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This paper aims to illustrate how graphic novel adaptations can engage adolescents in conversations about gender and society, particularly when adaptations are weighed against…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to illustrate how graphic novel adaptations can engage adolescents in conversations about gender and society, particularly when adaptations are weighed against messaging found in a student’s everyday life such as religiously motivated gender normativity.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on quantitative and qualitative analyzes of the interview, think-aloud and survey data collected from 15 adolescents who self-identified as Modern Orthodox Jewish women. Texts used for think-aloud were three graphic novel adaptations that critically adapted potentially misogynistic readings and interpretations of religious Jewish texts such as the Bible.
Findings
Epistemic network analysis and constructivist grounded theory show that visual elements found in each adaptation can spark deeply personal reflections on topics that are often explicitly or implicitly suppressed by social norms such as gender normativity in Jewish texts and practices.
Originality/value
This paper is timely and contributes to understanding the apparent cultural clash between religious conservativism and movements for social change, using the graphic novel to mediate between them.
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Steven Buchanan and Zamzam Husain
The purpose is to provide insight into the social media related information behaviours of Muslim women within Arab society, and to explore issues of societal constraint and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose is to provide insight into the social media related information behaviours of Muslim women within Arab society, and to explore issues of societal constraint and control, and impact on behaviours.
Design/methodology/approach
The study conducted semi-structured interviews with Muslim women resident within the capital city of a nation within the Arabian Peninsula.
Findings
Social media provides the study participants' with an important source of information and social connection, and medium for personal expression. However, use is constrained within sociocultural boundaries, and monitored by husbands and/or male relatives. Pseudonym accounts and carefully managed privacy settings are used to circumvent boundaries and pursue needs, but not without risk of social transgression. The authors provide evidence of systematic marginalisation, but also of resilience and agency to overcome. Self-protective acts of secrecy and deception are employed to not only cope with small world life, but to also circumvent boundaries and move between social and information worlds.
Research limitations/implications
Findings should not be considered representative of Muslim women as a whole as Muslim women are not a homogenous group, and Arabian Peninsula nations variously more conservative or liberal than others.
Practical implications
Findings contribute to practical and conceptual understanding of digital literacy with implications for education programmes including social, moral and intellectual aspects.
Originality/value
Findings contribute to conceptual and practical understanding of information poverty, evidencing structural inequalities as a major contributory factor, and that self-protective information behaviours, often considered reductive, can also be expansive in nature.
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Xiaohu Guo and Lukai Yang
This research aims to investigate whether local religious norms influence corporate attitudes toward board gender diversity.
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to investigate whether local religious norms influence corporate attitudes toward board gender diversity.
Design/methodology/approach
The data are collected from American Religion Data Archive (ARDA) website and Boardex. The analysis used in this paper is ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and two-stage least squares (2SLS) models.
Findings
The authors find that firms headquartered in religious areas are negatively associated with corporate board gender diversity initiatives, proxied by the change in the total number of female directors, the share of directors that are newly hired females and the percentage of female directors on the board. The results remain robust when the authors employ alternative econometric specifications, including propensity score matching (PSM) and instrumental variable (IV) analysis. Furthermore, through quasi-experiments, the authors find that two exogenous shocks, the Vatican Leaks scandal and the Big Three board gender diversity campaign, attenuate the negative association between religiosity and diversity.
Research limitations/implications
This study unveils an important but previously unidentified factor that restrains firms from exercising one of their socially responsible activities – board gender diversity and provides new insight into the emerging literature on the influence of local culture on corporate behaviors.
Originality/value
The lack of existing literature on factors that contribute to corporate board gender diversity presents opportunities for further study.
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Payal Mago, Reena Bhatiya, Nupur Gosain and Deekshant Awasthi
As a solution to these crises, bringing back the feminine sensitivity can become a welcome change. The Bishnoi community, in particular, propagated Eco-feminism for the cause of…
Abstract
Purpose
As a solution to these crises, bringing back the feminine sensitivity can become a welcome change. The Bishnoi community, in particular, propagated Eco-feminism for the cause of the environment. Therefore, this paper aims to study the community in detail along with suggesting a Bishnoi Environment Protection Model as an Indian indigenous solution to the global environmental problems.
Design/methodology/approach
The method of obtaining information was a detailed questionnaire-based interview along with multiple focus group discussions. The interviews were conducted with the women who belong to the Bishnoi community and who are actively taking forward the ethos of their community. Interviews were conducted across a span of different villages to cover a different portion of the Bishnoi population. Adding to this, multiple focus group discussions took place in the temple, wild-life protection center, Self-help group women's households, community meetings.
Findings
Religion and science are complementary and supplementary to each other in the true sense. It would be good to recall what the greatest scientist had said “Science without religion is blind and religion without science is lame”.
Research limitations/implications
The research limitation of this paper is that it is a field study-based research wherein the research findings are the outcomes of personal interviews with the village community people. The limitation, therefore, lies in the simplicity of the research arguments put forward in this paper. The implication of this research would be to challenge the dominant research paradigms in the field of Eco-feminism and Climate Change and bring grass root narratives to the forefront.
Practical implications
The practical implication of this research paper is that in Environment related policy solutions, rural women should be appointed as consultants of advisors in the high profile decision-making policy groups. It would make the process very democratic and rooted in ground-level solutions. If the Bishnoi community women of India are given their due regard they would eventually play significant roles in the decision-making groups at the national and international levels.
Social implications
Other than having a policy implication, this research paper has a social implication too. The community narratives which have been hidden for so long in the remote villages of India will come to the forefront and help as a guiding force.
Originality/value
This paper recommends that India should propagate its culturally-rooted principles such as the one in Jambhoji's commandments. India should strongly put these normative values in the international organizations and contribute to a new epistemology of knowledge in the counter effect of existing ones. This would make a paradigm shift at the level of the knowledge-power in which the developed nations manipulate the rest of the world. The new terminologies, concepts, agendas, goals should be formulated by deriving the knowledge from age-old communities in India. The people of these communities have even given their lives for the protection of the environment.
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Massimiliano Agovino, Michele Bevilacqua and Massimiliano Cerciello
While the economic literature mostly tackled discrimination looking at labour costs, this work focuses on its relation to labour productivity, arguing that discrimination may…
Abstract
Purpose
While the economic literature mostly tackled discrimination looking at labour costs, this work focuses on its relation to labour productivity, arguing that discrimination may worsen the performance of female employees. In this view, it represents a source of allocative inefficiency, which contributes to reducing output.
Design/methodology/approach
Female discrimination is both a social and an economic problem. In social terms, consolidated gender stereotypes impose constraints on women’s behaviour, worsening their overall well-being. In economic terms, women face generally worse labour market conditions. Using long-run Italian data spanning from 1861 to 2009, the authors propose a novel measure of female discrimination based on the observed frequency of discriminating epithets. Following social capital theory, the authors distinguish between structural and voluntary discrimination, and use Data Envelopment Analysis for time series data to assess the extent of inefficiency that each component of discrimination induces in the production process.
Findings
The results draw the trajectory of female discrimination in Italy and provide evidence in favour of the idea that female discrimination reduces productive efficiency. In particular, the structural component of female discrimination, although less sizeable than the voluntary component, plays a major role, especially in recent years, where more stringent beauty standards fuel looks-based discrimination.
Originality/value
The contribution of this work is twofold. First, based on contributions from social sciences different from economics, it proposes a novel theoretical framework that explores the effect of discriminatory language on labour productivity. Second, it introduces a novel and direct measure of female discrimination at the country level, based on the bidirectional link between language and culture. The indicator is easily understood by policymakers and may be used to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-discrimination policies.
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