The Economic Consequences of Child Sexual Abuse for Adult Lesbian Women

This study is designed to extend the investigation of the long‐term consequences of child sexual abuse (CSA) into the workplace and to consider the effects on the economic welfare of 1,925 lesbian women from the National Lesbian Health Care Survey. It seeks to develop a two‐stage, least‐squares model that considers simultaneously the effects of child sexual abuse on four spheres of a woman's life—her physical health, mental health, educational attainment, and economic welfare; and to investigate the differential impacts of diverse forms of child sexual abuse on the adult woman's functioning. The CSA survivors experienced adverse health and mental health consequences. The type of CSA experienced was also a significant predictor of a woman's educational attainment and annual earnings.     

“Ellen Is Our Man”

This article examines the nature of shifting gender roles in Liberia's postconflict reconstruction process. Specifically, it investigates the ways in which political authority is gendered and the agency that women in politics employ to justify their participation as they attempt to reduce gender inequalities at the institutional level. I argue that the intervention of the international community has been instrumental in providing space and resources for gender mainstreaming, however in the absence of more in-depth intersectional analyses of gender dynamics, the unintended consequences of peacebuilding policies could hinder the sustainability of long-term peace. This article is based on a qualitative research country study conducted by the author in rural and urban Liberia following the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. A discussion of key findings is exemplified with excerpts from key informant interviews and focus group discussions that seek to give voice to a cross-section of Liberians, so that they can contribute to the ongoing debate on gender mainstreaming in postconflict societies and bridge the gap between local and international discourses.     

Wives' Relative Wages,Husbands' Paid Work Hours,and Wives' Labor‐Force Exit

Economic theories predict that women are more likely to exit the labor force if their partners' earnings are higher and if their own wage rate is lower. In this article, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,254) and discrete‐time event‐history analysis to show that wives' relative wages are more predictive of their exit than are their own or their husbands' absolute wages. In addition, I show that women married to men who work more than 45 hours per week are more likely to exit the labor force than are wives whose husbands' work approximately 40 hours per week. My findings highlight the need to examine how women's partners affect women's labor‐force participation.     

International Women's Day: Art project for young women

Abstract

The primary aim of the project was to provide the opportunity for a marginalised group of young women to participate in International Women's Day with other women and members of the community and to have the opportunity to express themselves and aspects of their lives in art work on ceramic platters. The target group were ‘homeless, transient and at risk young women from 18 to 25 years of age, including Koori women’, engaged mainly through local homeless youth agencies in the Port Phillip area in Victoria. It was thought that many of this target group had been left out of formal support service provision. The project was evidently a success, both in terms of its modest aims and, most importantly, as evaluated by the participants themselves. Those interviewed expressed greater feelings of social connectedness - particularly with other women, raised self esteem and optimism and a new found enjoyment in the creative process.     

International women's magazines in China: Global and local perspectives

Unlike other global media products that are imported from overseas, international women's magazines in China are published via licensing agreements or joint ventures with local companies. These ownership patterns allow local editions of international women's magazines to negotiate the tensions and contradictions between the global players and local publishers. Given the influence of cultural and commercial forces in different economic environments, international women's magazines provide a challenging platform for exploring the interaction between global and local forces. Through a theoretical framework of hybridity theory and in-depth interviews with editorial personnel from the magazine industry, this study explores the global and local forces that have contributed to the production process of international women's magazines in China. The findings reveal that these magazines are a result of a multi-level convergence of local realities and global influences. Although there are factors of control and dependence in many areas such as the publishing ideas, editorial policies, the training of personnel, and the quality of production, both Western-style and Japanese-style women's magazines tend to appropriate and rework global cultures to satisfy local readers' needs, albeit in different ways. As a result, local and transnational influences are inextricably interwoven in the production process of international women's magazines in China. The study provides an extensive understanding of the global processes, the consumers, and the cultural forces that are shaping the media, particularly magazines in China.     

Female Headed Households in Iran (1976–2006)

Here we address the issue of female-headed households in Iran in an effort to discover whether the incidences, causes, and consequences are similar to those seen elsewhere in both developed and developing countries. In the United States such households are not always found to have resulted from involuntary, relatively homogeneous causes, but there is a persistent finding of associated poverty. From Iranian census data including the past 40 years, we found a rather dramatic, albeit not extremely large, countercultural increase in female-headed households; however, such households neither resulted from common causes nor led necessarily to poverty. We consider these results in relation to their implications about changes in family and women's roles in this highly transitional society in which tradition and modernity seem to coexist and family changes emerge slowly and selectively.     

Envisioning the Possibilities for a Good Life: Exploring the Public Policy Implications of Intersectionality Theory

SUMMARY

Public policy is one of the younger, interdisciplinary subfields in the social sciences, but one of the most promising in terms of its social relevance. While public policy has made major strides in terms of analytical and methodological development, it has largely ignored the development of intersectional theory-a broad theoretical paradigm that has much to offer public policy scholars. In this article, the author discusses the contribution made by intersectionality scholars to the social sciences and advances ways in which intersectionality theory could extend efforts to elucidate public policy outcomes and women's political leadership.     

Women's economic inequality and domestic violence: exploring the links and empowering women

Economic empowerment of poor households is a key entry point for development organisations concerned with economic inequality. Over the decades, gender inequality has emerged as a key concern, and the result has been women's economic empowerment (WEE) programming. This article is a study of the impact of WEE programming on domestic violence (DV) against women. While this link has received some attention in gender and development literature, evaluations and impact assessments in development organisations have not consistently focused on the possibility of increased or decreased DV as a result of the challenge WEE represents to gender power relations. Drawing on the experience of Oxfam and other development organisations, we offer recommendations for practitioners aimed at better programme integration and more holistic empowerment. Aiming to challenge economic inequality between households involves better understanding of the impact of WEE programming on intra-household gender inequality, including rates of DV. This requires planning to anticipate these possible impacts and ensure women are able to gain from programming without placing themselves at risk.     

Not ‘women's burden’: how washing clothes and grinding corn became issues of social justice and development

Women's heavy and unequal responsibilities for care, long considered ordinary or insignificant by development workers as well as the wider public, are being reframed as issues of social justice through new methodologies for communities to analyse care work and advocate for change. Oxfam and local partners in the Philippines, Honduras, and Bangladesh are piloting two approaches. The first, Rapid Care-Analysis, uses focus groups to assess the local provision of care, identify problems, and propose solutions, reframing care as a compelling issue for both women and men. The second, the Household Care Survey, can be used to gather evidence to persuade governments and aid donors to invest in infrastructure to lessen the practical load of care work. This article shares the experience so far of evolving and piloting these innovative methods.     

Olivia Records: The Production of a Movement

This article looks at the early years of Olivia Records, setting the context for the historic release of the album Where Would I Be Without You. From its origins as a Washington, D.C.-based activist collective in 1973, Olivia became a hugely successful recording company, marketing radical lesbian recordings and performances that soon defined the “women's music” movement. Both artistically and politically, Olivia's woman-identified albums became the soundtrack for a generation awakening to lesbian activism. Pat Parker and Judy Grahn's 1976 spoken-word recording is a unique demonstration of Olivia's radical production values and expanding catalog.     

Commitment to Work Among Welfare‐Reliant Women

The purpose of this article is to describe the work of welfare‐reliant women and to reveal commitment to work in the experiences of 84 welfare‐reliant, rural women interviewed for this study. Understanding the domains where welfare‐reliant women exhibit commitment to work may help policy makers, trainers, and employers design and implement interventions that enhance chances of success for these women in the formal, paid workforce. Discussion focuses on the women's formal labor force participation in the past and desire for wage work in the future; barriers to labor force participation, both personal and in the rural job market; informal work and the work of care; support networks; survival strategies for making ends meet while receiving welfare; and the stigma of welfare receipt.     

Education,wage work,and marriage: Perspectives of Egyptian working women

We explore young working women's perceptions of marriage and work in contemporary Egypt, when an increase in age at marriage was evident from national survey data. Both working conditions and employment opportunities declined significantly for young women even as their educational attainment increased and marriage was delayed. In‐depth interviews were conducted over a 2‐year period between 1998 and 2000 with 27 young women between the ages of 15 and 29 who were from relatively poor families and working in a range of salaried jobs in three locations. The qualitative data indicate that young women have high expectations in terms of marital living standards. They seek to achieve this in part by saving intensively before marriage when they work, and otherwise by ensuring substantial monetary support from their families. We conclude that rising material aspirations and family nucleation rather than change in female labor force participation drive marriage change in contemporary Egypt. The driving force behind this conclusion is that there is a reinforcement of the traditional values associated with the institution of marriage rather than its erosion.     

Changes in Wives' Income: Effects on Marital Happiness,Psychological Well‐Being,and the Risk of Divorce

We investigate the effects of increases in married women's actual income and in their proportion of total family income on marital happiness, psychological well‐being, and the likelihood of divorce. We use data from a sample of 1,047 married individuals (not couples) in medium‐duration marriages, drawn from a five‐wave panel survey begun in 1980 and continuing to 1997. Structural equation modeling is used to assess the impact of increases in married women's absolute and relative income from 1980 to 1988 on the marital happiness and well‐being of married men and women in 1988. Event history analysis is used to determine how these changes affect the risk of divorce between 1988 and 1997. We find that increases in married women's absolute and relative income significantly increase their marital happiness and well‐being. Increases in married women's absolute income generally have nonsignificant effects for married men. However, married men's well‐being is significantly lower when married women's proportional contributions to the total family income are increased. The likelihood of divorce is not significantly affected by increases in married women's income. Nevertheless, increases in married women's income may indirectly lower the risk of divorce by increasing women's marital happiness.     

Privileging work not sex: flexibility and employment in the sexual services industry

We present findings from a study of sex workers recruited in indoor licensed premises in Victoria. While the study addressed regulation, enforcement and working conditions, we focus on the value of flexible well‐paid work for two particular groups of female workers (parents and students). We link this issue of flexibility to broader gendered employment conditions in Australia, arguing the lack of comparable employment is crucial to understanding worker decisions about sex work. Debates and regulation focus on gendered inequalities related to heterosexuality much more than they recognize gendered inequalities related to labour market conditions. The focus on criminalization, harm, exploitation and stigma obscures the centrality of work flexibility and conditions to women's decision‐making. A more direct focus on the broader employment context may produce better recognition of why women do sex work.     

Training Camp on Safe Motherhood in Rural India: A Research Note

ABSTRACT

The Center for Women Studies at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani (Rajasthan), India made an effort to combine theory and practice by implementing some of the discussions of an international conference that the center had organized on safe motherhood. A clinic was set up as a medical training camp in a village near Pilani. Measures to ensure safe motherhood included check-ups, interventions, advocacy, and counseling at the grassroots level. As a follow-up, the center has adopted the 12 by 12 initiative of the Government of India to ensure that each child has a percentage hemoglobin of 12 grams by the age of 12 years with special focus on adolescent girls.     

Sexuality in Older Adults (65+)—An Overview of the Literature,Part 1: Sexual Function and its Difficulties

Objectives: The aim of the current article was to provide an overview of literature on sexual function and sexual difficulties in older adults. Method: The authors conducted a narrative review of papers published in English between January 2005 and July 2015 based on an extensive search in PsycINFO. Results: The review showed that although common biological changes may adversely affect sexual function in old age, sexual experience seems to also be affected by psychological and interpersonal factors. Conclusions: Greater life expectancy and better medical care will result in older individuals with chronic diseases living longer. The need for help to cope with changes in sexual health is likely to increase in older adults, as sexuality may be negatively affected through several pathways.     

Global Care Chains

This article critically examines the utility of the ‘global care chain’ concept and considers various modifications required to that concept in order to render it a major generative force in feminist and non-feminist research. By way of progressing this research agenda, the discussion critically evaluates the possibilities and limitations of a more rigorous application of global commodity chain analysis, from which the global care chain concept is presently only loosely derived, to transnational care

services. The incompatibility of (non-feminist) commodity chain analysis and (feminist) care chain analysis, together with the weaknesses in each of these bodies of analysis, requires the integration of a range of modifications into a revised global care chain framework. These modifications involve foregrounding transnational labour networks

and applying an engendered global commodity chain perspective to the analysis of these networks as well as broadening the application of the global care chain concept to embrace a variety of groups and settings. Further research required to progress the development of this field of study is outlined.     

From pillar to post: Women and social work studies in the 21st century

Abstract

A decade or so after the acknowledgement and inclusion of women's issues in mainstream social work courses, we find the circumstances in which such education occurs have changed. The 'third wave' of feminism has revisited the feminist agenda of the 1960s and 1970s; there has been a paradigm shift in what tertiary education is perceived to offer; and global theories have been replaced by post modern interpretations. This article discusses the impact of these changes for social work education drawing on the authors' experiences with the 'Women and Social Work' elective subject in the Bachelor of Social Work Degree at the University of New South Wales, Australia. This elective was popular until the mid 1990s when it failed to attract students. The authors reflect on their experience of teaching the subject and their understanding of current feminism to identify a way forward in the attempt to rekindle student enthusiasm for feminist understandings and provide education which will further the emancipatory project of social work.     

Women's Status and Social Capital in the United States

SUMMARY

Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone found that social capital is closely associated with a variety of important indicators of community health, and women benefit from many of these resources as members of their communities. But is there anything distinct about how women experience social capital? Is there a relationship between social capital and women's status overall? Using data on social capital from Bowling Alone and data collected by the Institute for Women's Policy Research for its Status of Women in the States project, we assess trends across the states on both dimensions. Overall, the findings suggest that there is a strong relationship between the two.