Abstract
What do the following social issues have in common: legal cases and sexual harassment of immigrant women, gender and empowerment in #MeToo era, oil boomtowns and interpersonal violence, surrogacy market advertising and sexual citizenship, gender and fertility decisions, and sociocultural impacts of mainstream films and over-the-top television? The answer lies in identifying, analyzing and reflecting on how power is created and the relationships that co-exist at the micro, meso and macro levels of society. Gender, Power, and Society: Persistence and Change explores the questions and works through the answers in an edited volume with six original research projects divided into three separate sections. As part of the Advances in Gender Research series, the variety of methods used is particularly intriguing in interrogating power and the ways it is maintained, challenged and redefined in the process.
To begin the discussion, in chapter one of the first section of “Harassment and Gender-Based Violence” Deitch and Lyu analyze a collection of 49 lawsuits filed by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) between 2015 and 2024 along with legal and media documents of EEOC press releases, publicly available legal documents associated with the case (such as Consent Decrees, Complaints and Court Opinions) and media reports of the cases. Particularly significant is the centering of an intersectional analysis of sexual harassment of low-wage immigrant women, who tend to be left out of the conversations. In addition, the call of support for bystander training, external hotlines or monitors and more participation of women in supervisory positions provides concrete solutions for more fully structural organizational capacities for change.
Aronson et al. take us to the University of Michigan, where over 4,500 faculty and staff responded to open and closed surveys to ascertain the impact of #MeToo in shifting the culture of power on campus. Particularly significant is the recognition of the university and higher education more broadly as a workplace that is amenable to everyday transformations.
The third and final chapter of the section creatively captures the situations of boomtowns in the Bakken region of Western North Dakota and Northeastern Montana in the United States and Southern Canada. To more fully create the structural framing of interpersonal violence, Legerski includes the voices of direct service providers, criminal justice personnel, general human service providers, oil and industry personnel and healthcare or emergency medical service providers and general community members (such as pastors and gas station attendants). The research provides unique analysis on how gendered power dynamics, a gendered economic event (oil boom), existing inequalities (division of labor) and gendered risk of interpersonal violence (social isolation and the power of oil wages) are all interconnected. Working through all of these components uncovers the gendered intricacies of social resources (particularly housing and childcare) for a much-needed (and appreciated) feminist conversation when the focus tends to be more on resource extraction.
The second section explores “Traditional and Non-traditional Reproductive Decisions and Beliefs.” The first chapter by Danielowski uses discourse analysis and open coding of 18 websites of U.S.-based surrogacy agencies marketed to international intended parents to discover the emphasis of rights and ethics, U.S. citizenship, American exceptionalism and the medical, social and legal climate. Focusing directly on sexual and reproductive citizenship, the research nicely centers transnationality within neoliberal consumerist model of healthcare in discussions of power. In the next chapter, Oslawski-Lopez and Tabor use qualitative and quantitative responses from the U.S. survey “Constructing the Family II” to describe the relationship between gender roles and fertility decision-making, more specifically whether Americans believe wives and husbands should be able to refuse to have children with their spouses. The analysis then extends smoothly into other fertility issues of contraception and abortion to reveal the “gaps that exist in individuals’ desires and real outcomes” with power (p. 114).
The third and final section, “Gender on the Screen,” moves into a comparative content analysis of mainstream Hindi movies and Netflix Hindi web series within Indian media. Datta and Tewari expose key themes to reveal how “we need a diverse understanding of power reflected on screen as a radical contrast to the stereotyped notion of power as destructive aggression only” (p. 139).
Collectively, the research reflected in this volume not only defines power but offers various ways that power is constantly moving with gender, and in the process, reshaping ability, age, ethnicity, national origin and social class. In essence, the transformation of power occurs not only to which groups we are part of, but also the combination of interactions across our workplaces, families, media and the policies that shape our lives. This collection is useful for anyone interested in the feminist intersectional reimaginings of power. Rest in power, Vicky Demos!