Experiencing Gender Regimes: Accounts of Women Professors in Mexico, the UK and Sweden

This article investigates differences between statistics on gender equality in Mexico, the UK and Sweden, and similarities in women professors’ career experiences in these countries. We use Acker’s inequality regime framework, focusing on gender, to explore our data, and argue that similarities in women professors’ lived experiences are related to an image of the ideal academic. This ideal type is produced in the interplay of the university gender regime and other gender regimes, and reproduced through the process of structuration: signification, domination and legitimation. We suggest that the struggle over legitimation can also be a trigger for change.

Orbánistan and the Anti-gender Rhetoric in Hungary

This chapter introduces Hungary’s anti-liberal political rule and its gender regime. It traces policy changes in Hungary since 2010, discusses the legacies of the state socialist gender regimes and the formation of a new, anti-liberal one. I introduce the term “carefare” and discuss how the concept of “gender” has been deployed by Hungarian politicians to legitimate an increase in women’s unpaid care burden and their lack of attention to gender inequality in the labor market. I end the chapter with a description of my research methods and provide an outline for the rest of the book.

AN ANALYSIS ON THE REPRODUCTION OF GENDER RELATIONS IN THE YOUTH SECTION OF THE REPUBLICAN PEOPLE’S PARTY

The objective of this article is to explain the gender regime that dominates two district youth organizations (Bakırköy and Üsküdar Branches) of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), and thus, to assert whether an organizational structure and functioning based on the principle of gender equality exist in these organizations. To begin with, relations between the “civil feminism” represented by women’s movement that gained momentum in the early years of the Republic, first under the leadership of the Women People’s Party and then, under the leadership of the Turkish Women’s Union and the “state feminism” that emerged as a consequence of the Republican People’s Party’s will to represent the whole society, are discussed and it is tried to be summarized the historical development of the “gender-blindness” and gender inequality related to it, which emerged as a result of the Republican People’s Party’s rulers’ seeing the “woman problem” and “gender inequality” as problems within the scope of national development, westernization, modernization projects since its establishment. Subsequently, the most important data of the field work conducted within the scope of the master’s thesis, which is the basis of this article, is analyzed. The gender regime of the two district youth organizations is interpreted in the axis of following 5 main reproductive elements: Gender-based task sharing, members’ gender equality perceptions and discourses, actions and activities aimed at these issues, their discourses on sex quota and perceptions of feminism allegedly perpetuated under a certain influence of the ominous historical relations between left movements and feminist movements. Keywords: Republican People’s Party, Republican People’s Party’s Youth Section, Gender Inequality, Gender-Blindness

Self-Employed Women in Europe: Lack of Opportunity or Forced by Necessity?

The gender gap in self-employment is one of the most resilient in labour participation. While for some, this gap is the result of women’s lack of opportunities to become self-employed, for others, it reflects women’s preference to stay in paid employment. This article investigates the motivations behind women’s decision (either from opportunity or necessity) to start a business in 17 European countries. Results from the analysis suggest that individual resources are fundamental in explaining women’s motivations to become entrepreneurs. The type of gender regime and the economic situation in their country also play a role in women’s decisions to start a business. Women are more likely to be driven due to opportunity in dual-earner gender regimes than elsewhere, and high levels of unemployment produced by the economic crisis have boosted women’s self-employment from necessity. These findings are discussed in relation to the gender gap in self-employment.

Women in Iranian Kurdistan: Patriarchy and the Quest for Empowerment

Informed by sociological standpoint, intersectional, and gender regime theories, we examine perceptions of a diverse sample of Iranian Kurdish women in the city of Sanandaj about their legal status and social positions. We find perceptions of injustice, oppression, male control, and lack of opportunity associated with both the family and broader society. Kurdish women are socially located in structures and institutions of both private and public patriarchy. At the same time, their growing educational attainment and knowledge of possibilities for change enable them not only to articulate grievances but also to aspire to, and sometimes engage in, collective action for women’s rights. By focusing on an under-studied region, this article contributes to the wider literature on Kurdish women, underscores the continued salience of intersectional and standpoint approaches, and expands gender regime theorizing beyond Western cases.

A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Feminist Reflections on the EU’s Crisis Responses

As critics are quick to point out, the European Union (EU) has entered the crisis phase of its evolution. It could be argued that crisis management is now the EU’s new normal. Dealing with both endogenous (e.g., economic crisis and Brexit) and exogenous crises (e.g., the migrant crisis and COVID-19), the EU is facing a whole new set of challenges that has the potential to destabilize the complex institutional balance that has maintained the process of European integration over the last 70 years. In this environment of rapid responses, gender+ equality has frequently been compromised. As we argue in this article, the implications of this backsliding are grave not only for equality but also for the European Union as a whole. Drawing on Walby’s concept of gender regimes and social transformation, we consider current crises and the EU’s responses to those crises to highlight potentially dangerous shifts in the European gender regime. With crisis response increasingly supporting a neo-liberal gender regime, the current state of perpetual crisis in the European institutions does not bode well for the future of equality.