scholarly journals Domestic Connectivity: Media, Gender and the Domestic Sphere in Kenya

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-198
Author(s):  
Jessica Gustafsson

This article explores how increased media access and use influences Kenyan women’s everyday life and alters the domestic space. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with women in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya, the article demonstrates that women have incorporated newly gained media into their daily lives and routines. Increased media access has opened up the home and turned the domestic sphere from a secluded place into a connected space in which women can receive input from, connect with and interact with the world beyond their immediate surroundings whilst simultaneously remaining at home and fulfilling their traditional gender roles. Women’s media use thus reinforces their connection to the domestic sphere and the gendered division of labour. Although it has the potential to challenge gender inequalities, the extent to which this occurs depends on the individual woman’s ability to act on the imaginaries and ideas that media carry.

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-72
Author(s):  
Muhammad Zaman ◽  
Muhammad Zakria Zakar ◽  
Abida Sharif

This article deals with the traditional and changing gender roles and relationships in the exchange-marriage system that exists in south Punjab, Pakistan. It examines the structural roles and an individual’s independent choices. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-four families who have utilized the system of exchange. In this research the guidelines of the Grounded Theory Method (GTM) in order to collect and analyse the data. The study found that pre-determined, structured roles were more influential and they retain more importance than the individual’s choices. It revealed a perpetual tension between structural forces and an individual agency: an emancipated individual tries to assert and wants to exercise her/his choice but finds that the structural pressures are powerful. Some contention grows between the structural agents and the individual agency for the freeing of the individual’s emancipated role. This paper analyses the interplay between the structure and the agency. It also analyses the tensions and the process of slight social change that occurs under given social conditions.


Author(s):  
Cory Thomas Hutcheson

This chapter unfolds the intersectionality of the domestic sphere in three parts. First, the home itself presents a multivalent space in which individual locations become realms of practice and performance for different groups, such as bathrooms used by children at slumber parties as the locus of legend ostension. Issues of personal identity and even “solo folklore” appear in spaces like treehouses and apartments, as do considerations of material cultural performance. Questions of gender and occupation appear in rooms like the “man cave” or the “home office” as well. Beyond the domestic space is the intersection of home and public spaces in practices such as holiday decoration, yard art, porch culture, and backyard cookouts. The automobile informs the final section, demonstrating the connection between domestic, familial, social, and political performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1671
Author(s):  
Maura A. E. Pilotti

In many societies across the globe, females are still underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM fields), although they are reported to have higher grades in high school and college than males. The present study was guided by the assumption that the sustainability of higher education critically rests on the academic success of both male and female students under conditions of equitable educational options, practices, and contents. It first assessed the persistence of familiar patterns of gender bias (e.g., do competencies at enrollment, serving as academic precursors, and academic performance favor females?) in college students of a society in transition from a gender-segregated workforce with marked gender inequalities to one whose aims at integrating into the global economy demand that women pursue once forbidden careers thought to be the exclusive domain of men. It then examined how simple indices of academic readiness, as well as preferences for fields fitting traditional gender roles, could predict attainment of key competencies and motivation to graduate (as measured by the average number of credits completed per year) in college. As expected, females had a higher high school GPA. Once in college, they were underrepresented in a major that fitted traditional gender roles (interior design) and over-represented in one that did not fit (business). Female students’ performance and motivation to graduate did not differ between the male-suited major of business and the female-suited major of interior design. Male students’ performance and motivation to graduate were higher in engineering than in business, albeit both majors were gender-role consistent. Although high school GPA and English proficiency scores predicted performance and motivation for all, preference for engineering over business also predicted males’ performance and motivation. These findings offered a more complex picture of patterns of gender bias, thereby inspiring the implementation of targeted educational interventions to improve females’ motivation for and enrollment in STEM fields, nowadays increasingly available to them, as well as to enhance males’ academic success in non-STEM fields such as business.


2021 ◽  
pp. 101269022110141
Author(s):  
Eunhye Yoo

This study explores the influence and sociocultural meaning of self-management of South Korean sports stars in the context of their social media activity. The study utilizes netnography to analyze social media posts to determine the meaning of sports stars’ self-management. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with study participants. Ten South Korean sports stars, who are active users of Instagram, were selected as the study participants. Photographs, videos, and stories from their accounts—around 1800 posts in total—were analyzed. The results indicated that the sports stars attempted to share their daily lives on social media to build a close relationship with the public. Moreover, they used their accounts to publicize their commercialized selves and to promote their sponsors. They uploaded only strictly composed and curated posts on their accounts as a form of self-censorship. Finally, it was determined that digital labor was used for self-management on social media, where there is no distinction between public and private territory. A sports star has become a self-living commercial today, and self-management is now a prerequisite for survival. Thus, self-management on social media has become a requirement for sports stars.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Willing ◽  
Sarah-Jane Paine ◽  
Emma Wyeth ◽  
Braden Te Ao ◽  
Rhema Vaithianathan ◽  
...  

The philosophical assumptions that underpin the way in which health states are valued within economic measures of health are rarely made explicit and fail to capture the experiences of Indigenous peoples. Within a Kaupapa Māori theoretical paradigm, in-depth interviews were conducted with six Māori key informants who had cared for whānau (family) members through illness to give voice to dimensions of health and illness that Western economic measures of health fail to capture. An Indigenous measure of health needs to consider the individual within the context of the collective and the environment that they are connected to. Economic measures of health are widely used to inform decisions about resource allocation that have significant impacts on Indigenous health outcomes. This article sets out to start a conversation around what an Indigenous measure of health might look like and how it might value key dimensions of health.


2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Smith Dahmen ◽  
Erin K. Coyle

Through surveys and in-depth interviews with members of the White House News Photographers Association, this study indicates that visual journalists understand the value of the watchdog role and that current White House practices interfere with this critical function. Limiting news media access and attempting to control the visual narrative undermines the ability of the press to perform the watchdog function that is critical for democratic self-governance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 219
Author(s):  
Marta Dominguez-Folgueras

The lockdowns enforced in many countries to contain the spread of COVID-19 had important consequences for the domestic sphere. This paper analyzes the division of domestic work among heterosexual couples in France during the lockdown. In particular, we analyzed the role of time constraints and availability and expected to find a more egalitarian division of domestic work among couples in which the man had more time than his partner due to not working or working from home. We used data from the ELIPSS panel, a representative survey of the French population, and ran OLS regressions on the division of domestic work among 406 couples. The results show that men’s time availability was associated with a more egalitarian division of domestic work, even if gender inequalities persisted. However, we did not find any clear differences between men who did not work and men who worked from home, leading us to hypothesize that men’s presence at home is an important factor.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 417-427
Author(s):  
Ben Little ◽  
Alison Winch

Abstract In a video that showcases a new Facebook feature, Mark Zuckerberg chats to his users, telling them that he’s “just hanging out with you in my backyard.” In this video-which is on his Facebook page-Zuckerberg discloses the domestic space of his backyard, revealing his interaction with family and friends. Depicted hosting a barbeque while watching the electoral debate, Zuckerberg performs an affective white postfeminist paternity (Hamad, 2014) by talking about hunting, eating meat, and being a father. This video is key in explaining how Zuckerberg affectively models patriarchal power. We argue that this PR exercise (for both him and Facebook which are portrayed as inextricably linked) functions to represent Facebook as enabling an empowered “community,” rather than being just an instrument of data accumulation. In particular, Zuckerberg’s affective paternalism is also a means to recoup and obfuscate patriarchal power structures. Zuckerberg’s Facebook page constructs an intimate paternalism in relation to his domestic sphere, but also to his followers, and this works to legitimate his corporate and global paternalism. The ways in which he is portrayed through signifiers of an emotional fatherhood work to gloss his power as the third richest man in the world.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jembere Gizachew Balew ◽  
Yongtae Cho ◽  
Clara Tammy Kim ◽  
Woorim Ko

Family planning coverage has improved in Ethiopia in the last decade, though fertility is still about 5.8 in the rural setup. In this paper, the major structural determinants of family planning service were analyzed using a multilevel model from 8906 individual women observation in the 2011 EDHS data. The results show that there is a big variation in family planning use both at the individual and between group levels. More than 39% of the variation in FP use is explained by contextual cluster level differences. Most of the socioeconomic predictors; respondent’s education, ethnicity, and partners’ education as well as employment status and urbanization were found to be significant factors that affect FP use. Similarly health extension visit and media access were found to be strong factors that affect FP service at both individual and cluster levels. This evidence concludes that addressing these contextual factors is very crucial to strengthen FP use and fertility reduction in the nation, beyond individual behavioral changes.


2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 69-71
Author(s):  
Anita Kozák

The primary objective of this essay is to assign a gap in Human Recourse Management literature. Many studies and resources are known about hiring and maintaining people and their loyalty to organizations. Work socialization is the first step to keeping people; however, most of the literature on integration at the workplace focuses primarily on organizational commitment and not on the individuals. Various perspectives of work socialization have been discussed including socialization stages, guidance and carrier development. This essay focuses on the approach of Human Resource Management, but the scope is expanded to the individual as well. In this paper, the reasoning, the methods and the questions of my future doctoral research on integration at the workplace are analysed. First, the issue is discussed from the perspective of social changes in Hungary. The next part of this essay illustrates varying definitions from the literature, providing then my own view of how to explain the integration process in the workplace and through which what I would like to focus my research. This article also aims to show possible methods (in-depth interviews with Human Resource Managers and document analysis) for examining the topic at multinational pharmaceutical factories in Hungary, while highlighting the most important questions for which my research aims to find answers.


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