additional axes and indicators resulting from its application in the Greek context.
The aim of this article is to examine whether and how diplomacy may be gendered, symbolically and rhetorically, using US representations of diplomacy as a case. Prior scholarship on gender and ...contemporary diplomacy is sparse but has shown that the symbolic figure of ‘the diplomat’ has come to overlap tightly with ‘man’ and be associated with traits often attributed to masculinity. Inspired by queer international relations methods, relying on the concept of ‘figuration’ and focused on US news media and biographies of diplomats from the past decade, this article uncovers and examines a palette of feminised figurations also at play in US representations of diplomacy, including the diplomat as ‘the “soft” non-fighter’, ‘the relationship builder’, ‘the gossip’, ‘the cookie-pusher’, and ‘the fancy Frenchman’. These feminised figurations alternate between configuring the diplomat as a woman and – more commonly – a (feminised) man. The analysis complicates rather than displaces existing claims, highlighting the importance of attention to slippages and challenges to dominant masculinised subject positions.
The Maghreb countries share a similar demographic profile: around 40% of the population is under twenty-five years of age. The recent upsurge in the birth rate also implies, in the medium term, a ...large and lasting proportion of young people being in post-school phase and at the point of entry into working life. Considering these structural similarities, is the evolution of higher education going the same path among countries of North Africa? This article explores this question by examining detailed statistics for Algeria and Morocco. They reveal that the two countries have made different university policy choices, but that they are both affected by comparable transformations: the massification and feminisation of their enrolments; a relative emergence of the private sector, occurring recently but at different times; and substantial investments to generalise access for young people to university education, which is considered essential for development. These observations lead to a regional perspective with a prospective vision. A projection of recent trends over the coming decades, linked to demographic forecasts, is proposed. This exercise proves to be highly instructive in assessing the challenges that the situation poses to policymakers.
Abstract
Women’s entry into the exclusively male-dominated field of Ayurveda in large numbers and their pursuit of a professional career as physicians, observed since the 1980s in India, are socially ...and historically significant events. Their overwhelming participation marks a rupture in the unchallenged control of the field by men of certain castes and families of medical lineages for centuries. In Kerala, interestingly, this has occurred when women’s overall workforce participation has remained low. This article attempts to analyse women’s work in Ayurveda in Kerala and its consequences for Ayurvedic transformations in the state that are simultaneously aimed at consolidation of a regional identity and expansion of its global market. It analyses the experiences of women practitioners in the context of the local gender power dynamics and negotiations that define and direct their professional participation. How do these women Ayurveda practitioners negotiate forces of professionalisation as well as gender marginalisation? What are the various personal and societal resources that they mobilise to succeed as Ayurveda practitioners? Do their subjectivities, negotiations and resources alter practices of Ayurveda and infuse it with different sensibilities? Based on interviews of women Ayurveda practitioners from diverse caste, religious and economic backgrounds, the paper argues that women’s experiences vary according to their social locations and all women are not empowered or dis-empowered in a similar fashion by the same gender system. While globalisation has led to increased opportunities for women physicians, their careers and contributions continue to be restricted by the specific gender structures and ideologies that govern women’s lives in the respective local and global sites.
The growth of girls’ and women's football in Africa, coupled with increased professionalisation in Europe and the United States, has led to rising international migration of African female players. ...This trend reflects the longer standing culture of independent, transnational migration among African women since the late 1980s and of enlarged possibilities and responsibilities triggered by neoliberal reform across the continent. This article explores how these sporting, cultural and economic transformations have coalesced to influence the aspirations and agency of female youth and young women in Ghana. To do so, we draw on original data from ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana, Sweden and Denmark undertaken between 2015 and 2021. Our findings reveal that for ambitious, talented female footballers, transnational football migration is increasingly viewed as a speculative route to improve ones’ life chances and negotiate intergenerational responsibilities to family. Significantly, the article also illustrates that in seeking to produce this highly prized form of migration, they must carefully navigate gendered social norms and hierarchies related to ‘respectable’ career and life trajectories. The conclusion proposes a critical research agenda to explore the interplay between sporting opportunities, migration aspirations and diverse socioeconomic conditions in Africa.
Violencia de género y frontera Cortés, Almudena
European review of Latin American and Caribbean studies,
2018
105
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This text analyses the case of Central American migration in and through Mexico from an anthropological perspective and a feminist analysis applied to recent proposals on migration and mobility ...regimes. It seeks to reformulate traditional research questions that present the role of criminal violence as a causal meta-narrative that hides the role of sexual and gender-based violence in the migration of Central American women, and in doing so, it hides women's agency in migration. The main contribution of this work is the feminist and gender analysis centred on ethnographic data obtained through fieldwork and the realisation of more than 50 in-depth interviews with Central American migrants, activists of feminist and migrant organisations, and politicians in Puebla (Mexico) in 2016 and 2017, a Mexican state located between the southern border and Mexico City that plays a central but unknown role in the transit of Central American migration.
Este texto analiza el caso de la migración centroamericana que migra en y por México desde una perspectiva de análisis antropológico y feminista aplicados a las recientes propuestas sobre los regímenes migratorios y de movilidad. Se busca reformular las preguntas tradicionales de investigación que presentan el papel de la violencia criminal como una metanarrativa causal que oculta el papel de la violencia sexual y de género en la migración de las mujeres centroamericanas, y al hacerlo, invisibiliza y neutraliza la agencia de las mujeres. La principal contribución de este trabajo es el análisis feminista y de género centrados en datos etnográficos obtenidos mediante el trabajo de campo y la realización de más de 50 entrevistas en profundidad con migrantes centroamericanos/as, activistas de organizaciones feministas y de migrantes, y con políticos en Puebla (México) en 2016 y 2017, un estado mexicano situado entre la frontera sur y la Ciudad de México que juega un rol central aunque desconocido en el tránsito de la migración centroamericana.
UNDP’s 2030 agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasized gender equality in augmenting human capital and alleviating poverty. For eradication of extreme poverty and building resilience ...for persons who are vulnerable to poverty, SDGs calls for a pro-poor and gender-sensitive policy framework. In this context, a gender-based study on multi-dimensional aspects of poverty is highly significant. Extant literature reveals that females are more deprived in different dimensions of poverty such as education, health, living standard, empowerment, environment, autonomy and social relationship. The present study is conducted with the basic objective of examining feminization of poverty in rural areas of Jagatsinghapur district of Odisha. Seven socio-economic dimensions comprising sixteen indicators have been taken into consideration to construct the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) using the Alkire-Foster (AF) Method at the individual level. The novelty of the study lies in analyzing MPI at the individual level for rural Odisha. Higher female deprivation is observed across social groups and all occupation categories except services. Dummy variable regression analysis also supports the major findings of the study. Complementary Cumulative Distribution Function satisfies strict first-order stochastic dominance condition and substantiates the feminisation of poverty at each level of poverty cut-off across all social groups and occupational categories except for services. The findings of the study have significant implications for developing suitable policies for gender equalization and poverty alleviation.
The introduction of elementary schools in Sweden (and elsewhere) in the mid-nineteenth century required the quick hiring of many new teachers, which in turn posed challenges about their financing. ...This paper analyses school inspectors' reports and teachers' journals to illuminate local strategies to provide affordable teaching in the Uppsala region in central Sweden from 1861 to 1910. The feminisation of the teacher's role and the secondary occupations undertaken by (usually) male teachers during this time have not previously been studied together in this context. The main aim of studying these areas together was to contribute to social and economic research in the history of education. The methods were historical and statistical analyses of source materials, with a particular focus on local and regional school developments. The results show that hiring more women to teach in the lower school forms and providing or encouraging side occupations for male teachers were common strategies to make teaching affordable in Sweden during the period studied. In conclusion, it would have been very difficult to implement the elementary school model in Sweden without these strategies. The study confirms the notion of the local character of school funding and provides new empirical evidence of the limitations of state intervention during this period.
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