„Þú þarft að hafa breitt bak til að vinna í svona“: Reynsla stuðningsfulltrúa af krefjandi hegðun barna í grunnskólum

Peer reviewe

The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media

Research suggests young women view drinking as a pleasurable aspect of their social lives but that they face challenges in engaging in a traditionally ‘masculine’ behaviour whilst maintaining a desirable ‘femininity’. Social network sites such as Facebook make socialising visible to a wide audience. This paper explores how young people discuss young women’s drinking practices, and how young women construct their identities through alcohol consumption and its display on social media. We conducted 21 friendship-based focus groups (both mixed and single sex) with young adults aged 18–29 years and 13 individual interviews with a subset of focus group respondents centred on their Facebook practices. We recruited a purposive sample in Glasgow, Scotland (UK) which included ‘middle class’ (defined as students and those in professional jobs) and ‘working class’ respondents (employed in manual/service sector jobs), who participated in a range of venues in the night time economy. Young women’s discussions revealed a difficult ‘balancing act’ between demonstrating an ‘up for it’ sexy (but not too sexy) femininity through their drinking and appearance, while still retaining control and respectability. This ‘balancing act’ was particularly precarious for working class women, who appeared to be judged more harshly than middle class women both online and offline. While a gendered double standard around appearance and alcohol consumption is not new, a wider online audience can now observe and comment on how women look and behave. Social structures such as gender and social class remain central to the construction of identity both online and offline

Transformation and time-out: the role of alcohol in identity construction among Scottish women in early midlife

Despite the increase in drinking by women in early midlife, little alcohol research has focused on this group. We explore how alcohol is associated with the construction of gender identities among women aged 30 to 50 years in the west of Scotland, United Kingdom. We draw on qualitative data from 11 focus groups (five all-female, six mixed-sex) with pre-existing groups of friends and work colleagues in which women and men discuss their drinking behaviours. Analysis demonstrated how alcohol represented a time and space away from paid and unpaid work for women in a range of domestic circumstances, allowing them to relax and unwind. While women used alcohol to construct a range of identities, traditional notions of femininity remained salient (e.g. attention to appearance, drinking ‘girly’ drinks). Drinking enabled women to assert their identity beyond the roles and responsibilities often associated with being a woman in early midlife. For example, some respondents with young children described the transformative effects of excessive drinking which allowed them to return temporarily to a younger, carefree version of themselves. Thus, our data suggest that women's drinking in early midlife revolves around notions of ‘idealised’ femininity but simultaneously represents a way of achieving ‘time out’ from traditional female responsibilities such as caring for others. We consider these findings within a broader social and cultural context including alcohol marketing, domestic roles and motherhood and their implications for health promotion

Fuck patriarchy! An analysis of digital mainstream media discussion of the #freethenipple activities in Iceland in March 2015

This article contributes to recent research on young women’s emerging feminist movements or feminist counter-publics (see Salter, 2013) in the digital age. The focus is on the #freethenipple protests in Iceland in 2015 organised by young women and the ensuing debates in mainstream digital news media and popular ezines. A feminist, post-structuralist perspective is adopted to analyse the discursive context in which the debates and discussions about the protest are embedded, but we are also informed by recent theories about role of affect in triggering and sustaining political movements. The data corpus consists of 60 texts from the digital public domain published during and after the protests. The young women’s political movement is construed as a revolution centering on reclaiming the body from the oppressive structures of patriarchy which, through shame and pornification, have taken their bodies and their ability to choose, in a post-feminist context, from them. Public representations of the protest are mostly supportive and many older feminists are affectively pulled by the young women’s rhetoric about how patriarchy has blighted their lives. We argue that the young women manage to claim space as agents of change but highlight the importance of the support or affective sustenance they received from older feminists.Peer Reviewe

Contextualizing students' alcohol use perceptions and practices within French culture: an analysis of gender and drinking among sport-science college students

Although research has examined alcohol consumption and sport in a variety of contexts, there is a paucity of research on gender and gender dynamics among French college students. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by examining alcohol use practices by men and women among a non-probability sample of French sport science students from five different universities in Northern France. We utilized both survey data (N = 534) and in-depth qualitative interviews (n = 16) to provide empirical and theoretical insight into a relatively ubiquitous health concern: the culture of intoxication. Qualitative data were based on students’ perceptions of their own alcohol use; analysis were framed by theoretical conceptions of gender. Survey results indicate gender differences in alcohol consumption wherein men reported a substantially higher frequency and quantity of alcohol use compared to their female peers. Qualitative findings confirm that male privilege and women’s concern for safety, masculine embodiment via alcohol use, gendering of alcohol type, and gender conformity pressures shape gender disparities in alcohol use behavior. Our findings also suggest that health education policy and educational programs focused on alcohol-related health risks need to be designed to take into account gender category and gender orientation

Þrátefli Kína og Filippseyja í Suður-Kínahafi. Hegðun Filippseyja í ljósi raunhyggju- og frjálslyndiskenninga

Markmið þessar ritgerðar er að útskýra hegðun Filippseyja í deilum við Kína um Scarborough grynningar árið 2012 út frá tveimur helstu kenningum alþjóðastjórnmála, þ.e. raunhyggju og frjálslyndisstefnu ásamt undirkenningum þeirra. Farið verður yfir sögulegan bakgrunn Suður-Kínahafs og hvernig ríki sem bæði eiga land að hafinu og ekki hafa deilt um svæðið lengi, ásamt því hvernig ríki hafa reynt að ná sáttum um málefnið. Filippseyjar og Kína hafa þó verið sérstaklega áberandi í deilum um svæðið síðastliðin áratug en deilur þeirra náðu nýjum hæðum árið 2012 þegar þrátefli myndaðist á milli ríkjanna tveggja við Scarborough grynningarnar vestur af Filippseyjum. Þó ekki hafi komið til átaka á milli ríkjanna varð spennan mikil og voru leiðir stjórnvalda ríkjanna tveggja til að hafa áhrif á stöðuna ólíkar. Þráteflið varði ekki lengi en eftirmálar þess urðu nokkrir. Filippseyjar leituðu mikið til Bandaríkjanna á þessum tíma og uppfærðu fyrri hernaðarsamninga þeirra þetta þrátefli við Kína. Filippseyjar efldu einnig samband sitt við Japan og Víetnam í kjölfarið. Í þessari ritgerð var leitast við að svara spurningunni, hvort tekst raunhyggjukenningum eða frjálslyndiskenningum betur að útskýra hegðun Filippseyja í deilum þeirra við Kína vegna þráteflis ríkjanna tveggja við Scarborough grynningarnar árið 2012? Megin niðurstöður ritgerðarinnar eru þær að nýraunhyggju kenning Stephen Walt um ógnarjafnvægi sem ber frjálslyndisstefnueinkenni geti útskýrt hvað mest í þessu tilviki

“This typical, insecure girl”: Young women’s stories about the importance of women’s body weight in a dating scenario

Markmið þessarar rannsóknar var að greina hugmyndir ungra kvenna (18-24 ára) um vægi holdafars í tengslum við stefnumót. Fræðilega sjónarhornið er femíniskur póststrúktúralismi en gagna var aflað með sögulokaaðferð þar sem þátttakendur fengu upphaf að sögu sem þeir voru beðnir um að ljúka. Þátttakendur fengu ýmist söguupphaf þar sem söguhetja, sem var að fara á stefnumót, hafði grennst eða fitnað. Alls voru 72 sögur þemagreindar. Í sögum þátttakenda voru póstfemíniskar hugmyndir áberandi en fjögur þemu voru greind: (1) Líkaminn má ekki valda (honum) vonbrigðum. Þar kom fram að grannir líkamar hafa meira virði en feitir á vettvangi stefnumótamenningar og að það sé á ábyrgð sögupersónunnar að tryggja að virði hans sé sem mest. (2) Sjálfstraust og líðan tengist ánægju sögupersónu með útlit sitt. Í því þema kom fram að tilhugsunin um að fitna eða vera feit fyllti sögupersónuna kvíða og óöryggi. Þegar hún grenntist einkenndust sögurnar aftur á móti af gleði og aukinni eftirvæntingu fyrir stefnumótinu. Nokkrar sögur greindu einnig frá vonleysi sögupersónunnar þegar hún áttaði sig á því að sama hversu mikið hún grenntist þá var það aldrei nóg. (3) Líkaminn og sjálfið sem verkefni. Í því þema kom fram að vinnan og eftirlitið með líkamanum er stöðugt ferli og ekki hægt að slá slöku við. (4) Andóf gegn útlitskröfum felst í að taka líkamann í sátt. Í því þema mátti greina andóf gagnvart ríkjandi útlitskröfum, sérstaklega í sögum þar sem sögupersónan hafði fitnað. Áhersla var lögð á að gefa ríkjandi hugmyndum langt nef og taka líkama sinn í sátt. Rannsóknin gefur innsýn í flókin tengsl ungra kvenna við menningarbundnar hugmyndir um líkamann og hversu mikillar vinnu við líkamann kvenleikinn krefst af þeim. Hún sýnir einnig hversu gagnleg sögulokaaðferðin er til að fá innsýn í kynjaðar menningarbundnar hugmyndir og þau tök sem þær hafa á ungum konum.In Iceland concerns have been raised about the unrealistic body ideals young women are presented with and their impact on self-esteem and body image. Quantitative research confirms these concerns and indeed it seems that women are unhappy with their body weight throughout their life course. At the same time, research into the cultural and social discourses that underpin and shape young women’s ideas about the relation between body weight and femininity, has been scant. This article adopts a feminist poststructuralist framework to explore young women’s (18-24 years old) ideas about the importance of body weight when dating. This is based on research that used a story completion methodology to explore the sociocultural ideas participants draw on when making sense of the topic. In the research, participants were randomly presented with either of two different story stems and asked to complete the story. In the first story stem a fictional female character is on her way to a date and notices when she looks in the mirror that she has lost weight. The second story stem is identical apart from the female character noticing that she has gained weight. The participants were approached on social media where they were provided with a link that directed them to the task on SurveyMonkey. In total, 81 participants provided stories. Out of these, 73 stories could be used in this research. When participants had completed their stories they were asked two further questions about the story character and then asked to answer some demographic questions. The stories were analysed thematically. The analysis resulted in 4 themes: (1) the body should not disappoint (him), (2) looks facilitate/are an obstacle to good self-esteem, (3) the body and the self constitute tasks that must be worked on, (4) resistance to body ideals consists in accepting your body. It was interesting that most of the participants seemed to assume that the story character was heterosexual and was on her way to meet a man. In the stories collected we saw clear signs of postfeminist discourses where women are presented as the entrepreneurs of their lives, free to make choices that shape their lives. In many of the stories it was assumed that it was the young woman’s responsibility to ensure that her body was of value so that she would not disappoint possible lovers and herself. It was also clear that slim bodies were deemed to be of more value than fat bodies. What came across clearly was that it was the young woman’s responsibility to work on her body and mind-set so that she could be “the best version of herself”. In the stories where the fictional character had gained weight, we detected much body shame and even repulsion towards the fat body. The thought of gaining weight was described as filling the character with much dread and anxiety. When the character had lost weight, she was described as excited about the date but also filled with dread because she anticipated that no matter how much weight she lost it would never be enough. A common description of the story character was that she was a typical anxious and insecure girl who needed to sort herself out; that is, the causes of her problems rested in herself. In contrast, some of the stories seemed to draw on feminist discourses criticising societal pressures on young women to be slim. This resistance was particularly apparent when the character had gained weight. The stories outlined how the story character decided to ignore the slim ideal so that she could accept and love her body. The paper provides an insight into the complex relationship young women have with often hostile socio-cultural ideas about the young female body and the constant surveillance and work those ideas demand from them. We call for a greater interrogation of cultural ideals that either blame young women or their peer group for their anxious relationships to their bodies. We also conclude that the storycompletion method is useful for collecting data. Despite some of the stories seemingly being written in jest they overall presented a rich and nuanced scenario. As such they provide clear insights into the cultural and social discourses participants have access to when writing their stories.Peer Reviewe

“Women have a wider embrace“: principals’ gendered perspective on teachers in elementary schools

Töluvert hefur verið fjallað um kvenvæðingu kennarastarfsins og hvort hún skipti máli fyrir starfsemi skóla. Þetta vakti áhuga okkar á sýn skólastjórnenda á kyngervi og því hvernig þeir telja að það móti hlutverk, starfsumhverfi og væntingar til kennara. Fræðilegt sjónarhorn þessarar rannsóknar er feminískur póststrúktúralismi en gögnin sem voru þemagreind samanstanda af átta hálfopnum viðtölum við grunnskólastjóra á höfuðborgarsvæðinu. Niðurstöður benda til þess að þó að skólastjórar líti svo á að kyngervi sé félagslega mótað lýsi þeir kvenkennurum út frá hefðbundnum kvenleikahugmyndum sem samviskusömum, skipulögðum og umhyggjusömum starfsmönnum og að það leiði til aukins álags á þær. Karlkennarar þykja kærulausari en betri í að halda uppi aga. Viðmælendur telja að kennarastarfið sem kvennastarf sé lítils metið, og það birtist í lágum launum en einnig því að starfið, sem öðrum þræði er skilgreint sem kvenlegt uppeldisstarf, sé ekki „í tísku“. Niðurstöður vekja áleitnar spurningar um það hvernig kynjaðar hugmyndir viðhalda valdaskipan þar sem kennarastarfið og konur sem sinna því eru undirskipaðar körlum. Við teljum að til að efla kennarastarfið og auka nýliðun þurfi að takast á við það kynjaða hugmyndakerfi sem starfið er skilgreint út frá.The feminisation of the teaching profession has been widely discussed both in Iceland and internationally. In 2017 women comprised 82% of teachers in compulsory schools in Iceland (Hagstofa Íslands, 2018); in the time period between 1909–1945, however, women accounted for only 35–46% of graduates from the Teachers’ Training College in Iceland (Loftur Guttormsson, 2008). The lack of male teachers in elementary schools has raised considerable concern and questions about its effect on the schools in general. The fact that the lion’s share of teachers is female gives the impression that teaching is a job for women. Principals have a number of responsibilities. They govern the school, which involves providing professional leadership in terms of management of the school and its curriculum. They have the responsibility to ensure the education and well-being of students. Furthermore, this work has to be conducted within the remit of the law and regulations that apply to elementary schools. Results from a research conducted by Guðný S. Guðbjörnsdóttir and Steinunn Helga Lárusdóttir (2017), indicate that principals want to work with issues relating to gender and diversity. However, the authors express their concern about the lack of knowledge principals portray in relation to gender issues. The aim of this research was to explore principals’ ideas about the qualities and work environment of elementary school teachers and how these ideas are informed by gender. The theoretical perspective is feminist poststructuralism and we work from the presumption that gender is rooted in sociological and cultural ideas. This can be manifested in gendered constructions of the teaching profession and qualities of teachers but also in how teachers’ performances of masculinity and femininity are enabled and valued. The data consisted of eight semi-structured interviews with principals (four men and four women). All of them had worked as administrators within the compulsory school system for at least five years. The interviews focused on what qualities the principals considered to characterise male and female teachers work and whether they felt gender was of importance for teachers’ relation to students and contribution to the workplace. The data was analysed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2013). The three main themes we developed were: (1) the feminisation of the teaching profession prevents students from having appropriate role models; (2) teachers’ qualities and tasks assigned to teachers are informed by traditional binary gender ideas; and (3) the perception of teaching as a low paying job for women prevents men from entering the profession. The participants outlined how their understanding of gender had changed during their time as principals and how they saw gender as socially and culturally constructed. However, as the interviews progressed it became clear that the principals had well-defined opinions as to which attributes they felt female teachers possessed and how they differed from those of male teachers. Women teachers were described as more caring and dutiful and this linked with constructions of motherhood. Thus, there was a tendency to load women with more responsibilities than men. The principals agreed that more male teachers were needed within the compulsory school but provided different reasons. Some reasoned that boys need appropriate role models; that is, exposure to masculinity, but others pointed out that the school staff should reflect the diverseness of society. The principals argued that attitudes towards the teaching profession needed to be changed. In this regard, they pointed out how the job is perceived to be low paid women’s work and considered to require performance of care seen to have a natural fit with feminine qualities. We argue that this research sheds light on how gender shapes ideas about the teaching profession and maintains gendered relations of power that can have a negative impact, especially on women’s work environment.Peer Reviewe

“The time-plan has been ousted and is now in the garage”: Family life and homework in stories about COVID-19

Markmið þessarar rannsóknar var að greina kynjaðar hugmyndir þátttakenda um uppeldishlutverk foreldra sem birtast í sögum um heimanám barna á tímum COVID-19. Gögnum var safnað með sögulokaaðferð í apríl 2020, en þá hafði neyðarstigi verið lýst yfir á Íslandi. Þátttakendur fengu upphaf að sögu sem þeir áttu að ljúka. Þar var söguhetjan ýmist móðir eða faðir sem þurfti að sinna heimanámi með börnum sínum í samkomubanni. Auglýst var eftir þátttakendum á samfélagsmiðlum. Meirihluti þeirra sem tóku þátt voru menntaðar millistéttarkonur og endurspeglar rannsóknin því einkum sjónarhorn þeirra. Alls voru 97 sögur greindar með ígrundaðri þemagreiningu. Fræðilega sjónarhornið var femínískt, þ.e. þemu voru sett í samhengi við ríkjandi orðræður um foreldrahlutverkið í samtímamenningu og skoðað hvernig kynjuð hlutverk afmörkuðu tækifæri og forgangsröðun sögupersóna. Í sögunum var einkum tekist á við orðræðu nýfrjálshyggjunnar um skipulagða foreldrið sem nýtir hvert tækifæri til að hámarka reynslu barnsins svo það verði skilvirkur þegn samfélagsins. Þrjú meginþemu voru greind: (1) Togstreitan um tímann. Þar kom fram að tíminn er kynjapólitísk auðlind. Verkefnamiðuð dagskrá krefst verkstjórnar og yfirlegu sem lenda oft á herðum mæðra. (2) Glíman við heimanámið: Endurmat og (ó)sigrar. Félagsleg staða, m.a. menntun og auðmagn, hefur áhrif á hversu raunhæfar forsendur foreldri hefur til að taka að sér heimanám. Kvíði og sektarkennd fylgir því að ráða ekki við námsefnið. (3) Bugaðir foreldrar rísa upp gegn óraunhæfum kröfum. Þemað lýsir andstöðu foreldra við hamingjuhandrit nýfrjálshyggjunnar þar sem gott foreldri er sér meðvitað um alla þá áhættuþætti sem hafa áhrif á velferð barnsins. Hamingjuna má finna í heimilisóreiðu og námi sem fylgir ekki dagskrá skóla heldur takti heimilisins. Niðurstöður sýna að þær aðstæður sem sköpuðust í samkomubanninu skerpa átakalínur milli heimila og samfélags og átakalínur innan heimila. Þær lýsa einnig kvíða og sektarkennd sem fylgir því að geta ekki fylgt leikreglum nýfrjálshyggjuorðræðunnar.In Western societies the role of the parent has increasingly been framed by neoliberal discourses. The focus is on the parent, especially the professional middle-class mother, as an entrepreneur who makes choices and trains the child with an eye to how it can maximize its potential and become a good citizen. This places a strain on parents, especially working mothers, who juggle their parenting responsibilities with their work outside the home. The COVID-19 epidemic upset these juggling acts and the fine-tuned daily rhythms of many families. In April, 2020, when the study took place, Iceland was in semi-lockdown, with schools running at limited capacity and a ban of gatherings of more than 20 people. Furthermore, many parents did not have access to their usual support in terms of childcare. These times without “precedent” thus provided an interesting moment to explore constructions of parenting, especially in relation to parents’ role in their children’s education and how at times contradictory demands from the home and work were met. This article adopts a feminist poststructuralist perspective to analyse ideas about parenting roles in relation to children’s homework during the COVID-19 epidemic in Iceland. Data was collected using the story-completion method during the period April 7–24, 2020, when a national emergency had been declared in Iceland because of the Corona virus. The story completion method is useful as it provides insight into the sociocultural ideas and discourses people draw on when making sense of a topic. The participants were approached on social media where they were provided with a link directing them to the task on Qualtrics. There the participants were randomly presented with either of two different story stems and asked to complete a story. In the first story stem the main fictional character is a mother who is informed that her children will only be able to stay 2 hours per day at school and she is sent ideas for homework to work on with her children. The other story stem is identical except the main character is a father. In total, 97 stories were collected. The majority of the participants who submitted stories were middle-class, university-educated women and the stories have to be interpreted with that in mind. However, they are an interesting group as they are usually considered to set the norm for good mothering. A recurrent idea running through all the storiesPeer reviewe

Strong epidemiological evidence that alcohol causes cancer, but how might the public interpret this information?

No abstract available