The Kenyan women and situation and strategies for improvement

The problem is that whether aware of it or not, women live in a male dominated society which for a long time has oppressed and discriminated against them. Women in most parts of the world are apparently more dissatisfied with their situations in family, social, economic and political circles in comparison to men.This paper makes an observation of the Kenyan woman and her daily problems. It points out the heavy responsibilities undertaken by both the urban and the rural woman as mother, wife and worker. The anthropological facts which have contributed to the current male-female situation have been highlighted.Finally the paper has expressed the strategies which the Kenyan women can employ to empower themselves when they find the current situation unbearable.     

Conceptualizing the Harms Done to Children Made the Subjects of Sexual Abuse Images Online

The innovation of the Internet and the proliferation of new digital technologies in everyday life have unfortunately created more opportunities for the sexual abuse of children and especially the global distribution of child sexual abuse images online (CSAIO). Most of the current therapeutic interventions being used were designed to treat ‘conventional’ sexual abuse trauma. Victims of CSAIO may experience ongoing trauma because the recordings of their abuse have the potential to be endlessly viewed and shared by those with a sexual interest in children some of whom may be known to them. However, little is known about the potential psychological harm to victims, the extent to which existing trauma treatment modalities are applicable to them, or what modifications of these treatments may be required for effective treatment. This paper explores current ways of understanding the harms done to the victims of CSAIO and presents cautions and recommendations for moving forward.     

The Toleration and Erotization of Rape: Interpreting Charles Perrault s Le Petit Chaperon Rouge within Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Jurisprudence

Fairy tales encapsulate the enduring myths of a culture, encoding the traditions and the moral values by which we like to think we live. (Garton 289) Ce que le monde fournit au mythe, c est un r el historique, d fini, si loin qu il faille remonter, par la fa on dont les hommes l ont produit ou utilis ; et ce que le mythe restitue, c est une image naturelle de ce r el. […] Le mythe ne nie pas les choses, sa fonction est au contraire d en parler: simplement, il les purifie, les innocente, les fonde en nature et en ternit , il leur donne une clart qui n est pas celle d explication, mais celle du constat. (Barthes, Paris, 230) What the world supplies to myth is an historical reality, defined, even if this goes back quite a while, by the way in which men have produced or used it; and what myth gives in return is a natural image of this reality. […] Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact. (Barthes, New York, 142-43)     

The Substitute's Farewell

I will miss the smell of refer in the halls, The obscene, misspelled graffiti on the walls, And the raucous, clanging bells, And the gym and lunchroom smells, I will miss them, I will miss them— Not at all. I will miss walking upstairs to the third floor Just to find that my classroom has a locked door. And the chalkboards with no chalk, And the kids who yell, not talk, I will miss them and think of them— Nevermore. Will I miss the students' sullen disrespect? Or the lesson plans that show benign neglect? Or the teachers who all say, “Well, who are you today?” Like they think that's clever? What do you suspect? I have dipped my pen in venom for this verse. And I know that it is cynical and terse. But if you think I'm unkind, Or if you think I've lost my mind, You can go to hell— Or subbing, which is worse.     

Student-to-Student Abuse in the Indian Residential Schools in Canada: Setting the Stage for Further Understanding

The Indian residential school system in Canada was established to assimilate Aboriginal children into mainstream society by removing the “Indian within them.” In the past 20 years survivors of the schools have come forward with stories of physical and sexual abuse perpetrated against them by staff. However, what is significantly less spoken of is the abuse which occurred between students. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation recently held a small gathering of survivors, Elders, advocates, and researchers to discuss ways to bring this issue into the open. This article comes out of the discussions held at the gathering. Within the article we offer a conceptualization of the dynamics and processes of student to student abuse within the Indian residential schools in Canada with the hope that it will encourage a deeper discussion of this issue.     

Pharmacopoeia – a collaboration between the textile artist Susie Freeman and the general practitioner Liz Lee

In this article I describe the development of my collaboration with the textile artist Susie Freeman in the production of the visual arts project Pharmacopoeia. Over the last 3 years we have created a body of work that aims to provide information about common medical treatments in a way that engages the public imagination. The work is dominated by the use of active pharmaceuticals, both pills and capsules, which are incorporated into dramatic fabrics by a process known as pocket knitting. These fabrics are then made into clothing and accessories, making their individual messages easier to ‘read’. The work aims to encourage people to think about their own medical and pharmacological history, and to reflect on their relationship with commonly prescribed drugs. It also reveals how dependent our society is on pharmaceuticals, how ambivalent we feel about them and yet how casually we use them.     

Anti-sexist men: A case of cloak-and-dagger chauvinism

The paper looks at the sexual behaviour of anti-sexist men as this is presented in writing, in discussion, and in personal experience of them. It shows that changes in the sexual behaviour of anti-sexist men have been those that serve their own interests. Some anti-sexist male writing about sex describes how some of them cannot get an erection without objectifying the women they're in bed with; and they don't tell these women about the misogynistic fantasies they have in order to objectify them. Drawing on this, on discussions with anti-sexist men and on personal experience, it seems that ‘impotence’ is a common reaction to stroppy feminists and sexually active women. The paper concludes that male anti-sexism is more a ‘cloak-and-dagger form of chauvinism’ than a genuine attempt to lose their power over women.     

politicizing biographies: the forming of transnational subjectivities as insiders outside

We take our own life stories as points of departure to look at some of the ways in which women were politicized in Argentina and West Germany (our respective countries of origin), focusing on similarities as well as differences in our politicization processes. We aim at putting present discussions about global political movements into a historical perspective. We want also to illuminate the centrality of political identities in the construction of specific (gendered) subjectivities. Our focus lies on theorizing the ways through which privileged (gendered) identities critically re-read their own position and transform their own understanding of themselves and the world through the field of the political. Methodologically, we want to contribute to ways of re-thinking Feminist methodologies by experimenting with a form of analysis in which we are alternately the subject and the object of our research process. The aim of this intervention is to transgress the binary oppositions between researcher/researched and challenge traditional understanding of social science where researchers provide analysis and informants have ‘experience’. One of our conclusions is that the 68 movement provided subject positions for living alternative normalities as an ‘insider-outside’, that is, for those who belonged to normalized groups in their respective societies, but for different reasons (of which we analyse some concerning our formation as ‘women’) could not identify with the dominant normalities offered to them. At the same time, the dominant male instrumentality of the movement estranged (some) women and allowed them (or forced them into) a kind of distanced engagement that, perhaps paradoxically, provided a basis for sustaining their political subjectivities through transformative experiences of defeat.     

Feminist consciousness vs profit—an unsolvable contradiction?

To survive in the capitalist system (which we are still part of), we have to deal with money, and in order to keep our projects going we have to make profit. The cold principles that rule the market will often clash with our feminist ideas of humane collectivity, but I will argue that we better face these conflicts and integrate them in our work structures, because the system sneaks in anyway and finds us unprepared and fighting with each other.     

More than a reader and less than a critic: Literary authority and women's book-discussion groups

The phenomenon of women reading books collaboratively is largely invisible, and certainly under-researched. This study, based on extensive circulation figures and on a small sample of members of four Council of Adult Education reading groups in metropolitan Melbourne, argues that such groups have a reading repertoire which is seriously middlebrow, far removed from the “wish-fulfillment” or “lazy reader” stereotypes purveyed by some who would scorn such groups. The study finds that such groups are sensitively served by the institution which hosts them. While such groups do not question the aesthetic assumptions that underlie their practice, they are combative with some manifestations of the literary establishment. Their powerful preferences for contemporary Australian women's fiction and their participation in global debates via identity politics suggests they warrant closer examination, both within Australian culture, and to find out if such groups have counterparts in other cultures.     

城市困难职工群体的形成与解困对策

在经济和社会转型时期,随着经济结构、所有制形式的变化,形成了不同的社会利益群体,尤其是城镇出现了以下岗职工为主体的困难群体,引起了社会的广泛关注。分析这一群体的生活现状和致困原因,可以从宏观和微观的结合上采取有效的解困对策,帮助其走出困境,共享改革和社会发展的成果。     

15: Professionalizing Day Care

Comparisons with other occupations, which may be seen as entailing similar levels of responsibility and training, indicate clearly that day care providers do not have comparable professional status. Reasons for this relate to two general areas: public perception of the value and nature of the work; and the lack of a clear identity within the profession. The situation will only improve if those entering the field are aware of the issues and prepared to address them. Training programs have a crucial role to play in this regard.     

The politics of the shareholding collective economy in China's rural villages

Since the early 2000s, the collective economy, assets or property rights have gone through shareholding reform in an increasing number of China's rural villages. There are two main types of the shareholding economy. One type is the Cooperative of Shareholding Economy (CSE) that quantifies the total value of the village's collective assets and turns them into stocks to be distributed among all the villagers. Another type is the Shareholding Land Cooperative (SLC), which peasants spontaneously organized in some regions and voluntarily joined with their land-use contracts. Both types aim to turn ordinary villagers into the shareholders and thereby the genuine owners of the collective economy or assets. The SLC serves another purpose, which is to achieve economies of scale for agricultural production through reconcentration of village land. While the effects of the shareholding reform in empowering peasants are varied and limited, it does have the potential to make village governance more democratic.     

Restructuring Postponed? Large Russian Farm Enterprises 'Coping with the Market'

The continued existence and predominance of large farm enterprises (LFEs) in Russian agriculture during the transition to a market economy is analysed using theories of transaction costs, coordination mechanisms and networks. A comparative analysis is presented of farm restructuring in two, highly contrasting survey regions. That analysis shows that LFEs have undertaken only partial restructuring, which has not lead to radical increases in output and productivity. Still, LFEs have kept functioning by adopting a rational strategy of 'coping with the market'. This entails their integration into processing and retailing, and building up new business (and social) networks while cultivating old ones. The network economy that has thus emerged has enabled them to stay afloat as social and economic units, in a form of 'paradoxical continuity'.     

The ‘Wrongs’ of Women: Sex and Sexuality in Irish American Women's Writing

A key trait distinguishing the writing of Irish American women from that of their male counterparts is a strong feminist bent often expressed in stories featuring sex and sexuality. In ignoring these characteristics, Irish studies scholars have disregarded a trait established by Irish women writers in oral traditions as early as 600 and in written English since 1685. Much of this material was categorized as the ‘Wrongs of Woman’, a phrase used to describe stories about physical and sexual abuse. These same themes can be traced in the writing of Irish American women since the late nineteenth century. By focusing on these ‘wrongs’, Irish American women have not only carried on the tradition begun by their foremothers; they have also battled patriarchal bonds on three fronts: religion, which created such bonds; society, which reinforced them; and politics, which tries to recreate and re-impose them. A complete understanding of Irish American writing therefore depends on recognizing and adding the contributions of these women to the definition of the literature. This essay defines that cohort, then provides a historically contextualized examination of their literary attempts to address the ‘wrongs’ of women inflicted by religion, society and politics from 1899 to the present. In so doing, this discussion demonstrates the role played by Irish American women writers in promoting, protecting and perpetuating the rights of women in the United States and around the world.     

On the margins of soy farms: traditional populations and selective environmental policies in the Brazilian Cerrado

In the Cerrado, the expansion of soybean cultivation since the 1990s has coincided with the strengthening of environmental regulations. We analyze how the two main environmental policies – Protected Areas and the Forest Code – have played out at the ground level in western Bahia state. These policies in Cerrado have not been designed to curb the expansion of this agricultural frontier. These norms have, on the contrary, accommodated this expansion because the way environmental managers selectively choose environmental problems and publicize them through specific information systems depreciates traditional fire-dependent production systems. These ‘politics of selection’ are likely to increase competition for resources in the margins of soybean agriculture, which is where traditional populations have now become confined.     

Foetal politics and the birth of an industry

In early Western society, women were considered to have a minor role in the reproductive process. Their social status was, correspondingly, secondary. Since the eighteenth century, women's contribution to procreation has been widely accepted, yet their social status remains. Women's importance in the reproduction of the species has not guaranteed them social prestige and the argument of this paper is that women's social standing is being further assaulted by the legal and economic consequences of innovations in birth technology. Two well-publicized innovations, Artificial Insemination by Donor, and In-Vitro Fertilization (or ‘test-tube babies’) have provoked legal, political and economic considerations which focus upon the possibilities of extensive bioengineering. The significance of this for women is that birth technology is not being fashioned after the interests of its clients but, instead, is becoming a new mercantile frontier in which women's needs may well be eclipsed by commercial and political ambitions.     

进城务工人员工会组建工作中存在的问题及对策

随着经济结构和产业结构的进一步调整以及城镇化、工业化进程的加快,大量农村富余劳动力离开土地进城务工.他们虽然已经成为产业工人的重要组成部分,但相当数量的职工却还游离于工会组织之外,迫切需要工会将其组织起来,维护其合法权益.     

Class dynamics and ideological construction in the struggle over fairness: a neo-Gramscian examination of the Fairtrade initiative

This paper develops a neo-Gramscian conceptual framework in order to examine the ideological constructs and political dynamics that frame the day-to-day workings of the certification-based Fairtrade initiative. To accomplish this goal, the paper resorts to the notion of a ‘comprehensive concept of control’, which accounts for the main ideological elements that constitute the Fairtrade vision of the world. The analysis of these imaginaries is complemented with an examination of the concrete ways in which they have been institutionalized in the Fairtrade system and the specific power relations between class fractions they promote. This is followed by an exploration of the way in which Fairtrade articulates the contradictory interests of a variety of class fractions, bringing them together under the shared objective of advancing the situation of small producers and workers in the global South. The paper finishes with a reflection on the main limitations inherent to Fairtrade’s concept of control and the political dynamics it entails.     

Extending appropriate technology to rural African women

The vital role of women in the agricultural sector in Africa is gaining wider recognition. It is now apparent that although women are actively engaged in agriculture, they are often denied information on modern agricultural practices.Besides farming, women have other arduous responsibilities. Appropriate technologies of all kinds have been developed to lessen the time women spend on nonproductive tasks, assist them with processing and preserving foods and equip them with income-yielding skills.University Departments of Home Economics can extend the benefits of appropriate technology to village women in several ways. They can carry on research studies in collaboration with international agencies. They can revise their syllabi to include appropriate technology and make agricultural subjects a requirement in the Home Economics Extension Programme. Students can be given more research and practical projects related to appropriate technology. Lastly, universities can set up Appropriate Technology Centres for the benefit of contiguous communities.