Power Of Women Research Articles

Women in power

Women occupy a small minority of elite positions in contemporary society. In addition, the minority of women who gain access to influential elite positions are often assumed to have their actual influence circumscribed by mechanisms of marginalization. However, systematic evidence to support the latter view is relatively scarce. We apply social network analysis to study sex differences in local elite networks in Sweden, and show empirically that, despite the fact that women are the minority group across all elite dimensions, female elites uphold the same ‘structural status’ as male elites.

Gender and child sensitive social protection in South Africa

Drawing from a 2010 study of women receiving the Child Support Grant in an urban area of South Africa, this article discusses the link between social protection, women's empowerment and the well-being of children. It appears that the Grant enhances women's power and control over household decision-making in financial matters, general household spending and child well-being. At the same time, the data show that women continue to bear the greatest burden of care in the household and that these responsibilities significantly heighten gender inequalities. Therefore, while the Grant has benefits for child well-being and women's empowerment, it cannot on its own transform unequal and unjust social relations of power. It should be working in concert with other public programmes not only to focus on children's needs but also to strive for gender equality for poor women.

Signification, common knowledge, and womanhood: The significs of Lady Victoria Welby and beyond

Lady Victoria Welby was born to an era when women were challenging their station as summarily subject to the discretion of the dominant male proprietors. The furtive soil of women's liberation had been enriched by the quill and fountain of epic female figures such as Abigail Adams (1744–1818, First Lady of the United States of America between, 1797–1801, promoted property rights for women), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797 – Vindication on the Rights of Women, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935 – The Home: Its Work and Influence). The Victorian period witnessed the burgeoning of a female authority in public consciousness with vigorous support from public figures such as John Stewart Mill (1806–1873 – The Subjection of Women), who openly rejected inequality between sexes, and John Ruskin (1819–1900), who urged women to “abandon trivial feminine pursuits in order to act as a moral force in countering the ills of society” (Ruskin, Of Queen's Gardens, Sesame and Lillie, 1865). It is, therefore, not astonishing that Lady Victoria Welby's authority among semioticians emerged from her endeavours interpreting scriptures. Moral gatekeeping was fast becoming a female authority widely respected, though most prominently within the confines of the private sphere. Women were socially groomed to manage the family's moral code, shape children's character, and nurture the husband's honorable conduct (Meyrowitz 1985: 200). However, respect for women's particular authority and power within the private sphere was limited and remained ancillary to the dominance of the masculine paradigm. Though common sensibility has changed toward women's mobility within the public sphere, the socio-operative dynamics of power between genders remains asymmetrical, the scale tipped decidedly in favour of the masculine domain. Given that the social world operates to a significant degree within the ambit of symbolic elocutions, there has never been a better moment in history to apply Lady Victoria Welby's theory of significs to examine the contemporary subordination of women, and Susan Petrilli's publication of Welby's correspondence is nothing short of timely.

Security and the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment: Findings from a Thematic Synthesis of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research

Security and the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment: Findings from a Thematic Synthesis of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research

Women in Power in Post-Communist Parliaments. Edited by Marilyn Reuschemeyer and Sharon l. Wolchik. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. xiv, 292 pp. $65.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Women in Power in Post-Communist Parliaments. Edited by Marilyn Reuschemeyer and Sharon l. Wolchik. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. xiv, 292 pp. $65.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Leveraging changing gender norms to address concurrency: focus group findings from South African university students

Background This study aims to complement recent research on sexual concurrency in South Africa by providing a deeper understanding of women's roles and motivations for engaging in and accepting their partners' concurrency. Our goal is to inform the implementation of more effective interventions that embrace the powerful role that women can play in healthy sexual decision-making in consensual relationships. We conducted 12 focus groups with male and female students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Drawing on a subset of those focus groups, we examined the gender norms underpinning the apparently widespread acceptance of concurrent sexual partnerships. Our analysis focusses on women's attitudes and behaviours towards concurrency - from both men's and women's perspectives - with a goal of identifying opportunities to engage women as agents of change in sexual partnership patterns in their communities. Our findings indicate that: (1) concurrent sexual partnerships were the norm among male students and increasingly common among female students; (2) material gain and changes in women's perceptions of their roles and power in relationships were the primary female motives for concurrency; (3) peer pressure, a perceived innate need and a fear of being alone were the primary male motives for concurrency; (4) women often know that their partners are cheating and stay with them because they believe they are the most important partner, for financial reasons, or because they worry they will not find another partner. HIV prevention interventions in populations where concurrency is common would benefit from emphasising women's role and power in taking greater control of their own sexual decision-making in consensual and nonviolent relationships.

The Role of Networks, Mentors, and the Law in Overcoming Barriers to Organizational Leadership for Women with Children

The 2012 election brought headlines such as "Another 'Year of Women' in Congress." Although the number of women in the highest legislative offices increased, their numbers are still significantly lower than those of men. Fewer than 100 women hold office in both houses of Congress. Corporate America similarly reflects significantly low female leadership numbers. For example, "fewer than 20% of finance industry directors and executives are women, and [there are] no women leading the 20 biggest U.S. banks and securities firms." Women make up nearly half the workforce and hold 60% of bachelor degrees, yet they hold only 14% of senior executive positions at Fortune 500 companies and 40% of managerial positions overall. These figures have persisted unchanged since 2005. Subtle yet entrenched forms of gender discrimination have clearly stalled women's career progress, and more must be done to rectify these disparities. The differences in gender outcome may be a function of demand-side (work-related) and supply-side (worker-related) characteristics. These include personal characteristics, human and social capital, and developmental, interpersonal, and situational factors. Gender overlaps with multiple group memberships based on family status, race, religion, national origin, and disability. These group memberships also influence women's status and power dynamics in the family, the workplace, and in other communities. The interplay of these factors makes gender-based discrimination an interesting phenomenon to explore. Having dependents is an important family status variable in the larger scheme of social differentiators that account for sex differences in career-related outcomes. In this study, we are interested in whether men or women benefit more from having access to networks when they have dependents. Prior studies have shown that mentoring and networking are major components of professional development that lead to career advancement. We are also interested in whether the outcome differs for those men and women who report having mentors.

The Inconsistency of the Chivalric Community: The Grail Quest and Woman's Power in Malory's Morte d'Arthur

The Inconsistency of the Chivalric Community: The Grail Quest and Woman's Power in Malory's Morte d'Arthur

AMY N. VINES. Women's Power in Late Medieval Romance

AMY N. VINES. Women's Power in Late Medieval Romance

Cognitive mediation of women's sexual decision making: the influence of alcohol, contextual factors, and background variables.

As a result of the current STI epidemic, women are at particularly high risk. Sexual relations with men are the greatest source of risk for women in contracting HIV or other STIs. Because the male condom is still the most effective means of protection against these diseases, prevention efforts for women need to concentrate on the ability to effectively negotiate condom use. To date, research has primarily addressed the role of knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about condoms in predicting their use rather than the situation within which individuals make sexual decisions. Our first goal is to present a theoretical model focusing on the situational influences and cognitive processes occurring at the time of a woman's sexual interaction with a man. The underlying premise for this model is that sexual decision making is mediated by a series of primary and secondary appraisals during the sexual encounter. Our second goal is to discuss specific contextual influences on women's cognitions during the process leading to sexual decision making. We review the literature on the effects of alcohol consumption, relationship status, and sexual arousal on the cognitive appraisal process, as well as on sexual decision making. Finally, although our main interest is the specific situation and context, we also review the influence of background factors and experiences that are especially relevant to the cognitive appraisal process, including alcohol expectancies, sexual victimization, sexuality-related characteristics, relationship-related characteristics, and other personality traits. Examining women's cognitive processes at the time of a sexual encounter can yield information that will enhance women's power to protect themselves against HIV and other STIs.

Young Married Women in the Russian Countryside: Women's Networks, Communication and Power

This essay explores the experiences of recently married young women living in rural Russia in the village of Karsun in the Ul’yanovsk Oblast’. It analyses the connections between women in rural communities looking at social networks and the power relations inherent within them. The ways in which forms of power among and between women (as well as between women and men) impact on young women's agency are critically appraised through an analysis of what this essay terms forms of ‘women's power’. The essay also shows how women's discussions of their experiences reflect the problems that the perceived physical and emotional absences of men present for younger married women and their attempts to develop forms of autonomy.

Women's Centers: Even More Relevant and Necessary Today

The University of the Pacific opened its Women's Center in 2010, some 50 years after the University of Minnesota had originated the concept. A year earlier, the 160-year-old traditionally male-dominated university had welcomed its first woman president, Dr. Pamela A. Eibeck, an engineer. The oldest private college in California, the University of the Pacific was the first school to receive a charter from the newly formed state. “Women students at Pacific have a long and storied history of leadership and success across the disciplines, and particularly in the humanities,” said Corrie Martin, director of the Women's Resource Center. “I think our relatively small size and personalized education model promoted women student success in the past.” Martin spoke about the power of Women's Centers to transform schools at the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) conference held in Phoenix in March 2012. Prior to 2010, the school “addressed women's issues in an ad hoc, grassroots way,” said Martin. “Individual faculty, students and administrators would identify problems or issues and seek to investigate and rally support for institutional change or response.” Sometimes they just went ahead and did the job themselves, like the dean of women who made condoms available in the residence halls. Thanks to a new female VP for student life who's a “visionary administrator,” and because of “critical gender-based challenges” (a brutal sexual assault on campus) creating the Women's Center was put on the fast track. The center's mandate is to “provide leadership and a collaborative space for organizing campus-wide efforts to understand and improve the academic and professional success of its women students, faculty and staff.” Martin's position is funded by the liberal arts unit and student life. The center organizes groups, provides a meeting place and resource library and offers internships and service learning opportunities, as well as collaborates with local, community-based organizations. Its objective is to “remain in the ‘mainstream’ of campus culture, collaborating with everybody, while effectively leading and mobilizing the campus community to recognize and address issues that might otherwise remain marginal and under-prioritized,” she said. Some would argue that a Women's Center, especially one that was just launched, is unnecessary when the student body is more than half female. Martin firmly disagrees. “I do think that the need for campus-based Women's Centers is as great as ever and will continue to be so for decades to come,” she said. “The increase in and dominance of women students earning all degrees belie entrenched inequities and roadblocks to actual equity in higher education for women.” Women's Centers are able to uncover and address the subtle incidents of discrimination. Speaking at an annual conference promoting girls' achievement in STEM, Martin asked some 80 middle and high school girls if they had ever heard or been told they couldn't do or study something because of their gender. “Nearly every girl raised her hand,” she said. “It was a sobering reminder to me about how much work needs to be done.” At Pacific, the concept of a Women's Center was already under discussion when the two catalysts, the new VP and the sexual assault, made it a top priority. If there is no Women's Center committee, start with the women's commission of faculty, administrators and students. Focus groups will help you refine the message. Track students you've worked with and incorporate their stories. “Gender equity and justice is the responsibility and work of every sector of campus,” said Martin. “It's enormously helpful to have a catalyst like the Women's Center to be able to provide some limited resources, energy and focus to this long-term project.” Determine how you'll strategically partner with other groups so all benefit. Seek out and form deep partnerships across campus but avoid losing the historical center. This year's political rhetoric has revealed that gender discrimination is still alive and well, and the academy is not immune. Women's Centers are about change; in today's political climate, they're needed more than ever. “The day that women do not have to plan their lives and families around the inhumane limitations of their academic workplace and schools is the day we won't need Women's Centers any longer,” she said. Contact: Martin1@pacific.edu or 209.932.2815

Security and the Pathways of Women's Empowerment: Findings from a Thematic Synthesis of the Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research

Security and the Pathways of Women's Empowerment: Findings from a Thematic Synthesis of the Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research

The Queens of Avalon: William Forbush's Arthurian Antidote

William Byron Forbush founded The Queens of Avalon in 1894 as a parallel organization to his Knights of the Round Table, to construct courtly ladies worthy of his chivalric knights. This essay examines the group's interpretation of Arthurian legend, founding principles, rituals and material culture in the context of Forbush's own anxieties about 'modern' girls and larger early-twentieth-century discussions of the 'girl problem.' For Forbush, the Queens of Avalon was the perfect 'antidote' to this problem as it returned girls to an idealized medieval past to teach them to perform their 'role in modern chivalry': inspiring and refining knights.

Indonesia. Maskulinitas: Culture, gender and politics in Indonesia. By Marshall Clark. Monash papers on Southeast Asia no. 71. Caulfield: Monash University Press, 2010. Pp. 182. Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Maskulinitas: culture, gender and politics in Indonesia. Monash papers on Southeast Asia no. 71 Caulfield: Monash University Press, 2010. Pp. 182. Notes, Bibliography, Index. In this wide-ranging and intriguing study of Indonesian arts, especially those that appeared during the first 10 years following Suharto's fall, Marshall Clark looks at diverse genres: the novels of Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Ayu Utami; films--some art house, some more popular--by a number of important new directors; and works by a controversial poet, Binhad Nurrohmat. In each case, he asks how men are represented and what we can learn in light of those representations about contemporary Indonesian attitudes toward masculinity. In particular, he wishes to learn whether conventional expectations of the idealised male are undergoing re-evaluation. Has there been any loosening of the screws that keep Indonesian males fastened to a New Order take on gender, wherein men are in control of themselves and everyone else, and women are subservient, supportive and focused on the family? Or to say the same in a different idiom, has the radical questioning that the end of the New Order occasioned reduced the power of Javanist patriarchy and heteronormativity? Clark frequently invokes Bakhtin as he examines materials that deal much more frankly and provocatively with sexuality and 'lower bodily strata' than has been customary in recent Indonesian culture. Like Bakhtin, he celebrates the anti-authoritarian tenor of what comes from the 'marketplace': the way that exchange of all sorts challenges the order and stasis of institutionalised power. Yet there is a risk here, one that Clark does not completely avoid, of taking representations of the lowly or nonnormative as critiques of the high and mighty or the normative, when the point may simply be to emphasise their differences. Pramoedya, certainly, challenged hierarchical assumptions at their foundations. Yet many of Clark's other examples, particularly those from film, are equivocal. As Clark admits, many popular films reflect men's sense of being under threat from assertive feminism. But they do so by reaffirming stereotypes of women's baleful power and retelling tales of men's violent responses. Directors who fall back on these standard tropes may simply, and cynically, exploit young male spectators' taste for such violence. But their films' popularity suggests no rethinking of conventional (and destructive) masculinist attitudes. Clark's claims are modest. …

Mobilizing women's groups for improved maternal and newborn health: Evidence for impact, and challenges for sustainability and scale up

Research conducted over the past decade has shown that community-based interventions can improve the survival and health of mothers and newborns in low- and middle-income countries. Interventions engaging women's groups in participatory learning and action meetings and other group activities, for example, have led to substantial increases in neonatal survival in high-mortality settings. Participatory interventions with women's groups work by providing a forum for communities to develop a common understanding of maternal and neonatal problems, as well as locally acceptable and sustainable strategies to address these. Potential partners for scaling up interventions with women's groups include government community health workers and volunteers, as well as organizations working with self-help groups. It is important to tailor scale-up efforts to local contexts, while retaining fidelity to the intervention, by ensuring that the mobilization of women's groups complements other local programs (e.g. home visits), and by providing capacity building for participatory learning and action methods across a range of nongovernmental organizations and government stakeholders. Research into scale-up mechanisms and effectiveness is needed to inform further implementation, and prospective surveillance of maternal and neonatal mortality in key scale-up sites can provide valuable data for measuring impact and for advocacy. There is a need for further research into the role of participatory interventions with women's groups to improve the quality of health services, health, and nutrition beyond the perinatal period, as well as the role of groups in influencing non-health issues, such as women's decision-making power.

Women Power in Corporate India

Data on Women Directors on the Board of Directors of 166 Indian companies have been collected and analysed for the period 1995 to 2007. Women Directorships on Corporate Boards show an increasing trend in numbers as well as in percentage terms from 29 or 1.66% of all Directorships in 1995 to 67 or 3.63 % of all Directorships in 2007. These percentages are much lower than those for many of the industrially advanced countries for which such data is available.

Comparison of power and EMG during 6-s all-out cycling between young and older women

To investigate the effects of ageing on the neural control strategies governing sprint cycling on a friction-loaded cycle-ergometer, 10 older (aged 70–83yr) and 8 young (aged 19–35yr) healthy women completed seven 6-s all-out cycling trials against varying loads. Root mean square (RMS), median frequency and muscle fibre conduction velocity were determined from the vastus lateralis of the dominant limb during each pedal stroke. Peak power was 43% lower in the older group compared to the younger (p < 0.001) and was accompanied by a significantly lower RMS (p < 0.05). No differences were observed in the other electromyography (EMG) parameters between the groups (p > 0.05). ΔRMS from the first to the sixth second during each trial was found to increase significantly with the development of power output in both groups (p < 0.05). For the first time during an all-out 6-s cycle trial, it has been demonstrated that older women's lower mechanical power output was accompanied by a significantly lower RMS, which indicates a decline in either the number of active of motor units or a reduced discharge rate. Hence, changes in motor units can be regarded as a contributory factor to the decline of muscle power with advancing age. Overall, though, similar neural strategies are adopted in both younger and older populations.

Going beyond the surface: Gendered intra-household bargaining as a social determinant of child health and nutrition in low and middle income countries

A growing body of research highlights the importance of gendered social determinants of child health, such as maternal education and women's status, for mediating child survival. This narrative review of evidence from diverse low and middle-income contexts (covering the period 1970–May 2012) examines the significance of intra-household bargaining power and process as gendered dimensions of child health and nutrition. The findings focus on two main elements of bargaining: the role of women's decision-making power and access to and control over resources; and the importance of household headship, structure and composition. The paper discusses the implications of these findings in the light of lifecycle and intersectional approaches to gender and health. The relative lack of published intervention studies that explicitly consider gendered intra-household bargaining is highlighted. Given the complex mechanisms through which intra-household bargaining shapes child health and nutrition it is critical that efforts to address gender in health and nutrition programming are thoroughly documented and widely shared to promote further learning and action. There is scope to develop links between gender equity initiatives in areas of adult and adolescent health, and child health and nutrition programming. Child health and nutrition interventions will be more effective, equitable and sustainable if they are designed based on gender-sensitive information and continually evaluated from a gender perspective.

The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States (review)

Reviewed by: The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States Joyce A. Berkman Heather Munro Prescott . The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States. Critical Issues in Health and Medicine. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011. xi + 163 pp. $69.00 (cloth, 978-0-8135-5162-3), $22.95 (paperbound, 978-0-8135-5163-0). Heather Munro Prescott provides an engrossing and many-angled account of the origins and development of emergency contraception in the United States through to 2010. This study, chronologically organized and eschewing simplistic categories of friends and foes of emergency contraception, contextualizes the growth of popular and legal approval for emergency contraception within the fluid political history of the nonemergency birth control pill, changing feminist perspectives on hormonally based contraceptives, the anti-abortion backlash to Roe v. Wade, and the complex evolution of U.S. drugs' oversight and regulation. Charting shifts and continuities in public attitudes regarding unwanted pregnancy, Prescott observes how oral contraceptives were promoted to cure the unwanted pregnancy "disease," then reframed as attention expanded to societal causes of unwanted pregnancy; for example, taking into account sexual violence and social inequality, and in the later 1960s counting reproductive self-control as essential to a woman's power to over her own body. Relying on diverse documentation such as congressional hearings, Federal Drug Administration transcripts, National Institute of Health minutes, Planned Parenthood papers, television broadcasts, unpublished individual papers in numerous archives, professional, political and popular journals as well as relevant print and internet scholarship, Prescott builds the case that the consensus that emerged in support of emergency contraception—radical feminist groups antagonistic to decades of male medical and pharmaceutical callousness over women's interests; women of color rightfully suspicious of population control agendas; population and family planners; pharmaceutical and medical professionals—did not come easily. It entailed diligent and creative collaborative outreach and organization even among groups internally divided. It reflected constant medical, feminist, and non feminist reassessment of the risks of emergency contraception relative to the risks of alternative postcoital methods of preventing birth. Crucial to consensus building were conservative successes: Women of diverse races rose up against the stalling of FDA approval for RU 486, against pharmaceutical companies concealing the fact that the regular birth control pill could also be used as a postcoital contraceptive, and against judicial restrictions of access to abortion. Throughout her account Prescott stresses the key role of countless women from the 1960s to the present day who demanded ready access to emergency contraception, ultimately through over-the-counter purchase. She argues that "recent activism on emergency contraception demonstrates how women have continued to use personal histories of their bodies to transform reproductive health research and healthcare policy" (p. 127). Prescott is fully aware that emergency contraception is not a panacea for a woman's well-being. Written from a feminist pro-contraceptive persuasion, her study joins others critical of shallow advocacy of emergency contraception and calls for reproductive justice. She concludes her study by stating that the feminist [End Page 296] health movement and consumer economic initiatives "have thus far been unable to resolve the economic inequalities in the United States that continue to pose an insurmountable barrier to those unable to afford the products of this self-care revolution" (p. 128). Prescott might add that even if this barrier were surmounted, eased availability of emergency contraceptives may well compound female vulnerability to unwanted male sexual overtures if concurrent female sexual autonomy and self-confidence did not also ensue. Prescott's excellent account is not without its limitations, as when she cursorily turns to global developments. Why, for example, did thirty-eight countries provide emergency contraception ahead of the United States? We need fuller understanding of national variables in health care provision and feminist activism as well as greater knowledge of international exchanges and collaborations, since for decades the United States imported much of its contraceptive technology from Europe. Disappointing, too, is Prescott's weak discussion of Supreme Court rulings on privacy rights, especially the three pivotal decisions during the 1970s that involved Bill Baird, no mere "contraceptive salesman" (p. 16). Since Prescott places substantial emphasis on female...