Gender division of domestic labor in post-socialist Europe (1994-2012): test of class gradients hypothesis

This article analyzes changes in the gender division of domestic labor (GDDL) in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), an under-researched region characterized by high levels of inequality in GDDL from 1994–2012. Drawing on the literature on class gradients in the contribution of the genders to domestic labor and their change over time, the article answers two questions: How has GDDL (operationalized as men’s relative involvement into routine housework) changed in CEE in the post-socialist period? What has been the role of class (operationalized as respondents’ education and household income) in shaping GDDL in CEE in the post-socialist period? Data for the article comes from the 1994, 2002, and 2012 waves of the International Social Survey Program on Family and Changing Gender Roles from six CEE countries, i.e., Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Slovenia. The findings suggest that net of individual and interactional-level factors, inequality in GDDL in the CEE region did not change substantially during the post-socialist period. The analysis also shows, however, that trends of inequality in GDDL among different classes were idiosyncratic, and this underlay the overall lack of movement towards greater equality

Doing gender with class: gender division of unpaid work in Russian middle-class dual earner heterosexual households

This article is concerned with examining the relation between gender division of unpaid work and class. Drawing on in-depth interviews with middle-class dual earner heterosexual couples conducted in Russia, I show how the gender division of housework and care could be shaped by processes of accountability not only to sex category (“doing gender”) but also to class category (“doing class”). I discuss how my interviewees perceived various gender contracts that have evolved in post-socialist Russia as profoundly classed. I further show how their resulting understandings of middle-class (in)appropriate ways of doing masculinity and femininity influenced the division of work in their families. Men were not only accountable as breadwinners but also as carers; while women, in addition to their caring roles, were accountable for their career and sex appeal. In several couples, this double gender and class accountability underpinned their comparatively more equal—although not necessarily more egalitarian—gender division of housework and care

Back to ‘traditional’ family values? Trends in gender ideologies in Russia, 1994–2012

Previous studies on individual-level gender ideologies in Russia have produced conflicting results, with some suggesting re-traditionalisation and others noting increasing egalitarianism. This research explores changes in the Russian population’s views on gender division of labour between 1994 and 2012, moving beyond unidimensional conceptualisations of gender ideology that juxtapose traditionalism with egalitarianism. The findings evidence highly class-specific gender-ideology trajectories. Only lower classes increased their support for separate spheres. Amongst the more educated and affluent, ‘re-traditionalisation’ instead entailed increased endorsement of both joint breadwinning and gender-essentialist views of women’s caring roles at the expense of support for the housewife/male-breadwinner model and for egalitarianism

Embracing Public Health Approaches to Gambling? A Review of Global Legislative and Regulatory Trends

In recent years, calls to address gambling harms as a public health issue have become increasingly prominent within the international public health community. Growing number of public health actors advocate for a move away from the long-dominant Reno Model of gambling regulation grounded in the principles of individual responsibility and its focus on problem gamblers towards a public health approach adopting structural and population-level perspectives on gambling harms. In this study, we analysed the extent to which these competing policy frames have shaped legislation and regulation in countries that have recently either significantly restricted or opened up their markets to legal gambling. Using Vixio Gambling Compliance database, we identified all countries that have either legalized or banned one or more forms of gambling since 2018. The resulting sample included 31 countries from across Europe, Asia, Africa and Americas. For each country, we then extracted passed gambling legislation, regulatory documents, and the regulator’s public-facing sources. These documents were coded and analysed employing the method of critical frame analysis (CFA). CFA aims to uncover how particular meanings of reality (e.g., gambling harms) are constructed in policy documents and how they shape proposed actions. While some countries have adopted elements of the public health approach (e.g., focus on gambling product design in Germany), this is not a universal trend. In the majority of countries analysed, relatively little attention is being paid to gambling harms. When the issue is being explicitly addressed, ‘responsible gambling’ remains the predominant policy frame structuring proposed actions. Despite increasing recognition of the importance of applying public health approach to gambling, this framing is not being comprehensively employed within recent global legislation and regulation. As these policies set the framework for future activity, public health advocates face an ongoing struggle to integrate their perspectives on harm reduction into action

Public health approaches to gambling: a global review of legislative trends

The public health community has called for governments to recognise the harms associated with gambling, and for gambling policies to include population-based harm prevention approaches. This Health Policy explores the translation of this call into global policy action by systematically reviewing legislation of jurisdictions that introduced major gambling legislation change (ie, restricting or extending gambling provision) between Jan 1, 2018, and Dec 31, 2021. We mapped the global availability of legal gambling and changes in its provision, and conducted critical frame analysis on a sample of 33 jurisdictions introducing major policy change to assess the extent to which the protection of health and wellbeing was embedded within legislation. More than 80% of countries worldwide now legally permit gambling. Harmful gambling was recognised as a health and wellbeing issue in most of the analysed jurisdictions, but near-exclusive focus was given to individual-level harms rather than to wider social and economic harms, or harms to others. Most of the proposed prevention measures focused on individual responsibility. Gambling policies worldwide are changing, but addressing gambling as a public health issue is not yet translating into comprehensive policy action across jurisdictions

Making the health system work by and for Indigenous women in Guatemala: a community led multisectoral collaboration

No abstract available

Business not as usual: how multisectoral collaboration can promote transformative change for health and sustainable development.

• We present a model of enabling fac-tors for effective multisectoral collabo-ration for improvements in health and sustainable development. • Drive change: assess whether desired change is better off achieved by mul-tisectoral collaboration; drive forward collaboration by mobilising a critical mass of policy and public attention. • Define: frame the problem strategi-cally and holistically so that all sec-tors and stakeholders can see the benefits of collaboration and contri-bution to the public good• Design: create solutions relevant to context, building on existing mecha-nisms, and leverage the strengths of diverse sectors for collective impact. • Relate: ensure resources for multi-sectoral collaboration mechanisms, including for open communication and deliberation on evidence, norms, and innovation across all components of collaboration. • Realise: learn by doing, and adapt with regular feedback. Remain open to redefining and redesigning the collaboration to ensure relevance, effectiveness, and responsiveness to change. • Capture success: agree on success markers, using qualitative and quan-titative methods to monitor results regularly and comprehensively, and learn from both failures and successes to inform action and sustain gains

After Equality: Inequality trends and policy responses in contemporary Russia

Economic inequality in Russia - skewed income and wealth distribution - increased sharply in the transition from a state socialist system to a capitalist market economy. In the 2000s, despite significant economic growth and decreases in levels of poverty, income inequality has remained persistently high and has even increased. Social and spatial inequalities further exacerbate income inequality. As a result, inequality in access to healthcare, education, housing, jobs, and the law has also increased.The Russian government started to make attempts to address high inequality in the mid-2000s, focussing on regional economic development and redistributive transfers to low-income and vulnerable regions and people. However, as this discussion paper argues, the fight against inequality in contemporary Russia is unlikely to succeed without addressing labour market challenges; realizing the redistributive potential of the tax system and public services; improving anti-discrimination legislation; and addressing the problems of corruption and an inequitable law enforcement system

How class shapes gender inequality at home : Three essays on the gender division of unpaid work in post-socialist contexts

Recent growth in economic inequality and class divides across Western countries has been shown to significantly impact intra-family gender relations and inequalities. Although Eastern European countries have faced a comparable growth of economic inequalities and a complete re-drawing of class relations following the collapse of state socialism, the category of class has been conspicuously absent from the analysis of changing family and gender relations in that region. In this thesis, I address this gap by investigating whether and how class — in both a structural/material and a cultural sense — has shaped gender inequalities in the division of unpaid work in the context of post-socialist transformations. I conduct three studies using the 1994, 2002, and 2012 waves of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) from Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Slovenia, as well as primary interview data I collected in Russia in 2017. In Study 1, I analyse how the gender division of domestic labour changed across different classes in 1994-2002 vs. 2002-2012 periods. In Study 2, I theorise and empirically demonstrate how an interactional- level mechanism of double accountability to sex and class categories — undergirded by the perception of gender contracts evolved in the post-socialist period as profoundly classed — shapes negotiations about, and performance of, domestic labour and childcare among Russian middle-class dual earner heterosexual couples. In Study 3, I explore changes in the Russian population’s views on the gender division of labour between 1994 and 2012, moving beyond the unidimensional traditional vs. egalitarian conceptualization of gender ideology. As the findings of these three studies demonstrate, the analytical category of class, while still not widely used, is essential for making sense of changes in the practices and ideologies of the gendered division of unpaid work in post-socialist contexts. This thesis is a call to bring class squarely into post-socialist family and gender sociology

Poverty and Inequality in Contemporary Russia

Oxfam has more than 60 year's experience supporting people to overcome poverty the world over. Since 2003, Oxfam has been working in the Russian Federation, where it has applied its international knowledge to work with civil society partners from Murmansk to Vladivostok and many places in between. From 2012, advocacy on pro-poor social policy has become central to Oxfam's work in Russia. This briefing outlines Oxfam's analysis of poverty and inequality in Russia and introduces Oxfam's policy recommendations, which will be developed further as work in this area rolls out