Ruth’s Sociology Resources Blog

I thought we’d got beyond heavily gendered assumptions but I’ve just discovered that Sixt Car Rental (a fairly large, mainstream care hire company) offer a “Sixt Ladies Card” which allows ladies to

“Profit from your partner’s corporate rate.”

There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent ‘Gentlemen’s Card’ which speaks volumes about who is expected to be the one with the corporate job and is just another one of those little things that add to the reinforcement of assumptions of women’s lack of economic independence.

This article looks at changing patterns in parental custody of children and the social attitudes associated with it.

Hidden heartache of the weekend mothers - Times Online

More fathers are now gaining custody of their children after divorce, however this article suggests that social attitudes and assumptions are not changing at the same rate.  “Part-time” mothers talk of their shame at being separated from their children, shame which seems to come from the fact that being a “weekend mother” is not yet socially acceptable.  This raises the question of whether what happens in the courts reflects social change or creates it.

Another link is to the issue of women’s ‘Triple Shift’ of work - paid, emotional and childcare/housework.  This article claims that it is often women who work full-time outside the home who lose custody of their children, adding another layer to the burden of the Triple Shift.  There is however, at the same time a suggestion that it is becoming more acceptable for fathers to become the main carers and that men may themselves be taking on a new form of triple shift.

I spent last week staying in a Youth Hostel in Ghent attending the European Conference for Educational Research and it has been interesting noticing little cultural differences.

For example, the 2 Uzbek girls in my dorm use honey-flavoured toothpaste - my initial reaction was Ooooooh YUK! - after all we all know that toothpaste should be mint-flavoured. And then I started thinking about it … why should toothpaste be mint-flavoured? Honey actually has far better anti-bacterial properties than mint (as does Garlic) so in lots of ways it is far more logical, but it is an interesting illustration of some of the small cultural differences that we are often ignorant of.

Another interesting cultural aspect has been the lunches.  A sandwich buffet lunch sounds pretty innocent until you start thinking about the fillings.  The sandwiches were largely unlabelled which has meant that we had to guess at the fillings, some of which were difficult to identify.  It was only on the last day that they labelled one filling which all the Brits had been assuming was tuna in a tomato sauce - it turned out to be raw minced steak in a tomato sauce - a very Belgian speciality, but one which many delegates swiftly decided that they didn’t like (even though they had been happily eating it all week!).  There was also uncooked smoked haddock which I initially thought “YUK” to until I rationalised to myself that if it were raw smoked salmon I’d be very happy - even then my cultural conditioning meant that it still tasted ‘raw’ and not quite ‘right’.

These have been little reminders of the ways in which norms and assumptions can vary just subtly between cultures.

I’ve just added some more resources to the Downloads for Teachers section - a scheme of work for Education and a Resource Pack - also for education.