This book conceptualises the lived experience of intimacy in a world in which the terms and conditions of love and friendship are increasingly unclear. It shows that the analysis of the 'small world' of dyads can give important clues about society and its gendered makeup.

Debate on the effects of class on educational attainment is well documented and typically centres on the reproductive nature of class whilst studies of the effect of class on educational aspirations also predict outcomes that see education reinforcing and reproducing a student's class background.
Despite a number of government initiatives to help raise higher education participation to 50% by 2010, for the working class numbers have altered little. Using data from an ethnographic case study of a low-achieving girls school the author explores aspirations and argues that whilst class is very powerful in explaining educational attainment, understanding educational aspirations is somewhat more complex. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to question and challenge popular assumptions surrounding class-based theory in making sense of girls aspirations and to question the usefulness of the continued over reliance of such broad categorisations by both academics and policy makers.

Using nine recent theatrical and cinematic productions as case studies, it considers the productive contradictions and tensions that occur when contemporary actors perform the gender norms of previous cultures. It will be of interest to theatre practitioners as well as to students of early modern drama, of performance, and of gender studies.

The practice of karo kari allows family, especially fathers, brothers and sons, to take the lives of their daughters, sisters and mothers if they are accused of adultery. This volume examines the central position of karo kari in the social, political and juridical structures in Upper Sindh, Pakistan. Drawing connections between local contests over marriage and resources, Nafisa Shah unearths deep historical processes and power relations. In particular, she explores how the state justice system and informal mediations inform each other in state responses to karo kari, and how modern law is implicated in this seemingly ancient cultural practice.

The practice of karo kari allows family, especially fathers, brothers and sons, to take the lives of their daughters, sisters and mothers if they are accused of adultery. This volume examines the central position of karo kari in the social, political and juridical structures in Upper Sindh, Pakistan. Drawing connections between local contests over marriage and resources, Nafisa Shah unearths deep historical processes and power relations. In particular, she explores how the state justice system and informal mediations inform each other in state responses to karo kari, and how modern law is implicated in this seemingly ancient cultural practice.

Today, gender and gender identity is at the forefront of discussion as the plight of women around the world and issues of gender equality and human rights have become an international concern for politicians, government agencies, social activists, and the general public. Discourse Analysis as a Tool for Understanding Gender Identity, Representation, and Equality provides a thorough analysis of what language use and linguistic expression can teach us about gender identity in addition to current discussions on topics related to women's rights and gender inequality. Focusing on issues related to women in developing countries, workplace inequalities, and social freedom, this publication is an essential reference source for researchers, graduate-level students, and theorists in the fields of sociology, women's studies, economics, and government.

Gender representation in Mexico's contemporary audio-visual landscape This book focusses on gender and the audio-visual landscape of Mexico since 2010, examining popular culture as expressed in the still distinct but rapidly converging media forms of cinema, television, and streaming platforms. It tracks how changes in producers and genres coincide with changes in gender representations and engages with depictions of feminism, women's sexuality, masculinity, and teen homosexuality. It aims to move beyond the art, auteur or specialist film that is vaunted by film festivals but little seen by Mexicans at home, focussing instead on a wider world of media content and practices available in Mexico itself. Close attention is also paid to the social media footprint of the productions studied and the way it is used for promotion and engagement with the target audience. The book proposes a new approach to audio-visual studies, combining textual analysis with field surveys and the useof industrial sources perhaps unfamiliar to scholars in Anglo-American Hispanism and Latin American media studies in the UK and USA

Every morning Jewish men offering their prayers to God in the traditional manner include the line Blessed are you Lord our God, King of the universe who has not made me a woman. Regardless of one's interpretation of this line, it is an inescapable fact that traditional Judaism views women and men and their places within Judaism quite differently.

But Judaism is not a static religion. It has always been influenced by changes in its surrounding environment. Throughout history, issues of gender have both influenced and been influenced by classical and modern Jewish perspectives. This transformation continues today, as feminist thinkers attempt to discover how modern women fit into Jewish thought and practice. Is halakhah gender inclusive? How do conceptualizations of the Jewish home effect Jewish women's identities? What is the relation between the experiences of historical Jewish women and the roles of their present day sisters? How have changing gender roles affected the identity of the Jewish male?

In this groundbreaking anthology, twenty scholars seek to address these and other questions. Among the many subjects covered are: gender boundaries in Kabbalah; images of Jewish masculinity; the challenge of women's rabbinic leadership; Jewish feminist theory; rabbinic responses to wife-beating; Orthodox women in the modern world; and patriarchy, Judaism, and Nazism in German feminist thought.

This rich and varied collection of essays makes a timely contribution to critical debates about the Female Gothic, a popular but contested area of literary studies. The contributors revisit key Gothic themes - gender, race, the body, monstrosity, metaphor, motherhood and nationality - to open up new critical directions.

This volume, Gender in an Urban World, brings the analysis of gender from the margin to the center of urban theory. Gender in an Urban World examines the influence of gender in shaping relations in urban spaces and places. It represents a "crack" in the landscape of urban sociology, and engages in the discourse of the field from a gendered perspective.

This volume is global in focus and includes empirical and field studies as it relates to structure, politics, policy and everyday life within an urban context. The authors investigate the ways in which the urban world is gendered, and the roles of womens and mens agency in creating and changing urban life. Reconceptualizations of various models, focusing on local, metropolitan, and international environments are also included.

Gender in an Urban World contributes innovative theoretical paradigms to the urban field. It is meant to contribute to an ongoing dialogue with regard to gender within the context of urbanism and urbanization.
* Chapters authored by leading experts from around the world
* Brings the analysis of gender from the margin to the center of urban theory

Much research has been done on the social messages conveyed to children reading or listening to fairy tales. In this highly original study, the emphasis shifts from content to linguistic expression. The language and linguistic organization of a dozen versions, old and new, of the Little Red Riding Hood story are analyzed using a variety of theoretical approaches, including Critical Discourse Analysis, Conversational Analysis, Functional Grammar and Critical Stylistics, to uncover the contribution of fairy tales to the discourse of gender relations over time.

Female offenders are often perceived as victims who commit crimes as a self-defense mechanism or as criminal deviants whose actions strayed from typical 'womanly' behavior. Such cultural norms for violence exist in our gendered society and there has been scholarly debate about how male and female offenders are perceived and how this perception leads to differential treatment in the criminal justice system. This debate is primarily based upon theories associated with stereotypes and social norms and how these prescriptive norms can influence both public and criminal justice response. Scholars in psychology, sociology, and criminology have found that female offenders are perceived differently than male offenders and this ultimately leads to differential treatment in the criminal justice system. This interdisciplinary book provides an evidence based approach of how female offenders are perceived in society and how this translates to differential treatment within the criminal justice system and explores the ramifications of such differences. Quite often perceptions of female offenders are at odds with research findings. This book will provide a comprehensive evidence-based review of the research that is valuable to laypersons, researchers, practitioners, advocates, treatment providers, lawyers, judges, and anyone interested in equality in the criminal justice system.

In the wake of the French Revolution, history was no longer imagined as a cyclical process in which the succession of ruling dynasties was as predictable as the change in the seasons. Contemporaries wrestled with the meaning of this historical rupture, which represented both the progress of the Enlightenment and the darkness of the Terreur. French authors discussed the political events in their country, but they were not the only ones to do so. As the effects of the French Revolution became more palpable across the border, German authors pondered their implications in newspapers, political pamphlets, and historiographical treatises. German women also participated in these debates, but they often embedded their political commentary in literary texts because they were discouraged, and sometimes even barred, from publishing in explicitly political and public venues. As such, literature, in the sense of belles lettres, had a compensatory function for women: it allowed them to engage in political discussion without explicitly encroaching on certain domains that were perceived as a male preserve. As women writers explored the uses of literature for political commentary they adapted major literary genres in order to consolidate their position in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literary sphere. Those genres included domestic fiction, the historical novel, historical tragedy, autobiography, the Robinsonade, and the Bildungsroman. Women writers challenged the images of women traditionally portrayed in these genres: dutiful daughter, submissive wife, caring mother, tantalizing mistress, angelic figure, and passive victim. Gender and Genre discusses six women writers who replaced these traditional female types with women warriors and emigrants as protagonists in texts published between 1795 and 1821: Therese Huber, Caroline de la Motte Fouque, Christine Westphalen, Regula Engel, Sophie von La Roche, and Henriette Froelich. These authors' protagonists question traditional images of passive femininity, yet their battered bodies also depict the precarious position of women in general, and women writers in particular, during this period. Because women writers were attacked by their male counterparts who attempted to halt their foray into the literary marketplace, these texts are as much about power dynamics in the German literary establishment as they are about French politics.

Kevin Giles traces the historic understanding of subordination in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity and investigates the closely related question of whether women are created to be permanently subordinated to men. The concept has been vigorously debated in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity since the fourth century. Certain New Testament texts have made it part of discussions of right relations between men and women. In recent years these two matters have been dramatically brought together. Today the doctrine of the Trinity is being used to support opposing views of the right relationship between men and women in the church. At the center of the debate is the question of whether or not the orthodox view of the trinitarian relations teach the eternal subordination of the Son of God. The author masterfully traces the historic understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity from the patristic age to our own times to help resolve this important question. Giles goes on to provide an illuminating investigation of a closely related question--whether or not women, even in terms of function or role, were created to be permanently subordinated to men. By surveying the church's traditional interpretation of texts relating to the status of women and inquiring into the proper use of the doctrine of the Trinity, Giles lays out his position in this current debate.

The gender segregated nature of vocational education (VET) has received little attention in the stratification literature, despite the well-known consequences of VET for differences in labour market outcomes, such as job placement, income and access to full-time employment. This book investigates the institutional contexts of gender segregation in VET from a comparative perspective, through a number of cross-national comparisons as well as more in-depth studies of Canada, Norway, Germany, Australia and Bulgaria.The various chapters tackle questions about occupational expectations, gendered pathways to applied fields of study, educational transitions, feminization of occupations and the relationship between educational choice and opportunity structures. We discuss the relationship between institutional contexts and gender-typing of educational programs, and whether VET system characteristics make a difference to occupational outcomes across countries. The book concludes with a chapter on education-to-employment transitions (based on a large scale comparative project on labour market entry) assessing the impact of vocational education on gendered labour market inequalities.

This is a combination of essays from several disciplines with incisive commentary by the editor. This volume provides a unique perspective on sexual variance as a dimension of the larger social history of the United States.

Every society has had to confront the issue of sexual expression or behavior, in practice, if not in theory. It is a basic management issue which must be addressed. Theorizing about sex is a relatively recent phenomenon in American history, dating from no earlier than the beginning of the 20th century. In recent decades this interest has produced an enormous outpouring of literature of sexuality, dealing largely with what we do, how we do it, and how to do it better. Such inquiry has been, however, essentially the province of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. The historical perspective on sexuality has been less well treated. Some attention to this omission has occurred in recent years. Even so, minimal attention has been given to practices beyond the boundary of acceptable sexuality, namely sexual deviance or stigmatized sexual behavior.

The primary aim of this volume is to provide a compact and selective perspective on sexual deviance as one dimension of American societal history. It does so by examining attitudes and practices from the colonial era onward. The essays speak collectively to the history of American culture as well as to the history of variant practice. This is basic reading for all students of American social and sexual history, and gender specialized courses.

It is well established that the race and gender of elected representatives influence the ways in which they legislate, but surprisingly little research exists on how race and gender interact to affect who is elected and how they behave once in office. How do race and gender affect who gets elected, as well as who is represented? What issues do elected representatives prioritize? Does diversity in representation make a difference? Race, Gender, and Political Representation takes up the call to think about representation in the United States as intersectional, and it measures the extent to which political representation is simultaneously gendered and raced. Specifically, the book examines how race and gender interact to affect the election, behavior, and impact of all individuals. By putting women of color at the center of their analysis and re-evaluating traditional, "single-axis" approaches to studying the politics of race or gender, the authors demonstrate what an intersectional approach to identity politics can reveal. Drawing on original data on the presence, policy leadership, and policy impact of Black women and men, Latinas and Latinos, and White women and men in state legislative office in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, each chapter shows how the politics of race, gender, and representation are far more complex than recurring "Year of the Woman" frameworks suggest. An array of race-gender similarities and differences are evident in the experiences, activities, and accomplishments of these state legislators. Yet one thing is clear: the representation of those marginalized by multiple, intersecting systems of power and inequality is intricately bound to the representation of women of color.

Researched and written by a collaborative team of Americans and Russians, "Marriages in Russia" explores the myths and realities of how the first years of market transformation have affected Russian family life. The research project, in which 2418 individual interviews of randomly sampled heterosexual couples are used, was initiated to determine if the relationships between gender attitudes and the relative social statuses of spouses--based on such factors as education, occupational prestige, and income--influence the marital quality spouses experience. Whether these variables are linked to domestic violence, as data show they are in the United States, is also examined. The results are surprising in that they often contradict general beliefs about Russian gender attitudes and gender attributes, and the analysis of these findings is ultimately a fascinating look at the post-Cold War realities of family life in Russia.

During the last half of the nineteenth century, a number of social and economic factors converged that resulted in the rural village of Deerfield, Massachusetts becoming almost entirely female. This drastic shift in population presents a unique lens through which to study gender roles and social relations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The lessons gleaned from this case study will provide new insight to the study of gender relations throughout other historical periods as well.

Through an intensive examination of both historical and archaeological evidence, the author presents a clear picture of the gendered social relations in Deerfield over the span of seventy years. While gender relations in urban settings have been studied extensively, this unique work provides the same level of examination to gender relations in a rural setting. Likewise, where previous studies have often focused only on relations between married men and women, the unique case of Deerfield provides insight into the experiences of single women, particularly widows and spinsters .

This work presents a unique contribution that will be essential for anyone studying the historical archaeology of gender, or gender roles in the Victorian era and beyond."

In the course of the twentieth century glamour was associated primarily with cinema, although the theatre, fashion, high society, popular music, glossy magazines and department stores have all sought to harness its allure. It is usually associated with 'magic' and suggests a capacity to dazzle and seduce. Yet glamour's origins and meanings have never until now been thoroughly examined. For many, it is simply the aura of excitement and mystery that has surrounded the famous and the desirable from time immemorial. By contrast, this innovative book traces the origins of glamour to the nineteenth century and identifies it as a core feature of consumer culture. The authors examine the way that a language of visual seduction has been associated with a variety of social milieux and used to arouse envy and interest, mainly in commercial settings. They also illustrate eight distinct permutations of glamour, each of which has a complex history and is in continual evolution.

In a provocative and insightful exposition, Jane Flax posits that Americans have never properly mourned slavery and its lingering effects on American subjects and politics. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book shows that a reciprocal relationship exists between unconscious processes and race/gender domination and that unless we attend to these unconscious processes, no adequate remedy for the malignant consequences of our current race/gender practices and relations can be devised. Wide-ranging, Flax supports her arguments using a variety of sources, including psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, political theory, Michel Foucault's writings, Obama's books and speeches, critical race theory, data on race/gender disparities, and analysis of contemporary films.

Jo Carr and Anne Pauwels examine the continuing poor relationship between boys and the study of foreign languages. Framed by discussion of gender socialization, gendered curriculum practices and cultural narratives about boys and schooling, the core of the book is constructed by boys themselves. They talk about school, about themselves as learners, about teachers and language classrooms. Their commentaries raise important issues for language teachers and curriculum planners, but also for everyone involved in wider conversations about boys, language, literacy and education.

Queer Presences and Absences explores changes and continuations in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer lives, identities and spatial practices in the 21st century. Queer futures are situated across local, national and international spaces including the UK, USA, Italy, Brazil, Russia and the Czech Republic. Queer movements, marginalities and mainstreams are located in legislative changes, institutional locations and in everyday spaces: these are mediated through consumption, possession and entitlement, alongside dispossession, poverty and inequality. Rather than positing a queer arrival or a queer present 'everywhere', care is taken to consider the diversity of queer existence. Using a range of methods, including qualitative interviews, ethnographies, auto-biographical 'fictions' and archival research, authors connect pasts, places and policies with contemporary times, linking individual and social presences (and absences) affectively and materially.

This text brings together debates and empirical research in feminist theory, theories of men and masculinity, and post-structuralism, offering a wide-ranging account of the relationship between gender, culture and society. It offers a balanced study of the diverse, complex and fluid nature of gender at a time of rapid social change. It is a comprehensive book that is suitable for undergraduate and post-graduate social science courses and valuable to those writing and researching in the area of gender relations.