scholarly journals It’s a rich man’s world: How class and glass ceilings intersect for UK parliamentary candidates

2021 ◽  
pp. 019251212110400
Author(s):  
Rainbow Murray
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Informal Institutions ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Family Roles ◽  
Formal And Informal Institutions ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Uk

Why is politics dominated by wealthy men, and how do gendered and class barriers to running for office intersect? This article addresses these questions using the UK as a case study. Drawing on interview data, I highlight the formal and informal institutions that shape the class and glass ceilings in electoral politics. I identify how the high personal costs of running for office, especially in relation to candidates’ time, present a barrier to those without significant financial resources. These costs are gendered, as women typically have less time and money than men. These resource barriers are compounded by additional gendered obstacles including discrimination, abuse and gendered family roles. I find that the intersection of the class and glass ceilings creates cumulative barriers that are particularly prohibitive for working-class women. The findings extend our understanding of class and gender gaps within politics and, crucially, the intersection between them.

Sisters and Sisterhood

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyndsey Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Autonomous Agents ◽  
History Of Education ◽  
Social Reforms ◽  
Political Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Politically Active

This is a book about the possibilities for, and experiences of, working-class women in the militant suffrage movement. It uses the Kenney family as a case study through which to understand who these women were, what they wanted, and what the vote meant to them. It identifies why they became politically active, their experiences as activists, and the benefits they gained from their political work. It stresses the need to see working-class women as significant actors and autonomous agents in the suffrage campaign. It shows why and how some women became politicized, why they prioritized the vote above all else, and how this campaign came to dominate their lives. It also places the suffrage campaign within the broader trajectory of their lives in order to stress how far the personal and political were intertwined for these women. It addresses questions of class and gender, politics and activism, and agency and identity in the early twentieth century, engaging with recent historiographical research around politicization, networks, and transnationalism. It is a history of education, faith, and social mobility as well of suffrage, and of teachers, theosophists, political activists, social reforms, friends and sisters, as well as suffragettes.

scholarly journals Job Loss and Attempts to Return to Work: Complicating Inequalities across Gender and Class

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Damaske
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Return To Work ◽  
Job Search ◽  
Job Loss ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Family Responsibilities ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
And Gender

Drawing on data from 100 qualitative interviews with the recently unemployed, this study examines how participants made decisions about attempting to return to work and identifies how class and gender shape these decisions. Middle-class men were most likely to take time to attempt to return to work, middle-class women were most likely to begin a deliberate job search, working-class men were most likely to report an urgent search, and working-class women were most likely to have diverted searches. Financial resources, gendered labor force attachments, and family responsibilities shaped decision making. Ultimately, those in the middle-class appear doubly advantaged—both in their financial capabilities and in their ability to respond to the crisis with greater gender flexibility.

Anthropology, Class and the ‘Big Heads’: An Ethnography of Distinctions between ‘Rough’ and ‘Posh’ amongst Women Workers in the UK Pottery Industry

2005 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 710-728 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hart
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Pottery Industry ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Global Corporation ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
The Way

In the context of the take-over by a global corporation (Royal Doulton) of a family-owned and run pottery factory in Longton Stoke-on-Trent, known as ‘Beswick’, and the subsequent re-structuring of production, this paper explores the way in which women pottery workers make social distinctions between the ‘rough’ and ‘posh’, ‘proper paintresses’ and ‘big heads’ which cut into and across abstract sociological notions of class. Drawing on ethnographic data I show that for these working class women, class as lived is inherently ambiguous and contradictory and reveal the ways in which class is gendered. I build on historical and sociological studies of the pottery industry, and anthropological and related debates on class, as well as Frankenberg's study of a Welsh village, to develop my argument and draw analogies between factory and village at a number of levels. My findings support the view that class is best understood not as an abstract generalising category, but in the local and specific contexts of women's working lives. I was the first one in our family to go in decorating end and they thought I was a bit stuck-up. My sister was in clay end as a cup-handler and I had used to walk off factory without her, or wait for her to leave before I left, though she said, ‘If it wasn't for me you wouldn't have anything to paint!’ They were much freer in the clay end – had more to do with men – we thought we were one up. 1

scholarly journals The Impact of Interplay Between Formal and Informal Institutions on Corporate Governance Systems: a Comparative Study of CEECs

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 85-104
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Godlewska ◽  
Tomasz Pilewicz
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Deductive Reasoning ◽  
Case Study Research ◽  
Individual Case ◽  
Informal Institutions ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Governance Systems ◽  
Formal And Informal Institutions ◽  
The Impact

The central point of this paper is to present the results of comparative case study research concerning the impact of the interplay between formal and informal institutions in the corporate governance systems (CGS) of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC). Particular focus was put on the values of the corporate governance codes (CGC) of CEECs, as well as on transparent ownership structures, transactions with related parties, the protection of minority shareholders, independent members of supervisory boards, and separation between the CEO position and the chairman of the board of directors. The main subject of interest concerns two research areas: the character of the relationship between formal and informal institutions, as well as whether the interplay between them is relevant to the CGSs of CEECs. Moreover, the author investigates whether the CGCs of CEECs consist of regulations that are compatible with the values set up in preambles using research methods such as individual case study or deductive reasoning. The conclusion presented in the paper was drawn on the basis of a review of the literature and research on national and European corporate governance regulations, as well as the CGC of CEECs. The primary contribution this article makes is to advance the stream of research beyond any single country setting, and to link the literature on the interplay between formal and informal institutions related to CGSs in a broad range of economies in transition (‘catch up’ countries) like CEECs. This paper provides an understanding of how the interplay between formal and informal institutions may influence the CGCs of CEECs.

Voices of Angels

2020 ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Stephanie Vander Wel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Single Mother ◽  
Country Music ◽  
World War ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Representations Of Women

Chapter 6 traces the musical and lyrical developments of honky-tonk in the late 1930s and 1940s with Al Dexter, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Williams and remained a predominant mode of country music after World War II, right when Kitty Wells, Goldie Hill, and Jean Shepard contributed to the musical discourse. These female artists, taking over male-defined and often parodic representations of women, developed narratives that articulated class-specific voices couched in the metaphors of sexual and material desire, heartache, and loss juxtaposed with 1950s ideals of domesticity. Examining the particulars of musical style and vocal expression, this chapter argues that female artists in their various enactments of the honky-tonk angel, the angry, jilted housewife, the single mother, and the forsaken lover disclosed the paradoxes of class and gender and helped to lift the cloak of invisibility shrouding working-class women.

Building a ‘counter-community of emotions’: feminist encounters and socio-cultural difference in 1970s Turin1

Modern Italy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maud Anne Bracke
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Health Clinic ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Educational Backgrounds ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Women’S Sexual Health ◽  
History Of ◽  
Working Class Women

The article analyses cross-class encounters within 1970s feminist campaigning from the perspective of the history of emotions. It is based on a case study of a feminist women's sexual health clinic (consultorio autogestito) in a working-class district near Turin, the Falchera, in the mid-1970s. The article investigates the role played by emotions in the creation of a sense of community among women from different socio-economic and educational backgrounds. The encounters between feminist activists from Turin and working-class women living at the Falchera are understood as framed by these emotional exchanges, which led the women involved to question in new ways their own life-stories, aspirations and understanding of libertà. It is argued that these exchanges led to a reshaping of feminist politics at the grass-roots, specifically in the articulation of strongly situated notions of liberation. The analysis is based on original interviews and interviews published at the time.

Examining the Dynamics Between Formal and Informal Institutions in Progressive City Planning

2021 ◽  
pp. 107808742110416
Author(s):  
Andrea Restrepo-Mieth
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Direct Observation ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Document Analysis ◽  
Informal Institutions ◽  
Nonstate Actors ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Formal And Informal Institutions

What explains the institutionalization of progressive city planning practices? Using Medellín as a case study, I analyze how state and nonstate actors target both formal and informal institutions in efforts to maintain the continuity of progressive public space provision practices. I introduce the idea of institutional compounding, defined as the quest by networks of individuals and organizations to create and sustain both formal and informal institutions, where each maintains its particular defining features while together they provide continuity and legitimacy to an existing practice. I draw on in-depth, semi-structured interviews, direct observation, and document analysis to demonstrate that continuity efforts are more likely to have an effect when actors engage in institutional compounding, since the strategy minimizes the shortcomings of formal and informal institutions alone. The findings contribute toward conceptualizing how nascent institutions become effective, highlighting how actors strengthen practices and how they seek to embed them through networked efforts.

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