“Leftover Women” or Single by Choice: Gender Role Negotiation of Single Professional Women in Contemporary China

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (11) ◽  
pp. 1956-1978
Author(s):  
Tianhan Gui
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Marriage Market ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Career Women ◽  
Role Negotiation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Traditional Femininity ◽  
Leftover Women

In today’s Chinese society, we see more and more well-educated, well-paid, and independent career women. However, as traditional femininity has been associated with subordination and sacrifice, well-educated career women are perceived as less feminine and less like proper “women” or prospective wives. Career women who remain single until their late twenties have been referred to within Chinese popular culture as “leftover women.” The current research explores the negative discourses that single career-oriented women encounter in their lives, as well as their own perceptions on work, marriage, and gender roles. Through in-depth interviews with 30 single, professional women, I examined whether these women are really “leftover” on the marriage market and how they perceive their independent, single life. The study aims to explore how these career-oriented women live within conflicting social expectations and value systems, as well as how they perceive gender roles, marriage, and career.

scholarly journals Interpersonal perception of LinkedIn profiles and employability / Percepció interpersonal de perfils a LinkedIn i ocupabilitat

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susana Del Cerro Ramon ◽  
Cristina Rodríguez-Rivas ◽  
Sara Vidal ◽  
Marta Escabrós ◽  
Ursula Oberst
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Interpersonal Perception ◽  
The Self ◽  
Pilot Studies ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Perceived Employability ◽  
Job Selection ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Traditional Masculinity ◽  
Traditional Femininity

Summary. This paper presents two pilot studies related to the self-presentation of users of the professional social network LinkedIn. The first one looks at the most relevant categories users and observers employ when they assess LinkedIn profiles. The results show that professional and non-professional observers rely on similar aspects of the observable characteristics of these profiles to draw conclusions and form their assessment of a given candidate's employability. However, job selection professionals (recruiters) are more suspicious of profiles than non-professionals. The study concludes that candidates are highly aware of how they have to present themselves in a LinkedIn profile in order to attract the attention of selection professionals. The second pilot study asked whether certain gender roles, namely instrumentality (traditional masculinity) and expressiveness (traditional femininity), were predictors of the perceived employability of candidates, in addition to their competencies, personality and gender. The variable competencies turned out to be the strongest predictor of perceived employability, followed by expressiveness. These results are discussed in relation to changes in gender roles in society overall and in the labour world specifically.Resum.Aquest treball presenta dos estudis pilot en relació a la autopresentació d'usuaris de la xarxa social professional LinkedIn. En el primer s'estudia quines són les categories mes rellevants a l'hora de valorar un perfil de LinkedIn, tant per als usuaris com per a observadors. Els resultats mostren que els observadors professionals i no professionals es basen en aspectes similars pel que fa a característiques observables dels perfils per treure conclusions per a la seva valoració sobre l'ocupabilitat del candidat, però els professionals de la selecció desconfien més dels perfils que els no professionals. Es conclou que els candidats són força conscients sobre com s'han de presentar en un perfil de LinkedIn per atreure l'atenció de professionals de la selecció. El segon estudi pilot es va fer per comprovar si els rols de gènere, en tant instrumentalitat (la tradicional masculinitat) i expressivitat (la tradicional feminitat) eren predictors de l'ocupabilitat percebuda dels candidats, juntament amb les competències, personalitat i sexe. La variable competències es va perfilar com el predictor més fort de l'ocupabilitat percebuda, seguit per l'expressivitat. Es discuteixen aquests resultats en relació als canvis en els rols de gènere en la societat i en el món laboral específicament.

scholarly journals Re-imagining family and gender roles in Aminatta Forna's Ancestor Stones

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-99
Author(s):  
Yunusy Castory Ng'umbi
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Gender Role ◽  
Family Structure ◽  
First Century ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Role Negotiation ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time

This paper examines the interplay between polygyny and gender by exploring the way in which family structure and gender roles are negotiated, imagined and exercised in fiction. Aminatta Forna's Ancestor stones (2006) is read in order to explore how the institution of polygyny changes over time and how it influences gender role negotiation. Using an African feminist approach, the paper juxtaposes the historical and contemporary institution of polygyny in relation to gender role negotiation and how contemporary writers build on their literary precursors in re-writing the history of polygyny and gender according to the socio-cultural needs of twenty-first century Africans. These changes in socio-cultural, economic and political spheres in Africa have played a pivotal role in altering family structure and arrangements. I therefore argue that the changes in familial structure and arrangement necessitate gender role negotiation.

Chinese ‘Study Mothers’ in Living Apart Together (LAT) Relationships: Educational Migration, Family Practices, and Gender Roles

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-420
Author(s):  
Shuang Qiu
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Living Arrangements ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Chinese Study ◽  
Family Practices ◽  
Educational Migration ◽  
And Gender

Chinese people have a long history of giving great weight to education. Under the one-child policy, Chinese parents usually spare no efforts to devote themselves to their child’s development. This study examines how the gendered experiences of Chinese ‘study mothers’ ( peidu mama) who accompany their children to study while living apart from their partner, has impacted upon their everyday practices of ‘doing’ family in the Chinese social, historical, and cultural contexts. Drawing on data from qualitative interviews, this article examines how family is culturally constructed and practised in order to reclaim conventional forms of family and gender norms in China. For a woman, being a full-time study mother, even when it is at the cost of living separately from her partner and established career development, has been considered as a way to privilege ‘motherhood’ over ‘wifehood’. The dramatically opposite parenting roles reinforce and entrench the existing traditional gendered division of labour and gender hierarchy in contemporary Chinese society, which has a long tradition of patriarchal families within Confucian culture. This research suggests that family practices in the multi-local household setting are often closely implicated with practices of gender, class, mothering, and social norms. By focusing on these often-neglected groups, this study opens a new avenue to examining the diverse strategies employed by people in varied living arrangements, to negotiate gender roles and everyday family practices.

Contemporary Public Art and Nation: Contesting “Tradition” in Post-Socialist Cultures and Societies

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana T. Kudaibergenova
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Socialist Society ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Art Works ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Conservative Values ◽  
Official Sources

The contemporary art movement attempts to remain independent from official sources of power in order to generate ideas and discourses focusing on temporality and contemporaneity. In addition to art works and performances, some artists transmit their ideas through their public discussions and activism. But without a new value systems, a post-socialist society may fall into the trap of “inventing and re-inventing traditions,” and thus many social actors tend to block artists’ access to the discourses of temporality, “tradition,” nation, and gender. This article analyzes three instances where these “traditions” guided artistic discussions in the fields of sexuality, gender roles, and the sacredness of nation, which are all connected to the newly formed conservative values of the national and traditional that allow many nationalist conservatives to justify control over and criticism of independent cultural production.

Cross-border Migration and Gender Boundaries in Central Eastern Europe – Female Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-509
Author(s):  
Ágnes Erőss ◽  
Monika Mária Váradi ◽  
Doris Wastl-Walter
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Labour Migration ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Livelihood Strategy ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Dual Earner ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Boundaries

In post-Socialist countries, cross-border labour migration has become a common individual and family livelihood strategy. The paper is based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with two ethnic Hungarian women whose lives have been significantly reshaped by cross-border migration. Focusing on the interplay of gender and cross-border migration, our aim is to reveal how gender roles and boundaries are reinforced and repositioned by labour migration in the post-socialist context where both the socialist dual-earner model and conventional ideas of family and gender roles simultaneously prevail. We found that cross-border migration challenged these women to pursue diverse strategies to balance their roles of breadwinner, wife, and mother responsible for reproductive work. Nevertheless, the boundaries between female and male work or status were neither discursively nor in practice transgressed. Thus, the effect of cross-border migration on altering gender boundaries in post-socialist peripheries is limited.

Values and Gender Equality between Islam and the West

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Moulay Rachid Mrani
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
The West ◽  
Living Together ◽  
The Status ◽  
Muslim Intellectuals ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
And Gender

If the development of technology, means of communication, and rapid transportation have made continents closer and made the world a small village, the outcome of the ensuing encounters among cultures and civilizations is far from being a mere success. Within this new reality Muslims, whether they live in majority or minority contexts, face multiple challenges in terms of relating to non-Muslim cultures and traditions. One of these areas is the status of women and gender equality. Ali Mazrui was one of the few Muslim intellectuals to be deeply interested in this issue. His dual belonging, as an African and as a westerner, enable him to understand such issues arising from the economic, political, and ethical contrasts between the West and Islam. This work pays tribute to this exceptional intellectual’s contribution toward the rapprochement between the western and the Islamic value systems, illustrating how he managed to create a “virtual” space for meeting and living together between two worlds that remain different yet dependent upon each other. 

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