Claiming Citizenship: The Political Dimension of Welfare Fraud

This article exposes the political dimension of welfare fraud by investigating—in the context of the Israeli welfare reform of 2003—how forty‐nine Israeli women who live on welfare justify welfare fraud. I find that women's justifications cannot be fully explained by traditional noncompliance theories that view welfare fraud as an individual, private, criminal activity that solely reflects on the fraudster's moral character or desperate need. Instead, women's justifications for welfare fraud are better understood as a sociopolitical struggle for inclusion and deservedness—as a political act that reflects an alternative concept of citizenship with respect to women's unpaid care work.     

Women,the Home and Resistance in Northern Ireland

Abstract

This paper provides a perspective on women's resistance in Northern Ireland by focussing on their experiences of house raids. In light of a growing literature on women in conflict with the state, it argues that women have become increasingly politicised and organised in their resistance to repeated incursions into the home by the security forces which have ruptured traditional boundaries around relations of motherhood, home maker and sexual privacy. Based on a qualitative study of one hundred women in Northern Ireland, this paper suggests the coercive agents of the state have played a significant role in both the individual and collective resistance of women. Paradoxically, it seems, the security forces have become agents of change whereby the exposition and violation of the home has been one of the forces which has nurtured and defined women's political consciousness.     

Legal Emotions: An Ethnography of Distrust and Fear in the Arab Districts of an Israeli City

Recent sociolegal scholarship has explored the role of emotions in lawmaking and policymaking on security and crime issues. This article extends this approach to the relationship between law enforcement and affect by addressing the role of policing and security agencies in the (re)production of long‐term emotions, which bind a collective and fuel ethnonational division. An ethnography of the distinct emotional climate within the Arab districts of Lod, an Israeli city, shows that this climate is structured by two emotions: rampant distrust toward friends and neighbors, and intense fear of the Israeli authorities. This emotional climate is the product of the subterranean ties of Lod Palestinians with the Israeli security agencies as well as their experiences of the blurred line between state security and crime control enforcement. I embed the initial creation and relative stability of this emotional climate in the broader relationship between the Israeli state and its Palestinian citizens from 1948 to the present. The article concludes with a discussion of how the law enforcement's affective production has consequences for the salience and scope of citizenship and by arguing for a greater focus on the link between law enforcement, collective emotions, and processes of inclusion and exclusion.     

Women Corrections Officers in Men's Prisons

ABSTRACT

Women have worked as corrections officers (COs) in some adult male prisons in most states for the past two decades. However, the degree of acceptance of women COs and the perception of women officers' job performance by men officers have varied greatly. This study was based on the results of a survey of men and women officers working in men's prisons in a midwestern state. Comparisons of the officers' responses about women's acceptance, safety, and perceived job performance revealed some significant gender differences. The results indicated that while women faced some resistance among men officers, it was not to the extent suggested by previous research studies, and the resistance came primarily from more experienced men officers. Women officers were confident of their ability to work effectively in men's prisons. The resistance to women that persists among some men officers is likely to provide an obstacle for women seeking opportunities for advancement and promotion in adult male prisons.     

Habermas,Feminism, and Law: Beyond Equality and Difference?*

In this paper, I argue that Habermas' proceduralist model of law can be put to feminist ends in at least two significant ways. First, in presenting an alternative to the liberal and welfare models of laws, the proceduralist model offers feminism a way out of the equality/difference dilemma. Both these attempts to secure women's equality by emphasising women's sameness to men or their difference from men have placed the onus on women to either find a way of integrating themselves into existing institutions or to confront the so‐called question of women's difference. The proceduralist model renders this dilemma irrelevant. Instead, it proceeds from the fact of sexual difference; a fact that produces competing and conflicting needs and interests that require interpretation by both men and women. This, I argue, marks a change in the very way we conceptualise the so‐called problem of women's difference, insofar as the question is no longer framed in these terms. Second, I argue that this deliberative process over the interpretation of conflicting interests affects a fundamental shift in the nature of legal institutions themselves, insofar as law is no longer a vehicle for promoting male interests.     

Punishment and Welfare:

This paper will attempt to situate the current discourse on 'crack pregnancies' within the context of a broader regulatory discourse.' It will argue that defining and locating state intervention solely within the confines of formal legal discourse not only privileges the criminal law, but (1) occludes recognition of the ways in which regulation and control are effected by administrative law and welfare policy and (2) fails to specify the role of the welfare state in the construction and reproduction of dominant cultural norms of womanhood and mothering. The paper draws on feminist literature and fieldwork-in-progress to suggest that many of these women are already subject to substantial mechanisms of social control and cultural reproduction. In concluding, it is suggested that the construction of this debate to date has served to deflect attention away from the fissures of gender, race and class that render these women's lives as publicly problematic.     

MOVING BEYOND THE STEREOTYPES: WOMEN'S SUBJECTIVE ACCOUNTS OF THEIR VIOLENT CRIME*

This research builds on the recent scholarship that questions the anti‐agentic depictions of women's acts of violence. We inductively examine women's narratives of their violence to illuminate the diversity of motivations that appear to lie behind that violence. The narratives are drawn from a racially diverse sample of 205 women who were incarcerated in the Hennepin County Adult Detention Facility (Minneapolis, Minnesota). A life events calendar was used to assess women's involvement as both victims and offenders in violent crimes over the 36 months prior to their incarceration. We found that sixty‐six women provided information on 106 incidents of violence. Further, given the dominant theoretical framework in studying women's offending, we assess whether particular types of violent incidents are more likely to involve a partner as opposed to someone who is not a partner (friend, acquaintance, or stranger). Our contextualization of these events also includes an examination of the demographic and situational correlates of the incidents. Our findings reveal that women's reasons for engaging in violence are wide‐ranging and that we need not essentialize stereotypic views of gender in the study of violence.     

To object or not to object: The question of women judges in Egypt

Developing countries where women have not been permitted into the judiciary are excluded from feminist scholarship on women and the law. Such exclusion limits comparative views to a specific cultural‐historical domain. This paper explores the case of Egypt, where women have not entered the judiciary, in an attempt to extend the cross‐cultural discussion. A premise of the paper is that a theological vision of women's gender roles, which is qualitatively different from the prevailing one in the West, is a strong influencing factor on women's access to the judiciary in Egypt. After presenting a brief overview of women's status in Islam, this paper explores perspectives on women's role as judges within Islamic Shari'a. Building on the brief exploration of Islam's views regarding women's access to the judiciary, this paper then presents contemporary debates regarding women as judges in the Egyptian case. A recommendation for a more careful examination of the theological influences on the Egyptian debate regarding women's access to the judiciary concludes the paper.     

Women in a changing economy: the misleading tale of participation rates in a historical perspective

In this article I focus on women's advancement in the Swedish labour market during more than a century. By applying a long-term perspective I give the historical background to what is commonly seen as a success story. By reassessing census and labour force survey data I show that participation rates may tell a misleading tale not only for the past but also for the present. In a long-term perspective, Sweden does not stand out as a country with high female labour force participation rates. It was not until the mid-1960s that market work came to play a larger part of women's life, since young women worked until they had children and older married women returned to the labour force after having raised a family. During the late 1960s and the 1970s, women with children under the age of seven became an integrated part of the labour force. It seemed as if welfare reforms supported women's market work in an unprecedented way; gender differences in labour force participation decreased and became very small. A reassessment of labour force participation rates together with alternative measures of market work such as at-work and market-hours rates show that similarly to how they underestimate women's market work and contributions to production during the early decades of the twentieth century, they overestimate women's market work at the end of the century, neglecting the extent to which reproductive responsibilities still interfere with women's paid work through absence and part-time work.     

Lost in registration? Missing occupations of single women in the Bruges countryside,c.1814

The absence of occupational titles for women in historical censuses has stymied numerous scholars. Various authors have explained this phenomenon as carelessness or bias on the part of the census-takers. Women's work was of little interest to the authorities and census officials focused their efforts upon the activities of the head of household. While source triangulation can be a useful tool for uncovering ‘hidden’ employment of women, it is often a complex and time-consuming process. In this article we outline an alternative to deal with the issue of missing occupations of single women in censuses by exploring their living arrangements. We identify four aspects of co-residence that can highlight the roles played within the household by single women without registered employment: their relation to the head of the household, and that individual's occupation, property and marital status. Comparing data from the 1814 population census regarding two social agro-systems and the city of Bruges, we argue that occupational titles of single women were not randomly omitted by the census officials, but reflect the embeddedness of these women in the family economy and household. While we do not refute recent research that stresses single women's economic independence during the long eighteenth century, our findings suggest that for a subset of singles this was not the case. We claim that by studying registered labour only, the historical picture of single women's work is biased or at the very least incomplete.     

Pragmatic Discourse and Gender Inequality in China

Using courtroom dialogs from actual court trials in China as data, this article analyzes an emerging “pragmatic discourse,” deployed by judges to assist, but at the same time to constrain divorcing women. Through questions, statements, rebuttals, and other interactional devices, Chinese judges define the premises that underpin the law's understanding of gender equality and women's welfare. By looking at how discourses are deployed by judges and litigants, we link micro linguistic practices to more general social forces and processes. Despite their honest effort to protect women's rights, Chinese judges often inadvertently reinforce and reproduce the patriarchal norm. The data demonstrate how the hegemonic patriarchal order reasserts itself in an institutional forum that is meant to promote gender equality. The interaction of the discourses also highlights the tensions in Chinese society and displays the effect of changing social environment on the legal operation.     

Gender and “Other People's Money”: An Analysis of White-Collar Offender Sentencing

Although the female share of white-collar crime arrests (e.g., fraud, forgery, and embezzlement) continues to increase, little is known about the nature of women's involvement in these offenses, or the extent to which the legal treatment of white-collar offenders differs by gender. Using national survey data on employee crime, the present research addresses these voids in the literature. Consistent with prior research, women's roles in fraud offending are restricted by their positions in the organizational hierarchy. In support of the focal concerns perspective, results show that the decision to incarcerate and length of sentence are primarily shaped by indicators of offender blameworthiness. Findings reported here contribute to the literature on gender and white-collar crime, and also extend the growing body of focal concerns research to a previously unexplored sentencing context.     

Gender,Indigeneity, and the Criminal Courts: A Narrative Exploration of Women's Sentencing in Western Australia

Ethel Rosenberg's prison letters illustrate women's prison writing at a transitional point. Preceding her work are prison writings that focus on self-justification and autobiography; afterward come texts that assert the writer's pride and challenge the penal system and society. Rosenberg's correspondence includes elements of both traditional and contemporary women's prison literature. Along traditional lines, her letters focus on family matters and her own mental state as she attempts to adapt to imprisonment. In their outright assertions of pride in self and anger at perceived injustice, Rosenberg's letters point ahead to the writing of women inmates today.     

Discretion to Use Rules: Individual Interests and Collective Welfare in School Admissions

This article examines the approaches of British education authorities towards school admission decisions. Two models of case-level decision making in social programs are developed— the individual client orientation which focuses on using discretion to adapt decisions to the needs and choices of particular clients and the collective welfare orientation which emphasizes developing bureaucratic rules and procedures to decide cases efficiently. Education authorities use their discretion about how to decide school admissions to adopt primarily collective welfare approaches. Their emphasis on efficient rules and procedures continue even after parents are given rights of school choice that require an individualized examination of each parent's request. In the conclusion, the persistence of the primarily collective welfare orientations in school admissions is used to examine the pressures towards similar orientations that exist in all social programs.     

Italian women after development: Employment,entrepreneurship, and domestic work in the Third Italy

The highly successful economic development over the past 30 years of central and northeastern Italy, commonly referred to as the Third Italy, has created significant economic and social gains for the regions' women. The high historical prevalence of extended and multiple households among agricultural sharecroppers provided the social materials necessary for constructing a rapid and efficient engine of accumulation in the area's dynamic, small-firm-based economy. Though women have achieved some economic autonomy through employment and entrepreneurial activities, their achievement of greater economic equity is impeded by the continuing double burdens of employment inside and outside of the home. After examining the dimensions of women's status mobility with particular reference to the Marche region, one of the Third Italy's most economically dynamic, as well as socially conservative regions, it is argued that increasing state subsidies to families with children might increase women's options and help achieve greater equity between the sexes.     

Child protection as surveillance of African American families

The over-representation of black children in US out of home care results from racial bias in placement decisions and a political choice to address startling rates of child poverty by investigating parents instead of tackling poverty's societal roots. The impact of state disruption and supervision of African American families is intensified when it is concentrated in inner-city neighbourhoods – the system's ‘racial geography.’ A small case study of a black neighbourhood in Chicago with high rates of out of home placement found profound effects on both family and community social relationships, as well as reliance on child protective services for financial assistance, linking surveillance of black families to the neoliberal shrinking of public programmes. The surveillance of African American women by the child welfare system is also intensified by these women's disproportionate involvement in the prison system. Acknowledging racial bias in child welfare reveals the need to radically transform the system from one that relies too much on punitive disruption of families to one that generously supports them.     

We were conscious of the sort of people we mixed with

In the Republic of Ireland, the family is both a private entity and a construct of the state, and the relationship between family and state is outlined in the Irish constitution. In the Northern Irish state a similar conviction that the family unit is essential to the welfare of society has been implicit in social policy and legislation, as has the classification of women's place. Access to financial resources has played a significant role in situating the family in society and income and social class were inextricably interwoven.

This paper explores how social attitudes have shaped family behaviour and identity in mid twentieth century Ireland, particularly in terms of the part played by women. Class consciousness and definitions of “respectability” are considered, using oral history testimony from a number of women remembering when they were young in the 1930s and 40s. The interviewees accepted the domestic role assigned to them by popular consensus and social policy. Their stories contain frequent references to their reluctance to associate with people whose occupations were judged to be inferior because of the lower status accorded to certain kinds of work. The paper will consider the extent to which legislators and policy makers shared such class awareness and how that might have influenced the shaping of the family unit in Ireland in the middle decades of the twentieth century.     

Italian women after development

The highly successful economic development over the past 30 years of central and northeastern Italy, commonly referred to as the Third Italy, has created significant economic and social gains for the regions' women. The high historical prevalence of extended and multiple households among agricultural sharecroppers provided the social materials necessary for constructing a rapid and efficient engine of accumulation in the area's dynamic, small-firm-based economy. Though women have achieved some economic autonomy through employment and entrepreneurial activities, their achievement of greater economic equity is impeded by the continuing double burdens of employment inside and outside of the home. After examining the dimensions of women's status mobility with particular reference to the Marche region, one of the Third Italy's most economically dynamic, as well as socially conservative regions, it is argued that increasing state subsidies to families with children might increase women's options and help achieve greater equity between the sexes.     

Slave Women,Resistance and Criminality:

The system of slavery, a reflection of a patriarchal and racist social order, legitimatized and facilitated not only the economic and racist oppression but the sexual exploitation of black slave women. An extensive review of the literature on slavery was used to address how slave women accommodated and resisted these multiple forms of oppression. The findings presented here indicate that as blacks, both sexes experienced the harsh and inhumane consequences of racism and economic exploitation. In response to their exploitation, there was a significant convergence in male and female involvement in such forms of "criminal" resistance, such as murder, assault, theft and arson. These actions were employed to improve the slaves' lot in life and to express opposition to the slave system. "Criminal" resistance therefore set the stage for black women's participation in the criminal activities characteristic of today. Findings also suggest that in response to sexual exploitation, gender specific forms of accommodation-eg., acting as breeders and sex workers-were utilized in order to make slave women's lives bearable. The article concludes that the various forms of accommodation served as a preface to black women's vulnerability to sex-oriented crimes within the context of the twentieth century American society.     

Who's Running the Road? Street Railway Strikes and the Problem of Constructing a Liberal Capitalist Order in Canada, 1886–1914

Street railway strikes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were frequently the occasion for large-scale collective violence in North American cities and challenged the capacity of local authorities to maintain civic order. However, this was only the most visible manifestation of the challenge that street railway workers' collective action posed to the order of liberal capitalism, an order constructed on several intersecting dimensions. Using the example of Canadian street railway workers from 1886 to 1914, a period of rapid urbanization and industrialization, this article explores the ways the collective action by workers and their community sympathizers challenged the workplace, marketplace, and “streetplace” orders of liberal capitalism. It discusses how those challenges were met through political and legal processes of resistance and accommodation, taking into account the fragmentation of state power, hostile public opinion toward the street railways, and conflicting views over the legitimate scope for workers' collective action.