Conclusion

The concluding chapter revisits the main hypotheses regarding women’s experiences as aspirants, candidates, and legislators. Complemented by tables summarizing key findings, the chapter identifies where and how the book’s studies of Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Uganda, and Zambia either uphold or contradict hypotheses from the existing literature. Building on this summary, the chapter presents an agenda for future research on women’s political participation in African countries focused on the importance of financial constraints for women’s candidacies, the role of violence in shaping women’s political options, and the impact women in power have on gendered institutions. The book ends on an optimistic note, arguing that despite these barriers, the case studies clearly demonstrate that women are adept at securing a place for themselves, and asserting their voice, in local and national politics.

Lessons Learned

This chapter recounts societal aspirations for families as postfeminist, gender-neutral spaces at the beginning of the twenty-first century that have outpaced the actual rate of social change, particularly in heterosexual families. It points out how gendered patterns in the division of household labor and workplace disadvantage remain stubbornly entrenched. It also confirms parenting as the increasingly preferred gender-neutral label for the multifaceted work of providing care to children. The chapter explores how navigating contemporary motherhood meant navigating a discursively gender-neutral space as a person whose lived experience and interactions with social institutions are in fact quite gendered. It discusses the tensions between gender-neutral aspirations and discourse and gendered institutions, which shape the experiences of mothers without primary custody of their children.

Modelling gender differences in participation in PhD studies in mathematics

In most subject areas, the proportion of women PhD students is around 50%. Mathematics differs despite minimal differences between boys’ and girls’ school achievements. In this paper, we show, drawing on Swedish data from the last 45 years, that low female participation in mathematical PhDs is due to low participative growth rates rather than historical low levels. In comparison, science has twice as strong growth rate, while non-STEM subjects have grown four times faster. The results show that gender differences regarding participation is indeed dynamic, but changes do not occur despite political initiatives such as laws on non-discrimination and encouragement of equal parental leave. Instead, the results imply that in order for maths departments to avoid continuing being gendered institutions, it requires active changes in structures and working environment.

Queer parents, gendered embodiment and the de-essentialisation of motherhood

Feminist theorists have long looked to motherhood and mothering behaviour as an important site at which to examine women’s lives, gender inequality and the social construction of gendered institutions. One important line of theorisation has concerned itself with the de-essentialisation of motherhood, a project that I argue remains incomplete, as feminist theorisation of motherhood naturalises biological sex and therefore essentialises mothering as behaviour performed by ‘female bodies’ and fathering behaviour as performed by ‘male bodies’. Using two cases from a larger qualitative interview project with LGBTQ parents, I show that current theories of motherhood fail to have explanatory power in cases – such as gay and transgender parents – when gendered embodiment and mothering (and/or fathering) fail to align as expected. I suggest that research related to queer parenting – particularly research on gay male co-parenting, on the experiences of transgender parents and their children, on non-white LGBTQ parents and on mothering from outside the nuclear family – will be especially fruitful in moving the de-essentialisation of mothering in new directions that will further contest heteronormative, cisnormative and nuclear assumptions about the family.

When Following the Rules Is Bad for Wellbeing: The Effects of Gendered Rules in the Australian Construction Industry

The construction industry is known to be highly masculinised and to have work practices detrimental to employees’ wellbeing. Drawing on feminist institutional theory and a rapid ethnographic approach in two construction multinationals in Australia, we examine the relationship between the gendered nature of construction and workplace wellbeing for professional women and men employed in the industry. The findings reveal that adhering to the gendered ‘rules in use’ in the construction industry is negatively associated with wellbeing and is usually endured in silence. We also identify the ways in which the gendered rules have different effects on the wellbeing of men and women. We conclude that the construction industry is characterised by a set of ‘greedy’ gendered institutions that are inextricably linked to workplace wellbeing for both men and women and that these rules must be broken to improve worker wellbeing.

Suppressed Sexuality in Gendered Institutions: A Re-examination of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy

Socializing factors like, schools, parents, peer groups, and legal forces etc. all of them combine together to alienate women from fulfilling their own sexual desires and transform their sexual appetites into a subdued residue. The double standard of sexual morality forbade certain sexual activities for women while permitting the same actions for men. Women themselves know very well that they are not permitted by society to express their sexual feelings or even to enjoy sex in many contexts. Amitav Ghosh explores this double standard of sexual morality in his novels.He stresses on the need to deconstruct the cultural construct of sexual morality, which prohibited certain sexual behaviours for women while approving the same behaviours for men. Through an exploration of mainly Ghosh’s The River of Smoke, Sea of Poppies and Flood of Fire I have shown that the political purposes of men have often been rested on restraining women from enjoying satisfying sexual pleasure. Sexuality is not at all as restricted or as palpable as most of us believe. I have also argued in this paper that the restriction on human sexual activity to the lone task of producing babies is not at all a natural requirement, but it is the outcome of a very precise cultural construction.