Sex workers’ responses to the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT

This article engages with the voices of women sex workers during the peak of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in New Zealand. The late-1980s saw the formation of the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective, a sex worker led organisation that contracted with the government to provide a community-based national response to HIV and AIDS. The article explores the challenges sex workers faced to sustain and implement the use of condoms in their daily professional and personal lives. These included pressure from clients to forego the use of condoms, the risk of carrying condoms amidst the threat of arrest, and the struggle to manage the use of condoms in their personal sex lives. The paper traces both the widespread support for safe sex and the fractures and tensions that emerged as many sex workers mobilised to establish a community-based response to one of the most devastating health crises of the late-twentieth century.     

Bridging cross-cultural feminisms: annie besant and women's rights in England and India, 1874-1933

Abstract

Annie Besant was a Victorian radical whose outspoken views included advocacy of women's rights and opposition to British imperial policies. In her mid-forties she went to live in India. Contesting British attempts to Westernize Indian society, Besant found herself in the seemingly anomalous position of defending traditional Indian patriarchy and resisting efforts to reform the status of Indian women. Such conservatism brought on Besant criticism not only from Western liberals and Christian missionaries, but also from many Indian social reformers. When she gradually shifted her views and voiced her support for Indian women's rights, Indian nationalists condemned her as a British imperialist. The conflict between loyalty to national heritage and opposition to traditional patriarchy is one that colonized women have commonly experienced. By examining how an anti-imperialist British feminist responded to the question of women's reform in India, this paper offers another perspective on the complexities of this dilemma.     

Separation-individuation and ego identity status in New Zealand university students

This study explores intrapsychic structures underlying Marcia's ego identity statuses in terms of separation-individuation patterns. It was hypothesized that achievement and moratorium adolescents would give greater evidence of intrapsychic differentiation on a projective measure of separation anxiety than would foreclosure or diffusion youths. Marcia's Ego Identity Status Interview and Hansburg's Separation Anxiety Test were administered to 80 female and 60 male volunteers at a New Zealand university. All were under 23 years of age. As predicted, high statuses showed less anxiety than secure attachment or detachment. Contrary to expectation, no differences among attachment styles appeared for low statuses. Difficulties in adapting the identity status interview to the New Zealand context may partially explain these results. A measure of intrapsychic differentiation provides a useful supplement to the identity status interview.This research was supported by a grant from the Internal Research Committee, Victoria University of Wellington. Parts of this research were presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Toronto, 1985.Received Ph.D in child development from Florida State University in 1977. Current research interest is identity formation from a lifespan perspective.     

We are the ones that we have been waiting for: Political content in Alice Walker's novels

In this essay, I'd like to look at political concepts in Alice Walker's fiction, that is in her three novels and her two collections of short stories. There are two specific areas I'd like to focus on: (1) Walker's use of the interconnection between the domestic sphere (family, emotional relationships, etc.) and the social sphere, e.g. movements like the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement, in analysing sexism and racism; and in suggesting effective means to change. (2) Her use of black female protagonist who challenge ideologies, in the domestic and social sphere, e.g. the nationalist Black Muslims, the liberal Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Movement.Although these two areas seem to be large areas of concern and that it would seem that it would be practical to focus on only one of them, they intersect in Walker's work at critical points. Who does what and why is as important a political concept in her work as is her analysis of the intersection of the domestic and social sphere. Her fiction, as a whole, is an illustration of how inner personal transformation and wider social action are both necessary elements in an effective political philosophy.     

‘Magdalens and moral imbeciles’: Women's homes in nineteenth-century New Zealand

The potential for women's charitable work in nineteenth-century New Zealand was restricted by colonial women's initial isolation from each other and involvement in domestic life, and also by early government assumption of responsibility for welfare. Rescue work provided one of the few outlets for women's voluntary charity, and reflected the sanction given to women's role as a moral, civilising force in colonial society. It illustrates women's role in the development of social work, the limitations of this role in nineteenth-century New Zealand, and modifications to it in the space of three decades. The arguments used to justify women's involvement in rescuing ‘fallen’ members of their own sex were similar to those used in the later nineteenth-century, when women activists sought wider involvement in public life. It is argued that a power based upon moral influence was narrow in scope and ultimately restrictive in the New Zealand context.     

Christine Parker's Peach: The Politics of Filming Desire in 1990's New Zealand

Christine Parker's 1993 live-action short begins with music, the kind of repetitive, slow, percussion-heavy, saxophone-dominated score usually associated with low-budget porn. The film's opening visual, however, is a close-up not of the expected soft flesh, but of the skin of a soft fruit. Lest the viewer miss the joke-i.e., that the rounded, indented, rosy surfaces on display are not attached to a human body at all-the main title Peach appears, underlining the witty substitution. As the exaggeratedly sensual music continues, there is a long dissolve to a fixed frame shot of green background foliage, while a truck drives into view and approaches the camera. The front grille soon fills the screen, as does the truck's license plate, which remains in sight for several seconds. It reads "PF 9037."     

Two models of infant welfare in the first half of the twentieth century: New Zealand and the USA

In New Zealand, as elsewhere in the Western world in the early twentieth century, maternal and infant health became a national concern and the task of organising health services was taken up by women in a voluntary capacity. In the USA this culminated in the Sheppard-Towner (Maternity and Infancy) Act of 1921. However, within a decade American paediatricians had assumed control of the services. By contrast, the services in New Zealand remained in the hands of a female-run voluntary organisation, the Plunket Society. From the foundation of the Society in 1907, health services for mothers and their infants became the site of territorial disputes between various health providers – the Health Department, the Plunket Society and paediatricians. This article explores why and how the Plunket Society managed to retain control of this important area of public health in the face of challenges by these other health providers. It will be argued that the reasons relate to the tenacity with which the ‘maternalists’ claimed the territory as their own, their informal access to channels of power, their public support, and their success in maintaining medical respectability through their own honorary and paid professional staff.     

Foundations for longevity: the ILO,New Zealand and the strategies of autonomy,relevance and presence

In 2019, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) will celebrate its Centenary as one of the oldest international organisations. In this paper, we argue that important insights into this institutional resilience can be provided by an examination of the activities of the early ILO Directors and the establishment of three principal strategies – autonomy, presence and relevance. Through the case study of New Zealand, we demonstrate how these strategies provided the wherewithal for ILO survival during the inter-war years and the foundation for its longevity.