Adjusting Parenting Roles and Work Expectations among Women with Children during COVID-19

This study explores mothers' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on stressors, parenting roles, and work expectations. Qualitative analysis of open-ended interviews with a diverse group of 44 mothers in the United States generated two main themes: adjusting parenting roles and career concerns for mothers. Findings reveal that mothers have both internalized strong intra-family expectations to shoulder the primary responsibility for domestic labor and childcare in addition to completing their work obligations and experience institutional gender bias in the expectations that employers have for female employees. The interviews highlight lower expectations for fathers' contributions to parenting under pandemic conditions. Implications for research and policy are discussed with a particular focus on critiquing structures that may perpetuate gender disparities.

Feminist research in a female-dominated profession: How can this lens help us to understand ourselves better in speech-language pathology?

Purpose: Feminism is a theoretical position that allows researchers to explore, identify and potentially address issues that negatively impact on women, including on their health and health care. It has been used for many years in health care professions such as nursing.Method: In this paper, we argue that feminist research could underpin innovation in our professional practice as speech-language pathologists. We present research from within and outside of speech pathology that supports this position, and describe how feminism as an epistemology can guide qualitative research and discuss how other health care professions have used this framework to ask questions across broad areas.Conclusion: A feminist lens enables critique of ourselves and our profession to help us to understand how being female-dominated interacts with being portrayed, understood or conceptualised as feminine, and the consequences of this for professional practice. Feminism could also support us to better understand and support our clients, who may experience their disability, health and lives in ways that vary because of gendered experiences, expectations, or limitations.

Challenges for Iranian Women in Daily Urban Safety

Ensuring the safety of women as a vulnerable group in urban areas is a fundamental issue and of utmost importance to issues such as violence, crime, victimization, and depression. The purpose of this study is to investigate, through qualitative analysis, the contexts, causes, and consequences of women's feelings of unsafety in urban environments. The research field of the study is the public spaces of Tehran. The subjects and their spatial and interactive dimensions were explored through in-depth individual interviews, direct observation, and participant observation, and data from this study were analyzed using grounded theory. The results show that women's feeling of not being safe in the urban space of Tehran, the capital of Iran, is the result of some influential structural factors such as "socioeconomic challenges" and "dysfunctional socialization" and some contextual factors such as "crowded places" and "showing off." The women in the study also believe that their feelings of unsafety are reinforced by certain reasons evident in the behavior, language, and gestures of men. The feeling of unsafety among women has consequences at the micro and macro levels. Because of this feeling, women take "preventive measures" at the micro-level and at the macro-level, such feelings of unsafety lead to the spread and reinforcement of the "decay of social trust."

Examining What We Know in Relation to How We Know It: A Team-Based Reflexivity Model for Rapid Qualitative Health Research

Reflexivity constitutes a core component of qualitative research and has been actively integrated into long-term and "lone ranger" approaches to qualitative research. However, its application to team-based approaches and particularly to rapid qualitative team-based approaches continues to lag behind. In this article, we introduce a reflexivity model we developed for teams undertaking rapid qualitative studies. Utilizing our most recent application of this model to a rapid qualitative appraisal of health care workers' experiences delivering care during the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, we identify the steps to put this model into practice and its main outcomes. Our application of the model revealed that the team's practices could be grouped along four dimensions: design assumptions, data collection and analysis processes, multidisciplinary collaboration, and responsible dissemination. Reflexivity can improve the relations within the team and the quality of the research output, if it is implemented as a continuous and iterative process.

Queer Theory and Feminist Methods: A Review

Feminist research methodologies seek to conduct research that aligns with the political and social project of feminism. These research methodologies specifically focus on women's voice, experiences, and contributions, center a feminist perspective and adopt premises and assumptions of a feminist worldview. Some of these premises—raising critical consciousness, encouraging social change, and emphasizing a diversity of human experience related to gender at the intersection of race, sexuality, and other categories of identity—align with the premises and assumptions of queer theory. Since both feminist and queer research methods aim to centralize the experiences of people marginalized under racist, sexist, heterosexist, patriarchal, and imperialist conditions, both methods seek decentralization of and liberation from such experiences in research methodologies. While this paper will briefly discuss these important points of alignment between feminist methods and queer theory, the main purpose will be to distinguish these two broad approaches and to outline what queer theory additionally brings to the table.

A synthesis of convergent reflections, tensions and silences in linking gender and global environmental change research

This synthesis article joins the authors of the special issue "Gender perspectives in resilience, vulnerability and adaptation to global environmental change" in a common reflective dialogue about the main contributions of their papers. In sum, here we reflect on links between gender and feminist approaches to research in adaptation and resilience in global environmental change (GEC). The main theoretical contributions of this special issue are threefold: emphasizing the relevance of power relations in feminist political ecology, bringing the livelihood and intersectionality approaches into GEC, and linking resilience theories and critical feminist research. Empirical insights on key debates in GEC studies are also highlighted from the nine cases analysed, from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific. Further, the special issue also contributes to broaden the gender approach in adaptation to GEC by incorporating research sites in the Global North alongside sites from the Global South. This paper examines and compares the main approaches adopted (e.g. qualitative or mixed methods) and the methodological challenges that derive from intersectional perspectives. Finally, key messages for policy agendas and further research are drawn from the common reflection.