Sally K. Gallagher

SYMBOLIC TRADITIONALISM AND PRAGMATIC EGALITARIANISM Contemporary Evangelicals, Families, and Gender

Drawing on Connells notion of gender projects, the authors assess the degree to which contemporary evangelical ideals of mens headship challenge, as well as reinforce, a hegemonic masculinity. Based on 265 in-depth interviews in 23 states across the country, they find that rather than espousing a traditional gender hierarchy in which women are simply subordinate to men, the majority of contemporary evangelicals hold to symbolic traditionalism and pragmatic egalitarianism. Symbolic male headship provides an ideological tool with which individual evangelicals may maintain a sense of distinctiveness from the broader culture of which they are a part. At the same time, symbolic headship blunts some of the harsher effects of living in a materially rich, but time poor, culture, by defusing an area of potential conflict, creating a safe space within which men can negotiate, and strengthening mens material and emotional ties to their families.

Living with the mentally ill: Effects on the health and functioning of other household members

Based on data from the National Health Interview Survey Mental Health Supplement, 1989 (NCHS, 1991), this article compares health outcomes for respondents living with someone who is mentally ill (N = 776) with a randomly selected subsample of respondents not living with someone identified as mentally ill (N = 716). When other predictors of health are controlled, sharing a household with a mentally ill person is associated with poorer self-reported physical health, increased risk of reporting some activity limitation, and increased service utilization-both greater risk of hospitalization or visiting a physician, and a greater number of days hospitalized and number of physician visits among those utilizing these services. The severity and duration of mental illness have little effect across health outcome measures. Impaired health and increased utilization of medical care among persons living with someone who is mentally ill suggest hidden costs to individuals, to families of the mentally ill, and to the service system.

Where Are the Antifeminist Evangelicals? Evangelical Identity, Subcultural Location, and Attitudes toward Feminism

Based on data from a national survey and personal interviews with more than 300 religiously committed Protestants, this analysis assesses the range and location of attitudes toward feminism among conservative Protestants. Findings suggest that evangelicals are not uniformly antifeminist. Rather, the majority are both supportive and appreciative of the gains of liberal feminism as well as concerned that feminism has gotten off track by promoting an excessive individualism that undermines stable, meaningful, and caring relationships. For most evangelicals, feminism is neither a significant subcultural religious boundary nor a focus of political mobilization or action. Political conservatism, embeddedness in conservative local religious subcultures, belief in husbands’ headship and authority, and affiliation with particular subgroups and denominations help to locate and specify the sources that create, reinforce, and sustain more negative attitudes toward feminism within this diverse religious subculture.

Agency, Resources, and Identity: Lower-Income Women's Experiences in Damascus

Drawing on theories of structure and agency, this article assesses how women in lower-income households in Damascus use existing gender schemas to avoid unattractive employment and improve their access to income and employment. It highlights the overlapping effects of economic policy and gender dependency schemas on both the need for additional income and womens employment opportunities. While providing greater access to resources, womens accommodation to gender dependency schemas also helps to maintain domesticity and dependence on men. Agency for these women draws on and reinforces a collectively gendered sense of self that is central to the process of both obtaining resources and doing gender.

Schizophrenia and the life course: national findings on gender differences in disability and service use.

This article compares the social disability and service utilization across the life course of men and women with schizophrenia. Based on an analysis of data from the 1989 Mental Health Supplement to the National Health Interview Survey (n = 376), we compare functional limitations, service utilization and social integration among younger, middle aged, and older age groups. Compared to those with manic depression, individuals with schizophrenia are more disabled, and are more socially disadvantaged. These data confirm the generally held view of schizophrenia as the most disabling mental illness, point to the very high levels of need associated with it, and emphasize the need for general health care. Findings from the multivariate analysis provide mixed support for our hypotheses. Contrary to expectations based on new findings in the literature on course and outcome in schizophrenia, disability (both service utilization and functional limitations) was greater among older and middle aged adults than among their younger counterparts. In contrast, older individuals with schizophrenia appear to be more connected to potential sources of support. From a policy perspective, those improvements in social integration which do appear with age—whether marriage for men or the ability to make and keep friends among women—have their primary impact on the quality of life of the individual, without any direct opportunity for cost saving in terms of services to the seriously mentally ill.

Older people giving care : helping family and community

Preface Introduction Caring and Giving Care Study Design and Methodology Age and Giving Care Gender and Giving Care Gender and Informal Help to Family and Friends Gender and the Recipients of Care Gender and Giving Help Through Formal Volunteerism Marriage, Widowhood, and Giving Care Marriage and Informal Help to Family and Friends Marriage and the Recipients of Care Marriage and Giving Help Through Formal Volunteerism Conclusions The Implications of Giving Care: Labors of Love and Responsibility Appendix: Letters to Respondents Bibliography Index

Evangelicals, invested individualism and gender

Based on 178 in-depth interviews with evangelical Protestants in 23 states and data from the Evangelical Identity and Influence Survey (n=2,087), this chapter assesses the articulation of evangelical subcultural ideals with gendered family life, democratic individualism, and a two-earner, middle class lifestyle. Compared to other Protestants, evangelicals put more emphasis on husbands’ spiritual leadership, authority, and engaged fatherhood, and interpret wives’ employment as a pragmatic necessity and the outcome of expressive individualism. These ideals, in tension, produce a sense of “invested individualism” that embodies evangelical subcultural identity and facilitates the management and negotiation of gender, work, and family life.

The influence of state maternity leave policies on US mothers’ employment

ABSTRACT This study examines the influence of variation in state maternity leave policies on mothers’ employment. Data come from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) [U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). America’s families and living arrangements: 2010 (Data file). Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hhfam/cps2010/tabAVG1.xls] (n  = 1380) paired with an assessment of state provisions of expanded family leave. Results from a negative binomial regression show that job-protected leave greater than the 12 weeks provided under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is a marginally significant predictor of women spending fewer years out of the workforce following childbirth. Results from a logistic regression reveal that mothers in states with expanded access to job-protected leave are less likely to resign from their jobs within 12 weeks of their first childbirth than are mothers in states with non-expanded FMLA eligibility. These findings decrease the uncertainty about the effects of such legislation on mothers’ labour force participation, and support expansion of eligibility in order to better support working families.

Marriage in Men's Lives.

Because men and women live in worlds that are organized around gender, their marriages reflect differing realities. Marriage in Mens Lives focuses on marriage as a system of rules, customs, and expectations, and shows that marriage changes men on basic dimensions of achievement, participation in public and social life, and philanthropy because marriage reinforces such behaviours as part of adult masculinity. Using a huge database of over 6,000 interviews with men the author has studied since 1979, Nock draws some interesting and far-reaching conclusions about the nature of marriage, and predicts that marriage is definitely here to stay.