ARE YOU MY MOTHER? PERPETUATING GENDER INEQUALITY THROUGH LISTENING EXPECTATIONS AND RELATIONAL ROLES

• Published in: Journal of research in gender studies Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 28 - 48
• Main Authors: Parks, Elizabeth S, Barta, Kristen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Addleton Academic Publishers 2018
• Subjects: Case studies; Child care; Corpus analysis; Corpus linguistics; Demographic aspects; Ethical aspects; Ethics; Ethics / Practical Philosophy; Expectations; Family and social welfare; Femininity; Feminism; Gender; Gender equality; Gender inequality; Gender Studies; Inequality; Linguistics; Listening; Masculinity; Mobility; Morality; Motherhood; Mothers; Non-binary gender; New York; United States > US; Chicago Illinois; listening; mother; corpus linguistics; gender; ethics of care; care expectations
• ISSN: 2164-0262; 2378-3524
• DOI: 10.22381/JRGS8120182

Since the 1980s, ethics of care scholars have interrogated the gendering of care virtues and argued for divorcing virtues from binary masculine-feminine thinking. In this paper, we draw upon two case studies that situate listening as care and use corpus linguistics to explore ways in which expectations of care, enacted through listening, continue to not only be gendered, but heavily coded as feminine responsibilities. More specifically, we investigate the ways in which mothers and expectations for listening as care provision are intertwined, as further evidenced by the “mom friend” phenomenon. We argue that lessons from ethics of care scholarship may provide opportunities to challenge the mobility of feminized expectations of care and further decouple gender from care virtues.