Abstract This article advances gender-regime theory by conceptualizing Taiwan as a case of contested gender-regime transformation. Engaging post-Walby scholarship and the stalled gender revolution thesis, it examines how socioeconomic modernization, democratization-enabled feminist mobilization, state selectivity, and entrenched familist norms have shaped Taiwan’s uneven gender trajectory. It argues that Taiwan’s transformation cannot be explained by modernization, legal reform, or changing attitudes alone. Feminist mobilization translated democratic openings into reform, while selective state incorporation and family-based welfare arrangements mediated its uneven effects. These dynamics sustained private-sphere inequalities, including unequal caregiving and the motherhood penalty, even as women achieved public gains in rights, education, employment, and political representation. Extending stalled revolution insights to the regime level, the article shows how public gains and private inequalities remain institutionally decoupled yet mutually constitutive, making gender-regime transformation an ongoing, recursive process of reform and resistance.
Despite historic federal investment in a publicly funded childcare system through the 2021 Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program, Ontario's childcare sector remains characterized by long waitlists, space shortages, and a shrinking Early Childhood Educator (ECE) workforce. This article critically examines Ontario's implementation of CWELCC, particularly the province's prioritization of fee reductions for parents over improvements to ECE wages and working conditions. Drawing on a social reproduction framework and qualitative interview data with ECEs and childcare advocates, I argue that Ontario's "fees first" approach reproduces the historical devaluation of feminized care labor by sidelining the workforce upon which its policy reform relies. The province's approach exposes the limitations of social policy reforms that remain tethered to neoliberal capitalist logics that fail to address the structural undervaluation of care labor. The result is a care infrastructure built on an increasingly unstable and disillusioned workforce.
Abstract This paper presents findings from a qualitative study exploring the intimate and reproductive lives of Syrian refugee women in Lebanon, based on in-depth, structured interviews with 122 women across urban, rural, and peri-urban settings. Using a feminist and intersectional lens, it examines how displacement shapes sex, reproduction, and agency within a patriarchal context. While many participants were aware of contraceptive methods, access was constrained by misinformation, financial hardship, and male opposition. Sex was often described as a marital duty rather than a site of mutual pleasure, with few women able to assert consent or articulate desire. Participants expressed both longing for and ambivalence toward bodily autonomy, shaped by precarity. Although some younger urban women reported shifting attitudes, most accounts revealed entrenched gendered power relations limiting reproductive choice. The findings call for culturally sensitive, gender-transformative interventions supporting sexual and reproductive agency.
Abstract How does militarization impact women’s experiences of violence in Mexico’s war on drugs? Utilising feminist political economy analysis, and based on extensive interviews with feminist civil society, grassroots activists, and security professionals, this paper identifies the mechanisms through which militarization compounds violence against women across three interrelated dimensions: space, time, and capital. We argue that militarization entrenches the division between the public and the private, reproducing gender stereotypes. Moreover, we find the state’s prioritization of military action devalues social reproduction and tacitly outsources time-intensive practices to women, leading to depletion. Militarization also produces gendered harms that especially marginalize rural and Indigenous women by diverting capital away from essential social infrastructure and facilitating resource extractivism that degrades the environment and displaces local communities.
Abstract Being part of the morally conservative “pro-family” and “anti-gender” agenda, the pro-homeschooling advocacy coalition has received little attention so far. This article seeks to contribute to the literature on the constellation of anti-gender actors, with a particular focus on those engaged in promoting homeschooling. What objectives are they working toward, and how do they activate interpretive frames? How can one characterize the social conditions of far-right cosmopolitanism, a blend of interest in the international sphere and the ability to navigate its arenas? The objective is to comprehensively explore their discourses, internationalization strategies, funding sources, and policy advocacy efforts. In particular, this article examines the development of the global moral conservative movement’s development by analyzing the transnational dimension of homeschooling advocacy, with a particular emphasis on its expression in Brazil.
This article examines how recent developments in Canada's federal policy landscape related to early learning and childcare (ELCC) have opened new policy space for the M & eacute;tis. The article draws on a strength-based theoretical framework to demonstrate how the M & eacute;tis have taken a leadership role in policy development despite the sociohistorical and political context that constrains policy possibilities. Relying on a critical historical analysis of policy documents, the article argues that the M & eacute;tis are contributing to the disruption of Canada's settler colonial policy framework by positioning themselves as meaningful policy actors in the development of ELCC.
In 2022-2023, a controversy around drag queen story-readings (DSRs) at libraries arose in Sweden, which was noteworthy given the low level of political conflict surrounding LGBTQ+ issues in recent years. This article explores how discourses around DSRs as "political" or "nonpolitical" renegotiate LGBTQ+ rights and queerness in the Swedish societal landscape. The study draws on ethnographic observations, interviews, and media reporting, and draws inspiration from queer and feminist theories of depoliticization. The analysis maps out (1) how "polarization" and "politics" were portrayed as unwanted, especially in proximity to children, (2) constructions of DSRs as harmful or harmless, (3) efforts to position oneself on the side of the majority, and (4) repoliticizing narratives centering on changing the world for and through children. We argue that in a country imagining itself as both LGBTQ+ friendly and child-friendly, the figure of the child emerges as a site where queerness is both disavowed and reclaimed.
On January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom officially exited the European Union, resulting in significant consequences for the UK's future institutionalization of gender equality mechanisms, policies, and gender regime. This article takes Brexit, a critical juncture, as a point of departure to ask the question: "How does the process of Brexit affect the UK's employment and domestic violence policies, and what kind of impacts do these have on the UK's gender regime?" Analyzing government documents from 2016 to 2021, the study finds that post-Brexit erosion of EU gender equality norms has reinforced hierarchical policy meanings and amplified economic and degendered frames. Mediated by departmental mandates and institutional contexts, these shifts have consolidated a more neoliberal UK gender regime, emphasizing market-oriented logics while limiting transformative initiatives. The article highlights how Brexit reorganizes existing policy frames rather than producing progressive change and underscores the enduring discursive legacy of Europeanization in post-Brexit UK policy.
Gender equality in the labor market and family life has been a long-standing policy aim in Sweden, which has sought to solve this problem by promoting a dual-earner-dual-carer model. Drawing on seven focus group interviews with thirty-one low-resourced single and coupled parents, this study articulates a set of unintended consequences of this policy architecture for low-resourced single mothers. Swedish social policies are predicated on a perceived equal division of parenting, but checks to ensure equal parenting are few. When the division is highly unequal, single mothers are set back by policies that presume gender-equal parenting or do not adequately compensate for its absence. These insights highlight a paradox: policies designed to improve gender equality can unwittingly reinforce inequality when they overlook family diversity.
South Korea has become a frontrunner in twenty-first-century family policy expansion. While initially concentrated on childcare services, cash benefits-especially those given as an alternative to public childcare services-have increasingly moved to the center of the country's family policy portfolio. Outlining and integrating the structural-functionalist, institutional, political, and ideational approaches, this article traces three distinctive processes of childcare-related cash reforms chronologically: the policy's limited inception in the late 2000s, its extension to cover all income and preschool age groups in the early 2010s, and its further generous expansion to young children in the early 2020s. A key recurring pattern was observed during the reform: dwindling national productivity driven by low childbirth and stagnant female employment, coupled with an institutional gap in the service-focused childcare system, opened a discursive space for political actors to promote childcare-related cash in electoral politics and justify it with reference to widely accepted normative values.
This article explores the challenges faced by minority women in the Israeli labor market through interviews with twenty-five highly educated Arab Druze women. The article addresses the experience of Druze women with academic qualifications in fields such as medicine and engineering, entering the Jewish labor market for the first time. This entry highlights a gap between their self-perception as members of a "privileged" minority and the Jewish hegemony's stereotypical view of minorities. The findings reveal how women's encounters with racial-ethnic discrimination challenge and transform their sociopolitical worldview, which assumes privileges beyond those of other Arab communities. By engaging in symbolic boundary work and critical political discourse, these women not only confront their Jewish employers and colleagues but also influence mutual political imaginations. This study joins a body of knowledge in political science, highlighting how individual and collective identities are negotiated within labor market dynamics from a gender perspective.
What explains the liberal hypocrites exposed through the 2017 MeToo moment in the United States, and why did it take so long to "see" them? I argue that these liberal hypocrites are best understood within the context of the politicization of men's involvement in mainstream American feminism. There are three dimensions to politicization: public endorsement, abstraction of impact, and partisan identification. Each of these dimensions exteriorizes values from adherents, facilitating inconsistency between their outward personas and private lives. When values become politicized, hypocritical stances toward them become, in effect, conceptually impossible. What is distinctive about the American MeToo movement, and part of what has driven liberal pushback against it, is that it is calling for a different framing of men in feminism than has been the mainstream: one that recognizes and censures hypocrisy, even among political allies.
Gender has become a central arena of political and cultural change. Alongside feminism's growing visibility, anti-feminist attitudes have risen, including the belief that men are now the main victims of gender-based discrimination-known as the belief in sexism shift (BSS). Using Spain as a case study and survey-based multivariate analysis, this article tests four models: ideology, traditional sexism, reaction to feminist policies, and misperception of discrimination. Results show that BSS is rooted in right-wing ideology but expanding among younger men, particularly Gen Z, and centrist voters. This expansion marks its transition to a mainstream driver of anti-feminist discourse, reshaping public debates on gender equality.
The few studies that have analyzed the effect of mayors' female gender on the economic inefficiency of municipal social welfare services have not yielded conclusive results. Because this effect might not be clearly visible if the gender contrast with the governing team is not taken into account, our aim was to test whether the mayor's gender dissimilarity from the government team, using a binary perspective, influences the inefficiency of these services. Our research took into account the heterogeneity caused by the mayor's own gender and the governing team's ideology. Results from Spanish municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants show that mayors' gender dissimilarity reduces inefficiency in the provision of these services in municipalities with right-wing governments. Furthermore, female mayors generally reduce inefficiency, but this effect is the opposite when they are in highly masculinized government teams, a phenomenon that is especially relevant in municipalities with right-wing governments.
The article analyzes the evolution of the European Union's work-life balance agenda over the past three decades, focusing on key policy initiatives that have established minimum standards for care-related leaves, services, labor market protection, and flexible working arrangements. To assess how well the EU policy framework recognizes and responds to the care responsibilities of diverse families, the analysis applies a conceptual framework that foregrounds often-overlooked elements of policy design: inclusiveness, flexibility, and complementarity. The findings reveal that, while the European Union's agenda has gradually broadened, progress remains cautious, fragmented, and uneven. Binding instruments continue to prioritize "standard" workers and "average" families, while the (complex) needs of lone parents, migrant families, carers facing illness or disability, and those in precarious employment are addressed, if at all, through non-binding measures. The persistent undervaluation of care, limited recognition of fathers' roles, and siloed policy approaches weaken coherence and fail to provide meaningful support for diverse work-care arrangements.
Drawing on theories of masculinity, nationalism, and patriarchy, a discourse analysis of the current US presidential executive dictates, and leadership, demonstrates its attack on feminist conceptions of gender and erasure of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as it negates and erases achievements of women and feminist praxis in the rebuilding of a hegemonic masculine patriarchy. This demands a rethink from within feminism of how we absorb and critique such a significant social, cultural, and political backlash. The Trump regime (Trumpism), via presidential dictates and masculinist patriarchal discourse, has implemented erasure of gender equality and democratic freedoms through a nihilistic administration and disordered militaristic governance and operations.
Fiji endures one of the world's highest rates of gender-based violence (GBV), with two in three women experiencing physical or sexual abuse from a male intimate partner. Entrenched colonial legacies, harmful social norms, and economic inequalities fuel this crisis, normalizing the violence and silencing its survivors. Although international aid for gender-focused initiatives in Fiji surged from US$374 million pre-pandemic to US$1.2 billion in 2020-2021, we lack an understanding of how this influx shapes activist spaces. Guided by feminist political economy analysis and social movement theories, this study analyzes donor and feminist fund documents, interview discussions, and talanoa sessions-a Pacific storytelling method-among feminist and queer activists. It maps aid flows, interrogates donor metrics, and traces how competition and compliance pressures reshape activist strategies. The findings show how aid affects resource acquisition, distribution, and use, contributing to practical approaches for more equitable and sustainable movement building against GBV.
Gendered social policies, particularly those designed to reconcile work and family life, have expanded in post-retrenchment Chile, marked by unusual generosity from the political right. This article examines the political determinants of work-family policy expansion, focusing on the role of framing in the policymaking process. It argues that reform is more likely when advocates' frames align with the dominant narratives of powerful political actors. In contrast, even popular or politically rewarding proposals may falter if their frames contradict prevailing narratives. During the formulation and decision-making stages, effective framing helps resolve conflicts by reshaping opponents' perceptions of costs, benefits, and political feasibility, thereby facilitating consensus. This study contributes to the politics of social policy, with a focus on parental leave reform in Chile between 2006 and 2011. The analysis draws on diverse sources, including semi-structured interviews, policy documents, legislative proceedings, and media coverage.
This article investigates how public philosophies shaped contested meanings of family, gender roles, work, deservingness, and state responsibility in Czech political discourse surrounding the 2017 Family Policy Conception. Although the Conception proposed a shift resembling optional familialism, its implementation resulted in incremental changes aligned with the adult worker model. Drawing on discursive institutionalism and grounded theory, the analysis of sixty-nine media outputs (2014-2017) shows that proponents (Social Democrats) legitimized the reform through technocratic and labor-market oriented arguments while avoiding direct challenges to entrenched gender norms. Conservative parties framed the proposal as excessive state intervention, reinforcing traditional family roles and a narrow, work-based notion of deservingness. The article argues that in the context of institutional path-dependence, dominant public philosophies constrained the discursive space for reform, preventing a paradigmatic shift and limiting it to incremental, work-oriented changes that navigated between the post-communist legacy and contemporary neoliberal ideational frameworks.
We investigated the persistence of male violence against intimate partners in a context where, as is particularly the case in France, gender-based violence is considered deviant in light of normative changes promoting equality. Our hypothesis is that of a "masculinity trouble." As male socialization has not been completely depatriarchalized, many men might not be equipped to deal with the tensions inherent in egalitarianism in intimate relationships, and may resort to violence as a means of managing them. To test this hypothesis, we used a mixed method analysis combining six quantitative and qualitative datasets to determine the sociodemographic factors and rationales for action that can sociologically explain these violent behaviors. Our results confirm the hypothesis of "masculinity trouble," which is particularly evident in patterns of behavior that we refer to as "frustrated egocentrism" or "wounded narcissism."
