"Victims" and "Survivors": Emerging Vocabularies of Motive for "Battered Women Who Stay"*

This paper reviews the literature providing reasons for why battered women "stay" in abusive relationships and examines the emergence of images of battered women as "survivors" in early and contemporary activists' discourses, drawing on ideas from social constructionist approaches to social problems, identity, and deviance to explore this phenomenon. Most of the early representations of battered women I analyze emphasize their emotionality and their victimization, while the more recent constructions of this collective identity discussed here emphasize their rationality and their agency. Both "victim" and "survivor" typifications provide accounts for why battered women stay in violent relationships, thus providing a vocabulary of motive for this oft-imputed "deviance." Constructing battered women as survivors, however, may also remediate some of the stigma that can attach to victimization more generally. After situating victim and survivor discourses and considering how the image of a survivor may meet normative expectations that a victim image perhaps violates, I briefly discuss some implications of these alternate collective identities.     

Who Is Protected?

Many employers have excluded women whose infertility is not medically documented from allegedly hazardous work claiming they feared if the women became pregnant, their fetuses would be harmed. In United Auto Workers v. Johnson Controls, the Supreme Court held in 1991 that so-called "fetal protection policies" are unlawful sex discrimination. After examining four cases challenging exclusionary policies in Britain and the United States, this article unmasks and argues against the assumptions underlying such policies. By returning to well-established sex discrimination doctrine, moving away from a male norm, and reaffirming women's right to both work and have children, the Supreme Court's decision in UAW V. Johnson Controls is an important victory. The decision should help to break down job segregation, prompt the EEOC to act, and clear the way for addressing questions of health and safety rather than equality and difference.     

Toward a reconceptualization of "choice": challenges by women at the margins

It has been suggested that recent first world and third world feminist movements have gained impetus from a shared emphasis on "body politics" (abortion, rape, and domestic violence). It has been made clear by other writers, however, that first and third world women (including women of color in the first world) have very different conceptions of which policies and practices should be pursued to change their reproduction experiences (because the overriding experiences of their entire lives are so very different). Likewise, the concept of "the right to choose" has been challenged on the grounds that it ignores the external conditions (such as economics) which, in fact, dictate "choice." Eugenics also influences which "choices" are promoted among populations considered "undesirable." The dilemmas associated with reproductive choices are further highlighted by debate about the use of amniocentesis in India for sex determination and female feticide. At the center of this debate is whether calling for a ban on this practice would support or violate a woman's choice. The rhetoric of choice arose in the first place because women who wanted to end a pregnancy had "no choice" but to seek illegal abortions. However, working class women and Black women in the US object to the narrowness in the abortion rights agenda dictated by the use of this term. To assert women's "choice" absolves all others of the responsibility for a pregnancy. The "choice" concept is also vulnerable to political manipulation. "Choice" also evades ethical problems such as sex selection. Disabled feminists have also pointed out that it is as important to create conditions which include "the choice to have a disabled child" as it is to choose not to be a mother. Can feminists oppose the selective abortion of female fetuses while leaving the choice to abort a defective or unwanted fetus of either sex up to the mother? Objection to sex determination can be categorized as consequentialist (based on various predicted social and psychological consequences, such as more men would lead to more violence in the world) or nonconsequentialist (based on the inherent immorality of selective abortion). The benefits of sex selection would possibly include a reduction in sex-linked diseases and a reduction in the overall birth rate. Most US feminists support the moral, but not the legal, condemnation of sex selection. In India, where sex selection is openly practiced, feminists have tried to achieve legal prohibition of the use of tests for this purpose. This difference from the US position may be due to the difference in the abortion context in the 2 countries. Whether feminists support legal and/or moral prohibition of sex selection, however, almost all call for the longterm structural changes which must be made in the context of imperialism, racism, and poverty which would allow true "choices" to prevail.     

Women's Rights vs. "Fetal Rights":

Policies restricting the employment opportunities of women have a long history in the U.S. The most recent manifestation has been so-called "fetal protection" policies, which exclude women of childbearing age from jobs involving exposure to toxins considered dangerous to a developing fetus. Traditional arguments that women's biology is justification to keep them from jobs have resurfaced in a new form. In the present debate the issue is framed as one of competing rights, those of fetus versus those of the woman. An analysis of public policy on this issue from a feminist legal standpoint reveals how the law's implicit male standard hinders the attainment of equal employment opportunity for women, as they must now compete with hypothetical fetuses sa well sa with men.     

"NO WEAPON SAVE ARGUMENT":

US. woman suffragists routinely utilized two types of arguments in their demands for voting rights: justice and reform. The former argument held that women should vote because they were men's equals and therefore should have political rights equal to those of men. Reform arguments stated that women should have the ballot because women, given their unique womanly experiences and perspectives, would bring a unique contribution to politics, making society a more humane place. Although social movement scholars have increasingly studied the framing work of movement activists, few systematic studies of framing activity exist. In this work we examine the circumstances that led the suffragists to amplify one or the other of these motivational frames. We find that the suffragists were quite strategic in their choice of frames, targeting particular audiences and taking advantage of cultural opportunities for frame resonance. We find only limited evidence that their frames were driven by the collective identity of particular groups in the movement.     

Leaving Chicago for Iowa's "Fields of Opportunity": Community Dispossession, Rootlessness, and the Quest for Somewhere to "Be OK"

In recent years, urban development and public housing demolition have posed challenges to the social and geographic rootedness of low-income African Americans in urban areas. In particular, in Chicago, widespread public housing demolition, occurring in the context of rapid gentrification, has contributed to increasing shortages of affordable low-income housing. This study uses in-depth interviews and participant observation to examine the migration experiences of men and women who have left urban neighborhoods and public housing developments in Chicago searching for affordable housing and economic opportunity in eastern Iowa. This particular analysis focuses on experiences of social and geographic "rootlessness" that emerged as a major theme in these interviews. Participants describe community dispossession in Chicago that has threatened not only the ties between individuals and their social support networks, but also connections and claims to the places in which these ties are rooted. Narratives that describe leaving Chicago in this context and then trying to get by as a stigmatized outsider in "someone else's city" speak to a process of dislocation that may disrupt critical social-support resources that are known to mitigate the consequences of structural disadvantage.     

Battered women who were "being killed and survived it": straight talk from survivors

Findings from police reports and interviews with women who have survived an attempted domestic homicide revealed patterns in their experiences and sources of distress. The build-up in the year prior to the near-lethal attack involved tension from ongoing contact with an angry, controlling batterer. Most typically the perpetrator was an alcoholic or drug addict, a gun owner, and, if his victim had left him, her stalker. In the majority of cases, the victim had either left or announced that she was leaving the relationship. While he had often threatened her life and she feared him, she typically did not think him capable of killing her. She described the attack as shocking and terrifying, and she felt certain she was going to die. In the immediate aftermath, she received some support, but as time went by, she felt isolated and alone. Ultimately, the women became convinced that they must rely on their "inner strength" to get on with their lives.     

The Unwed Father: a "Non-Deviant" Rule Breaker

By and large, men (unwed fathers) responsible for impregnating unmarried women have successfully avoided being labeled deviant and have been largely overlooked as sociological research subjects. After they responded to newspaper advertisements, 140 men responsible for 176 extramarital pregnancies were interviewed to determine how they avoid being identified and sanctioned despite their apparent culpability. Factors investigated include: lack of a sense of moral trespass (including the double standard, perception of the pair relationship, and contextual moral meanings), visibility, and social distance. The apparent inconsistency between culpability of behavior and absence of labeling is reconciled by consideration of the "morality of consequences" and the "morality of intentions." It is suggested that consideration of the interaction of rules based on these moralities contributes to an understanding of the labeling process.     

Feminism and Military Gender Practices: Israeli Women Soldiers in "Masculine" Roles

Women's military service is the focus of an ongoing controversy because of its implications for the gendered nature of citizenship. While liberal feminists endorse equal service as a venue for equal citizenship, radical feminists see women's service as a rei•cation of martial citizenship and cooperation with a hierarchical and sexist institution. These debates, however, tend to ignore the perspective of the women soldiers themselves.
This paper seeks to add to the contemporary debate on women's military service the subjective dimension of gender and national identities of women soldiers serving in "masculine" roles. I use a theory of identity practices in order to analyze the interaction between state institutions and identity construction. Based on in-depth interviews, I argue that Israeli women soldiers in "masculine" roles shape their gender identities according to the hegemonic masculinity of the combat soldier through three interrelated practices: (1) mimicry of combat soldiers' bodily and discursive practices; (2) distancing from "traditional femininity"; and (3) trivialization of sexual harassment.
These practices signify both resistance and compliance with the military dichotomized gender order. While these transgender performances subvert the hegemonic norms of masculinity and femininity, they also collaborate with the military androcentric norms. Thus, although these women soldiers individually transgress gender boundaries, they internalize the military's masculine ideology and values and learn to identify with the patriarchal order of the army and the state. This accounts for a pattern of "limited inclusion" that reaf•rms their marginalization, thus prohibiting them from developing a collective consciousness that would challenge the gendered structure of citizenship.     

Thinking about "culture": some programme pointers

This article exhorts development workers to develop an understanding of their own cultural heritage in order to understand how cultural subjectivity influences their work. While not endorsing "cultural relativism," the authors stress that women must work within their own cultures to develop empowerment and combat culturally legitimized practices which are harmful to women. Cultural constructs must be examined in order to understand such issues as the Northern tendency to encourage personal individualism and the Southern tendency to organize along communal lines. Gender identity is also a social construction which calls for a consideration of each situation (or harmful practice) as uniquely based in a given cultural context. General agreement exists, however, that in order to tackle gender oppression, women must be empowered and their status must be improved. Thus development initiatives should support longterm investment in research and programs, illiteracy rates must be decreased, and educational opportunities must be sought in every program. Women's groups must link up to share resources with each other and with traditional nongovernmental organizations. Governments should 1) integrate a gender component into every Ministry; 2) emphasize literacy for girls and women; 3) support local women's initiatives; 4) provide gender-sensitive training for professionals in critical fields; 5) increase attention to the needs of young women; and 6) offer more women visible official posts in public service.     

The making of the "women's physician" in American obstetrics and gynecology: re-forging an occupational identity and a division of labor

After struggling as a surgical specialty, obstetrics and gynecology initiated its "women physician" program in the 1970s. This program officially defined the mostly male obstetricians and gynecologists at that time as women's primary care physicians. Using archival data, this article explains this development as a response to the specialty's dishonored position within the medical division of labor. Whatever else it was intended to be, the women's physician program, in its most developed form, aimed to galvanize the various interests within obstetrics and gynecology behind a strategy to restructure the medical division of labor serving women so that obstetricians and gynecologists controlled both the upstream positions responsible for their own case referrals and the downstream positions to which they referred their difficult cases. The article illustrates the importance of integrating insights from both macro-institutional and intra-occupational explanatory frameworks in accounting for significant developments in medicine.     

Gender relations,development practice and "culture"

Most development practitioners have the following preconceived notions about gender and culture: 1) that gender relations are equated with the most intimate aspects of society; 2) that culture and tradition are immutable; 3) that there is no independent resistance to subordination within the culture; and 4) that religion is culture. These notions interfere with work on developing equitable gender relations and complicate efforts to allocate resources in ways that redress the imbalance of power between men and women. The validity of these notions can be tested by analyzing an experience the author had in 1984 when she published a book on women and development in India. On a publicity tour in Liverpool, England, she addressed an audience composed largely of men from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This audience attacked her book and defended an idealized version of the position of women in the culture of South Asia. They accused the author of being a traitor to her own culture and of being Westernized. A Pakistani woman member of the audience, however, thanked the author for her presentation and reported that she was working with Asian women facing domestic violence. The men understood the cultural identity of South Asia as being composed of identical families dedicated to mutual interest, love, and cooperation. However, this family unit requires the subsuming of women's interests. This myth of the family ignores real life experiences of women who suffer abuse and ignores the fact that the notion of "family" is constantly undergoing change. Development practitioners should use culture as a way of opening up intractable areas of gender relations rather than regarding it as a dead-end which prevents work towards equitable gender relations. A new definition of "cultural sensitivity" would be to acknowledge that contests surround the significance attached by a society to different aspects of social constraints and that these contests often represent challenges to hierarchical social relations.     

"PUBLIC' WORK AND SOCIAL PARTICIPATION:

The impact of labor force participation by women on their social activism is examined using data gathered in a study of 695 North Carolina farm families. The traditional gender division of labor into "instrumental' (male) and "expressive' (female) activism breaks down when women take off-farm jobs. Their rates of activism in instrumental organizations move closer to those of men. Labor force participation by women also reduces the impact of the husband on the wife's activism.     

Gendered uncertainty and variation in physicians' decisions for coronary heart disease: the double-edged sword of "atypical symptoms"

Nonmedical factors and diagnostic certainty contribute to variation in clinical decision making, but the process by which this occurs remains unclear. We examine how physicians' interpretations of patient sex-gender affect diagnostic certainty and, in turn, decision making for coronary heart disease. Data are from a factorial experiment of 256 physicians who viewed 1 of 16 video vignettes with different patient-actors presenting the same symptoms of coronary heart disease. Physician participants completed a structured interview and provided a narrative about their decision-making processes. Quantitative analysis showed that diagnostic uncertainty reduces the likelihood that physicians will order tests and medications appropriate for an urgent cardiac condition in particular. Qualitative analysis revealed that a subset of physicians applied knowledge that women have "atypical symptoms" as a generalization, which engendered uncertainty for some. Findings are discussed in relation to social-psychological processes that underlie clinical decision making and the social framing of medical knowledge.     

"Women and disability don't mix]" Double discrimination and disabled women's rights

Oxfam's experience with groups of disabled people has revealed that gender affects how disabled people are treated in various cultures. This experience runs counter to the often voiced (even by a consultant hired by Oxfam) assumption that gender analysis serves only to confuse any analysis undertaken of disability-based circumstances. This assumption is echoed in the disability movement itself where activists fear fragmentation through the introduction of gender analysis. Thus, gender is not yet understood as a factor which affects every aspect of life including race, class, ethnicity, caste, and disability. Because 75% of the 250 million disabled women in the world live in developing countries, development programs must consider the specific needs and rights of disabled women who suffer from double discrimination and are more likely than disabled men to live impoverished and isolated lives which lead to depression and despair. In many societies, disabled women, but not disabled men, lose their rights to marriage, family life, education, and health care. Mothers of disabled children are stigmatized, and fathers tend to "blame" defective genes on the mothers and to ignore their disabled offspring. These factors combine to make it difficult to improve the status and livelihoods of disabled women through development work. Disabled women activists have also voiced complaints about their lack of access to the preparatory meetings for the Fourth UN Women's Conference, but disabled women intend to use the Conference to lobby for their rights and to call for scrutiny of health policies which discriminate against the disabled.     

"Engines Of Acculturation": The Last Political Generation of Jewish Women in Interwar East Europe

This study explores the formation of a political generation of Jewish women in interwar East Europe. Based on questionnaire data obtained from the Survivors of the Ravensbrueck Concentration Camp for Women and on secondary historical materials, it applied Mannheim's theory of political generations and the conditions for the formation of "generational units" under the impression of "fresh contact" in order to examine the role of class, education, and religiosity in the formation of political generations. Under the specific socio–historical circumstances analyzed, it is argued that Jewish women who came of age in interwar East Europe formed, perhaps for the first time a distinct political generation, as evidenced by high rates of political participation and assimilation into the thriving secular nationalistic culture of their time.     

Double Advantage? Violence Against Canadian Migrant Women from “Developed” Nations

Using a theoretical synthesis based in the Nested Ecological framework, the study examines an anomaly from our previous investigation (Brownridge and Halli, 2002) in which we were surprised to find that immigrant women from "developed" nations have a lower prevalence of violence than Canadian-born women. Based on a representative sample of 6,581 women, the results of the present study show that the key variables that account for this anomalous finding are at the microsystem level. More specifically, a tendency for partners of immigrant women from "developed" nations to be highly educated, and for immigrant women from "developed" nations to have longer-term relationships and be less likely to have young children in the home, appear to account for their lower likelihood of violence. These results are placed in the context of the unique situation of immigrants from "developed" nations and a selection hypothesis is articulated as underpinning the results.     

Women with disabilities making the transition back to work: Psychosocial barriers and interventions

The economic impact of disability on employment, earnings, and education appears to be more devastating for women than for men. Women with disabilities who are making the transition either back into the workforce or into the workforce for the first time often face barriers that are unique to this population. Many researchers have described women with disabilities as having a "double disadvantage" that results in social and psychological barriers to their transition back to work. The purpose of this article is to help vocational and career development programs better address the psychosocial needs of women with disabilities by (a) describing key psychosocial barriers faced by women with disabilities in their transition back to work and (b) providing career development strategies designed to ease this transition process for women with disabilities and enhance their employment outcomes.     

Sexual needs, control, and refusal: how "doing" class and gender influences sexual risk taking

The poor are disproportionately affected by unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). We know relatively little, however, about the sexual processes behind these disparities. Despite studies of gender enactment's influence on sexual behaviors, few analyses examine the sexual "doing" of social class. We conducted sexual history interviews with 36 women and men, half middle class and half poor and working class. Most respondents reported that men have greater sexual appetites than women, but the middle class were more likely to cite social influences while the poor and working-class respondents primarily ascribed biological origins. The social construction of sexual controllability among the middle class contributed to perceptions that sex was a containable force. Poor and working-class women described men's sexual needs as physiologically irrepressible, which shaped sexual refusal. Our findings move beyond socioeconomic status (SES) as a "risk factor" and explore two examples of how gender and social class mediate people's sexual selves and health.