Women Onlyness: The Cultural Production of a Gender Regime

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Leisure Groups and Gender

Abstract

For this paper, I draw on my dissertation research: four years of ethnographic research of contemporary women-only social formations. Specifically, I will discuss one case study of a women-only leisure activity – women-only home improvement workshops – as a site through which to explore the research problem: problematizing contemporary women onlyness. The research problem is developed in direct contrast to the dominant (naturalized, essentialized, assumed) approach to women onlyness in the literature. Specifically, taking a fresh look at women-only social formations by problematizing women onlyness, through exploring women’s experiences of and meaning making about women onlyness, calls critical attention to women onlyness. The analysis, informed by a conceptual framework that draws on Connell’s concept of ‘gender regime’ and a CCCS-inspired approach to cultural production, reveals the ways that women participants are active in the production of women onlyness gender regimes. Women participants work to produce women onlyness gender regimes that are experienced as welcoming, supportive, and comfortable, and encourage women to develop expertise and relationships with other participants. Emphasizing these processes of production reveals that these women onlyness gender regimes are not the natural result of a women-only group or the exclusion of men.

Author

• Michele Kathryn Donnelly, Syracuse University