Sociology Lens

Category: Gender & Sexuality

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Identity / Social Movements / Social Change

Emotional Labor, Social Movements, and Being a Bad Feminist

Since Arlie Hochschild’s groundbreaking book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983), the concept of “emotional labor” has become increasingly popularized. Writing about jobs in the service industry, Hochschild defines emotional labor as the work that “requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others” (20). In other words, many (if not most) jobs require us to manage and negotiate our own feelings and the...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion

Rain on the body: Bodies as mere objects

Bodies are inscribed with meaning in and through a web of social and power relations. Bodies are not neutral and object matter; rather, they (re)produce themselves when alone and when with others. The digital world can create bodies from afar and the offline world can do so, too. For example, one interacts with others online through digital platforms, such as Twitter or Facebook, shaping how the body is (un)seen and (un)heard; one can also interact with others offline, whereby a...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Sociology of Organizations & Work

The Uneven Adjustment to Homeworking Among UK Sex Workers

The shift to homeworking under lockdown raises important concerns for those whose work involves physical and emotional connection, not least forms of work which have been undertaken in a shroud of secrecy. Here, I highlight the work of sex workers, in particular, who negotiate a sexual and emotional experience with clients through physical touch and emotional conversation. Of course, while some aspects of the experience can be – and are – undertaken remotely through online technologies in a burgeoning online...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Identity / Social Movements / Social Change

Identity Theory, Emotions, and the “Victim”—“Survivor” Binary

Sociological identity theory concerns itself with the concept of the self: what it is, how societal structures influence it, and how we navigate it. According to the symbolic interactionist tradition, heavily influenced by the work of George Herbert Mead, one’s sense of self or identity is built in and through social interactions with others. As such, there is a reciprocal relationship between the self and the external social world; society impacts the self, and in turn, the self impacts our...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Identity / Sociology of Health & Illness

‘Women of my age tend to drink’: Understanding how older Australian and Danish women negotiate the pleasures and risks of their alcohol use

When we think of risky drinking, typically we think of young people ‘binge drinking’, passing out on the footpath and generally looking a bit ‘messy’. The media reinforces the notion that drinking is primarily a problem among young people by regularly circulating stories and images of young people being drunk in public and causing problems either to themselves or bystanders. This emphasis on young people’s drinking is not surprising, particularly since they are more likely to drink in public places,...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Organizations & Work

Upholding Equity Across Different Campuses

In the past decade the United States has witnessed an influx of conversations regarding sexual assault on college campuses. Cases like Brock Turner and Chanel Miller or Emma Sulkowicz became national examples of the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses as well as universities’ failures to protect survivors and seek justice. While there is much work left to be done, there seems to be a more concrete understanding of the frequency of sexual assault and the injustice done…

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Social Welfare

What are women’s experiences like during and after disasters?

Although gaining attention, gender remains under-researched in disaster risk reduction protocols and response and recovery efforts. Many research gaps are due to sexist biases and a lack of inclusion of women’s experiences1. In fact, much early social science research was blind to gender and used men as the default for analysis2. Since then, the effects of gender stratification and women’s experiences have slowly been integrated into disaster research and social vulnerability analyses3. It is important to continue gender-based research to...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology

Gender, Political Change, and the Macro-Social

It is clear that there is a reciprocal relationship between politics and our social world; while political action acts on our social environment, social phenomena equally shape our political landscape. In this vein, there has been a growing acknowledgment that social facts, like gender, deeply influence who rises to political power as well as the policies they are able to enact.  For example, over the past two years our country has frequently discussed how masculinity contributed to the rise of...

Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Research Brief / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Organizations & Work / Sociology of the Family

Pregnancy and childbirth in prison

“I’ve got baggy tops, so I just always have to hide my bump, and like most people couldn’t recognise that I’m pregnant, so that’s a good thing”. With a prison population of approximately 9000 women in England, it is estimated that approximately 600 pregnancies and 100 births occur annually.  Despite there being an extensive literature on the sociology of reproduction, pregnancy and childbirth, there has been scarce qualitative research looking specifically at pregnant prisoners. Our recently published open access paper:...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Media & Communication

Vaccine frictions – one rationality does not fit all

This blog piece highlights some points of my on-going multi-sited research project on HPV vaccination in Finland. The findings presented are based on my open access research article, What kind of ‘a girls’ thing’?, published in Sociology of Health and Illness. When you are vaccinated, you get protection against the cancer‐causing HP virus. On the front page of the Finnish HPV vaccination campaign site. That vaccine protects from papillomavirus (not directly even from cervical cancer), which is very effectively prevented...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Sociology of Organizations & Work

25 Years of Gender, Work and Organisation- ‘Embodying the political resistance we live’

At the start of Gender, Work and Organization’s 25th Anniversary year, we reflected on the journal’s trajectory and outlined an editorial direction for the journal (Pullen, Lewis and Ozkazanc-Pan, 2019). Ending this year, we ask ourselves what a journal focusing on critical approaches to gender requires in the current socio-political climate? It is tempting to revisit our contributions to the journal and outline what we might like to see submitted in the future; we might like to cross-reference developments in...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Social Welfare / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

‘Seeing What is Invisible in Plain Sight’: How Effective Is the New Law on Coercive Control?

In early 2013, Rob Titchener, a tall, dark and handsome dairy farmer, arrived in Ambridge and started an affair with Helen Archer. And so began the controversial story line of the usually staid and very popular BBC Radio Four drama, ‘The Archers’, that ‘gripped the UK’ for three and a half years. The portrayal of Rob’s torturous coercive and controlling persecution of Helen culminated in a thrilling Sunday night ‘special episode’ in September 2016, as the programme was extended to an hour for...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Sociology of Health & Illness

Update: Us too! Why it’s time to give female death by suicide some serious sociological attention!

It is almost a year since I wrote this original blog post, linking to my research paper, An exploration of integrated data on the social dynamics of suicide among women, published in Sociology of Health & Illness. Statistics published since then show that as the overall suicide rate in the UK continues to show a downward trend, the rate of suicide among young girls aged 15-19, grew to its highest rate since records began in 1981 (Mohdin, 2018).  The National...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Political & Economic Sociology / Race & Ethnicity Studies / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance / Sociology of Religion

Of bodies and burkinis: institutional Islamophobia, Islamic dress and the colonial condition

The image accompanying this piece was taken last month in France. The image is of a poster that was displayed on the wall of a beach front café, set against the backdrop of armed troops parading the beach front. The overwhelming impression of the poster is the bust of Marianne, her flowing locks said to represent the freedom of the French Republic. She dominates the image, exemplary of what it means to be a woman in France.  The poster is...

Gender & Sexuality / Opinion / Science & Technology / Sociology of Media & Communication

Sexed up online: Instagram influencers, harassment, and the changing nature of work

Kylie Jenner is estimated to earn $1 million per sponsored online post. Scrolling through her Instagram feed shows plenty of examples of how lucrative – and sexualized – the online attention economy has become. From poolside parties and bikinis, to fast cars and crop tops, and from motherhood to makeup tips, branded products are peppered among the mix of idealized selfies, professional headshots, and candid (or made to seem candid) snaps. Jenner is touted as the highest paid influencer on...

Applied Sociology / Books and arts / Feminist Theory / Gender & Sexuality / Social Psychology & Lifecourse

Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy

Happy Friday everyone! Actually, when was the last time that you experienced pure happiness? Real unrestrained joy? Many of us, sadly, are feeling increasingly isolated and lonely. During Mental Health Awareness Week recently, leading figures including Alastair Campbell bravely discussed their experiences of depression; raising awareness, with a view to generating a collective understanding of, and sympathy for, those experiencing mental health issues. So, the new book by Lynne Segal, Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy representing ‘a passionate call...