The Journal of Gender Research: Open issue
How is gender understood, constructed, and regulated, and with what consequences for individuals and society? In this issue of Journal for Gender Research, three articles examine how understandings of gender are shaped by social, cultural, and historical processes. The contributions explore recruitment to health and care professions, the relationship between integration and gender equality in Norway, and nineteenth-century scientific conceptions of hermaphroditism. Together, they show how norms, knowledge production, and power relations shape understandings of gender and influence who is perceived as legitimate, conceivable, or desirable within society.
Abstracts
The Principle of Asymmetry: Hermaphroditism and Its Impossibility in Japetus Steenstrup
By Silas Anker Saggau
This article analyzes Johannes Japetus Steenstrup’s Undersögelser over Hermaphroditismens Tilværelse i Naturen (1845) in order to explain how hermaphroditism could appear conceptually impossible within Danish natural science of the 1840s. Rather than understanding the rejection as the result of empirical investigation, the analysis shows how it arises from a Romantic understanding of nature in which sex functions as a principle of polar differentiation and as a precondition for natural order. Through a close reading, the article demonstrates how symmetry, analogy, and metaphysical coherence render certain understandings of sex rational, while others appear unthinkable. The article thus contributes to the field by framing hermaphroditism as an epistemological problem and by nuancing narratives of nineteenth-century sex science, including the notion of a unified transition toward biological dichotomy.
Keywords: hermaphroditism, Romantic natural philosophy, aesthetic rationality, history of sex, history of science
Relations and Frictions between Migrant Integration and Gender Equality Discourses in Norway: A Critical Perspective
By Alyssa Marie Kvalvaag
While migrant integration and gender equality are widely utilized concepts in the Norwegian context, meaning-making around these concepts is not typically explored in conjunction with one another. Based on an analysis of academic literature, this study explores the relations and frictions between migrant integration and gender equality discourses in Norway. Identified relations between these discourses include the focus on social equality, the labormarket as a key site, often dichotomous and hierarchical understandings of categories, and exclusionary inclusion and racialized boundary making. Home and family life as key sites for discursive contestations and meaning-making and integration into a gender unequal labor market are identified as frictions. I conclude by framing these questions within an equality/diversity dilemma that tends to (re)surface in questions of and debates on migrant integration and gender equality in Norway, and call for alternative ways of imagining the equality/diversity dilemma.
Keywords: migrant integration, gender equality, gender, migration, discourse, Norway
Gendered Representations in Recruitment to Health and Care Occupations
By Marianne Kambe and Sarah Helene Aarestad
This article examines how gender and professional identity are represented in recruitment campaigns and media and information materials targeting the health and care sector. The aim is to analyse how such representations may challenge or reinforce established gender norms within the nursing profession. The study draws on a qualitative document analysis of three cases: Menn i helse (Men in Health), Share the Care, and the NRK documentaryseries Barnesykehuset (The children’s hospital). The analysis is inspired by discursive and visual approaches, with emphasis on how language, narratives and visual expressions shape understandings of gender and professional identity. The findings reveal a recurring paradox: campaigns make men visible in care roles and challenge stereotypical assumptions, yet simultaneously reproduce masculine codes that link professional attractiveness to technical, acute and high-status tasks. Barnesykehuset demonstrates that alternative expressions of masculinity in care work are both possible and credible, while Share the Care highlights the importance of institutional andstructural conditions for men’s sense of belonging and completion. The study indicates that cultural representations alone are insufficient for lasting norm change. Visual campaigns may broaden ideas about who can become a nurse,but must be combined with organisational and material changes. Norm change in female-dominated professions therefore requires action at multiple levels.
Keywords: gendered representations, masculinity, professional identity, health and care occupations, recruitment
Read the full issue at Scandinavian University Press (scup.com)
DOI: 10.18261/issn.1891-1781