University of Galway Research Repository
Open access to publications, including peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, working papers, reports, and other scholarly communications by University of Galway researchers.
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Publication Emergencies, emergences and polycrises: The enduring need for critical feminist interventions(School of Political Science and Sociology, University of Galway, 2024-12-05)[No abstract avilable]Publication The fruits of labour: The role of globalisation in reinforcing, disrupting and reshaping gender norms and relations among Chile’s agri-workers(School of Political Science and Sociology, University of Galway, 2024)This article examines how the processes of globalisation serve to reinforce, disrupt, and reshape gender norms and relations in Chile. Chile has long since been subject to political corruption and societal disruption, but it was the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet and his neoliberal economic policies that reconfigured many aspects of life for Chilean farmers, both male and female. This article contextualises its core arguments in a case study of the fruit market in Chile’s commercial agriculture sector. This article argues that the processes of globalisation operate as a double-edged sword that can transform labour patterns and gender dynamics for better and worse.Publication Who cares? A thematic literature review around the themes of care work, social reproduction and universal basic income(School of Political Science and Sociology, University of Galway, 2024-12-05)This article explores the themes at the intersection of social reproduction, care work, and Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the literature. UBI has become important, both in the academic and public spheres, in an attempt to even out social disparity and injustice (Parolin and Siöland 2020). Given the global crisis of care, most recently highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic (Heintz et al. 2021), it is evident that a shift in the relationship between capitalism and social reproduction must take place (Bauhardt and Harcourt 2019; Heintz et al. 2021). The focus of this paper is looking into UBI’s potential to transform the way value is attributed to care work and social reproduction in society and, consequently, the gendered practices that lie underneath (Weeks 2011). This article stresses the complexities of such a transformation and shows that UBI can only be transformative if carefully implemented in co-ordination with other interventions, within a targeted policy frame, and with a specific focus on gender and social reproduction. To offer an accurate picture, the author conducted an extended literature review in search for the main debates around social reproduction, care work and UBI. To identify the most relevant themes within the conversation, Braun and Clarke’s Thematic Analysis (TA) (2017) was chosen as the most fitting method.Publication “I couldn’t help but compare with other countries”: Migrant mothers’ lived experiences of Japan’s COVID-19 state of emergency(School of Political Science and Sociology, University of Galway, 2024-12-05)This article presents the lived experiences of English-speaking migrant mothers in Japan during the early COVID-19 pandemic when school and childcare facilities closed, there was a national State of Emergency (SoE) and foreign residents were banned from re-entering the country. I examine the influence of the intersecting identities and social locations of being a woman, a mother of a dependent child, and a migrant in Japan. For mothers in this research, the COVID-19 pandemic played out against a backdrop of global gender inequality, which intensifies when women become mothers and is notoriously extreme in Japan. Although non-Japanese people face institutional and social discrimination, these mothers occupy a relatively privileged position amongst migrants, in a country which values English language ability. Still, their daily lives were affected by social structures and inequalities, and by a government response that did not sufficiently mitigate the uneven impacts of the crisis. Mothers experienced stress from the surge in demand for unpaid care of family members in a context of ambiguity, exacerbated by an unmet need for information and, for many, a language barrier. Mothers turned to online communities to provide each other with social support and information; as well as accessing information in English from sources in other countries. Findings support the case for intersectionality-based policymaking and crisis response which utilise knowledge from lived experiences of people with intersecting characteristics, as these factors influence people’s experiences of and access to services, and the ways in which they are impacted by crises such as public health emergencies.Publication What’s in a name? Drawing on women’s lived experiences to introduce and define cyber-located sexual violence (CLSV)(School of Political Science and Sociology, University of Galway, 2024-12-05)Feminists have long since drawn on women’s lived experiences to support advancing the concept of Violence Against Women (VAW) to incorporate previously overlooked behaviours/actions. Still, finding the right language to use when naming and defining VAW facilitated by technologies presents a challenge. For example, stretching the concept of sexual violence to include non physical behaviours/actions occurring online and via Internet-connected devices is questioned within dichotomous binary thinking advocating an offline/online, real/not-real duality. This paper reflects my attempt to meet the aforementioned challenge, providing a working term and definition that applies continuum(s) thinking to the various unwanted negative, sexually-based behaviours/actions occurring online and via Internet-connected devices that women in Ireland experience. I draw on findings from a quantitative multiple-choice questionnaire distributed in Ireland in October 2023 that invited women to share their understandings and experiences of the various behaviours/actions outlined in the questionnaire. N=397 women participated, including N=281 who had experienced unwanted negative, sexually-based behaviours/actions occurring online and via their devices. The respondents unequivocally understood the behaviours/actions outlined, both comment-based and image-based, as sexual violence. I interpret these findings through the lens of continuum(s) thinking, recognising that all forms of sexual violence exist on continuum(s) of experiences, making them episodic and maintaining a sense of fear and threat in women’s lives. This paper offers an insight into the lived experiences of women in Ireland and the potential to shift how we understand safety and (sexual) violence. It contributes to the expansion of our legal, social and cultural understandings of sexual violence.
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