Search results

Climate change is shaping up to be one of the greatest challenges of the century. Although research has focussed a lot on its generating factors, there has not been much talk about the role of gender in the development and intensity of the phenomenon. While there is significant research on ecofeminism, much less interest has been shown in how certain masculinities influence environmental issues. The chapter has three main sections. The first examines the correlation between gender and climate change while the second provides a glossary of the most important terms used in the first section. Finally, the third provides a wide range of exercises aiming to improve students’ skills in grammar, vocabulary and syntax.

This study uses the ‘Dragon Age’ series by BioWare as a case study to examine the impact of video game player diversity on the inclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) content in mainstream games. It explores the degree to which the perception of video games as ‘hegemonically masculine and heteronormative’ accurately reflects gamers’ own experiences.

The study is based on an online survey in the Dragon Age community forum, including open-ended qualitative questions.

The main findings show that male and female respondents widely believed in the presence of heterosexual (male) privilege within gaming culture at large. However, respondents’ own personal views and experiences demonstrated that they largely accept the inclusion of LGBT content in games. Finally, respondents showed considerable ‘disinhibition’ when it came to experimenting with sexuality and sexual identity in video games as compared to in real life.

This was a small exploratory study and was limited by its size and a possible self-selection bias.

The findings indicate that gender diversity, diversity of sexualities and acceptance of LGBT content are all greater than previously thought. Moreover, role-playing games are fertile ground for experimentation with sexual identities among gamers. These results call for more research in this area.

Gender remains a politically charged and powerful ideological social identity dimension that categorically essentializes and reproduces opportunities and limitations in organizations. Addressed in Chapter 6 are assumptions about gender and ways that gender classifications and gender roles form and spill forth into both work and home life for an overlap of public and private spheres that disadvantage women and privilege men. Furthermore, femininity and masculinity constructs strengthen the power system that undergirds them, reinforces their meanings, and perpetuates behaviors, changing over time, across and within cultures, and over the life course.

In organizations, the glass ceiling metaphor has become a popular representation of inequality in the workplace for women, people of color and sexual minorities; a phenomenon expanded in recent years to include glass walls and glass cliffs to describe advancement barriers. Gender-neutral mindsets and blame-the-victim strategies found in organizations are examined, as well as the breadwinner role and intersectionalities of gender with social identity dimensions of age, ethnicity, and social class. Chapter 6 is divided into these subthemes: gender, roles, femininity, and masculinity; power and gender inequality at work, and effects on women; gender, parenting, and the second shift; the breadwinner role, hegemonic masculinity, and masculinity in crisis; gendered occupations and feminization of career fields; intersectionalities of gender with age, ethnicity, and social class; and shattering schemas with androgyny and transgenderism.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how fictional narratives help us envision ways of constructing the identity as teaching professionals. Furthermore, how encounters with fictional narratives and the absorption of their structures and ideologies can dictate how the author perceive ourselves, and others.

The pedagogy of teacher education relies heavily on narratised models of instruction such as Critical Reflective Practice (CRP). The purposefully traumatic aspects of CRP are designed to trouble the sense of self. I suggest here that this creates a period of subjective vulnerability in the pre-service teacher practitioner.

This paper examines the response to traumatic learning events focusing on how literary tropes and their encompassing ideologies become a powerful yet regressive force in restabilising the professional identity and galvanising the personal subjectivity.

Data for this paper has been drawn from the Teaching Men research project that focused on a cohort of male teachers, from Australia and the UK working within TAFE/FE environments all of whom had recently become teachers.

This paper addresses a parallel concern: at a point of subjective vulnerability, a term coined as part of this analysis, how do fictional representations of male teachers impact on the construction and practice of teachers in the development of their professional identities? And how can the author devise a structure with which to interpret such activity?

Few studies examine the career success of women in the Arab Middle East. With that in mind, the purpose of this paper is to explore the conceptualizations of the career success of women managers in Lebanon. Drawing on the individual, behavioral, and structural approaches, this study also investigates the women’s approaches to career success. Capitalizing on the institutional theory (IT), the current investigation accounts for the complexity of the local context by illustrating how a diverse set of socio-cultural values and norms, institutional constraints, and individual agency impact the overall experience of career success among Arab women.

This study is exploratory in nature and draws on a qualitative approach. In-depth, face-to-face, open-ended interviews were conducted with women managers across the managerial hierarchy in a wide range of industries, sectors, and organizations.

The findings suggest that the Lebanese women managers’ career success was not conceptualized exclusively using the objective or the subjective measures. Rather, it was conceptualized on a continuum between these measures, thus challenging the rigid objective/subjective dichotomy in the context of Lebanon. The results also suggest that the career success of these women managers is better predicted and explained by the individual and behavioral approaches than by the traditional, structural approach. This empirical work sheds light on the gendered working conditions that women experience and how they capitalize on their individual agency to survive the hegemonic masculinity embedded in their workplaces, along with the inequalities that it promotes.

This study is the first to explore the conceptualizations and the determinants of the career success of women managers in Lebanon. However, the originality of this paper is not only limited to its contribution to the limited research on the careers of Arab women; it also extends to its usage of various approaches to predict career success as well as to adapt IT as a theoretical framework for capturing the myriad of factors that impact women’s careers and success. The originality of this study also lies in advancing the theoretical concept of hegemonic masculinity into studies looking at Arab women’s career experiences by shedding some light on how the reproduction of gender, gendered working practices, and agency impact their career success.

Although there are a number of hybrid tropes and cross-over conventions that relate to contemporary action cinema, broken down to its most rudimentary components, the genre places its cinematic hero in scenes of ritualised violence or conflict, with the intent of showcasing both athletic mastery and aesthetically pleasing physiques for interested and invested audiences. In as much as it is difficult to define the contemporary genre, the role of the action hero is clear in all permutations. Indeed, there is little question or query about who or what makes for a popular and long-standing action star. After all, names such as Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Statham have become inextricably linked to the genre in question. While there is much to consider here in relation to the muscles and power of these hard-bodied heroes in sweaty vests or form fitting t-shirts, there is another iteration of masculinity, a different and more agile physique, a more refined sartorial code, that has quietly overtaken these macho figures as the site of contemporary action, and that figure is Keanu Reeves. With this in mind, this chapter will examine the ways in which popular media reviewers foreground star image, acting, movement, the body and performance in order to position Reeves as an action star removed from the physical excesses of bulkier, slower and less agile men who continue to perform in the genre around him.

The rise of “strong man” politics in the Philippines brings attention to manhood narratives. Machismo remains a strong presence in the upper echelons of society, despite gender equality initiatives and a strong feminist movement. With Rodrigo Duterte portraying the “father-figure” of the nation, one questions what this type of manhood means for the Filipino family.

This study traces the construction of Filipino manhood in relation to the country’s strongest unit of the family. Utilizing a systematic review of seminal outputs on masculinity, this piece explores the definition of Filipino manhood using texts from various Filipino gender and development scholars. Sikolohiyang Pilipino or Indigenous Filipino Psychology frames the identified themes that surround the image of a Tunay na Lalaki or True Man. The labas (outer world) and loob (inner self) are then framed in relation to Filipino men’s roles. Intersections between one’s peer group, socio-economic class, and the situation in the global migration context inform the formation of one’s labas (outer self/identity). The findings indicate that Filipino manhood traits, as seen in one’s loob (inner self) contextualize one’s understanding of manhood’s construction as familial. By unearthing the nuances of manhood in the archipelago, this chapter showcases masculinities from the subaltern and purports possible ways of decolonizing “from below.”

Purpose – To explore the contested nature of masculinity through an examination of contemporary promotional culture associated with a predominantly masculine commodity – beer. More specifically, the analysis focuses on the representations of masculinity in two New Zealand beer advertisements spanning a 25-year period.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter is divided into four sections: (1) a brief overview of the contemporary crisis of masculinity; (2) the role of the media and promotional culture in representing and reproducing crises of masculinity; (3) The Holy Trinity: Sport, Beer and Masculinity and (4) analysis of two promotional campaigns for New Zealand beer brand Speight's. Here, the original series ad from 1992 is compared and contrasted with the 2019 instalment using Strate's (1992) framework which conceptualizes beer advertisements as ‘manuals of masculinity’, in order to track potential changes over time.

Findings – The results highlight the enduring value of Strate's (1992) framework of beer advertisements as manuals of masculinity. In addition, the results reveal that while the representation of masculinity in Speight's beer advertising has changed over time, key themes related to exclusive male spaces, physical labour and the core value of ‘mateship’ remain.

Research limitations/implications – Within the context of globalization, promotional culture operating at both the global and local level can cultivate images of masculinity that represent and reproduce the existing gender order, but it can also confront and disrupt it.