Over the past couple of decades, mobile phones have penetrated Sri Lanka at an unprecedented rate. The rate of adoption of cell phones in the country has been remarkably fast, and not gradual as in other nations. Yet, examination of the developmental impact of mobile phones has drawn surprisingly little attention in Sri Lanka. Therefore, this article attempts to investigate the empowering effect of mobile phones on dependent housewives in poor households of the country by using a mixed research method. Our research found that access to mobile phones was certainly empowering for these women: mobile phones unequivocally strengthened and expanded their social circle and support networks; they led them to domesticate technology, thus challenging negative societal attitudes toward women as technologically incompetent and timid; they reduced women’s information poverty; and opened them up to a newer, non-traditional fun space, which was a clear manifestation of choice and power. However, the women’s use of mobile phones was largely controlled within the household, mainly because they did not have their own income to maintain the phones, thus underlining the need for their financial autonomy. Those women who owned their mobile phones had more control over them than those who lacked legal ownership. To conclude, mobile phones can play a significant role in empowering poor women in Sri Lanka, and can be considered as a tool in the policy agenda for women’s empowerment by the government.
The empowerment potential of transnational labour migration by women has been debated in the field of women’s migration studies. This paper examines the case of women from Sri Lanka, a key home country of low-skilled female labour migrating to the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Using the methodological approach of the case study, the survey found that labour migration does ensure that access to productive resources leads to a measure of economic empowerment in the household. Yet, many women migrants faced intra-household socially disempowering experiences that in turn downplayed their economic contributions. Empowerment as a consequence of migration rested upon a complex interplay of economic factors and contextspecific non-economic factors; the latter were found to be more powerful determinants of women’s empowerment.
This qualitative study examines the identity claims of second-generation youth of Sri Lankan origin in New Zealand on social media, a social terrain that transcends the boundaries of traditional social worlds. Research participants’ represented themselves online by three main strategies: visual (graphic), textual (narrative) and group. Participants simultaneously travelled back and forth between two virtual cultural identities, Kiwi and Sri Lankan, thus [re]constructing identity performances, in which “definition of the situation” played a key role. Their virtual identities represented only a snapshot of the self, where different versions of the self were performed and [re]produced, thus defying the essentialist or foundationalist notion of identity.
In this article, I use qualitative methods to examine the concept of a regime for migrant care based on Sri Lankan women’s transnational mobility as migrant domestic workers to Saudi Arabia. My work thus contributes to the growing body of literature on migrant care regimes from a Global South perspective, which to date has still received insufficient scholarly attention. The Sri Lanka–Saudi migrant care regime, shaped by a transnational consciousness of the possibilities for accumulation and production through reproductive labour, is located at a convergence of “translocal” gender, care, employment and migration systems. The regime is (re)produced through the relations and tensions between the family, the state and the market in an interchange of the dynamics of capitalist market forces and structural relations on various levels. The colour “brown” has emerged as a new racial classification in the global domestic sector, where power and subjectivity are constantly evolving. I argue that domestic work, which continues to be constructed as “women’s work”, represents an embodiment both of the subordination of women and of their personal autonomy. This, in turn, has broader implications for the meaning of feminine/masculine, motherhood/fatherhood, home and work.
KEYWORDS: paid domestic labour; migrant domestic workers; care regime; Saudi Arabia; Sri Lanka
In contemporary Sri Lanka, the commodification of local mask production resulting from cultural tourism has caught the traditional mask artisan in a tight spot between "tradition" and "modernity". The impacts of tourism are diversely received and interpreted within the local mask artisan community, with tourism simultaneously resulting in what can be called a "cultural discovery" and "cultural decline". Within this cultural debate, this paper is an attempt to understand how the traditional mask artisan arrives at a balance between "tradition" and "modernity", and culture and commerce. Qualitative research conducted in southern Sri Lanka shows that tradition and modernity are shifting conceptions. Negotiating a balance between tradition and modernity is, therefore, largely a matter of meaning and interpretation. When cultural commodification occurs, tradition and modernity are continuously redefined and reinvented by both the traditional mask artisan and cultural consumer to fit their own needs and agendas. Cultural commodification contributes to the survival and revival of Sri Lanka's mask tradition, a strategy that is simultaneously welcomed and contested within the local mask artisan community.
Violence against women takes a variety of forms, extending from domestic abuse to violence in workplace. It is an ancient, universal problem occurring in every culture and social group. However, major traditions of organizational analysis have not devoted signi Ii cant and exp I icit concern with gender. sexuality and violence.Accordingly, the objectives of this paper are twofold; to recognize the most frequent types or organizational violence against women and the impact of such organizational violence on their work-lives and thereby the overall performance and peace of the organization. The methodology adopted has been qualitative and based on case study approach, confined to one public sector organization in Sri Lanka. The study shows how complex the issue of gender-based violence in organizations is. It confirmed that organizational violence seriously affects mental health of the working women concerned, which eventually create a deterioration of the work culture, peace and development in the organization.
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