A Jury of Their Peers: A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Teen Court on Criminal Recidivism

Juvenile delinquency has been on the decline for a number of years, yet, juvenile courts continue to assess more than 1 million cases per year. Involvement with the juvenile justice system has been linked to a number of risk factors and consequences that may impact positive youth development; however, evidence-based correctional programs that divert juvenile offenders away from formal processing are limited. Teen Court is a specialized diversion intervention that offers an alternative to traditional court processing for juvenile offenders. Despite the rapid expansion of Teen Courts, there is little comprehensive and systematic evidence available to justify this expansion. This meta-analytic study examines the effects of Teen Court on the recidivism of juvenile offenders. The literature search resulted in the selection of 14 studies, which contributed 18 unique effect sizes with a total sample of 2125 treatment group and 979 comparison group youth. The findings suggest that Teen Court is no more effective at reducing recidivism than (a) formal processing or (b) other diversion programs. Implications of formal and informal court processing for low-risk, first-time young offenders are discussed. The authors draw on the Risk-Need-Responsivity model to provide recommendations for policies and practices.     

‘A Woman’s Place …’: Male Representations of University Women in the Student Press of the University of Liverpool, 1944–1979

Deciphering the manner in which women have been, and continue to be, represented in society is an integral element of a feminist critique. This article explores male representations of university women as presented in the student press of the University of Liverpool between 1944 and 1979. It is suggested that university women were represented as ‘other’ and stereotyped in a negative manner in the years 1944 to 1959. Furthermore, they were presented as unattractive, unwelcome, and in most cases at university to find a husband. The years 1960 to 1979 signified a shift with regard to the representation of university women; however, continuity with the earlier period was retained in the visual imagery of female students and the way in which ‘careers’ were presented as distinctly male. University women remained part of the ‘male gaze’ and were, ultimately judged on the basis of their sexual attractiveness to the derision of their intellectual abilities.     

Forum: Women in Sport

This short introduction reflects upon the relatively improved representation of women in sports history and its historiography. It highlights the similar challenges faced by those researching women in sport and those researching women's history more generally. In addition to identifying the need for more empirical research around female participation in ‘sport’, it notes the importance of moving beyond this conceptual territory to physical culture. Only then can an adequate understanding of the kinesthetic experiences of girls and women in particular times, places and spaces be achieved.     

Women on the Edge of Modernity

Feminism has long been committed to a critique of stereotypic examples of women in patriarchal discourse and has been keen to see what it could offer by way of alternatives. Yet to suggest that alternatives are possible raises the question of whether feminism itself can altogether avoid the trap of turning women into stereotypes, turning the specific example of woman into a universal model, in its own efforts to represent women. Communication demands the particular; it is not possible to refer to everything at once. At the same time, judgements that arise from the use of those particulars are always to some extent faulty - inaccurate or incomplete, too particular or too general. This applies as much to aesthetics (models of beauty) as it does to politics (another matter of representation). What is at issue here is the entire problematic of inclusion and exclusion, whether in politics or aesthetics. Focusing on the significance of Kant's reliance on woman as an example in the Critique of Judgement , Elam argues that it would be a mistake to dismiss all aesthetic discourses of beauty as ploys on the part of patriarchy to keep women for men's eyes only. The Critique of Judgement stands to be useful to feminism because it demonstrates that the problem of the example cannot be solved by striving for the perfect representation of woman - either an inclusive aesthetics or a fully representational politics - or even by overcoming the use of examples altogether. Rather, taking 'woman' as an example stages both aesthetic and political questions about representation that call attention to the challenges feminism faces in its attempt to form political communities.     

‘When Two Loving Hearts Beat as One’: same‐sex marriage,subjectivity and self‐representation in the Australian case of Marion‐Bill‐Edwards, 1906–1916

This article focuses on the Australian case of Marion‐Bill‐Edwards who lived most of her adult life in male attire. It examines three bursts of publicity Edwards encountered, a 1906 criminal trial, her 1908 autobiography and a 1916 court case in which she was a witness. The case is significant because it makes an important contribution to understandings of the sexual subjectivity of women (especially women of the lower classes) who had same‐sex relationships in the early years of the twentieth century. The article explores changes in Edwards’ self‐representation and subjectivity in this pivotal period in which (research has indicated) new models for modern sexual identities began to emerge.     

‘Us Girls Won’t Put One Another Away’: relations among Melbourne’s prostitute pickpockets, 1860–1920

Larceny from the person, or pickpocketing, was the most common form of indictable crime committed by female offenders in turn-of-the-century Melbourne. It was an offence particularly likely to appear within the criminal careers of recidivist female offenders. Female pickpocketing, however, was notoriously difficult to prosecute. The usual differences found in trial outcomes for men and women were exacerbated by the specific contexts in which such robberies occurred, that is in the context of solicitation or sex work. This not only meant victims were reluctant to prosecute, but that women’s offending often took place within criminal subcultures that fostered interpersonal relationships between women that served to support them throughout the commission of the crime and during the trial process.     

US Women Federal Court Judges Appointed by President Carter

There is considerable disagreement as to whether any gender differences on the bench are symbolic, substantive, or both. This paper, based on never-before published surveys and personal interviews conducted in the early 1980s, contributes to that discussion by describing what women appointed to the federal bench by President Carter between 1976 and 1980 had to say about gender differences in their first years in office. I conclude that these early experiences and comments by women on the bench are still relevant today and presage much of the research on judicial gender which has followed.

‘You do act differently when you're in it’: lingerie and femininity

This paper examines British women's accounts of buying and wearing lingerie taken from in-depth interviews exploring experiences of shopping in sex shops. Lingerie forms one part of a sexual consumer culture that is positioned within a neoliberal discourse of postfeminism. Women's engagement with the representation of lingerie, the way they enact lingerie buying and wearing in their everyday lives and the ways they speak about these practices show complex and often incongruous strategies of accommodation and negotiation. Such strategies can make lingerie pleasurable and liveable whilst at the same time expressing forms of anxiety, ambivalence or laughter directed towards the performance of femininity and feminine sexuality required and represented by lingerie. I contend that it is precisely through this often contradictory engagement with lingerie that strategic counter discourses emerge, by which women can resist some of the respectable norms of female sexuality. Women position themselves in ambivalent ways in relation to the visual imperative of feminine sexuality represented by lingerie, particularly through an embodied discourse of comfort and discomfort, or through the playful and pleasurable performance of non-naturalised gender roles.     

The Bechdel in India: gendered depictions in contemporary Hindi cinema

The Bechdel test is a popular measure used to examine the adequacy of representation of women in movies, and other media. Although often applied to Hollywood movies, the test has rarely, if ever, been used to assess Hindi cinema. This paper adopts, adapts, and extends the original Bechdel test to scrutinise stereotypical, non-stereotypical, and typical dialogic content of same-sex conversations in three genres of Hindi cinema – top-grossing blockbuster films, women-centric movies, and parallel cinema. Using a qualitative approach to code dialogues, and quantifying subsequent frequencies, the current work highlights the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of female characters in contemporary Hindi cinema. The time taken for men to speak to men and women to speak to women was also quantified. While women-centric and parallel films depict a more balanced portrayal of male and female characters, top-grossing films are heavily lopsided, with some being devoid of a second female lead, and hence of female-to-female dialogues. Male characters spoke of more varied areas, both stereotypical and non-stereotypical, than women particularly in top-grossing content. The implications of such depictions in cinema, and their subsequent effect on perceptions of men and women in society, is discussed.     

Literary Journey from North to South: The Reception of Nordic Women Writers,Their Books and Ideas in the Slovenian Literary System

This article discusses the previously unresearched reception of Nordic women writers in the Slovenian cultural space. The first part presents the early reception of Nordic women writers in the nineteenth century up until the First World War. It analyses both the passive reception (the presence of books by Nordic women writers in library catalogues, references in the press and in egodocuments) as well as the active reception (literary influence). The second part of the article details the case study of Sigrid Undset’s reception, which is very intense and is still ongoing today (the most recent translation is from 2015). Through the methods and approaches of translation, intercultural, polysystem, and gender studies, this article explores the impact of Nordic women writers in the Slovenian literary polysystem and the influence of gender in the reception process. The article concludes that the writings of Nordic women writers brought representations of women’s lives to the Slovenian cultural space. Moreover, this has been of great interest for the Slovenian reading audience since female characters rarely serve as protagonists in Slovenian literature (except in some works written by Slovenian women writers). Slovenian feminists regarded Nordic women writers as role models and legitimized their own feminist demands by quoting the works of Nordic women writers and by referring to their successful writing careers. Therefore, the writings of Nordic women writers fill in a gap in Slovenian literature and supplement and enrich it.     

Women in agriculture in Nigeria: Problems and policies for development

This paper focuses on the involvement of Nigerian Women in Agriculture. A total of 600 women was selected for study in three different areas of Nigeria (West, North and East) in order to capture differences in the socio-economic activities of the women.A ranking of the socio-economic activities of the women studied indicated that their most important activity was the care of children, followed by house-keeping and then trading. A ranking of the women's preferred socio-economic activity revealed that the women would like to spend less time on home-related activities to increase time spent on farming, processing and trading. On an overall basis, trading was the women's most important occupation outside the home, followed by farming. Yoruba women of Western Nigeria are more often traders than Ibo women of Eastern Nigeria, who are often farmers. The Hausa/Fulani women of Northern Nigeria are positioned between the two other groups with respect to their involvement in farm operations. For the whole of Nigeria, economic considerations are a major determinant of the extent to which women are involved in farming as against processing and trading. Once men move out of farming into such non-farm occupations as factory work, mining and distribution of industrial goods, women take up food production for home consumption and for sale, regardless of which ethnic group they belong to, although in relative terms the restricting influence of the Moslem religion on the women in the North must be acknowledged. About 40 per cent of all the women studied could be classified as farmers, 28 per cent as processors and 52 per cent as traders. Processing was often part of farming or trading. The women were mainly involved in the production, processing and trading of such food crops as maize, rice, cassava, yam and palm oil. They were rarely connected with agricultural export crops such as cocoa, cotton and groundnuts. The women who were farmers undertook most farm operations themselves, including the more difficult ones such as land clearing and land preparation for planting. When necessary, they used supplementary family and hired labour. An analysis of the women's life and work indicated that they feel themselves left behind in the general drive towards development.The main policy implication of the research findings is that an employment-educational and incomes strategy needs to be devised for the women in order to enhance their contributions to agricultural and rural development in Nigeria and for their own personal fulfilment.     

Why Insanity Is Not Subversive in Hanan Al-Shaykh's Short Story ‘Season of Madness’

Dalya Abudi maintains that in many female Arab texts ‘madness serves as a metaphor for female victimisation on the one hand and for female resistance on the other’. This paper contends that the representation of women as insane in Hanan Al-Shaykh's ‘Season of Madness’ is not subversive. I draw on Camineor-Santangelo's approach to feminist criticism, which argues that a madwoman cannot speak. Camineor-Santangelo explains that madness is complicit with de Lauretis’ technologies of gender because it gives the illusion of power but at the same time the mad (non)-subject is located outside any ‘sphere where power can be exerted’. I illustrate how in this story female madness is mainly represented as witchcraft and evil, stigma, a female malady, a denied subjectivity, social control, illusional power, self-sabotage and a final surrender.     

Women, power and ordination: A psychological interpretation of objections to the ordination of women to the priesthood

The ordination of women to the priesthood is a subject which still encounters strong antagonism from both men and women. In this paper, such antagonism is interpreted using the thesis of Dinnerstein (1978) which suggests that it may be an expression of the flight from maternal power. The experience of a woman as the first caretaker, coupled with the infant's primitive capacity to deal with the necessarily dependent and frustrating relationship with her, leads men and women to associate their ambivalent fantasies of maternal power with female authority. In particular, the ordination of women for a role which is itself mystically powerful provokes arguments and attitudes which can be interpreted as an expression of this irrational fear.     

Women In or Out of American Economic History?

This viewpoint discusses the absence of women from the economic history of the USA. During the past 25 years American economic historians have been so concerned with conceptual and methodological arguments within the discipline that they have failed to examine the female factor. Though many practitioners might consider that women have had little input into marketplace activities in the past, their attitudes stem from conventional ways of examining both issues and data. A more balanced and realistic approach to writing American economic history will entail seeing women as an integral part of past economic change. To do this will involve asking different questions of the past ‐ both of new and existing sources. American economic history could greatly benefit from looking at changes in both history and economics.     

Women,poverty and agricultural growth in India

This article explores the interlinkages between gender, poverty and agricultural growth in India. It shows how women and female children of poor rural households bear a disproportionately high share of the burden of poverty. This is manifest especially in a systematic bias against females in the intra‐household distribution of food and health care. However, there are significant cross‐regional differences in the extent of the bias which is much higher in the north‐western states relative to the southern. Some of the likely factors ‐ economic, social, historical ‐ underlying these differences are discussed here. The specific problems of female‐headed households are separately considered. Also, the on‐going debate on the relationship between rural poverty and agricultural growth is critically examined. In addition, a detailed quantitative analysis is undertaken of the differential effects of the new agricultural technology, and associated growth, on the employment and earnings of female and male agricultural labourers (who constitute the bulk of the rural poor). The association between changes in these economic variables and others, such as in the incidence and pattern of dowry payments, is also examined, as are the implications of both these aspects for the situation of rural women in poverty in different geographic regions.     

Women and rural revolt in India

Women's major productive role (outside of the home) in agriculture and the crucial part which women play in peasant revolts have been more or less ignored by social scientists. In this paper an attempt is made to analyse the interconnections between class and sexual oppression, and between women's movements and class struggle, in rural India: with class structure, the nature of society, and the development of social movements looked at from the viewpoint of women themselves. With the use of two key concepts, work participation and mode of production, it is argued that in India, increasingly during the last decade, capitalism has developed in the countryside, and that, with the changing social relations of production, there has emerged a mass‐based and militant women's movement, whose objective basis has been the militancy of women of the rural poor. This is illustrated for a variety of Indian states, but especially for the state of Maharashtra.     

Women on Trial: representation of women in the courtroom in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama

As is well known, women labored under severe disabilities in the Renaissance court system. It was especially difficult for married women to litigate on their own behalf. Widows litigated more frequently, often to address issues of property or inheritance. To date, little attention has been given to the depiction of women at trial in the plays of the period. Unexpectedly, when we look at the trial scenes in the plays, the women are anything but shy and retiring. In the trial scenes examined, married women litigants prove to be forceful advocates of their position, often accusing hegemonic figures of injustice and unfair process. In conclusion, it is suggested that through the vehicle of presumptively vulnerable women defendants, the playwrights could dramatize the problem of overbearing, partial judges, and other problems that plagued the Renaissance legal system.     

对男女平等的再认识——兼论男女是否应当同龄退休

提倡男女平等,是社会进步的表现,体现了时代的文明。但男女平等不能简单地理解为男女一模一样。真正的男女平等应该体现在针对女性的不同特点给于与男性不同的待遇,正如《婚姻法》规定最低结婚年龄男女有别,《劳动法》禁止安排女职工从事矿山井下、森林伐木等重体力劳动一样。就退休年龄而言,无论男女延长退休年龄都是发展趋势,在现阶段,可以试行弹性退休制,尊重个人的选择。