dc.date.accessioned | 2020-12-01T20:13:59Z | |
dc.date.available | 2020-12-01T20:13:59Z | |
dc.date.created | 2020-11-09T10:52:31Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2020 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Aarseth, Helene . Against the grain? The craving for domestic femininity in a gender-egalitarian welfare state. The European Journal of Women's Studies. 2020 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10852/81322 | |
dc.description.abstract | This article aims to develop new conceptions of the psychosocial dynamics that drive the re-romanticization of domestic femininity in current financialized capitalism. Feminist scholars have described this heightened cultivation of mothering as a reparative move in response to irreconcilable tensions between cultural ideals of the ‘balancing mother’ and ‘lean-in femininity’. This article adds a materialist-psychosocial lens to these conceptions, to enhance understanding of what drives this craving for domestic femininity. Drawing on a free-association narrative interview study with couples in the financial elite in the comparatively gender-egalitarian Norwegian context, I describe a specific emotional mechanism that resists democratization of gender in this specific group. The interviews reveal a felt need to cultivate ‘the human side of things’ at safe distance from the competitiveness of ‘hard-core finance’. The Nordic earner–carer model with its entwinement of care and professional pursuits, cultivated by the more self-fulfilment-oriented parts of the professional middle-class appears not only unwanted but threatening. In my analysis, I retrieve and develop a psychoanalytically inspired historical-materialist feminism, one that perceives of the gendered division of work as a split in modes of focusing human energy. I suggest that the resurgent cultivation of domestic femininity is nurtured by a self-energizing antagonism between competitive and relational practices. I further argue that the cultivation of domestic femininity in these financial couples points to a potential antagonism between the democratization of love and the specific anxiety-driven competitiveness to which this financial-elite group may be particularly susceptible. | |
dc.language | EN | |
dc.rights | Attribution 4.0 International | |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | |
dc.title | Against the grain? The craving for domestic femininity in a gender-egalitarian welfare state | |
dc.type | Journal article | |
dc.creator.author | Aarseth, Helene | |
cristin.unitcode | 185,29,12,0 | |
cristin.unitname | Senter for tverrfaglig kjønnsforskning | |
cristin.ispublished | true | |
cristin.fulltext | postprint | |
cristin.qualitycode | 2 | |
dc.identifier.cristin | 1846060 | |
dc.identifier.bibliographiccitation | info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.jtitle=The European Journal of Women's Studies&rft.volume=&rft.spage=&rft.date=2020 | |
dc.identifier.jtitle | The European Journal of Women's Studies | |
dc.identifier.pagecount | 15 | |
dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506820970241 | |
dc.identifier.urn | URN:NBN:no-84416 | |
dc.type.document | Tidsskriftartikkel | |
dc.type.peerreviewed | Peer reviewed | |
dc.source.issn | 1350-5068 | |
dc.identifier.fulltext | Fulltext https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/81322/4/1350506820970241.pdf | |
dc.type.version | PublishedVersion | |
cristin.articleid | 135050682097024 | |