Since the early 1980s Ecuador has experienced a series of events unparalleled in its history. Its “free market” strategies exacerbated the debt crisis, and in response new forms of social movement organizing arose among the country’s poor, including women’s groups. Gendered Paradoxes focuses on women’s participation in the political and economic restructuring process of the past twenty-five years, showing how in their daily struggle for survival Ecuadorian women have both reinforced and embraced the neoliberal model yet also challenged its exclusionary nature. Drawing on her extensive ethnographic fieldwork and employing an approach combining political economy and cultural politics, Amy Lind charts the growth of several strands of women’s activism and identifies how they have helped redefine, often in contradictory ways, the real and imagined boundaries of neoliberal development discourse and practice. In her analysis of this ambivalent and “unfinished” cultural project of modernity in the Andes, she examines state policies and their effects on women of various social sectors; women’s community development initiatives and responses to the debt crisis; and the roles played by feminist “issue networks” in reshaping national and international policy agendas in Ecuador and in developing a transnationally influenced, locally based feminist movement.

In 2005 the World Bank released a gender assessment of the nation of Jordan, a country that, like many in the Middle East, has undergone dramatic social and gender transformations, in part by encouraging equal access to education for men and women. The resulting demographic picture there—highly educated women who still largely stay at home as mothers and caregivers— prompted the World Bank to label Jordan a “gender paradox.” In Gendered Paradoxes, Fida J. Adely shows that assessment to be a fallacy, taking readers into the rarely seen halls of a Jordanian public school—the al-Khatwa High School for Girls—and revealing the dynamic lives of its students, for whom such trends are far from paradoxical. Through the lives of these students, Adely explores the critical issues young people in Jordan grapple with today: nationalism and national identity, faith and the requisites of pious living, appropriate and respectable gender roles, and progress. In the process she shows the important place of education in Jordan, one less tied to the economic ends of labor and employment that are so emphasized by the rest of the developed world. In showcasing alternative values and the highly capable young women who hold them, Adely raises fundamental questions about what constitutes development, progress, and empowerment—not just for Jordanians, but for the whole world.

Today, in Western countries, we are seeing both the fragmentation of the gender binary (the division of the social world into two and only two genders) and its persistence. Multiple genders, gender-neutral pronouns and bathrooms, X designations, and other manifestations of degendering are becoming common, and yet the two-gender structure of our social world persists. Underneath the persistence of the binary and its discriminatory norms and expectations lurks the continuance of men’s power and privilege. So there is the continued need to valorize the accomplishments of women, especially those of denigrated groups. This succinct and thoughtful book by one of the world’s foremost sociologists of gender shines a light on both sides of this paradox – processes in the fragmentation of gender that are undermining the binary and processes in the performance of gender that reinforce the binary, and the pros and cons of each. The conclusion of the book discusses why we haven’t had a gender revolution and how degendering would go a long way in creating gender equality.

Explore the origins of sex and gender through a scientific lens and understand social constructionism, its reliance on regressive gender stereotypes, and its pathological doctrines. Social constructionist theory tells us that boys and girls are not born different but are rather made different through socialization. Yet something strange has happened: Across the world's most gender-equal liberal democracies, the differences between men and women have not gone away. Paradoxically, gender differences in personality, interests, and occupational preferences have grown larger. This should not be happening. If men and women are made different through socialization, shouldn't the most gender-equal societies be, after all, gender-equal? Gender, like the Penrose Triangle, is an optical illusion. Many people think they know its properties, but it's wildly deceptive. If we can just find the correct angle, then maybe we can observe gender's actual properties, and with it, perhaps we can solve The Gender Paradox.

The notion of paradox dates back to ancient philosophy, yet only recently have scholars started to explore this idea in organizational phenomena. Two decades ago, a handful of provocative theorists urged researchers to take seriously the study of paradox, and thereby deepen our understanding of plurality, tensions, and contradictions in organizational life. Studies of organizational paradox have grown exponentially over the past two decades, canvassing varied phenomena, methods, and levels of analysis. These studies have explored such tensions as today and tomorrow, global integration and local distinctions, collaboration and competition, self and others, mission and markets. Yet even with both the depth and breadth of interest in organizational paradoxes, key issues around definitions and application remain. This handbook seeks to aid, engage, and fuel the expanding interest in organizational paradox. Contributions to this volume depict how paradox studies inform, and are informed, by other theoretical perspectives, while creating a resource that enables scholars to learn about and apply this lens across varied organizational phenomena. The increasing complexity, volatility, and ambiguity in our world continually surfaces paradoxical dynamics. Thus, this handbook offers insights to scholars across organizational theory.

This book looks at political attempts to create a 'modern family' and the aspiration to regulate the family and establish gender equality, examining the regulation of the family in Sweden between 1930 and today.

The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Media and Communication in the Middle East and North Africa stands as an authoritative and up-to-date resource on the critical debates, research methods and ongoing reflections on how gender and communication intersect with the economic, social, political, and cultural fabrics of the countries in the MENA region. The Handbook comprises thirty-one chapters written by both established and rising scholars of gender, media, and digital technologies, and will rely on fresh data which seeks to capture the dynamic and complex realities of MENA societies, as well as the tensions and contradictions in the politics of gender and uses of communication technologies. The Handbook is split into six sections: Gender, Identities and Sexualities; The Gender of Politics; Gender and Activism; Gender-Based Violence; Gender and Entrepreneurship; and Gender in Expressive Cultures.

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2013. As social constructs, masculinities and femininities are continually being challenged and reconstructed, and in so doing, new subjectivities are re/produced. The boundaries of gender thus remain both violent and vulnerable; violent in the Butlerian sense of subject formation and normative gender policing, and vulnerable as they are fraught with possibilities for new ways of gendering and new definitions of sexual difference. This volume thus examines the boundaries of masculinities and femininities through various cultural, socio-historical, and political contexts, and the tensions which arise from the constant challenges and reconstructions. Violent and Vulnerable Performances: Challenging the Gender Boundaries of Masculinities and Femininities contains fourteen chapters which demonstrate the situatedness of gender, and its impacts on race, class, sex, the body, identity, language, work, the family, and further cultural, socio-political, and economic processes.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, flexible working has become the norm for many workers. This volume examines flexible working using data from 30 European countries and drawing on studies conducted in Australia, the US and India