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Using as a data source the 2015 Special Eurobarometer, the present analysis tries to identify the individual-level factors more likely to predict the Romanians’ opposition to equal rights for sexual minorities (including marriage equality rights). Although more than half of the Romanians tend to oppose equal rights for LGBT persons and seven out of ten respondents do not favor the legalization of same-sex marriage throughout Europe, as prior research has shown, the social context, as well as personal characteristics and life experiences, influence significantly variations in Romanians’ attitudes regarding LGBT rights. Specifically, findings indicate that heterosexist attitudes are more likely to be expressed by individuals who belong to minority religious groups, such as Catholics and adherents to Christian denominations other than the Orthodox Church, persons over 55 years old, those who regard themselves as being part of the working/low-middle classes, residents of South Muntenia and the South East, and persons who do not have access to or do not use modern communication systems. Conversely, support for LGBT rights is higher among those who acknowledge interpersonal contacts with LGBT persons, have higher levels of social acceptance of sexual and gender minorities in various spheres of the public life and in the family, and identify with the European Union’s norms and values.
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This paper clarifies some of the less known aspects of the origin, the development and the success of global Christian and Religious Right movements in Romania. Since 1995 global Religious Right started to offer comprehensive support for transnational moral campaigns over same-sex marriage, abortion, family life or gun control, sharing their (mostly)American expertise shaped in the battle with the secular state. One of the most important fronts in this battle was the discussion over traditional values in family life and the motivations and legal provisions that make it the only legitimate form of cohabitation. In Romania the Christian Right relies on conservatism, nationalism and religious tradition to foment popular support against same-sex marriage while at the same time touting the imminent homosexual attack on traditional family values, described as presently declining in importance in comparison to a prestigious past. Building on Romania’s new social realities but also revitalizing and hybridizing some of the more extreme versions of nationalism and palingenetic ideology, one of Christian Right’s offsprings, the Coalition for the Family’s relative success signals the coagulation of a moral alliance affecting both lived and institutionalized religion. In short this paper argues that the emergence of a typical Christian Right coalition formed by various groups that are not necessarily of Orthodox faith, is part of an interreligious alliance against the separation of church and state, and reveals Romania’s momentous role in the “clashing networks of global politics.”
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Over the last years, activists in the LGBT community in Bucharest have pointed out and promoted a significant increase in visibility. From new associations being born to more people attending the Pride, from more media coverage of LGBT topics to flourishing cultural and artistic productions on LGBT issues, visibility appears on the rise, as often argued by local activists. Drawing on a 6-month-long ethnographic research and on extensive interviews with activists, artists and personalities in the community, this article explores and problematizes the meanings of visibility among such actors.In dialogue with the current literature on LGBT movements and their visibility in the CEE region, the article will address various meanings of visibility on a collective level starting from the diverse stances towards the yearly Pride march and the different political approaches to visibility embraced by the main LGBT NGOs in Romania. This article will point out reflexivity and agency of local actors beyond and within the normative globalising forces of Western LGBT discourses.
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This article is looking at gender identity as a range of beliefs, perceptions and experiences. These are shaped in a life-long process of self perception, often triggered by cognitive dissonance, and also by interacting with the forms of social and political power manifesting in an individual’s milieu.1 We focus on the beliefs and experiences of transgender persons with a view to explore their perceptions of their own gender and their take on how transphobia in Romania might be addressed effectively. For the purposes of this article, we have had interviews/correspondence with members of the Romanian transgender community.
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This article explores the problem of gender inequality, manifested in the process of socialization of schoolchildren and young people. This problem leads to a decrease in the motivation of girls to choose technical sciences and STEM-professions as a career. The data was collected by means of an online survey and completing the questionnaire at school. The final sample involved 438 schoolchildren who are enrolled in 5, 8 and 11 grades in Moscow and Gubkin (Belgorod region). The data analysis demonstrates that, despite the fact that the objective achievements of girls in math are high, they tend to underestimate their abilities and less often associate their higher education prospects with technical sciences. A binary logistic regression with the interaction effects was built to look for the determining factors of schoolgirls choice of STEM-field. The appeal to interaction effects allowed to make interpretation of results more meaningful. The regression model reveals that parents, math teachers, gender beliefs, class profiles, assessment of the math abilities and the organization of the school curriculum in certain combinations influence the choice of STEM-disciplines by school girls. It is noteworthy that the class profile and the organization of the school curriculum participated in all interaction effects. The notion of a “hidden curriculum” is developed; a scale is proposed for its measurement. The factor analysis reveals that the most significant factor is “the organization of the academic life and the education programs”.
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The article presents the results of an empirical study conducted in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The research aimed at investigation into the features of perceptions women of different generations have on the digital world. The authors revealed the positive attitude of women towards the penetration of digital technologies into all spheres of life; suggested the most relevant electronic services for different age groups; worked out promising areas for further research on digital female users.
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The 2017 proposal of the European Union directive on work-life balance attempts to introduce a four-month, non-transferable, paid parental leave (i.e. quotas) for each employed parent and ten days of paid paternity leave. The proposal is being justified by the need to improve the position of women in the labour market. The adoption of the directive would require Croatia to introduce ten days of paternity leave and extend the existing quotas from two to four months. Croatia did not initially provide unreserved support to the directive proposal. The arguments that were put forward indicated the traditionally perceived role of fathers in early childhood, insufficient understanding of the factors determining the take-up rates of fathers, as well as possible effects of the proposed reforms. This paper attempts to contribute to this debate by exploring the leave schemes in European countries, mainly the factors and the outcomes of the fathers’ use of leave. The take-up rates of fathers are primarily determined by the leave scheme, with the highest fathers’ take-up rates being achieved in the countries which have introduced the paternity leave and/or the non-transferability principle within the parental leave scheme (quotas) – but only if these are accompanied by high replacement income rates. The capability of exercising the right to leave is also determined by socio-economic and socio-demographic factors, workplace characteristics, as well as by the preferences and attitudes of parents and their immediate social surroundings. The father’s use of the leave brings a lot of benefits to the position of women in the labour market, as well as to the well-being of the child, the father, and the partner. The results of our study point to the importance of the reform of the Croatian leave scheme in order to extend the fathers’ rights and the activities aiming to change the notions of parenting in Croatia, including the norms and practices at the workplace which should aim to become more open to the fathers exercising the leave rights and to encourage them to use those rights.
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In this paper I argue that the early moral philosophy of Ákos Pauler was informed by eugenic and racial hygienic theories of his age. Perhaps one of the key social theorists of his time was the British philosopher Herbert Spencer who arguably had an influence on the moral theories of Pauler as well. Pauler became an influential theoretician in Hungary during the interwar period. His ideological commitments to Christinity and national values made him favorable to the authoritarian politics of the 1920s and 30s. His significance lasted until the end of the 1940s; during the Socialist period from 1948 to 1989 Pauler’s heritage was played down because of the idological divide between the two political eras. However, after the transition, the works of Pauler were re-discovered and my study contributes to this strand of research from an intersectional perspective. In this paper I will analyze how conceptulizations of race and gender structured their moral theories in which the responsibility of women was understood in terms of their reproductive contribution to their country’s racial future. I claim that Pauler’s early moral philosophy rests on racially informed principles that justify gender subordination.
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In this article I flesh out support for observations that scientific accounts of social groups can influence the very groups and mental phenomena under investigation. The controversial hypothesis that there are hardwired differences between the brains of males and females that contribute to sex differences in gender-typed behaviour is common in both the scientific and popular media. Here I present evidence that such claims, quite independently of their scientific validity, have scope to sustain the very sex differences they seek to explain. I argue that, while further research is required, such claims can have self-fulfilling effects via their influence on social perception, behaviour and attitudes. The real effects of the products of scientists’ research on our minds and society, together with the fact that all scientific hypotheses are subject to dispute and disconfirmation, point to a need for scientists to consider the ethical implications of their work.
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The philosophers agree that philosophy begins in wonder. How wonder is understood, however, is not at all clear and has implications for contemporary work in feminist phenomenology. Luce Irigaray, for example, has insisted on wonder as the passion that will renew relationships between women and men, provide a foundation for democracy, and launch a new era in history. She calls on women to enact practices of wonder in relation to men. In what follows I briefly review the most significant claims about wonder in the history of philosophy generally, and as related to the phenomenological practice of the epoché particularly. I consider Irigaray’s claims about wonder as they arise out of this tradition, and try to spell out both what is promised to women and what is asked of them through affirmations of wonder. I suggest that this prescriptive notion is at the heart of a new conservatism in “feminist” thought that turns on nostalgia for age-old beliefs about women’s proper mode of relation toward men and their accomplishments, and is deeply homophobic. I urge readers to adopt a more critical attitude toward wonder as related to sexual difference by historicizing the inquiry in keeping with the phenomenological practice of Simone de Beauvoir. Drawing on Kant, Beauvoir, and contemporary work by Sara Ahmed, I suggest that there is a politics of wonder at work here which feminists have every reason to question. Reflecting on the politics of wonder also discloses some key features of critical feminist phenomenological practice.
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The purpose of this study is to introduce the final results of the research project focusing on the components of intercultural competence of Saudi female university students in the academic environment of the multicultural Jazan University in the KSA from 2014 to 2017. Firstly, this paper discusses the social roles of academic female youth then, it moves on with a literature review on the theoretical approaches and models, the author applied to this study. Secondly, the research survey is analysed conducted among female university students in different academic specializations. Due to the results, the study summarizes the four pillars of Saudi-specific cultural dimensions, and evaluates the intercultural competence components of the Jazan female students as future potential of Saudi female professionalism. The author’s research findings heavily support the idea that the present Saudi female university generation have the desire and ability to become interculturally and globally competent university students, even though women in Saudi Arabia still have a lot of things to do in the gender- separated society.
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The subject of the paper is the concept of gender mainstreaming and its transfer into the national social policy. The authors start their considerations of the concept from the aspect of discourse and its importance for policy transfer. This is followed by the analysis od the evolution of the concept in the European Union, along with taking into account the perspectives of member states, as well as an overview of relevant body of literature on potential and practical significance of gender mainstreaming for the realization of gender equality. The focus is on one of the areas of social policy, i.e. pension policy, which has been under reforms for a long period. Considerations of the gender aspect of pension reforms in Serbia show that the perspective of substantial justice, i.e. justice based on outcomes, has been neglected.
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In this paper I deal with the phenomenon of narrative complexity in TV serial production, and as an example I will discuss Breaking Bad. Pointing to this phenomenon as a creative revolution, characterized by a new visual style, I will discuss its self-reflexivity. This means that the mechanics of producing narrative are realized by making the audience follow not just the plot of the story, but also recognize formal aspects of the construction of the storyworld, its characters, and relations. I will illustrate the paradigm shift in television studies from a cultural approach to textual analysis, which focusses on formal aspects of producing the serials. My approach to Breaking Bad will apply both approaches. In cultural analysis, I will focus on the masculinity in crisis which is taking place within the context of American neoliberalism. After that I will deal with the mechanics of visual narrating which is a crucial component of Breaking Bad.
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Since the institutionalisation of the ‘nomads camp’ as housing policy for the Roma in Italy, various securitising discourses have ambiguously incorporated the motifs of mobility and stasis to construct Roma as a highly mobile – hence potentially ubiquitous – threat, while deploring their perceived social and cultural immobility through the tropes of their unwillingness to ‘integrate’ or to become ‘civilised’. Against the backdrop of these securitising narratives surrounding Roma (im)mobility, the article will bring to the fore the lived experiences of movement of two Roma women currently living in Rome; as they try to navigate economic hardship, the (im)mobility and pressures imposed by states’ or local authorities’ regulations of their lives, and personal contingencies, they contest, side-track or submit to the regimes of (im)mobility imposed on them. Applying a transnational and intergenerational lens to their social mobility projects contributes to nuance the autonomy of migration thesis within mobility studies: while some of their moves do challenge the categories upon which state power is predicated, in other respects they submit to prescribed paths of social mobility.
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The purpose of the research described in this paper is to investigate the gender differences in the relationship between perceived tension with work-life balance and satisfaction with life in eight post-communist regions (the Czech Republic, East Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine). The research investigates 1) how having a balanced life contributes to the subjective well-being of individuals (measured according to level of satisfaction with life), and 2) the variability which exists on a country level with satisfaction with life and satisfaction with work-life balance, and the relationship between these two attitudes. Data from the fifth round of the European Social Survey is used in the analysis, to which only respondents active in the labor force were included (N=6410). The paper presents descriptive statistics about country differences in the level of satisfaction with life and work-life balance. Following this, OLS regression models are used to predict satisfaction with life. Results reveal that the perceived balance between work and other elements of life has a significant impact on satisfaction with life, and no gender difference is detectable in this regard. Nevertheless, more highly educated individuals have greater subjective well-being, and the impact is stronger for women than men. Between-country differences are also moderate.
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―Outside history‖ is a phrase which marks Eavan Boland‘s poetic work to a large extent. Irish women have always existed at some place ―outside history‖, not participating in allegedly important historical events, made exclusively by men. The experience of everyday life which includes taking care of the household and children, the horrors suffered during the Great Famine, or giving birth to a child in an open field, have not been recorded in any chronicle. In many of her poems Boland records such untold stories, reminding the reader of a huge difference between the two sides of history, the one which is ―officially‖ known, and the other one, the silent, neglected and never retold past. By writing about the actual lives and experiences of women, both past and present, Boland subverts often passive and ―voiceless‖ images, and refuses any identification with the static and stereotypical images of women forever fixed in timeless youth and beauty in the traditional Irish poem. Boland consequently gives voice to Irish women who are finally allowed to live, i.e. grow old and even die in the poem. Her lyric persona thus does not occupy a place which belongs to the margins of history any more, but a place which is now much closer to the centre of history.
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