Gender, familism and housing: matrimonial property rights in Ireland

This article explores the gender structure of housing rights, and specifically matrimonial property law, in the Republic of Ireland as a basis for examining the means by which women gain access to and control over economic resources, or capital. Taking the Family Home Protection Act (1976) and the ill-fated Matrimonial Home Bill (1993) as examples of legislation to strengthen women's matrimonial property rights, it is argued that these have been formulated using gendered, familist, categories of reform. The State's attempts to strengthen women's entitlements have been mediated by its constitutional commitment to maintain a preference for the marital family as well as its failure to recognise the economic value of women's unpaid domestic work. This article argues that in this context, the Irish State's strategy of gender equality, which is based on the equitable treatment of different household types, is divisive, ineffective. and inequitable.     

Before Identity, Gender and Human Rights

This is the beginning of an exploration of before as the thesis ‘before’ (temporally) and ‘be-fore’ (spatially) difference. Before denotes the origin and the desired destination. Before (in the double sense of ‘before’ and ‚be-in-the-fore’) opens up a space of pre-difference, of origin and of forgotten memory, as well as a space of desire, objective, illusion of teleology, unity, completion. Applied to the two domains of Human Rights and Sex/Gender, the space of ‘before’ yields two slightly different vistas: in human rights, a premodern, functionally undifferentiated society which had to invent human rights as its safeguards of functional differentiation. In Sex/Gender, ‘before’ brings a self-referential construction: that of ipseity, as the form of identity beyond comparison that does not play with id but with ipsum. Ipseity is inoperable but not useless. It is inoperable because it cannot be observed from anywhere without suffering rupture. It is not useless because it offers a ground for the reconceptualisation of difference, both through awe and desire.     

The Effects of Ethnic Identity,Ethnicity, and Gender on Adolescent Well-Being

Ethnic identity was conceptualized into three categories: (1) unexamined, (2) searching for identity, and (3) achieved ethnic identity. Analyses of data collected from 12,386 adolescents showed that ethnic identity is an important qualifier of the relationships between independent variables of ethnicity and gender, and dependent variables of global self-esteem, academic self-confidence, and purpose in life. Whites and Native Americans had lower ethnic identity, and Blacks and Hispanics had higher ethnic identity. Asians and repondents of mixed ethnicity had intermediate levels of ethnic identity. The greater the ethnic identity, the higher the self-esteem, purpose in life and self-confidence. This mechanism applies to ethnic minorities and to women among whom achieved ethnic identity may blunt the negative effects of social denigration and stereotyping, and it applies to whites, too. The paper argues that multiculturalism in the schools can increase ethnic identity.     

Gender/Racial Differences in Jock Identity,Dating, and Adolescent Sexual Risk

Despite recent declines in overall sexual activity, sexual risk-taking remains a substantial danger to US youth. Existing research points to athletic participation as a promising venue for reducing these risks. Linear regressions and multiple analyses of covariance were performed on a longitudinal sample of nearly 600 Western New York adolescents in order to examine gender- and race-specific relationships between jock identity and adolescent sexual risk-taking, including age of sexual onset, past-year and lifetime frequency of sexual intercourse, and number of sexual partners. After controlling for age, race, socioeconomic status, and family cohesion, male jocks reported more frequent dating than nonjocks but female jocks did not. For both genders, athletic activity was associated with lower levels of sexual risk-taking; however, jock identity was associated with higher levels of sexual risk-taking, particularly among African American adolescents. Future research should distinguish between subjective and objective dimensions of athletic involvement as factors in adolescent sexual risk.Research Scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions of the University at Buffalo. Received PhD in sociology from the University at Buffalo. Research interests include adolescent athletic involvement, gender, race, and health-risk behavior, particularly substance use.Department Chair and Professor of Sociology at the University at Buffalo. Received PhD in sociology from Yale University. Research interests include the effects of families, friendships, and organizational participation on adolescent development and substance use.Senior Research Scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions of the University at Buffalo. Received PhD in sociology from the University at Buffalo. Research interests include family influences on adolescent substance use, gambling, and other problem behaviors.Professor of Physical Education and Sport at SUNY College at Brockport. Received PhD in physical education from Ohio State University. Research interests include the sociology of sport, social psychology of sport, sport group dynamics, and sport spectatorship/fandom.Professor of Sociology at DYouville College. Received PhD in sociology from the University at Buffalo. Research interests include the sociology of sport, gender, and mens health.     

Mothers and Their Adolescent Daughters: Relationship Between Self-Esteem,Gender Role Identity,Body Image

The relationship between the predictor variables of self-esteem and gender role identity, and the criterion measure of body image, were examined for 82 mothers and their menstrual daughters, and for 31 mothers and their premenstrual daughters. Findings from the regression analyses indicated that higher self-esteem was significantly related to positive body image scores for menstrual daughters and both groups of mothers, but not for the premenstrual participants. The role of gender identity in contributing to body image was more complex, with greater femininity being correlated with more positive body image for the premenstrual daughters and for the mothers of the menstrual daughters, and greater masculinity being correlated with more positive body image scores for the menstrual girls in the study. Mothers' body image scores were positively correlated with their daughters' body image scores for mother/menstrual daughter pairs but not for the mother/premenstrual daughter pairs in the study. Results support a complex relationship between age, physical maturation, and mother/daughter dynamics in contributing to the development of a positive body image for adolescent girls during puberty.     

The Role of Gender in Adolescent Identity and Intimacy Decisions

This study explored the relative importance of identity and intimacy in male and female adolescent decisions. One hundred twenty adolescents responded to 16 identity/intimacy dilemmas. Females had higher identity (and lower intimacy) scores than males. Identity scores were higher in scenarios with female protagonists. A content analysis of decision explanations showed females gave more explanations than males with identity and intimacy fused. Implications for theories of psychosocial development are discussed.     

Similarities or Differences in Identity Development? The Impact of Acculturation and Gender on Identity Process and Outcome

This study examined the effects of variations in acculturation and gender on identity processes and outcomes. Three hundred fifty-seven students at a culturally diverse university completed measures of identity processes (exploration, commitment, and identity style) and outcomes (identity status). The generalizability of the underlying identity processes across contextual variations was ascertained by evaluating the consistency of factor solutions across immigrant generation and gender. Results suggested that the processes underlying identity development are consistent across variations in acculturation and gender. Supplemental analyses revealed effects of acculturation and gender on the extent to which individuals utilized various identity processes and manifested various identity outcomes.     

Conserving the Principle of Identity: Identity,Representation and Equivalence

Howie recognizes as a starting position that there is a significant and political problem with judgements that presume an easy and unrestrained identification of a thing or a person, but she is sceptical that all judgements of identity are necessarily implicated in the same politics. She investigates how 'identity' functions in logic, judgement and epistemology, and argues that a dialectical understanding of identity provides the grounds both for a realist appreciation of the world that includes a subjective element and for a recognition that a subject both is and is not how she is and has been identified.     

A Nurse and a Soldier: Gender,Class and National Identity in the First World War Adventures of Grace McDougall and Flora Sandes

In this article the author explores the ways Grace McDougall, Commandant of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), and Flora Sandes, Captain and combatant in the Serbian Army, negotiated gender, class and national identity and enhanced women’s claim to personal and collective power during their work at the Front during the First World War. The author analyses Sandes and McDougall’s writings and their accounts of personal heroism and focuses on two aspects: first, their participation in the physical dangers of war and the creation of audacious stories of physical bravery that aligned them with male combatants; and second, their performance of ingenuity, intellect and action that gave them power, status and credibility, and consolidated their leadership and authority. In their different ways, both women modelled resistance to female subordination and made the case for women’s participation in war.     

Women and power in Ireland: Problems,progress, practice

A major problem confronting Irish feminists centres on how the transition from a first phase of consciousness-raising and more or less separatist analysis and action to a second phase of broad-based mobilisation for policy-change is to be achieved, without losing sight of, or faith in, the long-term goal of a radical transformation of sexual power relations. As part of the necessary reappraisal of our present position, fundamental to the development of new strategies, this paper describes the extent to which women in Ireland are chronically and grossly underrepresented in power élites, and analyses some of the barriers which have precluded—and in large measure continue to preclude—women's equal participation in the decision and policy-making processes. More optimistically, the conclusion briefly indicates the challenge to traditional forms of political organisation represented by the emergence of alternative forms of political activism, initiated and developed by women over the past several years.