Editorial
1 The five articles assembled in Working out Gender explore the nexus between gender and work from a variety of different angles, focusing on areas and issues as diverse as the U.S. strip trade, the legal profession and discrimination against women lawyers in England and Wales, maquiladoras and femicide on the border between Mexico and the United States, contemporary British film, and male childcare workers in Germany.
2 The guiding questions in Curtis Fogel's "Presenting the Naked Self: The Accumulation of Performative Capital in the Female Strip Trade" are how and why female strippers prepare, present, and manage their gender, bodies, and emotions in their everyday work. Taking into consideration that the precarious and unstable working conditions of female strippers seem to be built upon the symbolic transaction of performative into economic capital, the article is framed by a dramaturgical approach. Combining autobiographical accounts of strippers with theories by Erving Goffman, Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu and Arlie R. Hochschild, Fogel's discussion points out the complex cultural demands of emotional and physical self management within this working area.
3 In "Discrimination against Women Lawyers in England and Wales: An Overview," Alexandrine Guyard-Nedelec sheds light on various forms of discrimination experienced by British women lawyers. Focusing on the existing pay gap, the glass ceiling, as well as issues relating to maternity leave, Guyard-Nedelec illustrates how women lawyers' career opportunities are hampered by a "culture of discrimination" still prevailing in many law firms.
4 Christina Marín's contribution, "Staging Femicide/Confronting Reality: Negotiating Gender and Representation in Las Mujeres de Juárez," takes issue with cases of femicide of the last fifteen years in the towns of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua City, which both form part of the maquiladora-system, a "Third World 'industrial complex.'" Focusing on Rubén Amavizca's play Las Mujeres de Juárez and her own production of it as a theatre director, Marín explores the potential of theatre as a means of drawing attention to and inspiring dialogue about the social injustice arising in the context of the maquiladoras.
5 Presenting an in-depth discussion of Brassed Off (1996), The Full Monty (1997), and Billy Elliot (2000), Mark Schreiber's "Re-negotiating Concepts of Masculinity in Contemporary British Film" examines how these films depict their male protagonists' search for gender identity in the face of the demise of heavy industry in post-war Britain. Schreiber illustrates how these characters succeed at least partly in negotiating new roles for themselves, thereby deviating from traditional concepts of working-class masculinity.