Mexico gender equality is elusive despite progress

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Women In Politics ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Gender Parity ◽  
Female Politicians ◽  
President Elect ◽  
And Gender

Subject Women in politics. Significance With eight women nominated to the 17-minister cabinet of President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), the incoming National Regeneration Movement (Morena) administration will be Mexico’s most gender balanced ever. Similarly, both chambers of the federal Congress formally established on August 29 have achieved near-gender parity. States and municipalities across the country saw the share of female politicians increase significantly in the July 1 elections. Impacts Gender equality will not be achievable until all states issue laws that define and penalise political violence against women. Efforts to end all forms of political gender violence -- physical, psychological, sexual and economic -- will be required. Indigenous women, facing racial and gender discrimination, will struggle to increase their participation in politics.

Corruption, Opportunity Networks, and Gender

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Wiesehomeier ◽  
Tània Verge
Keyword(s):  
Conjoint Analysis ◽  
Unethical Behavior ◽  
Gender Stereotype ◽  
Women In Politics ◽  
Representative Survey ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Female Politicians ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
And Gender

Abstract Given the gender stereotype that women are more ethical than men, people should assess female politicians as being less corruptible. Yet information about access to networks suggests that opportunities to engage in unethical behavior may counter this perception. Using a conjoint analysis in a nationally representative survey in Spain, a country shaken by corruption scandals, we asked respondents to identify the more corruptible politician between two hypothetical local councilors by imagining an investor willing to offer a bribe to advance business interests. Results indicate that female politicians do symbolically stand for honesty. However, this assessment is offset by embeddedness cues signaling a woman politician’s access to opportunity networks. We discuss our findings in light of instrumentalist arguments for an increase of women in politics as a means to combat corruption.

Positive Duties and Gender Equality

2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 91-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colm O'cinneide
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
Positive Duty ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Substantive Equality ◽  
Promote Gender Equality ◽  
Positive Duties ◽  
And Gender ◽  
First Time

The imposition since 1998 of a variety of positive equality duties upon public authorities has attracted comparatively little academic attention. However, these duties are a central part of current government equality initiatives, increasingly constitute a major part of the work of the UK's equality commissions, and have been described as an essential part of a new ‘fourth generation’ of equality legislation. It now appears likely that a positive duty to promote gender equality will soon be imposed upon public authorities, which will complement similar race and disability duties. Will the introduction of this positive gender equality duty add to, detract or complement existing statutory provisions? Given the danger that ‘soft law’ initiatives may undermine existing anti-discrimination controls, will the duty provide a clear steer to public authorities, or will it lack teeth, substance and direction, and possibly even prove counter-productive? Such positive duties are designed to compensate for the limitations of existing anti-discrimination law, by requiring the taking of positive steps to promote equality and eliminate discrimination, rather than just compelling a reactive compliance with the letter of the (equality) law. The justifications in principle for the introduction of such duties are strong: for the first time, the introduction of a positive gender duty will impose a clear legislative obligation upon public authorities to adopt a substantive equality approach and to take proactive action to redress patterns of disadvantage linked to gender discrimination. Serious concerns do however exist as to the extent to which such duties can be enforced, and the danger that they will simply encourage greater bureaucratic activity at the expense of real change. The proposed gender duty, as with the other duties that have been introduced, is no panacea. Nevertheless, it does constitute a good start, can serve a useful function by empowering public authorities to take positive action, and if effectively used will be a very valuable point of pressure to push for better things.

scholarly journals Who is afraid of more women in politics, and why? An analysis of public opinion in 28 European countries

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimiter Toshkov ◽  
Giulia Cretti
Keyword(s):  
Gender Attitudes ◽  
Women In Politics ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Gender Parity ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Female Politicians ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Masculine Culture

We study how individual and country-level variables interact in affecting political gender attitudes in Europe. Based on data from the 2017 Eurobarometer survey, we show that there are high levels of support for more women in politics and legal measures to achieve gender parity across the EU. In fact, more people, and women in particular, put higher trust in female compared to male political representatives than the other way round. We find that – at the individual level – gender, age and education have significant effects on political gender attitudes. Contrary to theory, however, the effect of gender is not mediated by beliefs about the proper role of women in politics and society. We also do not find support for the contextual effects of masculine culture and the religiosity of society, but we do uncover significant gaps in political gender attitudes between post-communist and other countries, especially for men. This gap is very significant in size and declines only marginally with the age of the respondent. Our study identifies men in post-communist countries as the group least likely to trust female politicians and support gender parity in politics in Europe. These attitudes are at least partly independent from stereotypes about gender roles.

scholarly journals Women Politicians and Parliamentary Elections in Ukraine and Georgia in 2012

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tetiana Kostiuchenko ◽  
Tamara Martsenyuk ◽  
Svitlana Oksamytna
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Women Politicians ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
Women In Politics ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Female Politicians

<p class="EW-abstract"><strong>Abstract:</strong> Post-communist countries undergoing social transformations in the last twenty years needed to implement political and economic reforms. Changes also had to support the principles of equality in the access to power, specifically gender quotas in executive and legislative branches of government and within political parties. The events in Ukraine and Georgia in 2004-2005 known as the “colour revolutions” gave impulse to the promotion of equality and implementation of reforms. However, the number of women participating in national politics in both countries remains low. This paper proposes an analysis of gender equality principles during the parliamentary election campaigns in Ukraine and Georgia in 2012 from the perspective of women’s participation in politics and their self-representation as politicians. This empirical study covers public attitudes towards women in politics and examines networks of female parliamentarians. The findings raise hopes for better representation of women in politics as female politicians promote them from the top down, and mass public perception of gender equality principles set the ground for bottom-up activism.  <strong></strong></p><p class="EW-Keyword">Keywords: Gender Equality, Women Politicians, Public Attitudes, Social Network Analysis (SNA)</p>

Excellence and gender

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farinaz Fassa
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Feminist Movements

Purpose – Discussing the Swiss case, the purpose of this paper is to examine how gender equality policies deal with the present requirements for scholars to be considered “excellent”. It aims to pinpoint the lines of tension or coherence between excellence, meritocracy and gender politics. Design/methodology/approach – In order to specify the norms of academic careers and their different renditions, the author draws on two studies (at local and national levels) to illustrate where the changes and resistances are taking place. Findings – The translations of a number of demands of feminist movements into the policies set up to favour equality between the sexes may combine to challenge the norms of academia as a gendered realm. Nevertheless, without strong pressure from feminists at local level and the conduct of research pursuing the enterprise of deconstructing norms, top-down policies may prove less “corrective” than affirmative action. This pressure is not only useful to build gender equality in science but also to broaden the spectrum of knowledge that can become a common good. Research limitations/implications – As neither the names nor the positions of the experts who select the candidates at national level are made public, we had to opt for other, less satisfactory means. Originality/value – The originality of the paper lies in the link made between the enhancements brought by Equalities policies and the changes they bring. It attempts to bring to light the extent to which gender equality policies conform to the neo-managerial order or challenge its norms to build a world that is more just.

A novel approach to the creation of a labelling lexicon for improving emotion analysis in text

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandra Segura Navarrete ◽  
Claudia Martinez-Araneda ◽  
Christian Vidal-Castro ◽  
Clemente Rubio-Manzano
Keyword(s):  
Hybrid Approach ◽  
Software Tool ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Automatic Process ◽  
Emotion Analysis ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Emotion Lexicon ◽  
And Gender

Purpose This paper aims to describe the process used to create an emotion lexicon enriched with the emotional intensity of words and focuses on improving the emotion analysis process in texts. Design/methodology/approach The process includes setting, preparation and labelling stages. In the first stage, a lexicon is selected. It must include a translation to the target language and labelling according to Plutchik’s eight emotions. The second stage starts with the validation of the translations. Then, it is expanded with the synonyms of the emotion synsets of each word. In the labelling stage, the similarity of words is calculated and displayed using WordNet similarity. Findings The authors’ approach shows better performance to identification of the predominant emotion for the selected corpus. The most relevant is the improvement obtained in the results of the emotion analysis in a hybrid approach compared to the results obtained in a purist approach. Research limitations/implications The proposed lexicon can still be enriched by incorporating elements such as emojis, idioms and colloquial expressions. Practical implications This work is part of a research project that aids in solving problems in a digital society, such as detecting cyberbullying, abusive language and gender violence in texts or exercising parental control. Detection of depressive states in young people and children is added. Originality/value This semi-automatic process can be applied to any language to generate an emotion lexicon. This resource will be available in a software tool that implements a crowdsourcing strategy allowing the intensity to be re-labelled and new words to be automatically incorporated into the lexicon.

Fathering, parental leave, impacts, and gender equality: what/how are we measuring?

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 441-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Doucet ◽  
Lindsey McKay
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Family Income ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Unpaid Leave ◽  
Leave Taking ◽  
Canadian Provinces ◽  
And Gender

PurposeThis research article explores several questions about assessing the impacts of fathers' parental leave take up and gender equality. We ask: How does the conceptual and contextual specificity of care and equality shape what we focus on, and how, when we study parental leave policies and their impacts? What and how are we measuring?Design/methodology/approachThe article is based on a longitudinal qualitative research study on families with fathers who had taken parental leave in two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Québec), which included interviews with 26 couples in the first stage (25 mother/father couples and one father/father couple) and with nine couples a decade later. Guided by Margaret Somers' historical sociology of concept formation, we explore the concepts of care and equality (and their histories, networks, and narratives) and how they are taken up in parental leave research. We also draw on insights from three feminist scholars who have made major contributions to theoretical intersections between care, work, equality, social protection policies, and care deficits: Nancy Fraser, Joan Williams, and Martha Fineman.FindingsThe relationship between fathers' leave-taking and gender equality impacts is a complex, non-linear entanglement shaped by the specificities of state and employment policies and by how these structure parental eligibility for leave benefits, financial dimensions of leave-taking (including wage replacement rates for benefits), childcare possibilities/limitations and related financial dimensions for families, masculine work norms in workplaces, and intersections of gender and social class. Overall, we found that maximizing both parental leave time and family income in order to sustain good care for their children (through paid and unpaid leave time, followed by limited and expensive childcare services) was articulated as a more immediate concern to parents than were issues of gender equality. Our research supports the need to draw closer connections between parental leave, childcare, and workplace policies to better understand how these all shape parental leave decisions and practices and possible gender equality outcomes.Research limitations/implicationsThe article is based on a small and fairly homogenous Canadian research sample and thus calls for more research to be done on diverse families, with attention to possible conceptual diversity arising from these sites.Practical implicationsThis research calls for greater attention to: the genealogies of, and relations between, the concepts of care, equality, and subjectivity that guide parental leave research and policy; to the historical specificity of models like the Universal Caregiver model; and to the need for new models and conceptual configurations that can guide research on care, equality, and parental leave policies in current global contexts of neoliberal capitalism.Originality/valueWe call for a move toward thinking about care, not only as care time, but as responsibilities, which can be partly assessed through the stories people tell about how they negotiate and navigate care, domestic work, and paid work responsibilities in specific contexts and conditions across time. We also advocate for gender equality concepts that attend to how families navigate restrictive parental leave and childcare policies and how broader socio-economic inequalities arise partly from state policies underpinned by a concept of liberal autonomous subjects rather than relational subjects who face moments of vulnerability and inter-dependence across the life course.

Violence against Women in Politics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Lena Krook
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Women In Politics ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Ongoing Dialogue

Women have made significant inroads into politics in recent years, but in many parts of the world, their increased engagement has spurred attacks, intimidation, and harassment intended to deter their participation. This book provides the first comprehensive account of this phenomenon, exploring how women came to give these experiences a name—violence against women in politics—and lobby for its increased recognition by citizens, states, and international organizations. Drawing on research in multiple disciplines, the volume resolves lingering ambiguities regarding its contours by arguing that violence against women in politics is not simply a gendered extension of existing definitions of political violence privileging physical aggressions against rivals. Rather, it is a distinct phenomenon involving a broad range of harms to attack and undermine women as political actors. Incorporating a wide range of country examples, the book illustrates what this violence looks like in practice, catalogues emerging solutions around the world, and considers how to document this phenomenon more effectively. Highlighting its implications for democracy, human rights, and gender equality, the volume concludes that tackling violence against women in politics requires ongoing dialogue and collaboration to ensure women’s equal rights to participate—freely and safely—in political life around the globe.

Gender and Demography in Asia (India and China)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravinder Kaur
Keyword(s):  
Sex Determination ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Sex Selection ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
Family And Marriage ◽  
And Gender

China and India together account for over one-third of the world’s population and both countries have considerably fewer women than men.. With long histories of skewed sex ratios and gender discrimination, these two countries have experienced a sharp decline in the birth of girls since the late 20th century. The unfolding and intimate relationship between gendered social structures, son preference, fertility decline, and new sex determination technologies has had serious demographic and social consequences, resulting in millions of “missing” girls, surplus males, bride shortages, and possibly, rising levels of gender violence. Even as women’s socio-economic indicators such as life expectancy, literacy, education, and fertility have improved, families continue to show a preference for sons raising questions between the tenuous relationship between development and gender equality. The advantages of raising sons over daughters, supported by traditional kinship, family, and marriage systems, appear to have got further entrenched in the era of neoliberal economies. Family planning policies of both nations, advocating small families, and the advent of pre-natal sex selection technologies further set the stage for the prevention of birth of daughters. Governments in both countries have since banned sex determination and launched policies and schemes to redress the gender imbalance and improve the value of the girl child. While these policies have not been highly successful, other social forces such as urbanization and rising educational levels are beginning to transform the way girls are perceived. A kernel of hope seems to be emerging at the beginning of the 21st century, as some improvement is visible in the sex ratio at birth in some of the worst affected regions in the two countries.

Gender discourse in the social studies curriculum: an international literature review

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-194
Author(s):  
Molly D. Siebert
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Comparative Education ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
Social Studies Curriculum ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Gender Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
And Gender

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore research on the inclusion of women and discourses on gender in the social studies curriculum, with the goal of promoting gender equality.Design/methodology/approachTo gauge how issues on gender are being taken up in classrooms around the world, the process started by exploring Compare, Comparative Education, Comparative Education Review and International Journal of Educational Development. Initially, studies related to the social studies curriculum were examined. The research then expanded beyond the social sciences and these journals. The next level of research used a mixture of the key search terms “inclusion,” “gender discourse,” “women,” “gender equality” and “curriculum.” Studies conducted around the world were examined to broaden the understanding of global research on women and gender discourses in the curriculum.FindingsAlthough progress is evident, reform measures are necessary to ameliorate the inclusion of women and gender discourses in the curriculum. Implementing these strategies in social studies education may be effective steps to achieve gender equality: (1) consistently encourage students to critique power structures and systems of oppression; (2) include the exploration of gender fluidity, masculinity and the fluidity of masculinity in the curriculum; (3) examine intersectional identities such as race, gender and sexuality; and (4) utilize teacher education programs and professional development as key sites to help educators improve the amount of and approach to gender discourse in the classroom.Originality/valueAfter reviewing these studies, the combined findings offer potential steps to achieve gender equality.

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