Female Athletes' Motives and Experiences During the Gay Games

This study examines female athletes' motives for participation in Gay Games IV, and their experiences during the Games. The participants (N = 132) acknowledged traditional sport motives as well as social, self-enhancement, and political motives for participation in the Gay Games. Positive aspects of these athletes' experiences at the Games included having a sense of belonging, pride, and community. Meeting, competing with, and being near other lesbian, gay, and bisexual athletes also were important motives and outcomes of participation in this event. Almost all of the athletes described positive experiences at the Games. The experiences expressed by these athletes show the affirming emotional and psychological impact of participation in an inclusive sport environment. Overall, while many of these athletes noted sport highlights in describing their experiences, the social and personal development were voiced more consistently and frequently.     

Beyond the state: Conceptualizing protection in community settings

In the last two decades, the child welfare system has undergone a series of dramatic changes. We have moved from a broad concern for the social welfare of children and families to a restricted focus on detecting, investigating and assessing instances of child physical and sexual abuse and neglect. Spiraling reports of suspected or actual abuse and neglect, higher caseloads, reduced resources and lack of support for both families and workers, have all contributed to narrowing the focus of contemporary child welfare to one more aptly characterized as child protection. Child protection discourse is concerned with the nature and extent of state intervention into family life for the purpose of protecting children at risk of harm. While much attention has been given to boundaries and procedures for state intervention, it is less common to critically examine the actual activities involved in protection of children. An exception to this is the feminist scholarship on the topic, illustrating that protection is very much a gendered activity entailing the scrutiny of women's mothering practices and often associated with mother-blame. In this paper, another dimension to protection activity is explicated, namely that which occurs in a community setting. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a community agency that serves young mothers, we document its implications in 'child protection' processes and its markedly different approach to protection from formal child welfare agencies. Given the community agency's emphasis on supportive services to mothers, we turn a critical eye on usual conceptions of protection, where it occurs, and how it is accomplished.     

Mothering and child protection practice: rethinking risk assessment

In recent years, across North America and the UK, child protective service agencies have increasingly begun to rely on bureaucratic, technocratic, and regulatory mechanisms for detecting and managing abuse and neglect. Coupled with a shift from concern for the general social welfare of children to a heightened preoccupation with risk or dangerousness to children, risk assessment systems are becoming integral to child protection practice.
Though risk assessment systems aim to enhance the effectiveness of child protection investigations and service provision, as well as filter out high risk cases from the rest, such systems may foster and reproduce often concealed relations of gender, race, and class. This paper presents a review of the risk assessment trend in child welfare, its general objectives, and some criticisms raised to date. Through a feminist analysis of the social construction of mothering, we re-examine risk assessment. We argue that the risk assessment trend has the potential to entrench oppressive relations of gender, race, and class in child welfare practice with mothers. We suggest that an approach to risk assessment which incorporates a 'mothering narrative' might offer a more thorough evaluation of the conditions that shape the context within which risk to children emerges.     

Unresolved issues in the forensic use of DNA profiling

The enormous amount of genetic diversity in humans allows for a powerful form of individual identification. This “DNA profiling”; is based on the fact that sites within the human genome have variable numbers of tandem repeats (VNTRs) and has been hailed in forensic sciences as the greatest discovery since fingerprinting. The techniques involved are virtually the same as those used in all molecular biology laboratories. A major difference however is that in forensic science DNA samples can be less than ideal in both quality and quantity. Furthermore, in basic molecular biology the origin of the sample is known while in forensic testing it is not. Thus, the challenge is to reconcile a “match”; between a crime scene DNA sample and one from a suspect(s). Presently, a debate exists regarding the use of the unmodified product rule versus a more conservative ceiling principle approach to calculate the probability of a coincidentally matching DNA profiles. The latter was endorsed in a recently published report by the prestigious National Research Council but has not received widespread support from testing laboratories. Further exacerbating the debate over how much weight should be attached to DNA profile evidence is a lack of widely accepted standards for forensic laboratories especially in the areas of proficiency testing, publication of error rates and laboratory personnel certification.