This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the role Nordic countries have played as exporters and importers of gender equality policies, and of how Europeanisation has framed the development and harmonisation of legislation and politics between the countries, with global consequences. The diverse range of contributors present the argument that the European Union increasingly exerts influence on Nordic equality policy, without undermining the recent significance of the Nordic countries’ gender policy as models for countries all over the world . It demonstrates that differentiation and variation at national and regional levels in the Nordic countries, as well as in Europe in general, matter as much as integrational processes and inner adaptation to EU legislation and international laws. This book explores the limitations of the Europeanisation process and the political diversity of national and regional policies, together with the crucial ways practices in the family life and the labour market concerning gender equality depend on cultural and religious norms and group interests. Nordic Gender Equality Policy in a Europeanisation Perspective is a key text for students and researchers seeking to understand the interrelations of Nordic and European Union gender policies.
This insightful book provides a comprehensive comparative historical analysis of the formation and evolution of Nordic earner-carer policies over five decades. Spanning parental leave, father quotas, daycare services, and cash for childcare allowances, it explores the key roles that ideas and political parties play in the policy reform process.
Nordic law is often referred to as something different from other legal systems. At the same time, it is a common belief that the Nordic countries share more or less the same legal tradition and are very similar in their approach to the law. Considering both of these points of view, the book tells a story of how Nordic law and Nordic legal thinking differ from other legal systems, and how there are many particularities in the law of each of the Nordic countries, making them different from each other. The idea of “Nordic” law also conceals national features. The basic premise of the book is that even if, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a Nordic common law, it still makes sense to speak of “Nordic” law, and that acquiring a more-than-basic knowledge of this law is interesting not only for comparative lawyers, but also helpful for those working with Nordic lawyers and dealing with questions involving law in the Nordic countries.
‘Bridging European and gender studies, this volume deserves a great welcome to the literature. It not only offers a feminist reading of Europeanisation in general, but also discusses the process of Europeanisation and de-Europeanisation of Turkey with regard to changes in gender policy. The book demonstrates that the EU is the leading body to advocate gender equality, and also proves that it is a firm gender actor compared to other international organisations. However, as the volume also shows, the EU is not yet a normative gender actor due to the absence of a feminist rationale in promoting gender equality abroad. The contributions offer significant insights into EU-Turkey relations from a gender studies perspective.’ Ayhan Kaya, Professor of Politics and Jean Monnet Chair for European Politics of Interculturalism, Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey ‘Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm and Cin have curated a timely volume that applies a feminist lens to the well-known Europeanisation framework. Using the case of Turkey, the book extends the focus of European studies scholarship that analyses the adaptation of non-member states to EU policies and practices to setting a new feminist agenda in the adaptation to the EU. Beyond the new insights offered on the Turkish case study, the volume provides a powerful critique, and highlights the limits of the EU’s reach outside of its current border.’ Toni Haastrup, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, University of Stirling, UK ‘This pioneering volume, which extends feminist perspectives to the study of EU toward candidate countries, is a must-read for scholars of EU integration and gender studies.’ Bahar Rumelili, Professor and Jean Monnet Chair at the Department of International Relations, Koc University, Turkey This book explores the Europeanisation of gender policies and addresses some of the challenges of the debates surrounding the EU’s impact on domestic politics. Using Turkey as a case study, it illustrates that Europeanisation needs a feminist agenda and perspective. The first part of the book critically engages with the literature on Europeanisation, the EU’s gender policies and gender policymaking, and the interaction between Europeanisation and gender policies to argue that the Europeanisation framework falls short in devising sustainable gender policies due to a lack of feminist rationale and theory. Subsequently, the book develops a feminist framework of Europeanisation by drawing on the work of key feminist philosophers (Carole Pateman, Onora O’Neill, Nancy Fraser, Anne Phillips, Iris Young) and uses this framework to offer a critique of the Europeanisation of gender policies in various areas where the EU has prompted changes to domestic policies, including in civil society, political representation, private sector, violence against women, education, and asylum policy.
This book presents a new step farther into the twenty-first century, for the first time truly combining a comprehensive global data analysis with social policy theory development. The theory of global ideal-typical welfare regimes, also known as the “Ten Worlds of Welfare Regime Theory”, as set forth earlier by Christian Aspalter, is now in this book tested empirically using a quantitative global data analysis for the first time. The strong and rich results fully vindicated the Ten Worlds Theory. All in all, about 150 countries are included in this test, measuring numerous variables on two main dimensions, i.e., povertization and inequality. The innovative approach of using a new indicator, Aspalter’s Standardized Relative Performance Index, is applied, which facilitated the exact measurements of distances between relative performances of each variable, each dimension, each country, and each ideal-typical welfare regime (in relation to one another, respectively). In addition, one explanative and one normative meta-study is added to the book, to point to ways to understand and deal with the global culprit of inequality and, hence, poverty. “On the backdrop of decades of comparative theoretical and empirical research we now, for the first time, have a truly global analysis of welfare regimes.” ---- Peter Abrahamson, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
Bisexuality in Europe offers an accessible and diverse overview of research on bisexuality and bi+ people in Europe, providing a foundation for theorising and empirical work on plurisexual orientations and identities, and the experiences and realities of people who desire more than one sex or gender Counteracting the predominance of work on bisexuality based in Ango-American contexts, this collection of fifteen contributions from both early-career and more senior academics reflects the current state of research in Europe on bisexuality and people who desire more than one sex or gender. The book is structured around three interlinked themes that resonate well with the international research frontiers of bisexual theorising: bisexual citizenship, intimate relationships, and bisexual+ identities. This book is the first of its kind in bringing together research from various European countries including Austria, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Scandinavian countries, as well as from Europe as a wider geographical region.. Topics include pansexual identity, non-monogomies, asylum seekers and youth cultures. This is an essential collection for students, early career researchers, and more senior academics in Gender Studies, LGBTQI Studies and Sexuality Studies.
This exciting and original volume offers the first comprehensive critical study of the recent profusion of European films and television addressing sexual migration and seeking to capture the lives and experiences of LGBTIQ+ migrants and refugees. Queering the Migrant in Contemporary European Cinema argues that embodied cinematic representations of the queer migrant, even if at times highly ambivalent and contentious, constitute an urgent new repertoire of queer subjectivities and socialities that serve to undermine the patrolled borders of gender and sexuality, nationhood and citizenship, and refigure or queer fixed notions and universals of identity like ‘Europe’ and national belonging based on the model of the family. At stake ethically and politically is the elaboration of a ‘transborder’ consciousness and aesthetics that counters the homonationalist, xenophobic and homo/trans-phobic representation of the ‘migrant to Europe’ figure rooted in the toxic binaries of othering (the good vs bad migrant, host vs guest, indigenous vs foreigner). Bringing together 16 contributors working in different national film traditions and embracing multiple theoretical perspectives, this powerful and timely collection will be of major interest to both specialists and students in Film and Media Studies, Gender and Queer Studies, Migration/Mobility Studies, Cultural Studies, and Aesthetics.
This intellectually vibrant volume is the first collection to deal with Australian celebrity in ways that account for both cultural and gendered specificities, demonstrating how gendered ways of imagining Australia are reinforced and contested in celebrity representations and self-presentations. Gender and Australian Celebrity Culture engages with celebrities across a diverse range of fields – actors, journalists, athletes, comedians, writers, and television personalities – and in doing so critically reflects upon different forms of Australian fame and the media platforms and practices that sustain them. Authors in this volume engage directly with pertinent issues relating to gender and sexuality, including celebrity feminism and the generative capacity of feminist rage; normative femininity and its instability; hegemonic masculinities; and queerness and its (in)visibility. Contributors also intervene in a number of ongoing debates in media and cultural studies more broadly, including those around the politics and affordances of digital media; whiteness and Australia’s colonial histories; celebrity labour; and methodologies for celebrity studies. This timely collection urges scholars of celebrity to attend further both to the gendered nature of celebrity culture and to local conditions of production and consumption. This book will be of key interest to researchers and graduate students in cultural studies, television and film studies, digital media studies, critical race and whiteness studies, gender and sexuality studies, and literary studies.
This book studies male activists in American feminism from the 1830s to the late 19th century, using archival work on personal papers as well as public sources to demonstrate their diverse and often contradictory advocacy of women’s rights, as important but also cumbersome allies. Focussing mainly on nine men—William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, James Mott, Frederick Douglass, Henry B. Blackwell, Stephen S. Foster, Henry Ward Beecher, Robert Purvis, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the book demonstrates how their interactions influenced debates within and outside the movement, marriages and friendships as well as the evolution of (self-)definitions of masculinity throughout the 19th century. Re-evaluating the historical evolution of feminisms as movements for and by women, as well as the meanings of identity politics before and after the Civil War, this is a crucial text for the history of both American feminisms and American politics and society. This is an important scholarly intervention that would be of interest to scholars in the fields of gender history, women’s history, gender studies and modern American history.
This book explores the life, scholarly oeuvre and intellectual connections of the significant "first generation" Hungarian female psychoanalysts, situating their lives within the wider context of social history and the history of psychoanalysis. Budapest was one of the main centres of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century – in a period which was also central regarding women’s changing roles and possibilities. Favourable social circumstances met a new, freshly developing profession’s need for receptive followers regardless of their sex. This book shines a light on the social and professional factors on the life and work of these first women psychoanalysts, examining documentary evidence of their lives and drawing upon the literature of psychoanalysis, social history, and gender studies. Through their life stories, not only the history of psychoanalysis, but also the processes of 20th-century women’s history and social-political developments in Hungary and the region can be reconstructed. Key psychoanalysts explored include Lilly Hajdu, Edit Gyömrői, Alice Bálint, Vilma Kovács, Lillián Rotter and twelve further women analysts. This important book will be of interest to researchers in gender studies, the history of psychoanalysis, women’s and gender history, and Eastern European history.