Lesbians and the Choice to Parent

No abstract available for this article.     

How to Make the Law Work? Budgetary Implications of Domestic Violence Laws in Latin America,Central America,and the Caribbean

SUMMARY

This study focuses on budgetary implications of domestic violence (DV) laws in the Latin American, Central American, and Caribbean (LAC) region. It is based on a survey of literature and data on DV legislation, literature reviews on the social and economic costs of DV, and an analysis of policies on DV in the region based on a survey of nonprofits working on DV in the region. The study shows DV is not being mainstreamed into ministerial budget line items as would be expected following the passage of law. There is clearly a difference between what is ratified in laws and the implementation of activities that follows those decisions. Funding for DV programs is insufficient to reach the entire target population and address the magnitude of the problem. Even after laws were passed, major sources of funding for DV services have continued to be discretionary funds from the ministries' budgets and international donor funds.     

Coming out within transnational families: intimate confessions under Western eyes*

This article is about ‘coming out’ and the process of disclosure of queer migrants within their transnational families. Despite debates about the decreasing relevance of coming out in contemporary western societies, we argue that the process of coming out continues to be a central mode of belonging and identity construction for queers in the context of transnational migration. Interviews with migrants from Poland, Russia and Turkey in Germany on their coming out experiences show that people rely on a variety of boundaries, i.e. gender, class and ethnicity, to construct a desired way of life. Theoretically, these insights indicate the need to reframe post-structuralist theories on power, most prominently advanced by Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, from an intersectional perspective. The findings in this paper pinpoint to the challenges of transnational social life queer migrants are confronted with through empirical illustrations of perceptions of differences and ambiguities between immigration and emigration contexts. Furthermore, we advocate that sexuality is a crucial dimension of migration processes determining self-definition in relation to people and places, which makes their stories of coming out always also stories of ‘coming home’.     

农村婚姻暴力受害因素的有效对称研究

立足农村家庭结构与中国特有的新型农村社会保障体系,以湖南某县级市的实证调查为依据,运用主成分分析、最小二乘回归分析和bootstrapping法,探究婚姻暴力受害因素对不同性别的解释力度。结果显示：农村女性受暴总体高于男性,家庭规模的扩大与家庭关系满意度的提升降低男性家暴的受害,社会支持网规模的扩大增加了两性遭受家暴的风险,“新农保”与“新农合”制度成为降低女性家暴受害的保护性因素,家庭功能衰弱导致家暴的情况没有出现,农村男性与女性家暴受害因素呈有限对称。     

Designing out vulnerability, building in respect: violence, safety and sex work policy

One recent finding about the prostitution market is the differences in the extent and nature of violence experienced between women who work on the street and those who work from indoor sex work venues. This paper brings together extensive qualitative fieldwork from two cities in the UK to unpack the intricacies in relation to violence and safety for indoor workers. Firstly, we document the types of violence women experience in indoor venues noting how the vulnerabilities surrounding work-based hazards are dependent on the environment in which sex is sold. Secondly, we highlight the protection strategies that indoor workers and management develop to maintain safety and order in the establishment. Thirdly, we use these empirical findings to suggest that violence should be a high priority on the policy agenda. Here we contend that the organizational and cultural conditions that seem to offer some protection from violence in indoor settings could be useful for informing the management of street sex work. Finally, drawing on the crime prevention literature, we argue that it is possible to go a considerable way to designing out vulnerability in sex work, but not only through physical and organizational change but building in respect for sex workers rights by developing policies that promote the employment/human rights and citizenship for sex workers. This argument is made in light of the Coordinated Prostitution Strategy.     

Connecting the gendered door: women, violence and doorwork

This paper explores the emerging role of women who work as 'bouncers', or doorstaff, in the night-time economy and examines how the cultural capital of the female bouncer is connected to the methods utilized to control licensed premises. It is drawn from a study that combined ethnographic observations and interviews in five major UK cities which explored a diverse range of issues such as gendered bodies, femininities and violence; the changing needs of the night-time economy in the UK and the experiences of women engaged in 'non-traditional' occupations. In this paper, we draw on interview data with one particular category of female door staff; women who share similar histories of exposure to violence and violent cultures, and we examine how their experiential knowledge of violence equips them with the resources to 'work the doors'. Our attention focuses on this group of women, who we refer to as 'The Connected', and examine how they are 'doing gender' when they negotiate violence 'on the door'     

论家庭暴力犯罪领域的两大误区

家庭暴力,尤其是其中的犯罪问题,成为近年来社会关注的焦点,但学界、立法界、司法界对这一问题长期以来在认识上存在两大误区:一是家庭暴力应加大犯罪化进程;二是对家庭暴力犯罪的处罚应与其它暴力犯罪一视同仁。论文从法律社会学、犯罪学、刑法学、伦理学、法史学等多学科的视角论证了当前我国的家庭暴力的犯罪化不宜过于宽泛,同时由于某些既定的家庭暴力犯罪重于其他暴力犯罪,故应从重处罚。     

Mothering and everyday life during and in the aftermath of domestic violence among women with immigrant backgrounds in Norway

This paper focuses on how immigrant women experience and negotiate their everyday life with children prior to and after leaving a violent partner. Twenty‐three women staying at domestic violence and abuse shelters with their children were interviewed about their experiences with assistance services and their everyday life with their children. At the time of the interviews, most of the women were legally separated or divorced and were either living in or in touch daily with shelters. In this paper, we look at some of the challenges that women face when exposed to violence in a relationship that involves children. Being exposed to violence from a partner raises a number of economic, practical, and emotional concerns, both prior to and after leaving. For the mothers in our study, maintaining a regular routine is key to making the children feel safe in an unpredictable setting. For many, economic dependence on the partner is replaced with economic dependence on assistance services after leaving the partner. Services must recognize that providing help to mothers who have left a violent partner constitutes more than just practical support but is crucial for mothers' ability to re‐establish a predictable everyday life with their children.     

Responding to Adolescent Violence in the Home – A Community Mental Health Approach

Family violence perpetrated by adults is increasingly understood as a health issue, and we argue that this pertains even more strongly to violence by adolescents. The co-dependence of the parent–child bond, lack of maturity in the adolescent, and often related issues of disability or mental illness make these young people both complex and also vulnerable. This research paper reviews the current literature relating to adolescent violence in the home, identifies known best practice, and evaluates the importance of taking a family-focused, therapeutic approach to adolescent family violence, in place of a punitive one. It describes the use of a co-design workshop to unpack gaps in service provision and develop a potential family focused model of care to address the needs both of young people who use violence, and their families. The findings indicate that an inclusive family approach is a key element in addressing adolescent violence in the home across a spectrum of behaviours and mental health care needs. The use of a coordinated, family-inclusive response through mental health care services is recommended to address the complexity of this issue, as well as to provide support both to adolescents and to their families and carers.     

Risking safety and rights: online sex work,crimes and ‘blended safety repertoires’

It has been well established that those working in the sex industry are at various risks of violence and crime depending on where they sell sex and the environments in which they work. What sociological research has failed to address is how crime and safety have been affected by the dynamic changing nature of sex work given the dominance of the internet and digital technologies, including the development of new markets such as webcamming. This paper reports the most comprehensive findings on the internet‐based sex market in the UK demonstrating types of crimes experienced by internet‐based sex workers and the strategies of risk management that sex workers adopt, building on our article in the British Journal of Sociology in 2007. We present the concept of ‘blended safety repertoires’ to explain how sex workers, particularly independent escorts, are using a range of traditional techniques alongside digitally enabled strategies to keep themselves safe. We contribute a deeper understanding of why sex workers who work indoors rarely report crimes to the police, reflecting the dilemmas experienced. Our findings highlight how legal and policy changes which seek to ban online adult services advertising and sex work related content within online spaces would have direct impact on the safety strategies online sex workers employ and would further undermine their safety. These findings occur in a context where aspects of sex work are quasi‐criminalized through the brothel keeping legislation. We conclude that the legal and policy failure to recognize sex work as a form of employment, contributes to the stigmatization of sex work and prevents individuals working together. Current UK policy disallows a framework for employment laws and health and safety standards to regulate sex work, leaving sex workers in the shadow economy, their safety at risk in a quasi‐legal system. In light of the strong evidence that the internet makes sex work safer, we argue that decriminalisation as a rights based model of regulation is most appropriate.