Willy Jansen

Transparency in Academic Recruitment: A Problematic Tool for Gender Equality?

Gender research has made a call for more transparency and accountability in academic recruitment and selection in order to overcome the inequality practices that have led to an underrepresentation of women among full professors. This paper provides insight into the multiple ways in which the notions of transparency and accountability are put into practice in academic recruitment and selection, and how this has enhanced — or hindered — gender equality. The methods employed consist of a qualitative content analysis of seven recruitment and selection protocols, interviews with 64 committee members, and an analysis of 971 appointment reports of full professors in the Netherlands. Our analysis contributes to the study of organizations in three respects. First, it shows that recruitment and selection processes are characterized by bounded transparency and limited accountability at best. Second, it explains that the protocols that should ensure transparency and accountability remain paper tigresses, because of the micropolitics and gender practices that are part and parcel of recruitment and selection. Third, it contributes to gender equality theory in organization theory by showing how a myriad of gender practices simultaneously increases and counteracts gender equality measures in academia.

Gender and the expansion of university education in Jordan

This article explores how gender is threaded through the expansion and privatization of higher education in Jordan. Due to the justified current concern with the educational deficit of Muslim girls, it is easy to overlook the educational advances made by girls in some Islamic countries. In Jordan, girls have profited more than boys from the expansion of higher education. Economic or political reasons cannot explain this change, so explanations for the advancement of girls in the universities have to be sought elsewhere. I argue here that, for Jordan, this female advancement is linked to the commercialization of education set in motion by the early mission schools, the re‐Islamization of society, and the prestige system of ‘culturedness’. For this article, I have drawn upon qualitative anthropological data gathered through interviews with students, staff and parents in Jordan and from an analysis of higher education statistics.

Shared Symbols Muslims, Marian Pilgrimages and Gender

Despite the trend of secularization, pilgrimages to sacred sites flourish. Most of the pilgrims are women and the reasons for their visits often have to do with the dynamics of womens lives. Some of the pilgrims to sites dedicated to St Mary are Muslims. This is interesting in the present political context in which lines are being redrawn between Christians and Muslims and their respective religious identities. Why would Muslims go to Marian shrines and how do they negotiate their relationship to the figure of the Virgin Mary and thereby define their gender and religious position? This article describes the experiences of Muslim pilgrims at Marian sites in Germany, Portugal and Turkey, and analyses these in terms of gender and religious identity.

Silencing women's sexuality: global AIDS policies and the case of the female condom

The female condom is the only evidence‐based AIDS prevention technology that has been designed for the female body; yet, most women do not have access to it. This is remarkable since women constitute the majority of all HIV‐positive people living in sub‐Saharan Africa, and gender inequality is seen as a driving force of the AIDS epidemic. In this study, we analyze how major actors in the AIDS prevention field frame the AIDS problem, in particular the female condom in comparison to other prevention technologies, in their discourse and policy formulations. Our aim is to gain insight into the discursive power mechanisms that underlie the thinking about AIDS prevention and women’s sexual agency.

The Hard Work of Small Talk in Ethnographic Fieldwork

In this article we explore the importance of small talk in the context of ethnographic fieldwork. Our examples derive from more than thirty years of research experience in Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, and The Netherlands. We argue that small talk is a central, yet taken-for-granted, ingredient of ethnographic fieldwork. We claim that this skill should be reflected upon and given a more consistent role in supplementing and correcting data obtained by other techniques. It is our conviction that it can and should be taught in courses on research methods and techniques.

Where does public funding for HIV prevention go to? The case of condoms versus microbicides and vaccines.

This study analyses the priorities of public donors in funding HIV prevention by either integrated condom programming or HIV preventive microbicides and vaccines in the period between 2000 and 2008. It further compares the public funding investments of the USA government and European governments, including the EU, as we expect the two groups to invest differently in HIV prevention options, because their policies on sexual and reproductive health and rights are different. We use two existing officially UN endorsed databases to compare the public donor funding streams for HIV prevention of these two distinct contributors. In the period 2000-2008, the relative share of public funding for integrated condom programming dropped significantly, while that for research on vaccines and microbicides increased. The European public donors gave a larger share to condom programming than the United States, but exhibited a similar downward trend in favour of funding research on vaccines and microbicides. Both public donor parties invested progressively more in research on vaccines and microbicides rather than addressing the shortage of condoms and improving access to integrated condom programming in developing countries.

Empowerment through sex education? Rethinking paradoxical policies

Abstract Youth empowerment is the main goal of sex education according to Dutch Government and NGO policies. Academics from different disciplines have argued, however, that the ideal of empowerment through education is problematic, because of the unequal power relations implicated in educational practices. Building on one-and-a-half years of online and offline ethnographic fieldwork among Dutch youth, this article argues that Dutch sex educational policies inhibit rather than encourage young people’s empowerment by allowing only a limited number of sexual knowledge building practices to thrive while making others nearly impossible. In order to facilitate young people’s empowerment, policies should aim to create space for young people to develop their own themes and priorities, to offer a multitude of perspectives, to set the pace and to use different strategies for sexual knowledge building, including learning by doing and online learning. This requires a cultural shift that involves both an openness to young people’s experimentation, and a change in existing power hierarchies based on age.

Migrant Living Spaces: Religiosity and Gender in a Disciplinary Institution

This article looks at the production of gendered pious subjectivities at an Islamic student dorm in the Netherlands, for Turkish–Dutch female students. Following the Foucauldian framework of disciplinary power, we trace how normalising disciplinary techniques are at work in the dorm. We note, however, that members of the dorm voluntarily subject themselves to this power, as they are highly committed to Islamic self-development and living in a pious universe as a mode of being. Members perceive the disciplinary sanctions on themselves as necessary. Therefore, we argue that the constitution of gendered pious subjects is a product of the interplay between agentic subjects and the disciplinary, normalising techniques of the dorm. We want to also stress, however, that gender norms become all the more binding and stringent when people are held accountable by a disciplinary institution rather than personal ethical convictions.

Caring and Connecting: Reworking Religion, Gender and Families in Post-Migration Life

This chapter deals with West and Central African women in Paris and their religious strategies to overcome the kin-related problems they face in their post-migration life. No longer living in close proximity to the extended family, they have to make continuous efforts to develop an alternative kin network. The women develop an intense programme of religious travel to Marian sites across Europe that offers them the opportunities to build new women-centred families around the central figure of Mother Mary. The chapter argues that their intensified religiosity results in a feminization of kinship based on spiritual ties that gives them support and respect as well as a feeling of home in a foreign environment. The study is based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork between 2009 and 2012.

Tuberculosis and the sexual and reproductive lives of women in Bangladesh

When they do not meet norms related to sexuality and reproduction, Bangladeshi women often face abandonment and are thus deprived of an active sexual life, a marital relationship, and motherhood. Little is known about how a stigmatised disease such as tuberculosis (TB) may constrain the reproductive health and sexual lives of women. This article, derived from a larger study on the impact of TB on women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights in Narsingdi district and Dhaka, Bangladesh, aims to fill this gap. Based on interviews with nine married women who have or had TB, four husbands, and two mothers-in-law, this article highlights that the ways in which TB impedes on the sexual and reproductive lives of women depends on the stigma within their family and community, their relationships with their husbands, motherhood, their living arrangements, their economic contribution to the family and/or their disclosure of their TB diagnosis. Women with children and supportive husbands retain a stronger position among their in-laws and are less likely to be isolated or rejected. The patients’ narratives revealed that the instructions of health workers influenced their decisions about intercourse or abstinence. Future studies should examine the instructions patients receive from health workers regarding their living and sleeping arrangements, sexual intercourse, and pregnancy, as well as policy documents on TB treatment and prevention.