This paper critically examines the pervasive influence of contemporary "aesthetic culture" within digital popular culture on social media in reshaping modern womanhood, where femininity is performed and disciplined. Specifically, the study investigates how three interconnected micro-trends: the "Clean Girl" aesthetic, "Matcha Girlie," and "Stanley Cup" culture construct a new form of femininity that frames rigorous self-regulation as empowering self-expression.

Drawing on critical feminist theory, including concepts of disciplinary power (Foucault and Bartky), postfeminist sensibility (Gill), neoliberal feminism (Rottenberg), and commodity feminism (Goldman), this research argues that this digital landscape constitutes a "Disciplined Aesthetic". This architecture regulates women’s bodies by internalizing the social media gaze, turning self-surveillance into a pleasurable act of self-care. Through an empirical analysis of Instagram reels and TikTok content, the paper demonstrates how documented routines such as the "6 AM morning routine" and specific consumption habits are codified as moral virtues and markers of success.

The paper concludes that these trends function as a postfeminist and neoliberal disciplinary regime. By translating political needs into psychological imperatives for "confidence" and "wellness," they effectively depoliticize feminist discourse. Ultimately, these aesthetics redirect female ambition away from structural critique and toward individualised, profit-driven self-management, reinforcing the status quo of late-stage capitalism where identity is reduced to marketable products and women are defined by what they buy rather than who they are

In Himachal Pradesh, women are central to sustaining households, managing natural resources, and maintaining cultural practices, yet their voices are frequently underrepresented in environmental and social decision-making. They carry out essential labor in agriculture, water collection, forest use, and household management, while also preserving knowledge of local ecology and contributing to social cohesion. This paper uses an ecofeminist lens to examine how women navigate the intersections of ecological stewardship, daily labor, and community leadership, revealing both their vital contributions and the constraints they face in rural Himalayan societies.

Drawing on field interviews, oral histories, and participatory observation across multiple villages in Himachal Pradesh, the study foregrounds women’s experiences in environmental management, resource use, and local governance. It explores how traditional knowledge, gendered labor, and care work shape community resilience and social organization, while also demonstrating the ways women negotiate influence in decision-making despite systemic inequalities.

The findings suggest that achieving inclusive and sustainable practices requires more than formal policies; it necessitates recognizing and integrating women’s labor, knowledge, and agency into governance structures. By centering women’s experiences, this paper highlights pathways for equitable and context-sensitive environmental management. It contributes to broader debates on ecofeminism, rural women’s agency, and participatory governance, offering insights for designing policies that value and amplify the often-overlooked voices of women in mountainous communities.

Pornography has become a pervasive component of contemporary sexual cultures, yet attitudes toward its social and interpersonal consequences remain highly contested. Existing research suggests that perceptions of pornography are strongly shaped by gender, reflecting broader inequalities in how sexual media represent bodies, power, and consent. From a theoretical standpoint, feminist approaches—particularly radical feminist critiques of pornography as a system of sexual objectification and male dominance—contrast with more liberal and sex-positive perspectives that emphasize agency, sexual expression, and potential benefits. Additionally, sexual script theory provides a useful framework for understanding how pornography may inform gendered expectations about sexuality, while objectification theory helps explain differential sensitivities to its potential harms. The current study examines gender differences in attitudes toward pornography and explores how men and women perceive harms and benefits. The analysis uses data from a sample of individuals aged 16 and older residing in Castilla-La Mancha, a region in central Spain (N = 1,003; 50.7% men). Attitudes toward pornography are measured using a set of 19 items adapted from the Internet Pornography Questionnaire developed by Noll et al. (2022) in the United States. These items capture beliefs about pornography’s potential harms—such as fostering sexual objectification, unrealistic sexual expectations, or aggression—as well as perceived benefits, including sexual education, sexual satisfaction, or tension release. The study compares responses between men and women using descriptive statistics to identify gender differences across the different attitudinal dimensions. From a gender studies perspective, the analysis interprets these differences in light of feminist debates on pornography and the gendered dynamics of sexual media consumption. By examining how attitudes toward pornography vary across genders, this study contributes to understanding how sexual media are interpreted within broader structures of gendered power, inequality, and sexual norms in contemporary societies.

Introduction:
Contemporary research on gender and sexuality highlights the role of sexual identity in shaping experiences of intimacy, body perception, and sexual well-being. Drawing on masculinity studies and minority stress theory, sexual orientation may influence how men internalize cultural norms regarding the body and sexual performance. Despite growing research on male sexual functioning, homosexual men remain underrepresented in studies examining the relationship between body image and sexual well-being. This study aimed to compare heterosexual and homosexual men in selected dimensions of sexual functioning and body image within the Polish cultural context.
Materials and Methods:
Data were collected between April and June 2025 via an online survey. The final sample consisted of 214 men (Mage = 22.20, SD = 2.11; 53% heterosexual). Measures included sexual satisfaction, sexual self-esteem, and body image. Group differences were analyzed using independent-samples t-tests and Mann–Whitney U tests.
Results:
Gay men reported a higher number of sexual partners and greater sexual consciousness. Heterosexual men rated their upper-body strength and physical condition more positively. No significant differences were found in overall sexual satisfaction or sexual self-esteem.
Conclusions:
Sexual orientation differentiates certain aspects of sexual behavior and body perception but not core evaluations of sexual functioning. These findings may reflect shared cultural standards of masculinity alongside minority-specific experiences influencing sexual self-reflection. The results highlight the importance of including sexual orientation in research on masculinity, body image, and sexual well-being, particularly in heteronormative contexts.

Access to safe and adequate sanitation remains a critical public health challenge for women living in urban poor settlements in India. Despite national initiatives such as the Swachh Bharat Mission aimed at improving sanitation infrastructure, many women in low-income urban communities continue to face difficulties in accessing safe, hygienic, and gender-sensitive sanitation facilities. This study examines the relationship between public sanitation facilities and women’s health problems among the urban poor in Tamil Nadu.

The study adopts a mixed-method approach combining survey data and qualitative insights from women residing in selected urban low-income neighborhoods. Primary data were collected through structured questionnaires and focused discussions to understand patterns of public toilet usage, accessibility issues, safety concerns, hygiene conditions, and associated health outcomes. The findings indicate that inadequate sanitation infrastructure, overcrowded public toilets, poor maintenance, lack of privacy, and safety concerns significantly affect women’s health and wellbeing. Many respondents reported health problems such as urinary tract infections, reproductive health issues, and psychological stress due to delayed or restricted toilet use.

The study further highlights the intersection of gender, poverty, and urban infrastructure inequalities in shaping sanitation experiences. It argues that sanitation policies must move beyond infrastructure provision to include gender-sensitive design, regular maintenance, safety measures, and community participation. Strengthening public sanitation systems is essential not only for improving women’s health but also for advancing urban dignity, gender equity, and inclusive public health governance. The findings contribute to ongoing debates on urban sanitation policy and gender-responsive urban planning in the Global South.

Child marriage remains a significant challenge in the socio-economic context of Bangladesh. It is hampering efforts to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 3, 4 and 5, which aim to ensure good health and well-being, inclusive and equitable quality education and gender equality, respectively. This study examines the physical, psychological, educational and socio-economic impacts of child marriage from a human rights perspective, using data from government and non-governmental organization reports, research articles and publications. The findings show that poverty, low literacy rates, dowry practices, weak law enforcement, patriarchal norms and socio-cultural pressures drive child marriage. Bangladesh ranks seventh in the world and first in Asia in terms of child marriage rates. Child marriage affects both girls and boys, although girls are disproportionately affected. Child marriage is associated with poor health outcomes, increased risk of early pregnancy and maternal mortality, loneliness, psychological distress, disrupted education, limited economic opportunities, gender inequality and violations of fundamental human rights. While policy measures and awareness-raising campaigns have made progress, persistent socio-economic and cultural barriers, poverty, dowry practices, weak law enforcement and poor implementation of laws hinder meaningful change. The study highlights the need for comprehensive legal enforcement, expansion of health care, education, poverty eradication and economic empowerment, addressing socio-cultural and religious perspectives and community-based interventions to reduce child marriage by 2030 and support the achievement of SDGs 3, 4 and 5.

Women’s entry into paid work in India unfolds within dense social arrangements that regulate mobility, time, financial control, and moral legitimacy. Drawing on midline qualitative data from a three-year tracer study across urban Bengaluru and industrial Hosur, this paper examines how women in vocational skilling programmes transition from training into early employment, and how institutional systems interact with gendered household structures to shape that transition.

The study is based on three focus group discussions and 30 in-depth interviews conducted in Kannada, Tamil, and Malayalam with women aged 18–40 engaged in beauty therapy, tailoring, data entry, and factory manufacturing. Using an ethnographic lens, the paper centres women’s narratives of negotiation rather than treating empowerment as a linear outcome.

Findings show clear psychosocial shifts between baseline and midline: stronger self-articulation, emerging entrepreneurial aspirations, and greater financial awareness. Peer networks function as informal infrastructure, enabling skill practice, emotional support, and shared mobility strategies. In industrial Hosur, structured systems such as company transport and buddy support significantly eased adaptation and reduced early dropout risk.

Yet structural constraints remain stable. Household permission hierarchies, gendered care burdens, mobility restrictions, and segmented financial authority continue to define the boundaries of participation. Digital financial tools are widely used but not fully understood, producing partial inclusion without autonomy. Empowerment therefore appears as a negotiated and relational process rather than a binary shift.

The paper argues that training acts as a first anchor of autonomy, but durable workforce participation depends on reducing everyday friction: predictable transport, structured workplace integration, and sustained financial handholding. Rather than asking whether skilling “works,” this study examines how empowerment unfolds under constraint and what institutional designs expand women’s feasible choices in contemporary South India.

Introduction:
This study explores how Pakistani singer and author Ali Sethi’s music videos Pasoori (2022) and Rung (2023) employ queer aesthetics to reimagine gender beyond binary logic. In a cultural landscape where queer and transgender lives are socially marginalised and legally endangered, Sethi’s visual art becomes a site of resistance and conceptual transformation.

Methods:
Grounded in Matthew J. Cull’s analytic trans philosophy—particularly his notions of “gender conceptual engineering” and “gender pluralism”—the research adopts an interdisciplinary qualitative framework combining conceptual analysis and visual semiotics. Through close reading of mise-en-scène, embodiment, sound, and colour, the study interprets how these videos function as forms of “ecumenical engineering,” modifying cultural representational devices to host plural meanings of gender.

Results:
Findings indicate that Pasoori and Rung challenge both heteronormative and homonormative frameworks by queering traditional South Asian motifs such as Sufi mysticism, truck art, and Mughal design. These works transform aesthetic codes—costume, choreography, and lighting—into political tools of visibility and epistemic repair. Sethi’s visual language enacts what Cull terms “concepts for the transition,” creating conceptual and affective infrastructures for livable gender identities within restrictive sociocultural conditions.

Conclusions:
The study concludes that Sethi’s videos operate as acts of conceptual and visual resistance. They exemplify how popular music can function as cultural philosophy—reengineering gender concepts toward inclusivity, affective justice, and queer futurity in Pakistan and beyond.

Although theIndonesian Reformation era initiated by the 1998 democratic transition was expected to open the floodgates of political inclusivity. The landscape of the 2024 General Election reveals that women's substantive participation still faces serious challenges. This study aims to investigate the dynamics of women's leadership in Indonesia, specifically focusing on female candidates and elected officials contesting in the 2024 executive and legislative elections. Despite decades of democratic consolidation, these female leaders remain under the "shadow of gender," a metaphor for deeply rooted structural and cultural patriarchal bias. Using qualitative methods with a case study approach of several female leaders at the regional and national levels, this study analyzes the dual barriers they face: internal barriers from masculine political parties and external barriers from socio-cultural stereotypes. The study's findings indicate that despite the implementation of affirmative action policies, women's leadership in the 2024 election cycle is often trapped in kinship politics (political dynasties) as a recruitment shortcut, rather than based on genuine meritocracy. Furthermore, media narratives and public expectations still place women within a moral double standard not applied to male leaders. This study concludes that democracy in Indonesia is not yet fully inclusive, and that perceived gender equity remains procedural rather than substantive. There is a need for electoral system reform that allows women to gain greater self-empowerment, alongside improvements within political parties through meritocracy and extensive political education to eliminate the shadow of gender bias, ultimately fostering an egalitarian democracy.

This study investigates how perceived job insecurity shapes trade union membership within a South African Higher Education Institution (HEI), with a specific emphasis on the role of gender. Drawing on Psychological Contract Theory and Social Exchange Theory, the study examines how gendered experiences of work influence feelings of insecurity, perceptions of fairness, and employees’ reasons for seeking union protection. A qualitative research design was adopted to explore employees’ lived experiences. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants, four females and four males, across both permanent and contract job categories. Data were analysed thematically to identify gendered patterns in job insecurity, psychological contract breach, and motivations for joining trade unions. The findings show that job insecurity is deeply gendered. Female participants consistently reported greater vulnerability, even when occupying permanent positions. They described higher levels of uncertainty, heightened awareness of organisational restructuring, and increased exposure to unfair or unilateral managerial decisions. These experiences intensified feelings of psychological contract breach and eroded trust in the employer. Consequently, women were more likely to view the trade union as an essential source of protection, advocacy, and stability. Male participants acknowledged insecurity but perceived it as less personally threatening, resulting in weaker pressure to join or rely on unions. The study concludes that gender significantly shapes how job insecurity is experienced and how employees respond to it. Women’s heightened sense of vulnerability strengthens the pathway between job insecurity and trade union membership. These findings highlight the need for gender-responsive organisational practices and reinforce the vital role of unions in safeguarding those who feel disproportionately insecure in the workplace.