Women as patients: A problem for sex differences research

Using the feminist critique of the health care system as a starting point, this article indicates some of the relevant issues facing women as patients in general practice: lack of control over our bodies and reproductive functions, ‘psychologizing’ of women's complaints, the medicalization of social problems experienced by women as a group. Current research on women as patients is primarily of the sex-differences tradition, i.e. the differences between men and women patients are investigated. The results of this research are critically discussed. My contention is that such research, aside from being methodologically impoverished, is—from a feminist point of view—counterproductive. Some directions for alternative research in this area are given.     

Yes to Women Bishops—Yes to Women?

The move to ordain women as priests and bishops in the Church of England has taken nearly 40?years of campaigning in General Synod and almost 100 years of discussion and debate more widely in the Church. Christina Rees, a member of the Church of England's ruling body, the General Synod, considers why there has been such a long struggle, especially after agreeing that women can be ordained as priests, and therefore are suitable for Holy Orders. Over the past 25?years she has uncovered disturbing evidence that the insidious ideology of patriarchy has distorted theology in ways that has contributed to entrenched discrimination against women in the Church.     

Gendered Testimonies: Autobiographies,Diaries and Letters by Women as Sources for Caribbean History

Although history has been one of the main disciplines through which we can understand gender, the paucity of data written or recorded by women makes it more difficult for the historian to research women's lives in the past. In the Caribbean, this task has been made easier by the discovery of a few key sources which allow an insight into the private sphere of Caribbean women's lives. These records of women who have lived in the Caribbean since the 1800s consist of memoirs, diaries and letters. The autobiographical writings include the extraordinary record of Mary Prince, a Bermuda-born enslaved African woman. Other sources which have been examined are the diaries of women who were members of the elite in the society, and educated women who worked either in professions or through the church to assist others in their societies. Through her examination of the testimonies of these women, the author reveals aspects of childhood, motherhood, marriage and sexual abuses which different women – free and unfree, white, black or coloured – experienced. The glimpses allow us to see Caribbean women who have lived with and challenged the definitions of femininity allowed them in the past. It demonstrates that the distinctions created between women's private and public lives were as artificial then as they are at present.     

Slide-writing as Site-writing: A Performative Reading of the Women’s Art Library Slides

Abstract

The artist’s 35?mm slide consists of a photographic image framed by a slide mount she inscribes with writing and symbols that direct the slide’s future use. In this article, I consider how these artists’ writings that are held, suspended, in the WAL slide collection are a vibrant reading material that performs the slides as a feminist text. In my joint role as curator and researcher, I explore how I used photography to initiate a performative reading of the slide collection that politicizes the work of image reproductions.     

Women and citizenship

Barbara Sullivan and Gillian Whitehouse (eds), Gender, Politics & Citizenship in the 1990s (University of New South Wales Press) Sydney, 1996.

Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1996.