Philosophy and feminism

Ellen Kennedy and Susan Mendus (eds) Women in Western Political Philosophy (Wheatsheaf Books) Brighton, Sussex, 1987; Gail Tulloch, Mill and Sexual Equality (Harvester Wheatsheaf) Hemel Hempstead, 1989; Andrea Nye, Feminist Theory and the Philosophies of Man (Routledge) New York, London, 1988.     

Epistemic Reasoning and Adolescent Egocentrism: Relations to Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms in Problem Youth

This investigation addressed the question of how two forms of social cognitive reasoning – epistemic reasoning and adolescent egocentrism – interface with externalizing and internalizing forms of psychopathology during adolescence. Adolescents’ epistemic reasoning (i.e., types of belief entitlement, or degree of doubt, held by an individual when confronted with contradictory sides of an issue), and imaginary audience and personal fable ideation, were assessed in a sample of 29 adolescent boys with behavioral problems and 30 of their peers without behavioral problems. To assess internalizing and externalizing symptomatology, teachers completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL-TRF). Results revealed that, compared to those without behavior problems, boys with behavioral problems were lower in epistemic reasoning. Further analyses revealed consistent relations between dimensions of social cognitive reasoning to specific forms of psychopathology. These findings suggest that social cognitive reasoning, particularly epistemic doubt, is important in understanding problem behaviors among typical and atypical adolescents.

The Role of Epistemic Cognition in Adolescent Identity Formation: Further Evidence

Following Boyes and Chandler (1992), it is investigated how adolescents’ epistemic understanding relates to the process of identity formation. In a cross-sectional as well as longitudinal study, identity status scores of diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and identity achievement as assessed by the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status were analyzed as a function of adolescents’ epistemic stance, while simultaneously taking into account individual differences in identity processing styles. The cross-sectional sample was composed of 200 German adolescents from Grades 7, 9, 11, and 13 (mean age: 16.2 years, SD = 2.41). The longitudinal study consisted of 134 participants (mean age at retest: 16.5 years, SD = 1.7) and covered a time interval of 18 months. Findings confirmed the view that the development of epistemic cognition contributes to adolescent identity formation. Specifically, the development of a multiplistic epistemic stance predicted higher moratorium scores, whereas the more advanced evaluativist epistemic position contributed to identity achievement over time. These effects were not due to individual differences in identity processing style.     

Women in counselling

During the last few years many new types of counselling institutions, offices, firms, and agencies dealing with giving advice have come into existence. In Poland, women's participation in these new institutions as well as in the traditional counselling offices differs depending on the type of problems which are solved there. Women more often fulfill the role of counsellor in counselling offices dealing with health, family, and childcare, which are traditionally treated as women's issues. At the same time, more women than men apply for counsel in these types of counselling offices. By contrast, in the new types of counselling/guidance offices dealing with economic, legal, and management problems, a woman counsellor appears more rarely than a man counsellor. When there are women in these new types of counselling offices, these women are forced to continuously demonstrate their competence and expertise. Women also more rarely use counsel given in the matters of economy, law, and management, but, as counsellors noticed, if a woman applies for advice, she is usually better informed and better prepared for taking advantage of the advice.     

新媒体时代提升政府公信力的对策研究

随着互联网和通讯技术的发展,我国已步入新媒体时代.我国近两年新媒体发展迅速,但政府公信力却面临各种挑战.政府本身的管理缺陷、法律法规的不健全和新媒体自身的特质等是造成政府公信力缺失的原因.要提高我国政府公信力就需要建立“整体政府”、加强法律法规建设、建立有效的监督机制和信息公开制度.     

Women and citizenship

Barbara Sullivan and Gillian Whitehouse (eds), Gender, Politics & Citizenship in the 1990s (University of New South Wales Press) Sydney, 1996.

Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1996.     

Women and War

Susan Hill's novel The Woman in Black (1983) is a radical example of women's Gothic horror. It is a popular ghost story that has been successfully adapted for the London stage. In addition, it offers a social critique of motherhood and contemporary rhetoric surrounding the family. Scullion interprets the novel from several critical perspectives: feminist, psychological, biographical, generic and intertextual. Principally, however, she offers a reading of the novel that engages with its immediate historical context. The contention is that Hill's novel mediates women's anxieties about motherhood and autonomy during the early 1980s when the institution of the family in Britain was an ideological battleground. Set primarily during the 1860s, The Woman in Black exposes Victorian hypocrisy towards the unmarried mother, and indirectly probes the quasi-Victorian values promulgated in the 1980s, during the first term of a Conservative right-wing government. The protagonist of the novel, the eponymous woman in black, resists the lot of the so-called fallen woman. In her physical form, she refuses to submit to Victorian patriarchal values by attempting to reclaim her illegitimate child. In spectral form, she repeatedly inflicts suffering on families by causing the death of their children. Her excessive revenge knows no compassion, and recognizes no boundaries of place and time. Her ghost is never laid to rest. Neither is order restored by the closing pages. Thus the novel, as well as being a popular ghost story, challenges assumptions about women's 'natural' acquiescence and their unconditionally generous responses to husbands, partners and children. Shaped by the social climate in which it was written, The Woman in Black suggests that mothers under extreme pressure have the potential, like any other members of the family, for cruelty to children. Through its forceful rejection of either idealized or derogatory stereotypes of women, this novel belongs to the genre of radical Gothic horror.     

Women and depression

Neurotic depression is twice as common among women. This is a puzzle to medical and social science. In this article, genetic and hormonal explanations are considered as well as the problem of distinguishing body from mind. Environmental causes are considered from the viewpoint of epidemiology, psychoanalysis and sociology. Neurotic depression is viewed as the outcome of an excess of stresses over supports and related to a woman's marital status, class and occupation.In the doctor-patient relationship, the doctor has a privileged role in interpreting what is said, an interpretation which appears as scientific to some and as individual to others. For, in order for it to be meaningful in a personal exchange, language constantly refers back to symbols which have been historically and culturally generated and, in doing so, incorporates particular historical and cultural values. By subjecting doctors and their patients to invoking a particular ideology, language binds us and blinds us in an allusive search for reality.