“Girl talk”: gender, equity, and identity discourses in a school-based computer culture

This article describes how a feminist intervention project in Canada focused on girls' more equitable access to and use of computers created significant opportunities for girls to develop and experience new identities as technology ‘experts’ within their school. In addition to a significant increase in participants' own technological expertise, there was a marked shift in the ways in which they talked about and negotiated their own gender identities with teachers and other students. Most significantly, the participants in the project became increasingly vocal about what they saw as inequitable practices in the daily operation of the school as well as those they were subject to by their teachers. This created, within the otherwise resilient macro-culture of the school, a more supportive climate for the advancement of gender equity well beyond the confines of its computer labs. We suggest that while equity-oriented school-level change is notoriously difficult to sustain, its most enduring impact might rather be participants' initiation into a discourse to which they had not previously experienced school-sanctioned access: a discourse in which to give voice to gender-specific inequities too long quieted by complacent discourses of “equality for all.”     

Property and proper chastity: Women's land rights in South Asia today

Bina Agarwal's ambitious and wide‐ranging book, A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), is reviewed. Agarwal's argument is that women in South Asia should have the same land rights as men. She considers, in detail, the pervasiveness with which such land rights are absent (although they do exist in certain limited areas), why this is so, and the means by which such rights might be obtained. Among the issues raised are: the need for women's organisations at the village level, whether legislation on its own can confer genuine rights (the answer is ‘no'), how control of women's sexuality connects with male control of land, and regional differences within India (especially between North and South). The book is seen to be a magisterial study of high quality. The one criticism made of it is the implication of Agarwal's theoretical discussion that gender ideologies are determined by economic causes. This is contested.

A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia, Bina Agarwal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp.xxii + 572. £60 (hardback); £24.95 (paperback). ISBN 81 85618 63 1 and 64 X.     

女大学生抑郁情绪与自动思维的关系

对384名女大学生进行自动思维问卷和Beck抑郁问卷表明,自动思维问卷中的全部条目均与女大学生抑郁呈显著正相关。说明女大学生具体自动思维和抑郁情绪的关系密切,增强女大学生识别和矫正消极思维的能力有助于缓解抑郁情绪。     

浅论传统文化与企业文化

随着时代的发展和科技的进步,企业文化已成为未来企业兴衰存亡的关键因素,而企业文化必然深受传统文化的影响。传统文化对企业文化既有积极意义亦有消极影响。企业文化对传统文化应采取"取其精华,弃其糟粕"的态度。     

Religion for the Modern Girl: Maude Royden in Australia, 1928

When the feminist preacher Maude Royden (1876–1956) toured Australia in 1928, she promoted modern religion for modern women. This article examines the Australian press coverage of Royden’s visit to shed light on the complex relationships between religion, modernity and the female body as they were constituted in Australia in the 1920s. In doing so, this article contributes to growing historiographic debate concerning the intersections of modernity and religion and serves to disrupt further those narratives which have presumed processes of modernisation and secularisation to be running in parallel. Australian newspapers eagerly spread the news of Royden assuming the previously masculine space of the pulpit and they promoted her new form of Christianity as scientifically credible and suited to modern Australia women’s lives. In advancing my analysis, I also compare Royden’s press reception in Australia to that of her contemporary, Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944). McPherson likewise also offered a religious response to modernity and a new religious femininity, but the Australian media showed comparatively little interest in her visit. I argue that although religious femininities were being recrafted for modernity in the pages of Australian newspapers, only certain expressions of religiosity and modern femininity were considered compatible.     

The right to culture and the culture of rights: a critical perspective on women’s sexual rights in Africa

The opposition of ‘culture’ and ‘rights’ is not uncommon in feminist legal discourse. This article argues that such an approach is fraught with danger as it creates an extremely restrictive framework within which African women can challenge domination; it limits our strategic interventions for transforming society and essentially plays into the hands of those seeking to perpetuate and solidify the existing structures of patriarchy. Drawing examples from a parallel research on Gender, Law and Sexuality, I propose that a more critical and interpretative approach to these two concepts may present a different perspective to portrayals of ‘tradition’ as constraining and/or fixed often displayed in mainstream feminist legal thinking.