Women and Asylum: A Particular Social Group

This note examines the judgement of the House of Lords in the cases of Islam andShah, particularly with regard to their conclusion that women in Pakistan who were victims of domestic violence and not protected by their state could qualify as members of a particular social group under the Geneva Convention, and therefore attain refugee status. The note considers the Refugee Women's Legal Group's Gender Guidelines for the Determination of Asylum Claims in the U.K. and discusses the problems faced by women who claim refugee status. Finally, the conceptualisation of domestic violence as a political issue and therefore a matter falling within the scope of the Convention issue is analysed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The ideal love object: Structural and family sources

We obtained preferences from 227 college students about the characteristics of their ideal love objects. We factor analyzed these separately for males and females and obtained both common and sex-specific factors. We then examined the relative contributions of a set of structural and family factors to the explanation of variance in each of the characteristics of the ideal love object. Results show that about one-third of the 58 characteristics have significant, though not high, amounts of variance explained by the predictors. The most important predictors were sex, religion, mother's marital happiness, and father's education.Received Ph.D. from New York University, 1963. Major research interest: emotions, love relationships, socialization, sociological theory.Received Ph.D. from City University of New York, 1976. Major research interests: sociological theory, sex roles, sociology of leisure, sociology of health.     

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。     

Women and Mental Health A Feminist Review

This article contextualizes some of the more specifically focused articles in this Special Issue of ‘Women and Mental Health’ by reviewing general historical and political currents structuring contemporary discussions around questions of models, treatment and provision for women within British mental health services. We highlight some particularities of the current British context (in relation to other national scenes) in terms of the forms and expressions of feminist activity around mental or emotional distress. While not absolute mirrors of each other, resonances between general trends in feminist debates and organizational forms within feminist mental health work give rise to a wide spectrum of sites of intervention. We discuss some of the conditions that gave rise to these forms of (visible) feminist intervention within mental health service provision, focusing particularly on women's counselling and therapy services, and we offer an analysis of the range and conceptual tensions within which such interventions may be situated, including contested perspectives on power and empowerment. We also consider ways in which women's political activity around mental health issues is likely not to be noticed as such, given women's prototypical positions as patients and practitioners. We end by identifying what we see as current challenges for feminist activism around distress and its links with the conditions of women's lives and oppression more generally, not only as instances of more general tensions and challenges within contemporary feminisms, but also as offering an arena of opportunity for broader alliance and coalition-building.     

Silences: Irish Women and Abortion

This article considers the forces which act to prevent women in Ireland from speaking about their experiences of abortion. It considers the various forms such silencing can take and the complexity of feelings and circumstance which women who have had abortions are subject to. In so doing it raises important questions about the way public debate about abortion between pro-choice and pro-life arguments - couched in terms of rights - acts to further silence women. Finally, the article calls for the creation of a new public and intellectual space in which the complexities of the issues can be realized. A new public space such as this could then facilitate the enactment of permissive legislation which in turn could enable women to decide the best pregnancy option available for them at any particular moment in their lives.