Aim of this article is to discuss some aspects of the relationship between gender and reflexivity. The concept of reflexivity provides sociology with a means to understand the way that gender and social change intersect in contemporary modernity. The conditions of late/second/post-modernity create the opportunities as well as the need for social actors to shape their own identities. This seems particularly true among Millennials (women and men born after 1981) and Gen Zers (boys and girls born after the year 2000), two generations that have grown up immersed in multi-modal messages and global online cultures, often resulting in new forms of understanding, engagement, practices and relationships. Through a literature review, the article discusses if/how reflexivity can be a useful tool both to deconstruct the system of transmission of gender inequalities and to understand contemporary gender changes.
In the last sixty years, the European legislation has broadened the notion of gender equality, with significant impacts on the consequential developing of national social policies and, generally speaking, on the public opinions. This process has been undoubtedly catalyzed by the adoption of the gender mainstreaming perspective in Europe since 1996, which gave legal basis to the implementation of the principle of gender equality in the frame of an integrated strategy. According to this, each EU activity should embrace the gender mainstreaming perspective, including also the way the European Commission (EC) gathers the Europeans’ public opinion. To study this linkage, we focus on the development of the Eurobarometer survey, the official instrument used by the European Commission to collect Europeans’ beliefs on several aspects, included gender equality issues. To observe the change lead by the implementation of the gender mainstreaming perspective in the European instruments, we reviewed the legislation operating in the field of gender equality since 1975 to 2016 and, covering the same period, we investigated the change in content and wording in about 80 waves of Eurobarometer, with a specific focus on questions on gender issues. Our analyses show a parallel development, documenting the cultural change occurred – at least in the European institutional actors – in framing gender equality from a «women issue» mainly related to discrimination, to a broad, multidimensional and dynamic concept of equality between men and women, incorporating therefore a more gender-sensitive approach.
In this article the authors analyse the phenomenon of mumpreneurship from the perspective of Relational Sociology. This point of view enriches the literature on mumpreneurs’ motivation that usually centres on classical elements such as push & pull factors and constrains. The Relational Perspective indeed allows for understanding the framework of different factors and the plurality of subjects involved in the phenomenon (the woman, the relationship with her partner, the belonging to a familiar networking…). It discovers the complexity at stake, which refers as an emerging effect, to the process of construction of personal identity, based on a deep exercise of reflexivity and strong relational dimension.
A growing scientific literature suggests changes in fatherhood. However, the extent to which this indicates a shift away from male breadwinner model is under debate across Europe. Thus, it is interesting to reflect on how paternal practices and gender models are evolving. This contribution will address the debate about fatherhood and gender roles by comparing two countries, Italy and Denmark, marked by relevant differences in terms of policies and practices related to fatherhood and childcare. Yet both countries are still facing the work and family balance issue. The question addressed in the chapter, by reviewing policies and secondary data analysis, will be: How are current political agendas and welfare services aimed at changing care patterns and gender equality in family life, and how are these policies and provisions transforming fatherhood and fathering practices? How are these new practices challenging and challenged by traditional gender norms and practices? Which trends can be identified?
Assuming «The Sociology of Deviance: An Obituary» as a dialectical point of departure the paper critically deals with two main arguments Sumner developed to decree provocatively the «death» of sociology of deviance in the late seventies. The «idealistic» argument claims that radical and Marxist theoretical development in the late 1960s and early 1970s, undermining concept of deviance grounds and criticizing it till «death», have excluded its sociological meaning and any scientific utility; the «objective» one remarks that post-modern or late-modern society compared with original concept historical contest changed so much that it is hard now to find the necessary coordinates of the phenomenon it is supposed to describe. The author concludes affirming their renewed soundness nowadays, outlining the difficulties to maintain deviance currently useful as a sociological analysis tool in contemporary society, and the outlook for discipline taking in account conceptual and theoretical problematic issues as raised and highlighted.