A Case Study of Women's Participation in DIY in France: Towards an Increasingly Androgynous and Individualistic French Society?

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Florence Potot

Over the past decade, the traditionally masculine pursuit of DIY has attracted an increasing number of female practitioners in France, thus seemingly challenging the long-established gendered division of tasks observed in the domestic sphere. This case study of women's DIY practices in France analyses women's rationale for participation by contrasting agency with economic necessity. Drawing on vertical and horizontal segregation theories, women's participation in DIY is examined as a potential indicator of progress towards greater gender equality in the domestic sphere. Finally, the article argues that women's participation in DIY illustrates the increasing normalisation of an androgynous division of labour already observed in the public sphere. This results from the development of individualistic values that are increasingly challenging the prevalence of gender as a term of reference in the construction of social and individual identity.

1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhan Mullally

This paper examines the legal regulation of women's employment in the public sphere in Pakistan. A large part of the legislation relating specifically to the employment of women is highly protective in nature. The 1973 Constitution of Pakistan assumes that women are in need of protection. This assumption is reflected in the labour legislation and in the international labour standards that have been adopted by Pakistan. Much of the existing Labour Code is a legacy of the colonial period and reflects the concerns of the early British factory movement to preserve female modesty and ‘protect’ women's roles within the domestic sphere. This paper attempts to identify those areas of the law most in need of reform if the protective approach to women's participation in the public sphere is to be transcended. Although legislative reform does not necessarily lead to a change in workplace practices, the existence of discriminatory legislation, gaps in existing legislation and a lack of adequate enforcement machinery constitute significant institutional barriers to women's participation in the public sphere. For these reasons, it is argued, calls for law reform and a focus on legislative reform as a strategy for change may be justified.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tess Evans

All aspects of children’s lives in the eighteenth century were purposeful. Boys and girls performed tasks inside the domestic sphere of the home as well as in the public sphere. Daily chores of chopping wood, taking care of livestock, helping with maintenance of the home, and buying supplies in town had to be completed to ensure the family’s survival. Leisure was allowed only after work was completed, and even then, children’s minds were not at rest. Playing with toys and games was not just for fun; these objects were meant to educate, which mirrors the philosophy that play could be used didactically to enhance children’s cognitive development.


2021 ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Korinna Schönhärl

It is often noted that people remember the past to better manage the present. One major driving force of economic behaviour is expectations of the future or ‘imagined futures’, as the sociologist Jens Beckert calls them. But whereas these expectations are oriented towards the future, the frames in which they arise are strongly influenced by the past. During economically difficult situations, economic crises of the past were especially intensively remembered and discussed. The thesis of this chapter is that actors in the public sphere remember crises in alarming situations to orient themselves, construct fictional expectations of the future, and legitimize decisions that have to be taken in the present. The Greek debt crisis from 2009 onwards is used as a case study. The past crisis most recalled in collective memory in this period is the one that followed the Greek bankruptcy of 1893.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tess Evans

All aspects of children’s lives in the eighteenth century were purposeful. Boys and girls performed tasks inside the domestic sphere of the home as well as in the public sphere. Daily chores of chopping wood, taking care of livestock, helping with maintenance of the home, and buying supplies in town had to be completed to ensure the family’s survival. Leisure was allowed only after work was completed, and even then, children’s minds were not at rest. Playing with toys and games was not just for fun; these objects were meant to educate, which mirrors the philosophy that play could be used didactically to enhance children’s cognitive development.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
Karin Carmit Yefet ◽  
Ido Shahar

The vast multidisciplinary literature on marital dissolution tends to conceptualize divorce as a personal, individualist act that naturally resides in the domestic sphere. The article challenges this prevailing scholarly perspective by dissecting a substantially underexplored dimension of divorce as a citizenship-certifying act located squarely in the public sphere. Drawing on a pioneering qualitative study among Palestinian Christians in Israel as a case study, we argue that Israel’s divorce law, which locks Catholics into indissoluble marriages, should be recognized as a key state instrument for delineating the contours of citizenship—a boundary-demarcating apparatus between insiders and outsiders who are excluded from full and equal membership. The article provides novel insights into the complex interrelations between divorce, gender, and citizenship, showing how Palestinian-Christian women pay the price of a purportedly sex-neutral, no-exit regime. The article also illuminates a seldom-studied phenomenon we call “divorce conversion”: the act of changing one’s denomination for the sake of marital freedom, which is a hallmark of Palestinian-Christians’ third-rate status in the Jewish state. We conclude that divorce should be reconceptualized as a right to egalitarian female citizenship, serving as a basic precursor to women’s full participation in all spheres of life.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.


Author(s):  
Ellen Anne McLarney

This chapter focuses on the work of Heba Raouf Ezzat. Ranked the thirty-ninth most influential Arab on Twitter, with over 100,000 followers, voted one of the hundred most powerful Arab women by ArabianBusiness.com, and elected a Youth Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Raouf Ezzat has articulated and disseminated her Islamic politics in a global public sphere. Her writings and lectures develop an Islamic theory of women's political participation but simultaneously address other contested questions about women's leadership, women's work, and women's participation in the public sphere. Heba Raouf Ezzat is one of the most visible public figures in the Arab and Islamic world today, a visibility that began with her book on the question of women's political work in Islam, Woman and Political Work.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-149
Author(s):  
Jan Siegemund

AbstractLibel played an important and extraordinary role in early modern conflict culture. The article discusses their functions and the way they were assessed in court. The case study illustrates argumentative spaces and different levels of normative references in libel trials in 16th century electoral Saxony. In 1569, Andreas Langener – in consequence of a long stagnating private conflict – posted several libels against the nobleman Tham Pflugk in different public places in the city of Dresden. Consequently, he was arrested and charged with ‘libelling’. Depending on the reference to conflicting social and legal norms, he had therefore been either threatened with corporal punishment including his execution, or rewarded with laudations. In this case, the act of libelling could be seen as slander, but also as a service to the community, which Langener had informed about potentially harmful transgression of norms. While the common good was the highest maxim, different and sometimes conflicting legally protected interests had to be discussed. The situational decision depended on whether the articulated charges where true and relevant for the public, on the invective language, and especially on the quality and size of the public sphere reached by the libel.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Emily J. M. Knox

AbstractOver the past few years, tensions between two core values in U.S. librarianship, intellectual freedom and social justice, have roiled the profession. This conflict was most recently seen in the insertion and subsequent removal of “hate groups” to the list of entities that cannot be denied access to library meeting rooms in the American Library Association’s Meeting Rooms Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights. This paper is intended to provide context for this conflict. It begins by situating its arguments within ethical philosophy, specifically the study of values or axiology. It then provides an overview of the theoretical foundations of the values of liberalism. Next, the paper discusses the values of truth and freedom from harm in librarianship. Finally, it suggests that a fuller understanding of the library’s place within the public sphere is a possible model for mitigating the tensions currently found in American librarianship. The paper is intended to provide a theoretical foundation for further research.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger

The relationship between law and religion in contemporary civil society has been a topic of increasing social interest and importance in Canada in the past many years. We have seen the practices and commitments of religious groups and individuals become highly salient on many issues of public policy, including the nature of the institution of marriage, the content of public education, and the uses of public space, to name just a few. As the vehicle for this discussion, I want to ask a straightforward question: When we listen to our public discourse, what is the story that we hear about the relationship between law and religion? How does this topic tend to be spoken about in law and politics – what is our idiom around this issue – and does this story serve us well? Though straightforward, this question has gone all but unanswered in our political and academic discussions. We take for granted our approach to speaking about – and, therefore, our way of thinking about – the relationship between law and religion. In my view, this is most unfortunate because this taken-for-grantedness is the source of our failure to properly understand the critically important relationship between law and religion.


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