Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ongoing fieldwork among German expatriate families in Tokyo, this paper focuses on the negotiation of interfamilial power in families with ‘reversed’ gender roles: how do female lead expatriates and their trailing families ‘do family’ and (re)negotiate power?

Paper long abstract:

Transnational professionals and their families, often called ‘expatriate families’, can mostly be described as an embodiment of a nuclear heterosexual family with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker (Wilding, 2014). However, the number of female lead migrants with trailing husbands and child(ren) is on the rise. Following a multi-perspective approach and drawing on interviews with female lead expatriates and their families as well as on ongoing fieldwork among German transnational, mostly expatriate families in Tokyo, this paper addresses the following questions: How do families with ‘reversed’ gender roles ‘do family’ in a rather conservative, but highly mobile, transnational context (Morgan 2013)? How do the spouses perceive their role and status, in the family as well as in relation to the ‘community’? And how do they (re)negotiate gender relations and interfamilial power? The findings reveal that families with ‘reversed’ gender roles encounter specific problems, like the reluctance of the husbands to socialize in motherly activities, self-doubts of some men, (perceived) prejudices and institutional rules and hurdle; a context, that forces the spouses to constantly (re)negotiate their gender roles, relations and interfamilial power structures.