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Introduction to Special Issue of Journal of Gender Studies entitled Rape culture, lad culture and everyday sexism: Researching, conceptualizing and politicizing new mediations of gender and sexual violence.

This report demonstrates that male advantage is a pervasive feature of the Australian music industry. Using publicly available published data the report interrogates the industry dynamics that have produced a contemporary music scene in which radio playlists, festival line-ups, industry awards, peak bodies and major industry boards are dominated by male contributions and voices. We make 5 key recommendations, discussed in more detail in the report, to begin the process of addressing the industry’s chronic gender inequality: 1. Collect more and better data on the music industry on a gender disaggregated basis; 2. Establish a well-resourced independent gender equality industry advocacy body; 3. Use gender equality criteria in deciding public funding outcomes; 4. Increase women’s representation in decision-making structures; 5. Address gender bias in the Australian music industry by prioritising inclusivity and representation as core industry values (for example through funding and implementing training programs). The music industry is skipping a beat when it comes to gender equality. We hope that our report will stimulate industry thinking and action for change.

Gaining accurate information on illicit drug use and policing in real-world settings is a challenge. This study examines the utility of a smartphone app (‘Going Out In Sydney’) to prospectively follow up illicit drug use and policing encounters at music festivals and licensed entertainment precincts in Sydney, Australia. In all, 38 regular festival and licensed entertainment venue attendees used the app to log nights out over a 3-month period, including (1) where they went (eg, festival, nightclub), (2) the prevalence of illicit drug use, and (3) the incidence and nature of police encounters. A survey and interview were then conducted about the utility of the app. The app enabled rich data collection (n = 353 entries) about illicit drug use and policing at both target settings. Follow-up surveys indicated that most participants were extremely satisfied with the ease of use of the app and privacy afforded, and compared with other data collection modes, such as paper-based logs and online surveys, rated the app the most desirable method of data collection. This suggests smartphone apps may be a viable option for future studies on illicit drug use and policing of drugs.

This article contextualizes some of the roles that women played in Montreal’s interwar jazz scene. The archives testify to the importance of pianists such as Vera Guilaroff and Ilene Bourne, piano teacher Daisy Peterson Sweeney, dance teachers Olga Spencer Foderingham and Ethel Bruneau, as well as black women performers on the variety stage in the development of Canada’s most thriving jazz scene in the first half of the twentieth century. This article explains why women were drawn to these particular performance spaces (piano, teaching, theatrical dance) and documents the historiographical processes that have led to their marginalization from the historical record.

This paper explores young adults' suggestions for preventing unwanted sexual attention in licensed venues. Despite emerging evidence that unwanted sexual attention and sexual violence are significant issues faced by young adults in the night-time economy, there has been little introduced in the way of preventative strategies or campaigns. Drawing on a mixed-methods research project undertaken in Melbourne, Australia, I contend that exploring young adults' suggestions for prevention is instructive in a number of ways. Young adults are the primary users of licensed venues and thus may provide insight into potential strategies for prevention. It can also illuminate the discursive positions that young adults draw on in talking about prevention and their understandings of unwanted sexual attention.

The economic, social and cultural contributions of the creative industries are essential elements of many societies and their governments' policies. However, there is growing evidence that precarity, competition and lack of regulation within these industries is exacerbating inequalities with respect to gender, race and class. With a focus on gender and sexual harassment among female workers, this study involved 32 in-depth interviews with women working in the Netherlands' creative industries. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Findings suggest that sexual harassment is prevalent, and many women considered it to be part of their occupational culture and career advancement. Four factors influenced this phenomenon: competition for work; industry culture; gendered power relations; and the importance of informal networks. Implications include the need for a climate of non-tolerance, sector-specific research and guidelines, sensitivity training and further work with unions and professional associations to provide worker protection strategies traditionally undertaken by organizations. The article concludes that effective sexual harassment prevention requires action at the individual, educational, sectoral and governmental levels, beginning with public conversations to convey the message that sexual harassment is never acceptable.

The economic, social and cultural contributions of the creative industries are essential elements of many societies and their governments’ policies. However, there is growing evidence that precarity, competition and lack of regulation within these industries is exacerbating inequalities with respect to gender, race and class. With a focus on gender and sexual harassment among female workers, this study involved 32 in-depth interviews with women working in the Netherlands’ creative industries. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Findings suggest that sexual harassment is prevalent, and many women considered it to be part of their occupational culture and career advancement. Four factors influenced this phenomenon: competition for work; industry culture; gendered power relations; and the importance of informal networks. Implications include the need for a climate of non-tolerance, sector-specific research and guidelines, sensitivity training and further work with unions and professional associations to provide worker protection strategies traditionally undertaken by organizations. The article concludes that effective sexual harassment prevention requires action at the individual, educational, sectoral and governmental levels, beginning with public conversations to convey the message that sexual harassment is never acceptable.

French Abstract: Lorsqu’une victime dénonce son agresseur sur la place publique, certaines personnes tentent de la réduire au silence en invoquant le droit à la présomption d’innocence. Ce fut particulièrement évident en 2014, lors du mouvement #AgressionNonDénoncée ; ce le fut encore à l’automne 2015, alors que des femmes autochtones de Val-d’Or dénonçaient les agressions sexuelles commises à leur endroit par des policiers ; ce le fut aussi en 2016 à l’occasion de la dénonciation du député Gerry Sklavounos par Alice Paquet ; et l’argument légaliste réapparaît ainsi périodiquement sur la scène publique. Pourtant, peut-on vraiment bâillonner une victime en mettant de l’avant les droits de son agresseur ? L’auteur estime qu’il s’agit là d’un mauvais usage de la présomption d’innocence. Dans ce texte, il explique que la présomption d’innocence doit être replacée dans son contexte juridique. Le droit à la présomption d’innocence est un principe fondamental qui protège les accusés contre le pouvoir punitif de l’État. Il trouve uniquement application dans le processus pénal et n’est pas conçu pour être employé sur la scène publique. De plus, l’auteur explique que, dans le cadre du processus pénal, la présomption d’innocence favorise la création d’un espace de discussion où les parties peuvent débattre de la culpabilité. Pourtant, lorsqu’elle est invoquée sur la scène publique, elle ne fait que placer les victimes dans un processus violent de remise en question de leur crédibilité, tout en protégeant les agresseurs. Son invocation crée une atmosphère qui décourage les dénonciations. Le débat public dévie, laissant peu de place pour critiquer nos systèmes de plaintes dysfonctionnels et la culture du viol. En ce sens, la présomption d’innocence n’est pas invoquée afin d’établir un dialogue constructif, mais plutôt pour faire taire les critiques.English Abstract: When a victim reports her aggressor publicly, some people try to silence her voice under the guise of the right to the presumption of innocence. This was especially remarkable in 2014, within the movement #AgressionNonDénoncée; and again in the fall of 2015, when Val-d’Or Indigenous women reported being sexually assaulted by police. It was also the case in 2016 when Alice Paquet denounced Member of Provincial Parliament Gerry Sklavounos, and the legal argument thus periodically reappears on the public stage. However, can we really silence a victim by advancing the rights of her aggressor? The author believes that this is a case of inappropriate use of the presumption of innocence. In this text, he explains that the presumption of innocence must be placed in its legal context. The right to the presumption of innocence is a principle that protects litigants against the punitive power of the state. Its sole application belongs in the criminal process, and it was not designed to be used as such on the public stage. In addition, the author explains that, at the heart of the criminal process, the presumption of innocence promotes the creation of a discussion space where all parties may debate the guilt. However, when it is invoked in the public sphere, it only places the victims in an aggressive process of questioning their credibility while protecting the aggressors. Its invocation creates a climate that deters denunciations of sexual assaults. The public debate deviates, leaving little room to criticize our dysfunctional complaint systems and rape culture. In that sense, the presumption of innocence is not invoked in order to establish a constructive dialogue, but it has the effect of shutting down its critics. In this article, the author explains why the right to the presumption of innocence must not be engaged in this way in the public sphere.

The aim of this article is to provide insight into the phenomenon of sexual harassment in the theatre world. A survey among Norwegian actors is presented showing that sexual harassment is much more prevalent in the theatre world than in Norwegian work life in general. Further, the article aims at understanding why the prevalence is as high as it is. Based on qualitative interviews, the article points out some risk factors that shed light on the high prevalence of sexual harassment. Lastly, the risk factors are related to charismatic authority as an important power base in the theatre world.

This article explores the ways in which young adults produce a sense of safety in pubs and clubs. Despite considerable anxiety around issues pertaining to safety and violence in the night-time economy, there is little consideration of how young adults themselves feel about their safety on a night out, or how they achieve a sense of safety in a seemingly ‘risky’ social space. Drawing on mixed-methods research conducted in Melbourne, Australia, in this article I consider the strategies that young adults used to feel safe on a night out. I argue that feeling ‘safe’ is something that is actively produced through the use of these strategies, as well as providing an avenue for ‘doing’ gender.

Beginning in 2014, the LGBTQ Alliance professional network of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) met to develop and publish a broad set of LGBTQ Welcoming Guidelines for Museums. The authors sought to help museums be more inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer staff and visitors. The Guidelines conform to the most recent established standards of professional practice in museums and touch on all areas of museum work; they may be viewed as part informational reference, part institutional self-assessment tool. The Guidelines were unveiled at the AAM’s 2016 annual meeting, and are now available at no charge online (http://www.aam-us.org/resources/professional-networks/lgbtq). The LGBTQ Alliance encourages readers to use and review the Guidelines and to make observations, critiques and corrections directly to the current chair, Mike Lesperance (mike@thedesignminds.com).

Background Music festivals have received relatively little research attention despite being key sites for alcohol and drug use among young people internationally. Research into music festivals and the social contexts of drug use more generally, has tended to focus on social and cultural processes without sufficient regard for the mediating role of space and spatial processes. Methods Adopting a relational approach to space and the social, from Actor-Network Theory and human geography, I examine how socio-spatial relations are generated in campsites at multiple-day music festivals. The data are drawn from ethnographic observations at music festivals around Melbourne, Australia; interviews with 18–23 year olds; and participant-written diaries. Results Through the analysis, the campsite is revealed as a space in process, the making of which is bound up in how drug use unfolds. Campsite relations mediate the formation of drug knowledge and norms, informal harm reduction practices, access to and exchange of drugs, and rest and recovery following drug use. Conclusions Greater attendance to socio-spatial relations affords new insights regarding how festival spaces and their social effects are generated, and how they give rise to particular drug use practices. These findings also point to how festival harm reduction strategies might be enhanced through the promotion of enabling socio-spatial relations.

This article contributes to debates about the value and utility of the notion of postfeminism for a seemingly “new” moment marked by a resurgence of interest in feminism in the media and among young women. The paper reviews current understandings of postfeminism and criticisms of the term’s failure to speak to or connect with contemporary feminism. It offers a defence of the continued importance of a critical notion of postfeminism, used as an analytical category to capture a distinctive contradictory-but-patterned sensibility intimately connected to neoliberalism. The paper raises questions about the meaning of the apparent new visibility of feminism and highlights the multiplicity of different feminisms currently circulating in mainstream media culture – which exist in tension with each other. I argue for the importance of being able to “think together” the rise of popular feminism alongside and in tandem with intensified misogyny. I further show how a postfeminist sensibility informs even those media productions that ostensibly celebrate the new feminism. Ultimately, the paper argues that claims that we have moved “beyond” postfeminism are (sadly) premature, and the notion still has much to offer feminist cultural critics.

This article considers live music policy in relation to wider debates on the cultural (as opposed to instrumental) value of the arts. The findings are based on research into amateur/enthusiast, state-funded and commercial concerts across a range of genres – classical, traditional folk, jazz, singer–songwriter and indie – using the Edinburgh Queen’s Hall venue as a case study. We argue that (1) articulations of the cultural or intrinsic value of live music across genres tend to lapse back into descriptions of instrumental value; (2) although explanations vary from audiences, artists and promoters as to why they participate in live music, they also share certain characteristics across genres and sometimes challenge stereotypes about genre-specific behaviours; and (3) there are lessons to be learned for live music policy from examining a venue that plays host to a range of genres and promotional practices.

This article examines the feminist response to a 2013 online “feud” between singers Miley Cyrus and Sinéad O’Connor that began when Cyrus connected the video for her single “Wrecking Ball” to O’Connor’s video for “Nothing Compares 2 U.” O’Connor’s response criticised Cyrus’ sexualised image, and the exchanges that followed sparked debate among feminists over the limits of sexual “agency,” and the sexual politics of feminism. This took place within a wider media context that has seen an apparent increase in female celebrities explicitly identifying themselves as feminist. Critics of this “celebrity feminism” argue that the sexualised star systems of its proponents are at odds with the aims of feminist politics. This article draws on post-structuralist feminist theory to question the positioning of celebrity feminism as exterior to an imagined “feminist movement.” Using the Cyrus/O’Connor feud, I argue that such a binary potentially reaffirms the structures of power that feminism seeks to oppose, and ignores the ways celebrity culture and contemporary media practice might combine to produce new understandings of the field of feminism.

Female journalists’ experiences of sexual harassment are barely documented in the literature about Australian news journalism despite evidence of its ongoing prevalence. There have been some stories of harassment detailed in autobiographies by female journalists and the occasional article in the mainstream media about individual incidents, but it wasn’t until 1996 that a union survey provided statistical evidence of an industry-wide problem. That Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance survey found that more than half of the 368 female participants had experienced sexual harassment at work. In 2012, I conducted the largest survey of female journalists in Australia finding that there was an increased number of respondents who had experienced sexual harassment in their workplaces. In a bid to better understand female journalists’ experiences of sexual harassment, this paper analyses written comments made by survey participants in relation to key questions about harassment. It finds that most downplay its seriousness and do not make formal reports because they fear victimisation or retaliation. As a consequence, a culture of secrecy hides a major industry problem where many women believe they should work it out themselves and that harassment is the price they have to pay for working in a male-dominated industry.

The present study explores the contemporary status of women harassment in Pakistani media industry taking alongside theoretical consideration of liberal feminism theory. An empirical method was adopted and in-depth interviews were conducted with media employees of both genders at television channels of the country. The study examined six core dimensions of harassment including working environment of the organization, male dominance, women harassment at workplaces, stereotype thinking patterns about women, offensive remarks on appearance of female colleagues and reporting of harassment issues to explore the current situation of women harassment in television channels of high repute. Findings of the study revealed that regardless of their ample role in thriving Pakistani media, women journalists are facing harassment at their workplaces but majority of them lesser likely to report harassment issues. Existence of stereotype thinking patterns about women and offensive remarks about appearance of women point towards severity of situation about women harassment at Pakistani media industry. Interestingly, despite male domination in media industry, general environment of media organizations is reported as satisfactory at large, whereas research concludes with highlighting areas for people working within and outside media organizations to eradicate harassment at workplaces. Keywords: Women harassment, male dominance, stereotype thinking patterns, Pakistani media, reporting of harassment.

Inequality has become essential to understanding contemporary society and is at the forefront of media, political and practice discussions of the future of the arts, particularly in the UK. Whilst there is a wealth of work on traditional areas of inequality, such as those associated with income or gender, the relationship between culture, specifically cultural value, and inequality is comparatively under-researched. The article considers inequality and cultural value from two points of view: how cultural value is consumed and how it is produced. The paper argues that these two activities are absolutely essential to understanding the relationship between culture and social inequality, but that the two activities have traditionally been considered separately in both academic research and public policy, despite the importance of culture to British and thus international policy agendas. The article uses the example of higher education in the UK to think through the relationship between cultural consumption and production. In doing, so the article maps out a productive possibility for a new research agenda, by sketching where and how research might link cultural consumption and production to better understand inequality.

This article considers Canadian comedian Debra DiGiovanni’s self-deprecatory humour as a performative strategy. In keeping with a performance tradition of self-deprecation as established by women like Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers, DiGiovanni offers ‘failure’ as a comic strategy. Her comedy is heavily reliant upon the framing of her lack in relationships, in self-control and in body image (in relation to normative gender standards and expectations). At the same time, however, DiGiovanni also engages critically with gendered expectations of heteronormative desirability, lampooning thin women, superficial men and celebrity culture. Although her comedy is generally characterized by self-deprecation, her humour also leaves space for an ambivalent politics of gender.