European Journal of Women's Studies

Gender equality measures are now common in the policies of European film industries and can be an important tool for rendering visible gender inequalities. Recent research, however, indicates that top-down institutional gender mainstreaming might mean better conditions for some women in certain aspects, but structural inequalities tend to remain, including lack of an intersectional approach. In this article, these issues are addressed by analysing gender equality policies currently implemented in the Swedish and Spanish film industries. Following Carole Lee Bacchi’s argument that the way in which a problem is represented must be analysed backwards, by looking at the solutions suggested, we unpack what inequalities gender equality measures render visible and, in so doing, highlight the aspects that remain invisible. We also discuss how such problem representation plays out for women in the film industries of both countries and consider the counter-practices women deploy to cope with continuing gender inequality in the film industries of Spain and Sweden. Our main argument is that Swedish and Spanish gender equality policies, despite having increased the presence of women film workers, still fail to render visible the structural basis of inequalities cemented by androcentric film governance structures and a male norm around which the film industry has been built.

In this article, I reflect on the intersection between feminism and documentary art as truth-telling by focusing on Alcaldessa (Ada Colau for Mayor), the most relevant documentary of the long-term collaboration between the film-maker Pau Faus and Ada Colau, the first female mayor of Barcelona (2015–2023). My argument is critical of a reductionist interpretation which portrays Alcaldessa as a personalist postfeminist documentary overly fixated on ‘biography rather than policy’. In contrast, I posit that Faus’ documentary, delving into Colau’s initial electoral campaign (2014–2015), offers valuable insights into pivotal aspects of an underexamined political vision that merges the principles of new municipalism with a focus on the ‘common people’ (gent comú) and feminism. Furthermore, the documentary sheds light on unreconciled dilemmas inherent in the lived new politics and feminist leadership, issues that often remain concealed within the ideological trappings of political manifestos and programmes.

Recently, there has been renewed interest in homemaking and domestic practices and the revival of domesticity has become related with pro-environmental values and sustainable lifestyles in Western societies. The turn to domesticity tends to be associated with women. While some authors warn of a return to traditional gender roles within the household, others view eco-domesticity as a feminist project that values domestic practices. This article considers the gender-specific aspects of the revival in a post-socialist country and focuses on the gendered aspects of new domesticity. Specifically, it studies the gendered discourses and practices within eco-domesticity in Czechia, which include sustainable consumption, green prosumption and alternative parenting practices. Can the eco-conscious reclaiming of domesticity be viewed as a new form of feminism in Czechia? The study is based on a qualitative sociological research using in-depth interviews, participant observation and media analyses. It is argued here that this new 21st-century domesticity should be understood through the context of the Czech state’s lengthy maternity/parental leave period, which leads to temporary domesticity. The examples of active fathers and self-reliant mothers undermine the traditional division of labour. Caring roles among men in the family are highly valued in eco-domesticity, and alternative gender roles are part of alternative sustainable lifestyles. Care in the home expands to collective activities of parents in community centres and other community projects and decreases the isolation of parents at home. Although inspired by trends from abroad, informants do not perceive eco-domesticity to be a new wave of feminism in Czechia.

Homelessness as a distinct social problem is a relatively recent social construct. Many women are thought to experience so-called ‘hidden homelessness’, which is said to be the cause of their under-representation in the data. However, data now show a higher proportion of women among those experiencing homelessness. In addition, current definitions explicitly include women’s specific experiences such as living under the threat of violence. This article attempts to explore this contradiction between the alleged invisibility and the increased presence of women in the broader population experiencing homelessness, particularly in the Flemish context. First, the marginalisation and housing precariousness of women is analysed from a historical perspective, from the mid 1800s to the recent federalisation of Belgium. Second, it examines the current production of knowledge about homelessness. The article shows that women’s housing precariousness was conspicuous in the past, even if it was not framed as homelessness. The practices of categorising women and representing gender are explored in current reports, statistical data and expert discourses. The recent ‘numericisation’ of homelessness research, the methods and categorisations used to produce quantitative data, are constantly caught up in existing knowledge, policies and evaluations. As a result, other variables, such as household composition or housing situation, override gender. Fragmented policies and individual responses on the ground contribute to a multiplicity of discourses and a lack of advocacy for women’s homelessness as a distinct social problem. For organisations working and advocating for migrants, migration, not gender, is the defining dimension of vulnerability. For women’s organisations, gender meant inequality manifested in domestic and intimate partner violence. The discourses on these two groups make gender an ambiguous dimension of homelessness. As a result, existing data on homelessness is rarely analysed from a gender perspective. This in turn can hinder the introduction of more gender-sensitive policies.

This article discusses so-called social egg freezing among women in Norway. The women, single and in their thirties, link the desire to freeze their eggs to challenges with heterosexual partnering and the lingering threat of becoming ‘desperate’ due to presumed declining fertility. I show that ‘desperation’ stands for impulses, desires, priorities and strategies, which are in conflict with an ideal feminine subjectivity – the ‘strong independent woman’ – who is gender equal, autonomous, rational and self-regulating. At the same time, normative coupledom based on ‘true love’ remains at the heart of the women’s idea of an optimal way of life. Drawing on feminist sociologist Eva Ilouz’ theorisation of the effects of late capitalism on heterosexual dynamics and relationships, I show how egg freezing is pursued in order to retain and improve one’s ability for what Illouz calls ‘unlove’: to avoid and escape substandard relationships and prioritise autonomy and self-empowerment over a desire for attachment. I contend that, although in some cases (and/or for some time) experienced as empowering and an enhancement of gender equality, egg freezing remains an individualised, and largely ineffective, response to conflicts and dilemmas stemming from gendered paradoxes of late capitalist intimate normativity, where norms of ‘true love’ coupledom come into conflict with an ideal subjectivity of radical autonomy. ‘Freezing for unlove’, thus, also highlights the ambiguous effects of an individualist neoliberal feminism, which fails to adequately address material gender differences, and to problematise adjustment to a male norm as a strategy for gender equality.

In this article, we aim to understand the prenatal experiences of, and attitudes towards, caesarean sections (c-section) among middle-class women in Türkiye, in the context of the State’s declarations about reproductive choices in recent years. These declarations addressed the following two main viewpoints: encouragement of ‘at least three children’ per family; and restrictions on caesarean sections. The authors take these discourses as an indirect intervention on women’s bodily autonomy. Within this context, this article tries to understand women’s accounts of their own prenatal experiences in Türkiye. The findings show that respondents embrace excessive medicalisation of pregnancy for the sake of their babies, and do not perceive State encouragement as being an attempt to intervene on their birth choices. In addition, participants state that they prefer c-sections, and willingly accept this service from the private sector without considering the possibility that they may not actually need the procedure.

The article applies the concept of stratified reproduction to analyse experiences of women with disabilities in Poland. Stratified reproduction – rewarding motherhood for some and disempowering others from being parents – and its relation to ableism is explored in a country context, where reproductive rights struggles are prevalent in the public sphere. Based on qualitative empirical research (in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews) with 50 women with disabilities, the article shows that women with disabilities are subjected to mechanisms of social control that limit their reproductive decision-making and discourage them from becoming parents. Social control is explored in the context of withdrawal of information about reproductive health and sexuality, navigating access and fear of custody deprivation based on ableist presumptions. The ambivalence between social expectations related to parenthood versus performing care work is explored. The analysis shows that women with disabilities navigate exclusionary norms and challenge understandings of who can become a parent and who can make decisions about who can become a parent. This article offers the concept of stratified reproduction to explain the structural inequalities experienced by women with disabilities with regard to reproduction, and highlights the importance of studying ableism as an essential factor within the reproductive realm.

In recent years, health-data-driven artificial intelligence and machine learning applications have been introduced to many areas of medicine. In the field of assisted reproduction, artificial intelligence and machine learning applications and related technologies have been hailed as (potentially) significant and ground-breaking, not least because they promise standardisation and automation in in-vitro fertilisation clinics – a precondition for scaling up and branching out in the fertility bioindustry. Artificial intelligence data-driven algorithms promise time- and cost-effective selection of ‘high-quality’ reproductive cells and successful personalised treatments. In this essay, we aim to critically discuss artificial intelligence as a technological clinical practice, which is currently moving from bench to bedside internationally. Through an analytic framework of reproductive justice, we propose that introducing artificial intelligence into this already stratified context threatens to black-box health disparities and to generate what we refer to as ‘hyper-stratifications’ of reproduction in the context of rising health and social disparities in the European context. As feminist, social science and bioethics scholars, we are all too aware of how reproductive technologies reinforce normativities rather than unravel them. We cannot presume that artificial intelligence is an ethical technological agent or user of health data but, instead, need to keep a critical eye on the moral ambivalence of emerging and evolving artificial intelligence-assisted reproduction technologies practices and their gendered consequences. Given the current hype around artificial intelligence, but also with concerns around the fast development and deployment of artificial intelligence generally and in artificial intelligence-assisted reproduction technologies particularly in mind, there is an urgent need to engage in critical feminist discussion of such developments.