Sex after divorce: older adult women’s reflections

People who divorce experience a number of negative impacts, and yet divorce also offers opportunities for growth and transformation. This qualitative study of older adult women offers the possibility that divorce may be sexually empowering, especially for women, based on in-depth interviewing of women who had gone through one or more divorces. Detailed examples of the experiences of fourteen women with divorce and sexual expression are offered, focusing on in which situations divorce might be empowering and how it could contribute to sexual exploration and satisfaction. Overall, for the fourteen women in the study who had experienced divorce, the quality of sex in the marriage impacted the quality of sexual expression after the divorce. Also, these findings supported the idea of transformational learning through divorce, and expand divorce-stress-adjustment and transformational learning perspectives to apply more specifically to sexual expression. Understanding possible impacts of divorce over the lifespan, including strengths-based aspects, is important for social workers as the population they serve ages.     

The Legal System and Alzheimer’s Disease: Social Workers and Lawyers’ Perceptions and Experiences

The expected increase in the number of people living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) worldwide will be accompanied by an increase in the number of cases involving persons with AD brought up to the courts. This study examined the perceptions and experiences of social workers and lawyers regarding these cases. Three focus groups including social workers and lawyers (n = 26) were conducted. Two main themes were raised by the participants: (a) the role of social workers and lawyers in court cases regarding AD, and (b) the need for improving legal encounters involving persons with AD. Similarities and differences were found in both professionals’ interpretations of these shared themes. Results of this study emphasize the need for increasing the knowledge and interprofessional training provided to social workers and lawyers involved in legal cases dealing with issues involving persons with Alzheimer’s disease.     

‘It’s who we are’: eco-nationalism and place in contesting deep-sea oil in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Given near consensus among the scientific community about the anthropogenic nature of climate change, there is pressing concern about how to mobilise enough people to care and demand wider socio-political change. In this article we explore this urgent issue, drawing on recent conflicts over deep-sea oil exploration and drilling in Aotearoa New Zealand. We explore how some activist groups are attempting to mobilise care and concern around deep-sea oil drilling and climate change through the use of narratives that entwine aspects of national identity with the non-human world. We suggest that these activist groups are not concerned about a retreat of the state, but rather, are in direct conflict with the state, and state interventionism, over fossil fuel development trajectories in Aotearoa New Zealand. In drawing upon eco-nationalism, and particularly a way of life related to place, activists have called into question the common sense of business as usual and thereby sought to expand space for ‘ordinary’ Aotearoa New Zealanders to care about climate change.     

Financial access and household’s borrowing: Policy perspectives of an emerging economy

This paper analyzes access to finance based on the usage of financial services by Indian households. Based on two rounds of nationally representative All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) for 2002 and 2012, we examine how access to credit is associated with a household's socioeconomic and demographic characteristics using Heckman’s two-step approach procedure. Our results show that belonging to higher asset quintile groups has a statistically significant positive effect on the household's decision to take loans only from the formal sector in both rounds and significant negative effects on taking a loan only from the informal sector. Similarly, social and religious groups play a significant role in the decision of the household to take a loan. Households with more educated adults are more likely to take a loan. Households involved in regular wage-earning occupations in urban areas are more likely to take a loan from formal sources. Thus, the importance of policy placing greater emphasis on demand-side barriers rather than on improving the physical availability of formal financial services to promote financial inclusion in India.     

The more things change …: milk pasteurization,food irradiation,and biotechnology in the New York Times

Discussions of science in the news often revolves around issues such as reporter–scientist relationships, how an issue was covered, or how certain issues are chosen among a myriad of possible topics. The aim of this project is to compare coverage between technological stories to evaluate journalistic practices over an extended period of time. Using the journalists-as-interpretive-communities perspective, we argue that New York Times coverage of food technologies over the past century has actually changed very little as the same types of experts and claimsmakers are quoted, trajectories of the coverage are similar, and the cultural resources used within the stories have not shifted to some new form of journalism. We focus on debates surrounding milk pasteurization, food irradiation, and biotechnology.     

Reification: A New Symptom in Women’s Writing in the Context of Consumer Culture

A major evil of capitalist society denounced by Marx, Lukacs, Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, reification developed as a concept thanks to the work     

New Literature’s Attack on and Inheritance of Traditional Culture

Although Chinese New Literature was strongly anti-traditional in expression, this does not sever the ties of blood that link it to traditional culture; and although it advocates a Western humanistic spirit, it does not install Western literature’s aesthetic values. Due to the cultural distinctiveness and historical continuity of the Chinese language, it was never possible for the New Literature to become totally “Westernized” and turn its back on the mother culture. Therefore, when examining the modern transition of Chinese literature as a whole, we must pay attention to its conscious inheritance of the national cultural tradition and to its operating strategy of attacking traditional culture by making use of it, instead of insisting on its inevitable ties with modern Western literature. The New Literature is after all “Chinese” new literature; no matter how many external factors intervene or are involved, they cannot change its cultural attributes or identification with national culture. This is the premier precondition for our understanding of the modernity of New Literature.     

The ‘black spot’ on the Crimea: venereal diseases in the Black Sea fleet in the 1920s

This article examines how high command in the Soviet Red Navy responded to reportedly high levels of venereal diseases in the Black Sea fleet in the mid-1920s. Illness in the fleet posed a threat to national security, especially during the first unstable decade of the Soviet Union’s existence. Naval command and the municipal authorities of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Crimean ASSR) targeted three main points for reform: the source of infection, those who became infected, and the urban space of Sevastopol. The majority of studies of venereal diseases in military populations have been situated within wartime, whereas this article explores the construction of disease during peacetime to interrogate how the naval and municipal authorities in the Black Sea justified intervention into the private, and intimate, lives of sailors and the wider population.     

Women’s political empowerment: Influence of women in legislative versus executive branches in the fight against corruption

This research adds to the literature on gender and corruption, with the main contributions lying in the comparison of the relative influence of women in the legislative versus the executive branches of the government on cross-country corruption. Placing the empirical analysis within the context of the determinants of corruption, results, using data over a large sample of nations covering the years 2018–2020, show that it is women in the legislative branch (via membership in parliaments) that exert a downward pressure on corruption. On the other hand, women in the executive branch (captured via female heads of state and female cabinet ministers) did not exert a statistically significant influence on corruption. Such insignificance also held when an overall index of women’s political empowerment was used and with respect to the longevity of women’s suffrage in a nation. Interestingly, nations with quotas for women’s political participation experienced greater corruption. Our quantile regression results uniquely show the sensitivity of the prevalence of corruption to the factors driving it. These findings provide additional insights into the role of women in government - women across the board in government will not necessarily lead to a “cleaner” government, and that, the institution of quotas to bolster women’s participation in the political process is not advisable, at least when corruption reduction is a goal.     

China’s Opening Up: Idea,Process and Logic*

China’s opening up since 1978 has been a historical process of continuous expansion and deepening. In the course of this process, Chinese policymakers and the mass of the people have gradually deepened their understanding of reform and opening up, and China’s relations with the world, especially its role in the world, have been constantly adjusted. At the beginning of reform and opening up, China adapted to and was integrated into the international economic system; it then became engaged in participating in and improving that system, and then became an advocate and leader in the reform of the international system. Moreover, in practice, an incremental series of coherent open economic policies and theories with Chinese characteristics that facilitate an open economy have come into being. Under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping Theory of reform and opening up, China’s practice of opening up to the outside world is not only a good fit with China’s traditional trade theory, the Huainanzi/Sima Qian Theorem, under which people benefit by exchanging their surplus goods for those that they lack, but is also explicable in terms of modern economic trade theories. With the entry of socialism with Chinese characteristics into the new era and profound changes in the international environment, China still needs to open further to lead and promote mutual and shared openness for all countries in the world, so as to create good international conditions for promoting the construction of a shared future for mankind and building a world of lasting peace, universal security, common prosperity, openness, inclusiveness, cleanliness and beauty.     

The power to change: Muslim women’s rights movement and the resistance towards gender-based violence

Abstract

Under transnational migration, migrant women are not confined by the new host society; the unbreakable attachments to the home society constantly affect and shape these women’s perceptions of their gender and position in the host society. As a result of the growing number of Muslim migrant women, both Muslim and non-Muslim communities have begun to be aware of and recognise the rights of Muslim women and the violence that occurs. Yet, unlike international experiences of Islamic feminist groups being established to promote Muslim women’s rights, an increasing number of local women’s rights groups have started to work with Islamic faith-based organisations to disseminate the idea of women’s rights in Muslim communities. With a lack of studies regarding Muslim migrant women in Hong Kong, this article draws on the significance of international studies on culture, religion and migration to understand the situation in Hong Kong. By analysing the social and political influences on minority integration, this article seeks to uncover the capacity of the Muslim women’s rights movement in guarding against gender-based violence in Hong Kong.