Divorce and Adult Psychological Well‐Being: Clarifying the Role of Gender and Child Age

Substantial evidence indicates that marital dissolution has negative consequences for adult well‐being. Because most research focuses on the average consequences of divorce, we know very little about factors that moderate this association. The present study tests the hypothesis that the effects of marital dissolution on adult well‐being are greatest for those with young children in the home at the time of marital dissolution. Analysis of data from the National Survey of Families and Households (N= 4,811 men and women married at the baseline interview) supports this hypothesis, especially among women. For women without young children, marital dissolution appears to have few negative consequences for psychological well‐being. Differential exposure to secondary stressors that accompany marital dissolution partly explains these patterns.     

Repartnering and (Re)employment: Strategies to Cope With the Economic Consequences of Partnership Dissolution

The economic consequences of a partnership dissolution have been described consistently in the research literature. For women all studies indicate severe financial losses, whereas men do not experience income decreases to the same extent. This article focuses on the 2 main strategies to cope with the economic consequences of a separation: repartnering and (re)employment. Using the European Community Household Panel Study we analyzed a sample of 66,292 individuals observed in a relationship of whom 4,925 subsequently separated and assessed the (relative) effect of both strategies in a cross‐national longitudinal perspective. Where men do not benefit financially from cohabiting with a new partner, repartnering proves to outweigh the benefits of reentering the labor force or increasing the working hours for most women. This especially applies to mothers.     

Non‐erotic thoughts: Content and relation to sexual functioning and sexual satisfaction

We examined the possible range of content of non‐erotic thoughts experienced during typical sexual activities with a partner. Undergraduate men (n = 47) and women (n = 50) were administered a measure of non‐erotic thought content, frequency, and anxiety, along with measures of sexual attitude, satisfaction, and functioning. Men were more likely to report performance‐related thoughts, and women were more likely to report thoughts about body image. However, men and women were equally likely to report thoughts about the external consequences of the activity (e.g., pregnancy, being caught) and the emotional consequences of the activity (e.g., morality, implications of the activity for the relationship). Women reported that their thoughts occurred more frequently and caused more anxiety. Greater thought frequency and greater anxiety over thoughts were associated with poorer sexual functioning for both men and women. For women, greater frequency of and anxiety evoked by thoughts was associated with lower sexual satisfaction. These data provide modest support for cognitive‐behavioral models of sexual dysfunction and indicate the importance of both examining a broad range of non‐erotic thought content and taking gender into account when applying these models to understanding and treating sexual difficulties.     

The Cost of Instability: The Effects of Family,Work, and Welfare Change on Low‐Income Women’s Health Insurance Status

The number of uninsured Americans has risen substantially over the last decade. Despite the availability of Medicaid, low‐income women are at particularly elevated risk of having no or inadequate health insurance. How does continuity of work, family, and welfare affect low‐income women’s health insurance status? A multinomial logistic regression analysis of 1,662 low‐income women from the Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three‐City Study provides evidence of the consequences of life changes on access to health insurance from 1999–2005. The results show that compared to those with stable welfare, work, and family attachments, new full‐time employment actually increases low‐income women’s risk of being uninsured as does being underemployed, on welfare, or single for extended periods of time. These findings illustrate how health‐care reform must adequately address the complexity of low‐income women’s lives—including the ways labor market, state, and family factors interact to create barriers to health insurance—in order to improve access to care under the current U.S. health insurance model.     

Public Attitudes Toward Reporting Partner Violence Against Women and Reporting Behavior

Drawing from attitude‐behavior research tradition, this study used a national probabilistic sample of the Spanish adult population (N= 2,432) to test hypotheses regarding correlates of public attitudes toward reporting partner violence against women, and the relationship between attitudes toward reporting and actual reporting behavior. Results show the importance of several correlates of public attitudes toward reporting. Also, our results have suggested a potential disconnect between attitudes and behavior because failure to intervene appears to be a common response of those aware of incidents of partner violence against women.     

Income and Life Satisfaction After Marital Disruption in Germany

Divorce in Germany and in many other countries is often instigated by the wife, even though marital disruption has much more negative economic consequences for women than for men. Both observations, however, are not necessarily a contradiction. Women may gain something that makes up for the economic loss. On the one hand, using data on income and (general) life satisfaction from the German Socio‐Economic Panel Study, this article shows that negative economic changes, as measured by data on household income, are real in the sense that they are reflected in subjective assessments of economic well‐being. On the other hand, these changes are relative because other aspects of life improve after marriage dissolution, and this is especially true for women.     

Marginal Structural Models: An Application to Incarceration and Marriage During Young Adulthood

Advanced methods for panel data analysis are commonly used in research on family life and relationships, but the fundamental issue of simultaneous time‐dependent confounding and mediation has received little attention. In this article the authors introduce inverse‐probability‐weighted estimation of marginal structural models, an approach to causal analysis that (unlike conventional regression modeling) appropriately adjusts for confounding variables on the causal pathway linking the treatment with the outcome. They discuss the need for marginal structural models in social science research and describe their estimation in detail. Substantively, the authors contribute to the ongoing debate on the effects of incarceration on marriage by applying a marginal structural model approach to panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (N = 4,781). In line with the increasing evidence on the collateral consequences of contact with the criminal justice system, the authors find that incarceration is associated with reduced chances of entering marriage.     

Marital and Cohabitation Dissolution and Parental Depressive Symptoms in Fragile Families

The consequences of divorce are pronounced for parents of young children, and cohabitation dissolution is increasing in this population and has important implications. The mental health consequences of union dissolution were examined, by union type and parental gender, using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n= 1,998 for mothers and 1,764 for fathers). Overall, cohabitation and marital dissolution were both associated with increased maternal and paternal depressive symptoms, though for married mothers, depressive symptoms returned to predissolution levels with time. Difference‐in‐difference estimates indicated no differences in the magnitude of the increase in depressive symptoms by type of dissolution, though pooled difference models suggested that married fathers increased in depressive symptoms more than cohabiting fathers. Potential time‐variant mediators did not account for these associations, though greater family chaos was associated with increased maternal depressive symptoms, and decreased social support and father–child contact were associated with increased paternal depressive symptoms.     

Is Baby a Blessing? Wantedness,Age at First Birth,and Later‐Life Depression

Research has found that both unintended and nonnormatively timed births have negative consequences, yet little is known about how birth timing and intention jointly influence mothers' mental health. This study explored how the interaction between intention and age at first birth influenced depression 5 to 13 years later by analyzing the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,573). We found that mistimed births, when compared with wanted births, were associated with depression, but only for normatively timed transitions to motherhood. Surprisingly, teen mothers who had unwanted births had better later‐life mental health than teens who had wanted or mistimed births. Among women with wanted or mistimed first births, increasing age at birth was associated with lower probabilities of depression. Most, but not all, of these effects were explained by selection factors and life circumstances. Results show the importance of examining joint effects of first birth wantedness and timing.     

Women's self‐defense and sexual assault resistance: The state of the field

Public attention to sexual assault has increased dramatically over the last decade, spurring questions about how it can be prevented. One approach that has received scant attention is women's self‐defense training (sometimes known as sexual assault resistance training). This neglect is curious because empowerment‐based women's self‐defense (ESD) training is so far the only approach that has produced substantively significant decreases in victimization rates. In this article, I review the research evidence on women's self‐defense training. Does resisting a sexual assault affect the outcome of sexual violence? Does self‐defense training further reduce women's risk of violence? What are the other consequences of self‐defense training? How does self‐defense work for different groups of women—for example, those who have survived prior victimizations? Are the critiques of women's self‐defense training valid? Finally, what do we still need to learn about women's self‐defense? Overall, I argue that this evidence presents a compelling case that women's self‐defense training should be central to any efforts to prevent sexual violence.     

Women leaders,self‐body‐care and corporate moderate feminism: An (im)perfect place for feminism

This article offers self‐body‐care as an aspect of corporate moderate feminism and a manifestation of postfeminism for women leaders. It explains how postfeminism as a bodily practice surfaces through women leaders' body work and how women ‘top' leaders strategize to stabilize their credibility by identifying their own and other women' body work needs and the steps they take to meet these. Self‐body‐care extends understandings of body work as part of postfeminist governmentality and contributes to understandings of moderate feminism as that which deflects and reflects feminism and constrains and empowers subjects. As such self‐body‐care offers an (im)perfect space for disruption and for Gender and Organization Studies (GOS) scholars to pursue the implications and potential of postfeminism. We call for women elite leaders to be part of feminist futures and illustrate self‐body‐care as an aspect of corporate moderate feminism by highlighting complexity in the postfeminist thesis and reflexively re‐examining two of our previous published empirical studies of women ‘top' leaders.     

Motherhood and Family Health Advocacy in Nutrition and Exercise: “Doing the Tradition”

Studies tend to subsume women’s routine family healthcare responsibilities under the larger heading of “household labor.” This study argues that, women’s—and particularly mothers’—family healthcare work in the area of diet and physical activity represents a distinctive area for critical family communication research with potentially serious psychological, emotional, and physical consequences for women and their families. Interviews (N = 30) with young adult-family member dyads supported this assertion. Interview data illustrated that mothers struggled to fulfill incongruous health goals for themselves and their family members, and did so at the expense of their familial relationships (particularly with children) and their own health. Moreover, dyadic data analysis highlighted how young adults ascertained and carried on the “tradition” of the established mother-as-healthcare-provider role. Implications for theory and future research directions conclude this study.     

Eritrean Refugees’ Utilization of Antenatal Services in Israel

This study analyzes Eritrean refugee women's utilization of antenatal services in Israel by means of retrospective self‐reports surveys (N = 63) targeting women's service utilization (array of services used, frequency rates, facility rates and demographic correlates) and semi‐structured interviews (N = 10) targeting women's experienced barriers for service utilization. Findings show that Eritrean women make substantive use of the full array of services, with user rates increasing over time. However, frequency rates are low, although increasing when women have more experience with the system. Facility rates are not in keeping with the recommendations of the Israeli Ministry of Health. Interviews reveal that the barriers of work and a complex system of antenatal care limit women's frequent service utilization in the right facility, while the barrier of miscommunication limits their understanding of the services they actually utilized. Findings stress the importance of analyzing different facets of utilization and their demographic correlates.     

Dowry in the absence of the legal protection of women’s inheritance rights

Review of Economics of the Household - The practice of dowry is often thought to be the root cause of the unequal treatment of girls in India, as represented by sex-selective abortion and female...     

“You see,one day they cut”: The evolution,expression, and consequences of resistance for women who oppose female genital cutting

ABSTRACT

It is estimated that more than 200 million women alive today have undergone female genital cutting (FGC). While emerging evidence shows that attitudes toward FGC may evolve for immigrants as they acculturate to the host country, scant empirical research explores how women come to oppose the practice. This qualitative study used grounded theory methods to explore the trajectory of resistance to FGC for seven women circumcised in childhood who sought asylum in the United States as adults to protect their daughters from the practice. Participants originated from Burkina Faso, Guinea, The Gambia, and Chad. Analysis revealed nine themes tracing the evolution of resistance to FGC and other gender role norms for participants: coercion, threat, and retribution narratives; traumatic memories of circumcision; growing awareness of the personal implications of circumcision; emergence of critical thinking; trangressive thoughts and acts; navigating the consequences of resistance; everyday reinforcement; negotiating resistance dilemmas; and making meaning of resistance. In contrast to previous studies linking opposition to FGC to post-settlement acculturation or pre-migration exposure to organized international human rights campaigns, findings of this study indicate that traumatic memories of the circumcision rite, combined with the capacity to reflect on “taken for granted” cultural practices and to employ critical thinking skills, may lead to resistance to FGC for some women. Furthermore, findings highlight that FGC, and opposition to it, has lasting consequences for women from societies where the practice is embraced, and these consequences persist after migration. Practice and policy recommendations are drawn from the analysis.     

The Thai bhikkhuni movement and women's empowerment

This paper discusses the recent emergence of a movement in Thailand that aims to critique and transform patriarchal values supported by the Theravada Buddhist tradition by introducing female ordination (bhikkhuni ordination). The paper argues that there is a relationship between the low status of women in Thai Buddhism and the inferior status of women in Thai society. The introduction of female leadership roles in Thai Buddhism could play a role in balancing the gender hierarchies within the tradition as well as in society more broadly.     

Measuring emotional intelligence in Moroccan Arabic: the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale / Medidas de la inteligencia emocional en árabe marroquí: la escala de inteligencia emocional de Wong y Law

Emotional intelligence is a widespread concept that has been analysed in different countries. However, it has been barely measured in African-Arab societies’ cultures due to their scarce tradition in validating instruments. In Morocco, the mere translation of instruments is a common practice that should be avoided to incorporate cultural and linguistic singularities. Thus, the aim of our study was to culturally adapt the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale to Morocco. This version could be widely used in other Arab North African countries and among immigrants in hosting countries. Two hundred and seventy-three Arab undergraduates (178 women and 95 men; age M = 22.17, SD = 4.09) from Morocco completed a questionnaire adapted to their culture following the back translation method. To determine construct validity, data were analysed by means of confirmatory factor analysis. The final scale resulted in a second-order factorial model with four first-order factors compounded by 16 items. This structure supports the original for Moroccan Arabic and other countries in which Arabic is spoken. Likewise, the results confirm an adequate criterion validity of the instrument.     

“You Go ‘Cause You Have to”: The Bridal Shower as a Ritual of Obligation

Getting married is one of the most celebrated and revered transitions in a woman's life. Therefore, many rituals and events exist to prepare a woman to become a wife. The bridal shower is one of those that is most steeped in tradition. It may be viewed as an event in which women friends and family members must participate. Women often attend bridal showers out of “duty.” Interestingly, many women find them boring, socially awkward, or otherwise uncomfortable. In this article, I identify the primary stressors of bridal showers for the three major participants: brides‐to‐be, hostesses, and guests. Finally, I explore the persistence of this ritual, despite its apparent lack of appeal for participants. This study draws on interviews with fifty‐one women who are recent brides or who have recently hosted or attended bridal showers, as well as participant observation at five bridal showers. I discuss the bridal shower as a ritual of obligation, one that is grounded in tradition and gives women the opportunity to express care and support for other women as members of a gender community.