Female volunteers: An asset to the reproductive health sector in rural Cambodia

The results of a field study examined in this article show the remarkable success of a reproductive health education and community outreach project in Cambodia that has been implemented by the Ministry of Women's and Veterans' Affairs since 1995, both in terms of levels of volunteer activity and in terms of the impact of the project on increased knowledge and practice in reproductive health issues among the target population. A key to the project's success appears to be its adherence to principles identified, but seldom practised, such as a strong commitment to capacity building at all levels.     

‘red tips for hot lips’: advertising cigarettes for young women in Britain, 1920-70

The girl or woman smoker is a twentieth-century phenomenon. In 1900, smoking was invariably associated with sexually deviant womanhood. Today, smoking is firmly, if contentiously, established as a feminine practice in British society. This article examines one aspect of the twentieth-century feminisation of smoking in Britain, namely, the ways in which smoking practices have been presented as appropriate for young women in the period 1920-70. Advertisements featured in magazines for young women aged 15-29 years have been chosen as a particularly apt medium through which to explore some of the ways in which cigarettes and smoking practices have been delineated and infused with meaning. These advertisements constituted a discourse for the circulation of messages about the relationship of women to cigarettes. Findings reveal a number of shifts in cigarette advertisements featured in Women's magazines from 1920 to 1970. Firstly, during the 1930s and early 1940s, advertisements were, in contrast to later counterparts, preoccupied with establishing smoking as a feminine practice. Key to processes by which smoking was feminised were various mechanisms whereby the cigarette was depicted as part of the presentation of a heterosexual identity and where smoking practices were embedded in heterosexual relations and rituals. Secondly, there was a discernible shift in the way women were addressed by advertisements, from potential women smokers in the 1930s to more general consumers in the 1960s. Thirdly and relatedly, the significance attached to women smoking changed between 1920 and 1970. In the 1930s, smoking was utilised to signify that women were ‘modern’; in the period 1960-70, smoking served to indicate that women were recognised, and accorded status, as consumers     

Parental choice of primary school: the legal implications and parental perceptions

This article gives an overview of the rules that apply to school admissions and the operation of parental preference in particular. It reports on a piece of empirical research into parental perceptions of their ‘rights’ and comments upon the legal implications of the limitations of parental choice     

Literary feminism

Susan Sheridan, Christina Stead, Key Women Writers, (Harvester Wheatsheaf). Hemel Hempstead, 1988; Janet Todd, Feminist Literary History, (Routledge), New York, 1988; Jane Heath, Simone de Beauvoir, Key Women Writers, (Harvester Wheatsheaf), Hemel Hempstead, 1989; Linda Kauffman, (ed.), Gender and Theory: Dialogues on Feminist Criticism, (Basil Blackwell), New York, 1989; Patricia Waugh, Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern, (Routledge), London, 1989.     

Where Have All the Women (and Men) Gone? Reflections on Gender and the Second Palestinian Intifada

The authors ground their reflections on gender and the complex realities of the second Palestinian intifada against Israeli occupation in the political processes unleashed by the signing of the Israeli–Palestinian rule, noting that the profound inequalities between Israel and Palestine during the interim period produced inequalities among Palestinians. The apartheid logic of the Oslo period – made explicit in Israel's policies of separation, seige and confinement of the Palestinian population during the intifada and before it – is shown to shape the forms, sites and levels of resistance which are highly restricted by gender and age. In addition, the authors argue that the Palestinian Authority and leadership have solved the contradictions and crisis of Palestinian nationalism in this period through a form of rule that the authors term ‘authoritarian populism’, that tends to disallow democractic politics and participation. The seeming absence of women and civil society from the highly unequal and violent confrontations is contrasted with the first Palestinian intifada (1987–91), that occurred in a context of more than a decade of democratic activism and the growth of mass-based organizations, including the Palestinian women's movement. The authors explore three linked crises in gender roles emerging from the conditions of the second intifada: a crisis in masculinity, a crisis in paternity and a crisis in maternity.     

安琪儿

“在马身上,你希望的和你得到的往往是两回事。”我的丈夫贝尔经常这样对我说,但是产马驹的季节的确是一个充满梦想的季节。当我们开始在我们的农场上养appaloosas(马的一种)时,我就梦想着蓝色的缎带和迫不及待的买主。第一年,几只小appaloosas身上斑斓的色彩把农场打扮成了一个会动的花园。它们的脸上、身上闪动着各色的斑点,如同穿着一件碎花衣裳。     

crisis,austerity and gendered governance: a feminist perspective

Feminist scholars have been highly attentive to the ways that crises have become an everyday technique of global governance. They are particularly sensitive to the mechanisms through which ‘crisis management’ entrenches the power of particular economic orders and constrains the possibilities, and space, for contestation and critique. This paper seeks to contribute to but also to extend existing feminist research on financial crisis by arguing that, over the course of what has commonly been labelled the ‘global financial crisis’, the emergence of ‘crisis governance feminism’ has enabled existing structures and mechanisms of gendered privilege, such as the global financial industry, to suppress calls for their overhaul and to re-entrench their power in the global political economy. Adopting a discursive approach to gender and governance that situates gender centrally in understanding governance discourses and their reproduction of common sense (about what people do, how they labour, where they invest and so on), this paper argues that the governance of crisis in the contemporary era, in particular the various actors, institutions, policies and ideas that have sought to describe and ‘contain’ the global financial crisis, are gendered. Gender has become, in the contemporary global political economy, a technique of governance, and with deleterious effects. Despite inciting more discussion of ‘gender’ in economic systems than ever before (particularly in terms of discussions of ‘economic competitiveness’), this paper argues that the ‘global financial crisis’ has precipitated and continues to reproduce techniques of governance that trivialise feminist concerns while further embedding a masculinised, white and elitist culture of global financial privilege.