Absence Of Women Research Articles

“Quicker than a consultation at the hairdressers”: abortion and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008

During the passage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, abortion amendments were debated in both Houses of Parliament. Analysis of the parliamentary divisions reveals that the majority of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs went through the progressive lobby while the majority of Conservatives voted for the more restrictive positions. Arguments for women's descriptive representation which rest on substantive representation – those that link the presence of women representatives with policies that are “for women” – appear, in this case seriously questioned, as party is found to trump sex. By analyzing parliamentary debate contributions (participation and content) in addition to parliamentary votes, and in both Houses of the UK Parliament, this article reconsiders the role of the sex of our representatives. Not only do women over-participate in the division lobbies and vote in a more liberal fashion than their male colleagues, debate contribution analysis suggests that women MPs' and Peers' interventions are substantively different from men's. Accordingly, we maintain that whilst women's absence from Parliament might not have affected the legislative outcome in 2008, their presence was critical to the way in which the issue of abortion was discussed. It is women representatives who center women in debates about abortion, conceive of it in terms of women's rights, and seek to protect women from reforms that would constrain their access to abortion and might force them to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

Bringing Women’s Carceral Experiences into the “New Punitiveness” Fray

The last decade produced a revival in comparative penal research, most of which focuses on explaining aggregate-level changes in imprisonment rates. In this paper, we highlight the absence of women in this research and we shift the focus from aggregate imprisonment rates to women’s prison experiences, arguing that these experiences are the best indicators of the post-modern penal era. Using both survey and interview data, we examine women’s perceptions of control over their carceral lives in California, England, and the Netherlands. We find similar prison experiences explain perceptions of control across all three regimes, but regime differences ultimately produce very different outcomes for these women.

Magnetic resonance imaging correlates of first-episode psychosis in young adult male patients: combined analysis of grey and white matter

Several patterns of grey and white matter changes have been separately described in young adults with first-episode psychosis. Concomitant investigation of grey and white matter densities in patients with first-episode psychosis without other psychiatric comorbidities that include all relevant imaging markers could provide clues to the neurodevelopmental hypothesis in schizophrenia. We recruited patients with first-episode psychosis diagnosed according to the DSM-IV-TR and matched controls. All participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis and mean diffusivity voxel-based analysis (VBA) were used for grey matter data. Fractional anisotropy and axial, radial and mean diffusivity were analyzed using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) for white matter data. We included 15 patients and 16 controls. The mean diffusivity VBA showed significantly greater mean diffusivity in the first-episode psychosis than in the control group in the lingual gyrus bilaterally, the occipital fusiform gyrus bilaterally, the right lateral occipital gyrus and the right inferior temporal gyrus. Moreover, the TBSS analysis revealed a lower fractional anisotropy in the first-episode psychosis than in the control group in the genu of the corpus callosum, minor forceps, corticospinal tract, right superior longitudinal fasciculus, left middle cerebellar peduncle, left inferior longitudinal fasciculus and the posterior part of the fronto-occipital fasciculus. This analysis also revealed greater radial diffusivity in the first-episode psychosis than in the control group in the right corticospinal tract, right superior longitudinal fasciculus and left middle cerebellar peduncle. The modest sample size and the absence of women in our series could limit the impact of our results. Our results highlight the structural vulnerability of grey matter in posterior areas of the brain among young adult male patients with first-episode psychosis. Moreover, the concomitant greater radial diffusivity within several regions already revealed by the fractional anisotropy analysis supports the idea of a late myelination in patients with first-episode psychosis.

Organizational Culture in an Academic Health Center

Implementing cultural change and aligning organizational cultures could enhance innovation, quality, safety, and job satisfaction. The authors conducted this mixed-methods study to assess academic physician-scientists' perceptions of the current and preferred future organizational culture at a university medical school and its partner health system. In October 2010, the authors surveyed academic physicians and scientists jointly employed by the University of Oxford and its local, major partner health system. The survey included the U.S. Veterans Affairs Administration's 14-item Competing Values Framework instrument and two extra items prompting respondents to identify their substantive employer and to provide any additional open-ended comments. Of 436 academic physicians and scientists, 170 (39%) responded. Of these, 69 (41%) provided open-ended comments. Dominant hierarchical culture, moderate rational and team cultures, and underdeveloped entrepreneurial culture characterized the health system culture profile. The university profile was more balanced, with strong rational and entrepreneurial cultures, and moderate-to-strong hierarchical and team cultures. The preferred future culture (within five years) would emphasize team and entrepreneurial cultures and-to a lesser degree-rational culture, and would deemphasize hierarchical culture. Whereas the university and the health system currently have distinct organizational cultures, academic physicians and scientists would prefer the same type of culture across the two organizations so that both could more successfully pursue the shared mission of academic medicine. Further research should explore strengthening the validity and reliability of the organizational culture instrument for academic medicine and building an evidence base of effective culture change strategies and interventions.

‘Boots for my Sancho’: structural vulnerability among Latin American day labourers in Berkeley, California

This paper addresses the structural vulnerability of Latin American undocumented day labourers in Northern California, as it is expressed in conversations on street corners where they wait for work. The intimate aspects of migrant experience become exemplified in jokes about the Sancho – a hypothetical character who has moved in on a day labourer's family and who enjoys the money he sends home. Joking turns to more serious topics of nostalgia and tensions with family far away, elements that come together with the fears and threats of labour on the corner and affect the way day labourers see themselves. Sexuality is rearticulated in the absence of women and masculinity becomes enmeshed in the contingencies of unregulated work and long-term separation from the people the men support. Together, these elements result in the articulation of threat to the immigrant body itself, which is exemplified by anxieties over homosexual propositions on the corner.

“The Greatest Man-Catcher of All”: The First Female Mounties, the Media, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police1

The arrival of the first female Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers disrupted the highly masculinized image of a police force that was closely connected to ideal Canadian manhood and the formation of the nation. The absence of women from the historical record allowed the figure of the manly and heroic male Mountie to continue its dominance in official, academic, and popular histories of the police force. Both the print and broadcast media were complicit in disseminating these representations. When the first female Mounties were hired in 1974, editorial cartoonists and journalists frequently portrayed them in highly gendered terms that reflected understandings of femininity in operation in broader Canadian society at the time. The RCMP also articulated the arrival of the first female RCMP officers in gendered terms, reinforcing beliefs about manliness and masculinity as essential attributes for police officers. In contrast to these depictions, the oral histories of female RCMP officers present an alternative perspective that challenged and contested these gendered assumptions, establishing female Mounties as equal participants in the policing activities, and the history, of the RCMP on their own terms.

A Gender‐Just Peace? Exploring the Post‐Dayton Peace Process in Bosnia

This article is rooted in the understanding that global ideas of liberal democratic peace and the gendered dynamics of peacebuilding need to be confronted. The aim is to explore the challenges of localizing liberal democratic peace by exploring efforts such as those undertaken by women’s organizations in Bosnia‐Herzegovina to promote a gender‐just peace. The Dayton Peace Accord was the new “social contract” that set the standard for postwar societies. The gendered hierarchies built into this peace and the absence of women in the peace process created a “peace gap” that was gendered despite the fact that gender empowerment has become a standard tool in international peacebuilding. The post‐Dayton peace process was characterized by a conservative backlash which has become a hallmark of women’s postwar experience.

Quantifying the Gender Gap: An Empirical Study of the Underrepresentation of Women in Philosophy

The lack of gender parity in philosophy has garnered serious attention recently. Previous empirical work that aims to quantify what has come to be called “the gender gap” in philosophy focuses mainly on the absence of women in philosophy faculty and graduate programs. Our study looks at gender representation in philosophy among undergraduate students, undergraduate majors, graduate students, and faculty. Our findings are consistent with what other studies have found about women faculty in philosophy, but we were able to add two pieces of new information. First, the biggest drop in the proportion of women in philosophy occurs between students enrolled in introductory philosophy classes and philosophy majors. Second, this drop is mitigated by the presence of more women philosophy faculty.

Karen Brown and Daniel Gilfoyle (eds), Healing the Herds: Disease Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine, Ecology and History Series (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010), pp. x + 299, £22.50, paperback, ISBN: 978-0-8214-1885-7.

Karen Brown and Daniel Gilfoyle (eds), Healing the Herds: Disease Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine, Ecology and History Series (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010), pp. x + 299, £22.50, paperback, ISBN: 978-0-8214-1885-7.

AYAM BATINO LAH BAKUKUAK: OTONOMI DAERAH DAN KETERLIBATAN PEREMPUAN DALAM PEMERINTAHAN NAGARI DI SUMATERA BARAT

This paperdiscuss the local autonomy process in West Sumatra, especially regarding the “babaliak ka nagari” (return tunagari) process and the role of women in the new nagari formation. The existence of nagari has been influence by several external forces including colonialism, Islam and the modern state. The absence of woman in the nagari government reflects the strength of Islamic and colonial influences and policy of central government on Minangkabau adat and nagari. The local autonomy process give chances and opportunities for women to participate and become involve in the local governance. In the new provincial and regency regulations women are one component of village representative council,then,thedirect local election system makes it possible for women to become a village mayor. Keywords : Local autonomy, role of women and nagari government Copyright © 2011 by Kafa`ah All right reserved DOI : 10.15548/jk.v1i2.73

‘Welcome singing sungura queens’: Cultural studies and the promotion of female musicians in a Zimbabwean male-dominated music genre

ABSTRACT It has been repeated over the years that Zimbabwean popular music is a male-domain and the best-selling sungura genre is nearly exclusively composed by male musicians. Female musicians have opted for the socially acceptable gospel music, avoiding the secular sungura for fear of stigmatisation. Many other reasons have been provided to explain women's virtual absence from the sungura genre, some of them sound, and yet others purely sexist and ludicrous. Using Cultural Studies and critical political economy approaches, which seek to both critique and transform the current gender demographics of sungura band leadership, vocalism and monopoly of instrument playing, this paper attempts to provide ways of introducing and nurturing female sungura musicians into the recording and performing industry. Such introduction of female sungura personalities is not only to add to the exciting diversity of creative sungura suppliers, but to expand the discursive and democratic spaces in which women can self-articulate, ironically within a medium that has been accused of negatively stereotyping and objectifying them.

Addressing girls’ challenges of water and sanitation in a rural schooling context in Swaziland

The Briefing reports on a study that investigates the problems experienced by girls as a result of the lack of water and sanitation in two rural schools in Swaziland using a Gender and Development (GAD) feminist theory to understand the genderspecific challenges faced by girls. The rationale of the study is to determine the extent of girls’ access to education amid the daily problems they have and to understand how schools address the problems. Interviews were conducted with 16 participants comprising, 11 girls, aged between 14 and 17, plus five women including a deputy principal and a principal of the schools, who live in the same communities as the girls, about access to water and sanitation and its impact on girls’ school attendance. Findings of the study indicate that the state of water and sanitation in both schools was not satisfactory. Girls’ rights to health, equal opportunities in education and a decent life were violated as a result of the schools’ inability to access clean water and sanitation at school. A correlation between poor access to water and sanitation and girls’ school attendance was identified. Girls’ and boys’ participation in education was unequal as a result of the lack of access to water and sanitation and sexism when it came to who fetches water at school. The Briefing concludes that in a patriarchal society where men hold the power and make many of the decisions, girls’ and women's gender subordination is often not questioned, and access to water and sanitation is severely compromised due to the absence of women and girls’ participation. Gender equality can be enhanced by giving women voice and by putting them in positions of decision making.

Women and change in Cyprus: feminisms and gender in conflict

The gendered aspect of the national question has never been raised or discussed publicly. Women’s issues or viewpoints are considered unimportant. The dominance of the ‘national question’ has left no space for Cypriot women to become involved in their own struggles for women’s rights, liberation from patriarchy and to acquire public visibility. Cypriot women have been trapped in a nationalist patriarchal agenda and later in party politics, which can explain the lack of feminist activism and the absence of women’s independent movements. This, however, has slowly started to change

“A woman's hide”: The presentation of female characters in Michael Boyd's The Histories

In 2006–2008 Michael Boyd staged the octology of Shakespeare's history plays. These plays are famous for the relative absence of women and Boyd's cycle amply illustrated this: out of 264 performed roles only 31 were female, requiring only five actresses in a company of 34 players. A negative approach to women in the history plays is evident both in the texts and criticism of the plays to date. The women of the first tetralogy are powerful, violent figures whose behaviour at times borders on the monstrous; in contrast, the women of the second tetralogy are not military, political or monstrous but are marginalized and dismissed as either silent crying queens or low whores. However, this approach to women in the history plays is insufficient when thinking about Boyd's productions. Although superficially strikingly different, the presentation of women through the octology can be seen as a single unfolding development. This article demonstrates that when read in chronological order of events, the presentation of women is a development of strength, from voiceless oppression in Richard II to anguished agency in Richard III, rather than a descent to disenfranchisement.

Like Red Tulips at Springtime: Understanding the Absence of Female Martyrs in Afghanistan

In an era where female suicide terrorism is on the rise in conflict regions such as the Middle East, the North Caucasus, and South Asia, why has Afghanistan been largely immune to this trend? Why do some violent groups use female suicide terrorism and others avoid it? This is a critical question for policy makers and analysts attempting to understand a dangerous terrorist phenomenon and how it may evolve in Afghanistan. During the anti-Soviet jihad, narratives were woven of men and women marching through the mountains of Nuristan to “offer their blood for the Islamic revolution like red tulips at springtime.” But today, women are wholly absent from the Taliban and their jihad in Afghanistan. This article analyzes, in particular, the absence of women in Taliban martyrdom operations. There are three primary findings from this study that explain the low propensity for female suicide bombers in Afghanistan. First, a permissive social and geographic environment in Afghanistan gives insurgents freedom of mobility and a resistance capacity characterized by a reduced necessity for female suicide bombers; second, the capacity of a fiercely conservative culture restricts female participation in both Afghan society and within insurgent organizations; and third, the pronounced absence of a female culture of martyrdom limits women from participation in insurgent actions and narratives.

From Peasants to Labourers: Ukrainian and Belarusan Immigration from the Russian Empire to Canada (review)

Reviewed by: From Peasants to Labourers: Ukrainian and Belarusan Immigration from the Russian Empire to Canada Orest Martynowych (bio) Vadim Kukushkin . From Peasants to Labourers: Ukrainian and Belarusan Immigration from the Russian Empire to Canada. McGill-Queen's University Press. 2007. xvi, 284. $80.00 Most historians still assume that emigration from the Russian empire to Canada was confined to Jews, Germans, Mennonites, and Doukhobors who fled political and religious oppression. In his well-researched and path-breaking monograph, the author challenges such assumptions and demonstrates that most of the Russian subjects who crossed the Atlantic between 1905 and 1914 were Ukrainian and Belarusan peasant sojourners attracted by short-term economic opportunities in Canada's resource frontier and eastern urban centres. Based primarily on an analysis of untapped personal migrant files in the archive of the Imperial Russian Consulate (the Li-Ra-Ma Collection) at Library and Archives Canada, the monograph also draws on collections in Canadian church archives, in the Library of Congress, and in Russian and Belarusan state archives and libraries. Russian-, Ukrainian-, and Belarusan-language newspapers and periodicals published in the tsarist empire and in North America, and an array of studies on late imperial Russian, Canadian, and migration history, supplement the author's archival sources. Kukushkin argues that the empire's western borderlands beyond the Dnieper River basin were 'the easternmost segment of the Atlantic migration system.' Acquired after the partitions of Poland, these lands retained cultural and commercial ties with the West. When rapid population growth, hereditary partible land tenure, low levels of urbanization and industrialization, poor soil in Belarus, and the dominance of noble-owned capitalist estates in Ukraine produced land hunger and few job opportunities, Ukrainian and Belarusan peasants chose migration to North America rather than seasonal labour in Russian cities or homesteading in Siberia. The westward flow of migration was strongest from Grodno province in Belarus and Podolia province in Ukraine, which supplied Canada with more migrants than any other province in the empire. Significantly, a majority of the Podolian migrants came from Kamenets, a border district adjacent to those Galician and Bukovynian counties where Ukrainian (Ruthenian) mass emigration from Austria to Canada was most intense. The Canadian government made no effort to attract Slavic homesteaders from the Russian empire, but after 1905 railway, mining, and steel interests recruited unskilled workers. Consequently, Ukrainians and Belarusans came to Canada as migrant labourers, often after slipping [End Page 585] across porous Russian borders illegally. Most migrants were small peasant property owners in their twenties and thirties, over half of them married and eager to return to their wives and children with a nest egg. They identified themselves as 'Russians,' spoke a 'Russianized patois,' spurned organizations established by Ukrainians from Austria, and returned in large numbers to serve the tsar during the Great War. Kukushkin contrasts Ukrainian migrants from Russia with immigrants from Austria. He correctly stresses that the latter had benefited from cultural autonomy in Galicia and Buikovyna and were accompanied by a thin layer of the intelligentsia who played a leading role in national mobilization and community building. However, he overstates the extent to which Ukrainians from Austria were homesteaders looking for land; after 1905 a majority of the Ukrainians who left Austria for Canada were also migrant labourers without wives and children. The author also provides an illuminating discussion of the culture of sojourning and its repercussions. Rowdiness and profligate behaviour were common among male migrants, and the absence of women, children, and families made community institutions, including Orthodox and Baptist congregations, ineffective and short-lived. Socialist sojourners were more concerned with revolution and land redistribution in Russia than with Canadian labour politics. Their organizations were shaken when many activists returned home after the fall of tsarism, and collapsed after Canadian authorities, who exaggerated Bolshevik influence among the migrants, cracked down on the Canadian left in late 1918. Although return migration, intermarriage, and the absorption of some leftists into the powerful Ukrainian Labour-Farmer Temple Association diminished the size of Canada's 'Russian' colonies, in the early 1920s up to twenty-five thousand Russian-born Ukrainians and nine thousand Belarusans still remained in the dominion where they maintained a 'Russian' identity and...

Would Empowering Women Initiate the Demographic Transition in Least Developed Countries?

We examine the pathways by which several dimensions of gender inequality affect fertility and growth in a model with nonunitary households. This approach allows for a corner regime with maximum fertility, the absence of women from the labor market, and gender inequality in education. Policies to ease countries out of the corner regime are promoting mothers’ survival and curbing infant mortality, while reducing the social and institutional gender gap (SIGG) is useless. In the interior regime, parents consider the impact of their children's education on their future marital bargaining power, and reducing the SIGG lowers fertility and fosters growth.

Entrepreneurs in the new economy: Immigration and sex effects in the Montreal metropolitan area

The recent literature on women’s entrepreneurship shows that they are underrepresented in the main stream economy when compared to their male counterparts, a phenomenon typically observed in other urban contexts. Approximately 30% of the entrepreneurs in the Montreal metropolitan area are women, active in a variety of sectors of the general economy. Their underrepresentation is still greater in the new economy, that is, those sectors that are knowledge-based and/or specialized in information technologies and communications. In this article, we examine the place of female entrepreneurs in the larger economy and in the new economy as related to their immigrant and/or ethnic origins. We seek in this paper to establish a comparative analysis of the situation of women entrepreneurs in immigrant-origin groups, focusing our attention on both the presence of women in entrepreneurial positions and the differential impact associated with membership in an immigrant-origin group. Based on data derived from Scott's Directory of 2007, we first determined an operational definition of the new economy and then analyzed the data from the perspective of sex and ethnic/immigrant origin. New economy enterprises represent approximately 12% of businesses in the Montreal metropolitan area, the majority of which are of the knowledge-based variety, and there is a relative, statistically significant absence of women from such enterprises. At the same time, there is a significantly greater presence of women drawn from minority groups, that is, from groups other than the Anglo-Canadian and French-Canadian dominant groups.

Studying Political Representation: A Comparative-Gendered Approach

How does a comparative politics of gender improve our understanding of political representation? I map the existing feminist literature on this topic, which asks questions like why there are so few women elected to political office, whether women in politics represent women as a group, and how the presence or absence of women in politics affects voter perceptions and opinions. I then consider how scholars—both feminist and non-feminist—might generate new insights on political representation by expanding what is thought of as a “case” and what is meant by the term “gender.” I recommend increasing the scope of comparison by (1) opening up the definition of a case to include a broader range of units and events and (2) connecting the study of a single unit to patterns generated by the study of other similar units. I suggest moving away from equating women with gender by exploring (1) relations between women and men and (2) the impact of masculinities and femininities on the conduct of political life. While developed in relation to research on representation, this approach offers broader advice for capturing the diverse and gendered nature of political dynamics observed around the world.

Women debate the absence of women in debate

Women debate the absence of women in debate