Beijing Welcomes You The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women

The Great Hall of the People, located west of Tiananmen Square, will be the site of the opening and closing ceremonies of the FWCW.     

As You Sow,So Shall You Reap?

Foundations’ capacity‐building grant programs strive to bolster performance and outcomes for their nonprofit grantees. Yet with few outcome evaluations of such programs, we have limited understanding of whether these capacity‐building efforts achieve their intended result. This study evaluates fifteen years of data for one foundation's capacity‐building grant program to understand whether targeted capacity building for financial management and development contributes to nonprofit financial growth. The authors examine the management–performance link in this context and inform sector leaders who dedicate resources to capacity‐building programs about the outcomes of these efforts.     

Would You Say You “Had Masturbated” If … ?: The Influence of Situational and Individual Factors on Labeling a Behavior as Masturbation

The term masturbation is often not clearly defined despite its prevalent use in sex education, sex research, and clinical settings. The purpose of this study was to understand what behaviors are typically considered to be masturbation as well as the situational and individual variables that may affect the labeling of a behavior as such. An online study of 564 individuals demonstrated that a wide variety of behaviors were considered to be masturbation by a majority of participants. No difference was found between men and women in the total number of behaviors labeled as masturbation. Both men and women were more likely to label a behavior as masturbation (1) if there was no sexual partner present than if there was and (2) if an orgasm occurred than if it did not. In addition, women were more likely than men to label a behavior as masturbation if they were alone and if no orgasm occurred. Younger age was associated with labeling more behaviors as masturbation, but sexual identity, self-pleasuring experience, partnered sexual experience, and attitudes toward masturbation were not related to the number of behaviors labeled as masturbation. Results speak to the importance of behavioral specificity when discussing masturbation with students, clients, and in sex research.     

Mom,I Understand You

To celebrate Mother's Day, the editors of Society Weekly(published by People's Daily) invited their readers to write and submit "A Sentence for Mother." This activity, which was co-sponsored by the "Program of Happiness," garnered quite an emotional response. Among the contributions we received were several from the 21 students of Class Three, Grade Two of the high school affiliated with the Beijing Institute of Clothing Technology. "Mother, you are a towering tree and I am your shadow. "—ZHANG YE "Mother, you are an umbrella, and we are the children under it. You are the pod, and we are the peas."—XU JING     

Have You Had Your Lunch Yet? A Case Study on Teaching International Social Work Students

The literature relating to university education is rife with commentary about internationalisation. The rhetoric of positing themselves in the international context appears to have entered the lexicon of most universities. However, the drivers for internationalisation appear largely economic and less has been said about some of the realities involved in moving to an internationalised position. Internationalisation raises many tensions for the university and for academic staff. This discussion reflects on the experience of one Australian university programme offering social work education in a non-Australian context. It seeks to highlight some of the learning from the experience and suggests opportunities for the adoption of a more transformative approach to internationalisation of social work education.     

Is Your Spouse More Likely to Divorce You if You Are the Older Partner?

The authors assessed how the relative age of spouses affects whether men or women initiate a divorce, using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. Ex‐spouses' reports of who left generally agreed, but not always, so the analysis used a latent class model embedded in an event‐history model with competing risks that the woman leaves the man or the man leaves the woman. Support was not found for the hypothesis that age heterogamy itself increases the odds of divorce: Even large age differences did not make men more likely to leave younger wives, and women's exits were as likely when the marriage is homogamous as when she was older. The main conclusion is that both men and women are more likely to leave if their spouse is older than they are. The effects were stronger for men, but the gender difference in effect size was not statistically significant.     

Periodicals to Help You Understand China

DEAR EDITOR, I am a Nepalese woman and work in Hong Kong right now. Our organization, the Committee for Asian Women, is receiving your publication Women of China. Personally, however, I would like to get Beijing Review and Social     

‘You Are a Girl’

Feminist scholarship has shown how gender is integral to understanding war, and that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was partly legitimated through a reference to Afghan women's ‘liberation’. Recognizing this, the article analyses how gender is crucial also to understanding the practice of ‘population-centric’ counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Because this type of warfare aims at ‘winning hearts and minds’, it is in engaging the population that a notable gendered addition to the US military strategy surfaces, Female Engagement Teams (FETs). Citing ‘cultural sensitivity’ as a key justification, the US deploys all-female teams to engage with and access a previously untapped source of intelligence and information, namely Afghan women. Beyond this being seen as necessary to complete the task of population-centric counterinsurgency, it is also hailed as a progressive step that contributes to Afghan women's broader empowerment. Subjecting population-centric counterinsurgency to feminist analysis, this article finds that in constructing women both as ‘practitioners’ and ‘targets’, this type of warfare constitutes another chapter in the various ways that their bodies have been relied upon for its ‘success’.     

“Lizzie Do You Mind”: Gertrude Stein's Laws of Genre in Blood on the Dining-Room Floor

Against previous critics’ readings of Stein's Blood on the Dining-Room Floor as a failed attempt at the hard-boiled genre, this article argues for the many ways in which the novel re-writes the gothic/domestic detective story in a brilliant tour de force that frames all that is un-natural about heteronormative Victorian family life while offering a lesbian alternative. In Stein's subversive and serious play with the forms and conventions of popular fiction, her positive invocations of Lizzie Borden as textual witness, her wide-reaching references to lesbian relationships in other of her works, and, finally, her virtuosic use of silence, Stein writes a profound critique of the patriarchal family through a radical unmaking of a thoroughly domestic literary form.     

‘You are a parasite on the productive classes’: online disablist hate speech in austere times

In response to a climate of austerity, disability has been keyed to a meta-narrative that has a political purpose, to justify extensive welfare cuts by positioning disability as a drain on so-called ‘hard-working taxpayers’. This paper explores how this meta-narrative is articulated on the online bulletin board, Reddit, to show how disablist hate speech may emerge as an attempt to secure one’s sense of self during austere times. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed to reveal these instances and highlights the normalisation of disablist hate speech within the wider context of welfare dependency. Based on these findings, this paper makes recommendations for future research and makes a call for policy change.     

Abstinence-Only: Are You Not Working the Program or Is the Program Not Working for You?

Low retention rates are common in substance use treatment programs. The dominant model of service delivery in the United States is abstinence-only, a high-threshold service delivery model requiring abstinence. What “doesn’t work” for the client—from the client point of view—is an overlooked source of insight about client engagement and disengagement. We report client counter-narratives about the choice to disengage from abstinence-based services, shifting from a story of “dropouts” to one of self-respect. Understanding why clients choose to disengage from treatment can help us as practitioners to “meet clients where they are” and enhance engagement in substance abuse treatment.     

How Are You, White Cranes?

How are you, my red-crowned cranes? Groups of you fly south one by one. Yet do you still stay at Zhalong, a natural preserve, For northern scenery or to enhance my feelings toward you?     

Mama, You Are the Most Important

On July 28th, 1997, An Jinpeng, a senior high school student of grade three of Tianjin No. 1 Middle School, won a gold medal in the 38th International Mathematics Olympiad, held in Argentina. The following story by Zhang Youde is about how his mother brought him up.     

“I've Fallen for You like a Blind Roofer:” Some Effects of Listener Characteristics on Interpreting Opening Lines

Until recently, the revolutionary effects of the development of metacommunication theory have been felt in message/behavioral research but have been ignored in the listening arena. In 1992, Cline and Clark (1992a) coined the term relational listening to capture the phenomenon of partners in interpersonal relationships actively attempting to decide the relational information that is embedded in interpersonal messages at an abstract level. Reasoning that relational listening begins at the beginning of a relationship (at the inception of relational contact), Cline and Clark 1992a; 1992b) focused their previous investigations of relational listening on the interpretation of opening lines. Those studies pointed listener characteristics as factors that significantly influence the interpretation of opening tines as a process of relational listening. The present investigation pursues this line of research by focusing on the listener's gender, the listener's self-perceived attractiveness, and the listener's communication predispositions as factors influencing the interpretation of opening lines.     

My Italian Friend—Where Are You?

Yu Xiuhui is a teacher with a vocational school in Dalian, During a visit to Beijing last summer, she befriended a young Italian woman. The brief encounter left Yu with a sweet memory,as well as a regret. So she came to us, hoping that Women of China could help her fulfill her wish—to convey the message of a young Chinese woman latent in her call...     

The Stability of Facial Attractiveness: Is It What You’ve Got or What You Do with It?

Physical attractiveness is suggested to be an indicator of biological quality and therefore should be stable. However, transient factors such as gaze direction and facial expression affect facial attractiveness, suggesting it is not. We compared the relative importance of variation between faces with variation within faces due to facial expressions. 128 participants viewed photographs of 14 men and 16 women displaying the six basic facial expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) and a neutral expression. Each rater saw each model only once with a randomly chosen expression. The effect of expressions on attractiveness was similar in male and female faces, although several expressions were not significantly different from each other. Identity was 2.2 times as important as emotion in attractiveness for both male and female pictures, suggesting that attractiveness is stable. Since the hard tissues of the face are unchangeable, people may still be able to perceive facial structure whatever expression the face is displaying, and still make attractiveness judgements based on structural cues.