Women In Relation Research Articles

Effectiveness of an online education intervention to enhance student perceptions of Respectful Maternity Care: A quasi-experimental study

BackgroundChildbearing women's relationship with maternity care providers enhance childbirth outcomes. Students need to understand and offer respectful care. ObjectiveEvaluate effectiveness and impact of an online education intervention on nursing students' perceptions towards respectful maternity care during labour and childbirth in Nepal. DesignA quasi-experimental pre-post design was used. ParticipantsA total of 89 Third Year Bachelor of Nursing students (intervention n = 40; control n = 49) from three participating colleges. MethodsStudents completed online pre and post-test surveys using the Students' Perceptions of Respectful Maternity Care scale and questions about impact of the intervention. The intervention group received six hours of education delivered online (three sessions x three weeks). ANCOVA and non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank tests measured effects. ResultsCompared to controls, students in the intervention group reported a significant increase in perceptions towards respectful maternity care (F (1, 86) = 28.19, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.25). Participants reported a good understanding of respectful maternity care (75%), positive views about providing such care (82.5%), and a desire to use their new knowledge in practice (65%). ConclusionRelatively few intervention studies to promote respectful maternity care in students have been published. This brief online intervention improved students' perceptions. The intervention package can be integrated into nursing or midwifery curricula and in-service training. A larger study with longer follow-up is needed to support current findings.

Descriptive study: Affective-sexual profile of men and women with severe mental disorders

ABSTRACT Introduction The affective-sexual relationships of people with severe mental disorders is a topic rarely found in the literature. Objective Present comparative data on affective-sexual lived experiences of men and women diagnosed with major depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Methods Cross-sectional study, through interviews, with 70 people diagnosed with severe mental disorder (major depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder), enrolled in a psychiatric institute in São Paulo-SP/ Brazil. All were rated with some items from two questionnaires: “Socioeconomic” and “Relationship inventory of family, affective and sexual life”. All items were analyzed and compared according to gender. Results The genders groups are not homogeneous regarding diagnosis, age, marital status, professional status, number of children and living with. Men were younger (M = 37; SD = 4.66), singles (N = 32; 89%), prevalence of schizophrenia (N = 30; SD = 83,5%), unemployed (N = 23; 64%), childless and living with family members (N = 34; 94,5%). Older women (M = 48; 4.66), with more diagnostic diversity (N = 9; 26,5% major depression, N = 13; 38% schizophrenia and N = 12; 35,5% bipolar disorder), marital status (N = 8; 24% married, N = 7; 21% separate and N = 18; 53% singles), professional situation (N = 14; 41% retired and N = 19; 56% unemployed), with a child and living with family member (N = 20; 59%) or partners (N = 8; 23,5%) or alone (N = 6; 17,5%). Both genders are similar for race, sexual orientation, education and family income (mostly white, heterosexual, incomplete high school, catholic, and average family income (N= 3.750 reais; SD = 1451.129). Men had earlier onset of sexual life and with greater diversity among the types of partners in the first experience and a greater practice and current frequency of masturbation. Women had a later on sexual life and with boyfriends; and lesser practice and frequency of masturbation. In the items: if you ever dated, how long it lasted and the degree of intimacy, men and women showed similarities regarding having already had a dating relationship during life, with sexual relations and lasting up to 1 month; there were similarities in terms of majority never having experienced an unsuccessful relationship, not currently having partners and not having had any sexual dysfunction. P value &amp;lt;0.05 were considered statistical significant. Conclusions Women haven greater experiences with affective and sexual relationships than men, with dating, marriage, sexual relations and children. The women are more independent when it comes to leaving their parents' homes and living alone or with partners. The fact that most men are diagnosed with schizophrenia tends to compromise their functional abilities more than other diagnoses, justifying the better performance in women's affective-sexual relationships. It study contributes with others focused on the neglect of sexual life and risky sexual behavior among men and women with severe mental disorders, in order to encourage care for the promotion of sexual health and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Disclosure Work supported by industry: no.

Hemispheric Thinking and Queer Kin

Hemispheric Thinking and Queer Kin

The role of intimate partner violence and relationship satisfaction in couples' interpersonal emotional arousal.

To inform interpersonal models of intimate partner violence (IPV), the present study examines patterns of vocally encoded emotional arousal during the conversations of mixed-gender couples who reported on the extent of physical and psychological IPV and degree of relationship satisfaction (N = 149). All couples completed two problem-solving discussions. Emotional arousal was measured continuously during each conversation using vocal fundamental frequency. Contrary to expectations, results demonstrated that trajectories of arousal differed based on gender, IPV, and relationship satisfaction. Within conversations, men demonstrated linear increases in arousal at higher levels of IPV, suggesting that men may either struggle to contain their emotions or use heightened emotional expression as a conflict strategy in relationships with more extensive IPV. Conversely, women exhibited different trajectories of arousal depending on the combinations of relationship satisfaction and couple IPV, except at higher levels of their own satisfaction. Specifically, when women reported being highly satisfied in their relationships, they demonstrated similarly shaped trajectories across all levels of IPV and men's satisfaction. Together, this suggests that women's higher relationship satisfaction may buffer their emotional expression, although this may not always be adaptive within the context of relationships with extensive IPV. Overall, this study offers insight into the dynamic interpersonal processes linked with relationship distress and IPV and implies the need for a more nuanced, interpersonal research agenda for IPV research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The impact of severe perineal trauma on a woman's relationship with her child: a hidden consequence

The impact of severe perineal trauma on a woman's relationship with her child: a hidden consequence

‘[Peers Give] You Hope that You Can Change Too': Peers’ Helping Relationships for Women Exiting Street-based Sex Trade

ABSTRACT A growing body of research demonstrates that peer support can facilitate drug use and mental health recovery and reduce health care costs. However, with few exceptions, peer support has not been systematically studied in the context of street-based sex trade, despite its potential benefits for this vulnerable population. This paper fills this gap by looking at the impact of peer support on 29 substance-use involved women formerly selling sex on the streets. Women were recruited for in-depth interviews from five recovery programmes for women with substance-use problems in a large metropolitan area in Northeast US. Results indicate that peer support can facilitate women's exit by providing a safe and accepting arena to share and normalise past experiences in the sex trade, serving as role models, and providing trustworthy advice. The findings emphasise the need for collaboration between peers and professionals in programmes that assist women exiting the sex trade; they also highlight providers’ limitations in interactions with exiting women, and stress the need for non-judgmental attention to women exiting the sex trade.

Female Desire in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and Middle English Romance by Lucy M. Allen-Goss

Reviewed by: Female Desire in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and Middle English Romance by Lucy M. Allen-Goss Holly A. Crocker lucy m. allen-goss, Female Desire in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and Middle English Romance. Gender in the Middle Ages, Volume 15. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. ix, 225. isbn: 978–1843845706. $99. With this study's focus on feminine desire, Lucy M. Allen-Goss asks what I believe will be the most crucial question in premodern literary studies: what will emerge if we change the standpoint from which we begin our scholarly enquiries into gender, sexuality, and other literary representations of embodiment? Allen-Goss focuses welcome attention on Chaucer's Legend of Good Women as a hermeneutic locus where the absences that might create a 'lesbian-like erotic' potentially emerge. Allen-Goss pairs this consideration with analysis of Middle English romance, or 'a mode of writing about female desire and bodily agency that is innovative and contemporary rather than isolated and retrograde' (pp. 28–29). In thinking through the tradition Chaucer and romance writers inherited, where women's desire is equated with deviance or treated as an absence, this book pursues a model of sexuality that is not constructed in relation to masculine desire. That kind of sexuality is almost always thwarted in Chaucer. While Chaucer might seek to represent a form of desire that emerges outside or beyond masculine domination or violence, in Chapter One Allen-Goss suggests that the 'Legend of Philomela' shows how a feminine hermeneutic is ultimately silenced in keeping with Jerome's famous model of reading as the rape of a conquered woman. Chapter Two, which turns to the Alliterative Morte, reads the giant's violent rape of the duchess at Mont St Michel as a traumatic hermeneutic that subtends the knights' attempts to establish their martial prowess. By thinking through this narrative's hyper-masculine suppression of feminine agency and desire, Allen-Goss offers a completely persuasive reconsideration of this poem as 'not anti-war but anti-rape' (p. 71). In Chapter Three, it becomes clear, there needs to be more than a foregrounding of women to render a plot revisionist. With his rethinking of the relicta motif in the 'Legend of Hipsiphyle and Medea,' Chaucer potentially queers Jason's faithlessness—unmooring him from conventional masculinity—in order to make space for women's desire. Despite the fact that Chaucer's 'Legend of Dido' expresses a more fluid form of feminine desire, Chaucer's poem codes her non-binarized attraction to Aeneas as deviant, and tumbles together Hipsiphyle's and Medea's betrayed expressions of desire for Jason in a way that diminishes the potential of the female masculinity it explores. Chapter Four, which analyzes the 'stony femininity' of Floripas in the Sowdone of Babylon, argues that this romance imagines the possibility of a woman whose desire is [End Page 95] not constituted in relation to masculine fantasies or demands. Rather than nightmares of women's affective and embodied fluidity, this romance instead charts the ways that an impenetrable feminine body produces desires that cannot be contained by masculinist fantasies of penetration or manipulation. It is only with his Thisbe, whom Allen-Goss considers alongside Ariadne in Chapter Five, that Chaucer creates a narrative of feminine innocence that might exceed the phallic logic that a masculinist hermeneutic demands. By reading these women's relation to veiling and reading, Chaucer's legends entertain the possibility of lesbian-like erotic that admits feminine desire through gaps and openings in edifices conventionally drawn to render women's bodies as available to men's sexual domination. By circumscribing the desire Chaucer associates with these women, these legends mark feminine eroticism as deviant in a way that assures Chaucer's own gendered authority. In Chapter Six, Allen-Goss turns to the late fifteenth-century romance, Undo Your Door, to argue that 'female sexuality [is] represented as a transgressive yet creative force, which . . . assembles its own objects of desire from inanimate materials and from mechanisms disturbingly reminiscent of the objects medieval writers associated with same-sex desire and female autoerotic satisfaction' (p. 166). By showing how women's desire is associated with inanimacy...

Fear of childbirth: Validation study of the Chinese version of Wijma delivery expectancy / experience questionnaire version B

IntroductionFear of childbirth has a significant impact on women's well-being post-birth. It can affect the women's relationships, future reproductive choices, and their decision on their future mode of birth. The Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire (Version B) is a comprehensive instrument for the assessment of postnatal fear of childbirth. MethodsHong Kong Chinese women at a postnatal ward of a tertiary hospital completed the translated questionnaire, Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale, and State-trait Anxiety Inventory. Exploratory factor analysis was performed. Pearson's correlation between the Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire (Version B) and the State-trait Anxiety Inventory or Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale scores were used to determine the convergent validity. Cronbach's alpha coefficient and intraclass correlation coefficient were used to determine the reliability of the translated Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire (Version B). Results136 postnatal mothers completed the study. 21.3% of women experienced fear of childbirth using the standard cut-off of 85/165. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient and test-retest reliability of the Chinese version were 0.910 and 0.741 respectively. Convergent validity was demonstrated with other psychological measures at expected moderate levels. Exploratory factor analysis revealed 4 factors. ConclusionThe Chinese version of the Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire (Version B) is a valid and reliable instrument to measure fear of childbirth amongst Chinese postpartum women. The questionnaire can be used to assess the severity of women's fear throughout their postpartum period, and to monitor the response of any medical or psychological interventions for women experiencing postnatal fear of childbirth.

To stay or go: Relationship dissolution and repartnering after paternal incarceration

AbstractObjectiveThis study investigated how relationship dissolution and repartnering shape women's relationship quality after their partner's incarceration and evaluates whether incarceration is a unique context for relationship transitions.BackgroundMillions of couples in the United States face incarceration each year, and many relationships do not survive the experience. Although these breakups are typically framed as negative events, it is unclear whether relationship dissolution harms or helps women navigating the incarceration of their partner or coparent.MethodUsing longitudinal data from the Fragile Families study, this article contrasts the experiences of women who stayed with their child's father through his incarceration, those who separated and remained single, and those who separated and repartnered. Three domains of relationship quality were considered: cooperativeness of parenting relationships, supportiveness of romantic relationships, and risk of domestic violence.ResultsData reveal that most relationships end, creating an opportunity for mothers to form stronger relationships with more advantaged new partners. Incarceration also provides a distinct context for repartnering, amplifying both the advantages and disadvantages of dissolution.ConclusionMost couples experiencing paternal incarceration will also navigate relationship dissolution, and many will integrate a new partner into the family. For many women, particularly those whose relationships have become violent, these transitions may be sources of resilience rather than hardship.ImplicationsRather than a proscriptive focus on preserving families, these findings highlight the need to support families simultaneously navigating incarceration and changing family roles.

Corrigendum for Distancing or drawing together: Sexism and organisational tolerance of sexism impact women's social relationships at work

European Journal of Social PsychologyVolume 52, Issue 1 p. 223-223 CORRIGENDUMFree Access Corrigendum for Distancing or drawing together: Sexism and organisational tolerance of sexism impact women's social relationships at work This article corrects the following: Distancing or drawing together: Sexism and organisational tolerance of sexism impact women's social relationships at work Esma Esen Ciftci, Manuela Barreto, David Matthew Doyle, Jolien Breen, Safi Darden, Volume 50Issue 6European Journal of Social Psychology pages: 1157-1172 First Published online: July 7, 2020 First published: 09 February 2022 https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2815AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat In Ciftci et al. (2020), there is an error in the results of Study 3. The statistics showing the effect of experience of sexism on women's social closeness to their female colleagues was reported as: b = −.28, t(370) = −2.42, p = .02, 95% CI [−.50, −.05] This statistic should have been: b = .28, t(370) = 2.42, p = .02, 95% CI [.05, .50] Because of this error, one reported interpretation of this study was that experiences of sexism led women to report weaker closeness with other women at work. However, the interpretation should be: Experiences of sexism led women to report greater closeness with other women at work. Below are the specific corrections related to this error: In section 4.2.1 of the original version, it reads: “Results showed a statistically significant main effect of sexism, b = −.28, t(370) = −2.42, p = .02, 95% CI [−.50, −.05], indicating that recalling sexism led women to report weaker closeness with other women at work, in line with Hypothesis 1.” This text should instead read: “Results showed a statistically significant main effect of sexism, b = .28, t(370) = 2.42, p = .02, 95% CI [.05, .50], indicating that recalling sexism led women to report greater closeness with other women at work, contradicting Hypothesis 1.” In section 4.3 of the original version, it reads: “Here, we found suggestive evidence for Hypothesis 1 on the measure of closeness; experiences of sexism led women to report reduced closeness with their female colleagues in this study. Moreover, we again found evidence in support of our second hypothesis…” This should instead read: “Here, we found that experiences of sexism led women to report increased closeness with their female colleagues in this study, which does not support Hypothesis 1. However, we again found evidence in support of our second hypothesis…” Finally, the following paragraph in section 5 of the original version should now not be included in the article. This paragraph read: “Although evidence for distancing was not consistently found, there was some evidence that experiences with sexism led women to report less closeness with other women in Study 4. This finding is consistent with some past work (Derks, Ellemers et al., 2011; Derks, Van Laar et al., 2011; Parks-Stamm et al., 2007; Doyle & Molix, 2014b). Previous work has shown distancing effects, but this was in the context of male-dominated work environments (Ely, 1994; Derks, Ellemers at al., 2011). The current work was not specifically focused on male-dominated contexts, but still we find some evidence that women may distance themselves from others following experiences of sexism.” These corrections affect the interpretation of one main effect in one of the 3 studies reported in the manuscript. The focus of the manuscript as a whole was on testing whether any effects of experienced sexism at work are moderated by organisational climate. Interactive effects relating to this focus were correctly reported. As such, this error does not affect the overall conclusions of this article. REFERENCE Ciftci, E. E., Barreto, M., Doyle, D. M., van Breen, J., & Darden, S. (2020). Distancing or drawing together: Sexism and organisational tolerance of sexism impact women's social relationships at work. European Journal of Social Psychology, 50, 1157– 1172. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2695Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Volume52, Issue1February 2022Pages 223-223 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Secondary emotional labor: How female nurses respond to the contradictions of caring.

Prior research suggests that caring is in tension with a financially incentivized, technologically-driven healthcare system. Nevertheless, employers, the public, and nurses expect nurses to be caring when providing care to patients and families. This article focuses on nurses' emotional labor strategies when managing emotions related to organizationally imposed interference with caring. We analyzed 27 semi-structured interviews with nurses and found that the unsuccessful performance of emotional labor spills over into the women's relationships at and outside of work. We apply Di-Cicco-Bloom and DiCicco-Bloom's concept of secondary emotional labor to examine our findings and how secondary emotional labor further develops the alienation and exploitation concepts of Hochschild's emotional labor theory. We suggest a structural change in nurses' job design that remedies contradictory caring expectations and supports their emotional labor to prioritize a climate of caring for patients.

Community relationship quality and reincarceration following rural drug-using women's reentry from jail.

Interpersonal relationships and social support are important factors in women's successful reentry from incarceration, but limited research has explored the role of women's relationships to their communities during the reentry process. In the current study, women were recruited from three rural Appalachian jails, screened for high-risk behaviors (including drug use and unprotected sex), and interviewed at 12 months postrelease (N = 339). Interviews included the Relational Health Indices-Community scale, a validated measure of women's relationships in community contexts, with subscales for empowerment/zest, engagement, and authenticity. Women who were reincarcerated during the 12-month postrelease period (43.4%) were younger, less employed, more likely to have used illicit drugs, and reported lower-quality community relationships at 12-month follow-up. Multivariate logistic regression models indicated that the effect of community relationships may be driven by the engagement and empowerment/zest constructs. Results suggest that community connectedness may relate to more successful reentry outcomes for rural women.

Women's Labor Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa and The Global South Compared, 1800–2000

Women's Labor Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa and The Global South Compared, 1800–2000 Karin Hofmeester (bio), Karin Pallaver (bio), and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva (bio) ABSTRACT This article places the research findings on women's work and gendered labor relations presented and discussed in this special issue in a broader and comparative perspective. We start by contextualizing and explaining main shifts and continuities in labor relations in sub-Saharan Africa in the last two hundred years. We then compare differences between women's and men's labor experiences and labor relations. To conclude we offer a comparative analysis of the main shifts and continuities in women's labor relations across several countries in the Global South. For this we draw on the case-studies analyzed in this special issue as well as on studies carried out for other African, South Asian and Latin American countries. The aim of this exercise is to show the potential of the "Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations" methodology for both intra-African as well as trans-continental comparisons, in particular between countries and regions in the Global South. KEYWORDS gender, women, labor, colonialism, slavery [End Page 152] Introduction The case studies examined in the various articles included in this special issue have shown the potential of the "Taxonomy of Labour Relations" developed by the "Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations" (hereafter Global Collaboratory) at the International Institute of Social History for the study of gendered labor division and labor relations in sub-Saharan African countries. At the same time, they have illuminated the main continuities and shifts in the work performed by women in various African countries as well as the power and social relations they entailed. The final article of this special issue aims to show the potential of the methodology used by the Global Collaboratory both for comparisons between African countries, and for meaningful trans-continental comparisons, in particular between countries located in the Global South, where women's labor experiences and labor relations might have more in common with each other than with those of women in countries in the Global North. To this end, the article will be divided into three main sections. In the first one, we contextualize and explain the developments in labor relations in several sub-Saharan African countries, including those discussed in this special issue. The second section presents a comparative analysis of gendered labor relations in various sub-Saharan African countries. Next, and before our final remarks, we present and discuss a comparative assessment of the development of women's work and labor relations in various countries in the Global South. Labor Relations in Sub-Saharan African Countries (1800–2000) In the first article of this special issue Karin Hofmeester has discussed the persistence of reciprocal labor in sub-Saharan Africa comparatively to other parts of the world. This persistence is evident when we compare the development of labor relations in those sub-Saharan African countries that have so far been included in the analysis of the Global Collaboratory. In this section, we will discuss in a comparative perspective those case studies that, from the point of view of the collection of data, are in a more advanced stage of analysis: Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.1 [End Page 153] The evidence gathered for these case-studies shows that until at least 1900 reciprocal labor remained the dominant type of labor relation in these sub-Saharan African countries. There were however some exceptions. In Mozambique, for example, in 1800 some forty-five percent of the total population worked under reciprocal labor relations, which is lower than the 73 percent on average in the African countries we studied so far (see Figures 1 and 2). The comparison confirms the predominance of reciprocal labor both for the colonial and the post-independence period. During the latter, a sizable share of the population of the countries examined remained engaged in reciprocal labor, amounting to thirty percent or more. However, in some countries such as Tanzania reciprocal labor remained exceptionally high during colonial rule and the post-independence period (see Figures 3 and 4). This was mainly due to a combination of labor...

Freedom through constraint: Young women's embodiment, space and wellbeing during lockdown

Following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdown restrictions in March 2020, young people were suddenly faced with a reduction and reconfiguration of the spaces in which they could ‘be’. This paper explores how in this lockdown context, young women (aged 10–20) experienced their bodies and wellbeing, where traditional social connections (particularly school and physical connections) were not possible. Based on qualitative responses (n = 511) from an online, open-ended survey on wellbeing, physical activity, body image and social media usage, we explore how a reduction and reconfiguration of space, understood relationally, contributes to an individual's wellbeing. Using abductive reasoning and taking a phenomenological approach, we concentrate on the embodied experience of wellbeing and how this links to the spaces in which the body is lived. We suggest that the removal of spaces during lockdown, which on the one hand can be seen as problematic for maintaining wellbeing, also enabled many young women to experience new connections – with their bodies, family, and the environment and nature, that supplemented previous connections and fostered positive relationships and wellbeing. The removal of specific performative modes of judgement associated with the school environment was a positive influence on many young women's relationships with their own bodies and their wider construction of wellbeing, but increased use of social media spaces were found to reconstitute these performative experiences. The benefits of the specific and newly delimited freedoms associated with the forced lockdown have implications for an understanding of embodied wellbeing that is not individual, instead embedded inextricably in relations of connectedness with others in space and the nature of these intersubjective experiences.

Escaping the Corset: Rage as a Force of Resistance and Creation in the Korean Feminist Movement

AbstractThis article explores rage in the context of Korean feminist movements. Rage as a corporeal force can be combined with other emotional modalities to achieve consistency, durability, efficiency, and intensity. These modalities are interdependent, and rage, in relation to indignation, becomes a revolutionary affect that changes power dynamics. Women's indignant rage challenges the patriarchal value system and increases women's agency. Korean women deploy the politics of rage to “Escape the Corset” and free themselves from the oppressive devices—patriarchal family structures and traditional notions of femininity and beauty—that oppress women's bodies. The “Escape the Corset” movement, driven by indignant rage, materializes the possibility of resistance and creation that puts an end to the phallic economy of desire and meaning, and it elaborates a new modality of women's life cycle and relation to the world. Unlike indignant rage, a feminist revolutionary tool, rage combined with hatred is a conservative affect that annihilates the possibility of change and maintains the status quo. The politics of rage promotes a deconstruction of the patriarchal system, joining with a subversive and cathartic joy that contains hope for a more just future.

How a pregnant woman's relationships with her siblings relate to her mental health: a prenatal allocare perspective.

BackgroundIn cooperatively breeding species, individuals may promote their inclusive fitness through allomothering. Humans exhibit some features of cooperative breeding, and previous studies have focused on allomothering by grandparents and juvenile siblings in the postnatal period. We hypothesize that a pregnant woman’s relationships with her siblings (offspring’s maternal aunts and uncles) are beneficial for maternal affect in ways that can enhance the siblings’ inclusive fitness. Maternal affect during pregnancy is a salient target of allocare given the detrimental effects of antepartum mood disorders on birth and infant outcomes.MethodologyWe test our hypotheses in a cohort of pregnant Latina women in Southern California (N = 201). Predictor variables of interest include number of siblings a participant has, if she has sisters, frequency of seeing siblings, and frequency of communication with siblings. Outcome variables measuring maternal affect include depression, state anxiety, pregnancy-related anxiety and perceived stress.ResultsHaving at least one sister and greater frequency of communication with siblings were associated with fewer depressive symptoms during pregnancy. No significant associations were found between sibling variables and other measures of affect.Conclusion and implicationsResults suggest that how frequently you communicate with, and not how often you see, siblings could be protective against risk of antepartum depression. Sibling allomothering could impart effects through social–emotional support rather than instrumental support, as a strategy to benefit the prenatal environment in which future nieces and nephews develop. Allomothering may be particularly important in cultural contexts that value family relationships. Future studies should investigate other communities.

Catholic Housewives in Transition: The Centres for the Promotion of Women between the Franco Dictatorship and Democracy in Spain (1960–1980)

This article aims to study the history of the Centres for the Promotion of Women in relation to the changing religious and gender identities of Spanish women. The first centre was founded by the lay organisation Catholic Action Women in 1959 and similar centres quickly spread across the country, giving access to basic education to many women from a working‐class background. By analysing oral interviews with students and sociocultural organisers, this article will demonstrate how the Centres for the Promotion of Women contributed to the transition from the self‐sacrificing housewife model of the first decades of Franco dictatorship to the more dynamic model of the working woman of the 1960s and 1970s.

‘An Old Maid in a House Is the Devil’: Single Women and Landed Estate Management in Eighteenth‐Century England

AbstractThis article examines the impact of singleness on elite women's experiences of landed estate management in eighteenth‐century England. Through extensive archival research, the article argues that singleness directly impacted women's relationships with landed estates and their ability to manage and shape their physical landscape. The article reveals that single women were overseeing the management of vast family estates: work that too often went unrewarded in their own lifetime and unrecognised in subsequent estate histories, due in large part to their unmarried status. It offers a fresh understanding of landed estates and will be of interest to historians and historical geographers alike.

“Don’t be so Harsh”: Influence Tactics, Support Transactions, and Relationship Satisfaction

The current study examined the association between both partners’ perceptions of the other partner's use of influence tactics during conflicts (harsh vs. soft) and both partners’ relationship satisfaction. Using a dyadic approach, the mediating role of support transactions (i.e., given and received support) was also examined. One-hundred and thirteen couples filled out questionnaires regarding partners’ use of influence tactics, received and given support, and relationship satisfaction. Results indicated one partner effect; namely, women's received support was found to be a mediator between women's perception of their partners’ use of harsh tactics and both partners’ satisfaction. There was only one actor mediation effect of given support and that was observed among women alone; namely, given support mediated the association between harsh tactics and women's relationship satisfaction. Gender and support transaction may play an important role in explaining the link between harsh tactics and relationship satisfaction.

Women's political empowerment and natural resource curse in developing countries

Women's political rights are increasingly recognized as critical to modern states. Women constitute half of the world's population, but they account for less than a quarter of the membership of national parliaments globally. Starting from the “resource curse" literature, this paper empirically examines the impact of natural resource abundance on women's political empowerment in a large panel of 130 developing countries between 2002 and 2017. Our results derived from two-step system GMM show that total resource rent per capita has a strong negative impact on overall women's political empowerment. Similar evidences are found when using women's political participation, civil society participation, and women's civil liberties subindexes separately. We also find large differences in the resource abundance women's political empowerment relationship, depending on a country's institutional quality. Furthermore, we explore some transmission channels and find that resource abundance reduces female employment in the manufacturing and exchangeable service sectors, increases gender inequality in primary and secondary education, and increases female fertility rate.