HEGEMONIC MASCULINITIES

The notion of hegemonic masculinity was originally proposed by Connell (Reference Connell1987, Reference Connell1995:77) to refer to ‘the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women’. In other words, it describes those practices, values, and structures that place men in a more dominant, more privileged position compared to women. The concept of hegemonic masculinity has been productively employed in research on gender relations, especially with a political dimension, across disciplines where ‘hegemonic’ is generally understood in the sense of ‘normative’ rather than ‘statistically most widely represented’ (Connell & Messerschmidt Reference Connell and Messerschmidt2005:832).

Since its conception in the mid 1980s hegemonic masculinity developed ‘from a conceptual model with a fairly narrow empirical base to a widely used framework for research and debate about men and masculinities’ (Connell & Messerschmidt Reference Connell and Messerschmidt2005:835) which is now often used to conceptualise ‘how patriarchal relations are legitimated throughout society’ (Messerschmidt Reference Messerschmidt2012:63). Subsequent research has used the term in at least two different meanings, namely to refer to certain masculinities that take a dominant position over femininities in the gender order, and also to describe those masculinities that take a hegemonic stance over other, often marginalised, masculinities (as reflected, for example, in the masculinities associated with heterosexual versus homosexual desire). These notions of masculinity and the specific forms that are considered to be hegemonic, however, are not static but are subject to change (Anderson Reference Anderson2008; Murgia & Poggio Reference Murgia and Poggio2009; Luyt Reference Luyt2012; Lampropoulou & Archakis Reference Lampropoulou and Archakis2015). They are conceptualised ‘as produced, contested, and transformed through discursive processes, and therefore embedded within and productive of power relations’ (Schippers Reference Schippers2007:94).

Although the concept of hegemonic masculinity was initially conceived in the singular form, we follow Messerschmidt (Reference Messerschmidt2012:73) and use the term hegemonic masculinities (and by analogy also the term hegemonic femininities ) in its plural to acknowledge that it is not always easy (or even possible) to say with certainty which masculinity (or femininity) exactly ‘is indeed the hegemonic ascendant’, and also to allow for some variation between hegemonic notions of masculinities (and femininities) on different levels, as explained in more detail below (see also Wetherell & Edley Reference Wetherell and Edley1999).

After having undergone several discursive reformulations (e.g. Wetherell & Edley Reference Wetherell and Edley1999; Speer Reference Speer2000), the concept of hegemonic masculinities also found its way into sociolinguistic research, where it is often used to refer to the dominant masculine habitus (e.g. McElhinny Reference McElhinny, Hall and Bucholtz1995; Koller Reference Koller2004). For example, Kiesling (Reference Kiesling2005) describes how the members of a fraternity in the US draw on the sometimes contradictory cultural discourses of masculinity—including gender difference, heterosexism, dominance, and male solidarity—thereby constructing and reinforcing (but also sometimes challenging) societal assumptions about what is considered to be masculine and, more or less explicitly, positioning themselves in relation to these underlying ideologies. Luyt (Reference Luyt2012:47), in a study on men in South Africa, explores how ‘local and regional representations of hegemonic masculinity are (re)produced, and how men's gender identities are constituted through situated interaction’. And Lampropoulou & Archakis (Reference Lampropoulou and Archakis2015) analyse the narratives of Greek adolescents who have been sexually involved with women who hold senior, institutional roles. They show how the storytellers position themselves in relation to heterosexuality and heteronormativity, thereby constructing their (hegemonic) masculine identities.

In spite of its wide usage, the concept of hegemonic masculinities has also attracted some criticism, most notably for its underlying notion of masculinity as being flawed (i.e. essentialist, vague, and tending to de-emphasize issues of power and domination), and for not specifying how hegemonic masculinities are enacted in actual practice (e.g. Collinson & Hearn Reference Collinson and Hearn1994; Wetherell & Edley Reference Wetherell and Edley1999). Taking these and other criticisms into account, Connell & Messerschmidt (Reference Connell and Messerschmidt2005:847) propose that ‘the concept of hegemonic masculinity is in need of reformulation’, and they argue that it is crucial to move beyond identifying hegemonic masculinities at the societal level towards empirically analysing prevailing hegemonic masculinities at three levels: the local, the regional, and the global.

The local level refers to hegemonic masculinities that are constructed and negotiated in relatively specific, small communities, such as families and organisations, while the regional level captures hegemonic masculinities constructed society-wide (e.g. in a particular culture or nation state). The global level refers to those hegemonic masculinities that are constructed in ‘transnational arenas such as world politics, business and media’ (Connell & Messerschmidt Reference Connell and Messerschmidt2005:849). Moreover, rather than being independent entities, these different levels are interlinked with each other: ‘global hegemonic masculinities pressure regional and local hegemonic masculinities, and regional hegemonic masculinities provide cultural materials adopted or reworked in global arenas and utilized in local gender dynamics’ (Messerschmidt Reference Messerschmidt2012:59). We adopt this framework for our analyses of the discourse of trailing spouses in Hong Kong and pay particular attention to the local and the regional level, thereby acknowledging the importance of the locality in which hegemonic masculinities and femininities are constructed, enacted, reinforced, as well as sometimes challenged and rejected. At the same time this approach also allows us to position the analysed local practices in relation to more global gender ideologies.

HEGEMONIC FEMININITIES

In contrast to the huge interest in the concept of hegemonic masculinities and the subsequent large amount of empirical research that has utilised it, the notion of hegemonic femininities remains largely under-theorised and empirically under-researched (Budgeon Reference Budgeon2014). One noteworthy exception is the study by Schippers (Reference Schippers2007:94), who developed a framework for analysing hegemonic femininities built around the definition of the concept as consisting of ‘the characteristics defined as womanly that establish and legitimate a hierarchical and complementary relationship to hegemonic masculinity and that, by doing so, guarantee the dominant position of men and the subordination of women’. However, as we illustrate in our analysis section below, what exactly is considered to be ‘womanly’ and whether this contributes to establishing and reinforcing gendered hegemonies is context-dependent and to some extent dynamically negotiated and co-constructed by interlocutors.

Schippers (Reference Schippers2007) questions Connell's (Reference Connell1987:186–87) initial claim that ‘there is no femininity that is hegemonic in the sense that the dominant form of masculinity is hegemonic among men’ because ‘all forms of femininity in this society are constructed in the context of the overall subordination of women to men’. In a similar vein, Budgeon (Reference Budgeon2014:322) maintains that empirical research has shown that ‘the interplay between different masculinities and between femininity and masculinity is more multi-faceted than first conceptualized by Connell’, and that this ‘relational dynamics of gender’ contributes to constituting masculinities, femininities, and the gender order. Schippers (Reference Schippers2007:94) argues that there is ‘an ascendancy of hegemonic femininity over other femininities to serve the interests of the gender order and male domination’, and that a distinction is to be made between different femininities. She distinguishes between hegemonic femininities, that is, those femininities that are legitimised by and created in complementary relation to hegemonic masculinities, and what she calls pariah femininities (c.f. Connell's (Reference Connell1987) own notion of emphasised femininityFootnote ¹ ). Pariah femininities are those femininities that are sometimes referred to as subordinate and that ‘are considered socially undesirable’ and deemed ‘contaminating to social life more generally’ (Schippers Reference Schippers2007:95). While certain femininities are hegemonic (compared to other femininities) in the sense that they capture what is considered to be ‘womanly’ in a particular context, pariah femininities are marked as deviant and are often stigmatised because they challenge the gender order with its masculine hegemony (Schippers Reference Schippers2007:94–95). For example, in those cases where women display behaviours, attributes, or values traditionally associated with hegemonic masculinity, such as physical strength or sexual interest in other women, they challenge traditional notions of hegemonic masculinities, which are based on male dominance and female subordination. As a consequence, these ‘pariah’ femininities pose a threat to the gender order and its central tenet of male dominance and female subordination, and they blur the boundaries between masculinity and femininity.

These relatively recent theoretical debates about the concept of hegemonic femininities have not only added much needed models on gender relations but have also led to an increase in empirical research which has analysed hegemonic femininities in a range of different contexts, including for example the representation of women in advertisements in Polish magazines (Pawelczyk Reference Pawelczyk2008), as well as research on female athletes (Wright & Clarke Reference Wright and Clarke1999; Krane Reference Krane2001), and female contestants in the TV beauty show The Swan (Marwick Reference Marwick2010). However, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the concept of hegemonic femininities is largely neglected and remains surprisingly under-researched. We aim to address this issue and contribute to the growing body of research by conducting a sociolinguistic study of hegemonic femininities in the specific sociocultural context of Hong Kong. We are particularly interested in the ways in which female trailing spouses mobilise and draw on different femininities in their discourse—which they either reinforce or challenge in their interactions—to make sense of their new life situation.

RESEARCHING HEGEMONIC FEMININITIES

The data that we analyse in this article is part of a larger scale study on expatriate spouses who have relocated to Hong Kong following their partners’ international work assignment. The data that we look at here consist of twenty, mainly one-to-one, interviews with female trailing spouses who live in different districts of Hong Kong (many of them in areas predominantly populated by expatriate families). They all enjoy similar benefits of an expatriate lifestyle, such as access to high-standard private medical care, supermarkets selling a range of Western products, exclusive sports and leisure facilities in the form of private clubs, international private schools for their children, and so on. Moreover, as our examples below illustrate, there are several similarities among these women—especially in relation to how they experience and evaluate their ‘new life’ in Hong Kong (see also Zayts, Schnurr, & Hopkins Reference Zayts, Schnurr and Hopkins2016). In spite of these similarities and in spite of treating these women as a group for the purposes of this article, however, we do not want to claim that their experiences as recounted here are typical for or representative of all female trailing spouses in Hong Kong. They are, however, representative of the twenty women whom we have spoken to, and therefore to an extent suggest certain patterns of how these expatriate women perceive themselves in their new life circumstances.

Participants were recruited through a post on a local expatriate online forum where we asked for volunteers who were interested in participating in a research project on the experience of people who have relocated to Hong Kong. In addition, we also used the friend-of-a-friend approach (Milroy Reference Milroy1987; Holmes Reference Holmes1991). The response to our call for participation was overwhelming, with more than ten women contacting the research team within the first ten minutes of the call being posted online. Our sample can be described as ‘convenience sample’ (Richards Reference Richards2003), and as a consequence we refrain from making generalisations, but rather treat this as a partial snapshot of the situation in the expatriate community in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, we hope that insights gained from this study—especially in relation to the usefulness of the concept of hegemonic femininities for sociolinguistic research—will be of interest and may be applied to other cases in different contexts.

Interviews lasted on average around one hour, and the overall recording time is twenty-plus hours. All interviews were conducted in English by a research team member who is an expatriate woman living in Hong Kong herself. They were transcribed using simplified transcription conventions adapted from the conversation analytic literature (see the appendix). This choice of interviewer was deliberate as we wanted to create a relaxed atmosphere that would enable our participants to talk relatively openly about potentially sensitive experiences. We acknowledge, however, that meaning is co-constructed in interviews (Kvale Reference Kvale2007; Edley & Litosseliti Reference Edley, Litosseliti and Litosseliti2010; Richards, Ross, & Seedhouse Reference Richards, Steven and Seedhouse2012; Holliday Reference Holliday2012). Hence, using an interviewer who shared many aspects of our interviewees’ backgrounds and who could thus be described as an insider in this expatriate community may of course also be potentially problematic. For example, it was not always easy for the interviewer to remain ‘neutral’ and to avoid taking a stance (for example, by agreeing with the interviewees). But, given the enormous benefits of such an interviewer with ‘insider’ knowledge, these potential pitfalls were considered to be relatively minor and worth engaging with. Moreover, we hoped that by providing our interviewees with a platform for expressing and sharing their very personal, and at times even traumatic, experiences, these interviews would also function as a means of empowerment for them.

We opted for mostly one-to-one interviews, as opposed to group interviews or focus groups, because we believed that a more intimate environment may facilitate participants’ openness and their willingness to express their own beliefs without the fear of being judged by others (Denscombe Reference Denscombe2010)—a benefit that we hoped to intensify by our choice of the interviewer. In line with this approach, our interviews were semistructured where the interviewer had only a few prepared questions that were mainly used to encourage participants to talk (Edley & Litosseliti Reference Edley, Litosseliti and Litosseliti2010) and to enable them to bring up issues they considered to be important (Dornyei Reference Dornyei2007).

THE DISCOURSE OF TRAILING SPOUSES IN HONG KONG

During our analysis of these interviews we have identified several recurring cultural discourses of femininity. Drawing on Foucault (Reference Foucault1972), Kiesling (Reference Kiesling2005:696) applies the concept of cultural discourses as ‘culturally shared ways of thinking, doing, making, evaluating, and speaking’ to his research on hegemonic masculinity. He uses the cultural discourses identified in his data as ways of capturing the taken-for-granted background assumptions that members of the same group share and on which they rely to make sense of their everyday experiences. They are thus, as Kiesling (Reference Kiesling2005:698) maintains, ‘a valuable part of a theory of how social practices, structures, and beliefs structure language use, and how that language use as a social practice is interpreted’. In other words, they provide useful entry points into understanding not only participants’ views on what they consider to be gender hegemonies but also on how these hegemonies are enacted and oriented to in and through their discourse.

Among the most prominent cultural discourses that these women frequently (re)produced throughout the interviews are the discourse of motherhood, which is often contrasted with the discourse of professionality; the discourse of change and adaptation, which is often linked to the discourse of regret, and the discourse of masculine hegemony, which in turn, as shown below, is often related to the discourse of femininity. The discourse of motherhood describes the women's often very personal experiences of being a mother, which is sometimes accompanied by their evaluation of the mother role (see example (4) below). The discourse of professionality, which is often set in sharp contrast to the discourse of motherhood, refers to the women's ‘former life’ where they had, often very successful, professional careers (example (5) is a good illustration of this). The discourse of change and adaptation, as well the closely related discourse of regret, captures the women's experience and feelings before, during, and after their relocation to Hong Kong (see example (1)). In contrast to these relatively explicit discourses, the discourses of hegemonic masculinities and femininities are more subtle and refer to comments that reinforce (and sometimes challenge) societally sanctioned notions of what practices and values are considered to be ‘manly’ and ‘womanly’, and which largely accept and reinforce hegemonic gender relations that place men in dominant and women in subordinate positions. These cultural discourses are organised along a temporal dimension (see Zayts et al. Reference Zayts, Schnurr and Hopkins2016) in which the discourses of professionality and change typically orient towards the past, while the discourses of motherhood, change and adaptation are mainly oriented towards the present. The discourses of hegemonic masculinities and femininities are related to both temporal dimensions and fluctuate between past and present.

As we illustrate below, these multiple, sometimes contradictory, discourses make up what we refer to as hegemonic femininities in the specific local context of Hong Kong. Since the terms hegemony, hegemonic masculinity, and hegemonic femininity are not, as Speer (Reference Speer2000:126) rightly reminds us, ‘participants’ [own] categories’, in exploring hegemonic masculinities and femininities in the discourse of trailing spouses in Hong Kong, we follow Schippers’ (Reference Schippers2007:100) suggestion to start by understanding what practices and characteristics are understood as ‘manly’ and ‘womanly’, that is, are indexed for masculinity or femininity, in a specific setting—here, in an expatriate community of Hong Kong. We then address the question of which of those practices ‘situate femininity as complementary and inferior to masculinity?’ (Schippers Reference Schippers2007:100). By answering these questions, we hope to empirically identify hegemonic masculinities and femininities and to shed some light on the existing gender relations between women and men in expatriate Hong Kong.

Although we did not ask the women explicitly about what characteristics and practices they considered to be ‘manly’ or ‘womanly’, in describing and evaluating their own everyday realities, the practices and activities that they, their (female) friends, and their (male) partners typically engage in, they provided useful insights into what they considered to be gendered practices and characteristics. This was particularly evident in those instances where they talked about the different roles that they and their husbands played in the decision to move to Hong Kong, and when they told us how they cope with this new reality of being an expatriate in Hong Kong. These gendered roles and expectations, at the same time, heavily rely on gender hegemonies as they evoke (and often reinforce or challenge) specific ideologies about women and men.

We illustrate two of the themes that emerged from the interviews here, namely (i) reclaiming agency over the move to Hong Kong, thereby rejecting (but sometimes also reinforcing) assumptions about hegemonic masculinities; and (ii) mobilising some of the gendered roles traditionally available to women in the context of Hong Kong, thereby largely challenging notions of hegemonic femininities as legitimised by hegemonic masculinities on a local level. As our examples below illustrate, the cultural discourses described above frequently occur in the accounts of these women and are closely interwoven with both themes.

MOBILISING GENDERED ROLES TRADITIONALLY AVAILABLE TO WOMEN IN HONG KONG

Throughout the interviews the women frequently and, it appeared, sometimes strategically draw on and mobilise gendered roles that are traditionally available to women in this expatriate community in Hong Kong. By orienting to these roles and positioning themselves in relation to them, they at the same reinforce or challenge different femininities. These relatively regional femininities, as Connell & Messerschmidt (Reference Connell and Messerschmidt2005:849) have argued, provide ‘a cultural framework that may be materialized in daily practices and interactions’. Among the most prominent roles that these women orient to in their interviews are the role of the mother and homemaker, and the role of the tai tai.Footnote ² In the specific context of Hong Kong, these roles are closely linked to hegemonic femininities as they reflect the practices and characteristics typically associated with expatriate women. Being a mother, a homemaker, or a tai tai is considered ‘womanly’, while other roles, such as being a career woman, have rather different connotations, and are not roles that are equally readily available to these expatriate women. Thus, the femininities underlying the roles of mother, homemaker, or tai tai can be considered as hegemonic in this specific context, while the femininities associated with other roles are pariah (using Schippers’ Reference Schippers2007 terminology). Orienting to these roles and portraying oneself as being, for example, a mother and a homemaker (including all the activities typically associated with it, such as preparing lunch and taking care of children) become part of the embodiment of the performance of hegemonic femininities in this expatriate community in Hong Kong. Interestingly, these roles share a lot of similarities with the roles ‘allocated to women in the social marketplace’, as described in Guendouzi (Reference Guendouzi2001:47), which ‘are restricted by characteristics such as “physical appearance”, “moral worth”, and being seen to be “a good mother” ’. And the role of homemaker in particular is also frequently projected onto women in the advertisements that Pawelczyk (Reference Pawelczyk2008) looked at.

We have included four examples here to demonstrate how the women we interviewed utilise and orient to these hegemonic femininities. The first two examples show how they mobilise the role of the mother and homemaker, and the last two examples illustrate how they use and position themselves in relation to the role of the tai tai.

1. (4) Context: This excerpt is taken from the same interview as in example (2) above.

   A:  Well, I do get bored. I think being a mom can be a boring role. Um. It's a loving role, and it's really, it's half time rewarding, you know, ‘cause you know being a mom is not that, all roses, especially when I have one of them screaming in my ear and slobbering on me and that. But it, it has its rewards. But it's boring. I think being a mom is harder than being in any office that I have ever worked in. I think, I remember, it's non-stop, it's twenty four hours, they still need you in the morning, you can't just clock off, um, you can't resign, um huh huh, and eh, you know, it's boring, but it's also, beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.

This example is a very good illustration of the dilemma that many of the women we spoke to find themselves in: having to adopt and adapt to a role (here, the role of the mother) that they do not really enjoy (“it's boring”) while at the same time being expected to take it on and enjoy it with very little alternatives. Throughout this excerpt it becomes clear that the interviewee finds herself caught between two extremes: she admits that “being a mom can be a boring role”, which is immediately relativised and contrasted by her claim that “it's a loving role”. This tension between “boring” and “beautiful” is maintained throughout the excerpt with only a few attempts at solving it, for example, when she states that “it's half-time rewarding”. Of particular interest is the interviewee's use of laughter towards the end that seems to function here as a means to express this ambiguity of her feelings, and to utter her frustration and vent her disappointment and despair with her situation. At the same time the laughter also mitigates the illocutionary force of her complaints and criticisms and contributes to establishing solidarity among interlocutors (e.g. Glenn Reference Glenn2003).

By mobilising the traditional, and one could perhaps say, global gender role of mother, and then distancing herself from it by resisting and rejecting underlying societally sanctioned ideological assumptions (e.g. of the mother role being fulfilling and beautiful), the interviewee at the same time challenges this particular femininity that is considered to be hegemonic in the local context of her expatriate community in Hong Kong. She thereby challenges hegemonic femininities on various levels: on the local level this is achieved by recounting her own experience (e.g. “when I have one of them screaming…”), and on the regional and perhaps even global level, she does this by describing the mother role in a more general, abstract, and context-free way as “boring”. Similar behaviours are evident in the next example taken from the interview with another woman.

1. (5) Context: C is Canadian with Asian heritage. She used to work as a portfolio manager in the finance sector (managing a portfolio of twelve billion dollars). C and her husband have three young children and are planning to stay in Asia for approximately five years. (I: interviewer)

   C:  So::, it is a big big shock, because like as I said I‘ve always worked, even after my children were born I stayed home for about a year for my maternity, and then I went back to work. I've always, always worked, and to now waking up in the morning thinking, “hmm what do I pack for their lunch boxes?” It's, it's a big change, you know, whereas in the past, I'll wake up and I‘ll say, “ok, what happened to the rest of the world when I was sleeping that will affect my markets?” And now it's sort of, “oh, it doesn't matter, one works hard for lunch”. It's a big shock, I would be lying if I said I was happy at the beginning, I wasn't, and the adjustment was hard.

   [Six turns are omitted]

   C:  I signed up for the whole bunch of seminars as well that are related to what I do because I found even after, even after doing a lot of the volunteering and whatever you have, I miss the mental stimulation, mhm, I am not trying to say, to put volunteering in a bad light, it's not, but it is very different, it is very different and=

   I: =Is it the responsibility?

   C:  No, I think just being mentally challenged, just being mentally challenged, emm. With volunteering when you are reading to a class of seven year olds there is really nothing very stimulating for me, emm and in terms of my- of my mental stimulation. But by attending seminars that talk about, you know, trading, derivative currency, whatever, it's just, it's just got me thinking, “oh, I forgot about it, I should read more about it” […] It's things that I used to do (.) on a daily basis.

Like many of the women we talked to, this interviewee also describes her daily reality in Hong Kong as “a big big shock”, which she largely accounts for by the fact that she had to give up her professional career as a consequence of the move (“I‘ve always worked”). She contrasts her past experiences as a professional with her current daily routines—as a mother and homemaker. She uses a lot of relatively dark humour, such as irony and sarcasm to make fun of her daily activities in these new roles (e.g. her sarcastic remark “one works hard for lunch”, and “reading to a class of seven year olds there is really nothing very stimulating for me”). By emphasising the importance of her (former) professional career in contrast to her current motherly duties, she is challenging hegemonic femininities that place women in subordinate positions and construct them as mother and homemaker (which is set in contrast to the role of the father who provides for the family). Like the interviewee in the previous example, she does this on various levels: on the local level she talks about her past (thereby drawing on the alternative role of career woman/professional), which she sets in sharp contrast to her present situation as a mother. On the regional level she challenges hegemonic femininities by vehemently rejecting the societally sanctioned expectations that the mother role is fulfilling and rewarding. The shift between these levels is signalled, for example, by her choice of pronouns and the shift between first-person singular I referring to the interviewee and a generic you or one referring to women more generally. She thereby combines regional and global hegemonies with her own localised experience.

The next two examples illustrate another gendered role that the women we interviewed frequently draw on, namely the role of the tai tai—a role that is closely linked to relatively regional hegemonies that apply specifically to expatriate women in this community in Hong Kong.

1. (6) Context: M used to work as a PR manager in the US. She has children, and expressed her desire to return to the workforce in the near future. Also present during the interview was S, another expatriate woman living in Hong Kong who is a close friend of M (I: interviewer).

   I: And how do you fill your time, look, I mean you've got more time because you don't have to do stuff around the house, or not as much as you would have to in the US, yeah, you know, yeah.

   M:  Eh hmmm ((sighs))

   I:  And you know=

   M: =Yeah, that's it, that takes a lot of effort=

   I:  eh huh huh

   M: =to fill up my time. Eh heh huh huh

   ((laughter echoed by two other interviewees and the interviewer. On and off laughter ensued afterwards for around twelve seconds, punctuated by inaudible speech))

   M: You know, trying to take care of the finances, you know, bill paying.

   Something that my husband used to do when he was eh, back in the States. Now I'm trying to do this, um, of course managing, a helper that's also, a big part of the job. Taking care of the kids eh when they're home? And they're at home at least seven hours a day, so I do not have a lot of time left. Taking care of myself? Sports, umm, gym? Swimming? ((cheeky tone of voice)) You know, just, you know trying to look nice for my husband? ((quiet laughter elicited from the interviewer and from the other interviewees)) That's not working most of the time?

   ((Four second pause accompanied by breathless laughter from the interviewer and the other interviewees))

   S: That sounds like a full-time job.

   M: Yes, yes. ((laughing lightly throughout, laughter echoed by the interviewer and the two other interviewees))

The interviewee here draws on several roles (e.g. the homemaker who “manages the helper” and the mother who takes “care of the kids”) but mostly she mobilises the role of the tai tai, that is, a married woman who does not have to work to earn money and who, according to Hong Kong local associations, spends most of her time looking after herself “trying to look nice for my husband” (just as the interviewee humorously suggests), and spends the money that her husband earns on buying clothes, cosmetics, and other luxury items. All of these activities and characteristics associated with this relatively localised role are, of course, closely related to gendered hegemonies that exist on a regional and even global level and that place men in a more powerful, dominant position (as the breadwinner and the one with a ‘meaningful/real’ job), while women are constructed in relation to this hegemonic masculinity as being subordinate, relying on the money earned by men, and spending part of their time (and constructing their self-understanding and identity) in relation to their husbands, namely “trying to look nice” for them. What is particularly interesting about this example, however, is that while the interviewee mobilises the role of the tai tai here, she does this in a humorous and ironic way, thereby challenging the underlying gender hegemonies associated with it. This interpretation is further supported by her friend's ironic supporting remark “That sounds like a full-time job”, which also humorously suggests that doing all these activities and leading a life of leisure is actually hard work. By describing her daily activities with a tongue in cheek tone of voice, laughter, the initial sighing, and some humour, these women send up and distance themselves from the gendered hegemonies associated with this role. Like the boys researched by Renold (Reference Renold2004:254), the women in our data often used humour and parody to do this and to resist, subvert, and sometimes challenge ‘the power relations embedded’ in these hegemonic femininities.

The next example shows how the interviewer rather than the interviewee mobilises the role of tai tai (or “lady of the lunch” as she calls it) and how this is vehemently rejected by the interviewee.

1. (7) Context: This excerpt is taken from the same interview as in example (1) above.

   I:  So tell me, what, what if you have no children, what would be your passion? If you were a lady of the lunch.

   H:  No, no, I wouldn't be a lady of the lunch, no.

   I:  But if you were, what would be your passion,=

   H: No, no, no.

   I: =would you go sailing, would you go to tennis, would you go horse-riding, […] what would be your dream, to be here?

   H: In Hong Kong? As in lady of the lunch? I don't know. No, I wouldn't be a lady of the lunch. I would love to get back into my job. I would love to, get kind of, and I used to do marketing for five-star hotels and for golf clubs

In this excerpt it is the interviewer who mobilises the role of tai tai (or “lady of the lunch” as she calls it) by creating a fantasy scenario (“if you were a lady of the lunch”). Interestingly, although she makes it very clear that this is just hypothetical, the interviewee strongly rejects this role: “No, no, I wouldn't be a lady of the lunch, no”. Her repeated use of the disagreement marker no occurs at important points in her utterance, including utterance-initial and utterance-final, which intensifies her almost verbatim rejection of the interviewer's hypothetical scenario. This is followed by further strong rejections and strong disagreements in subsequent lines (where she again repeats no several times—to which the interviewer latches on and further elaborates, thereby almost trying to make this role sound attractive). But the interviewee maintains her position, and after some questions at the beginning of her reply (to express her resistance), she repeats her initial statement “No, no, I wouldn't be a lady of the lunch”, which is this time followed by referring to an alternative femininity related to her former job (“I would love to get back into my job”) and some explanations. In this example, thus, the interviewee not only challenges and rejects the role of tai tai but actually provides an alternative, nonhegemonic, role, namely that of a career woman.