Women and substance use/abuse: Towards a feminist perspective or how to make dust fly

The purpose of this paper is to offer a feminist perspective in the area of women and substance abuse. A major strand of thinking highlighted throughout this paper is that a women- orientated response rooted in the identity and consciousness of women substance users/abusers is essential. Five key areas are explored and these include: (1) the need for a feminist perspective which moves beyond ‘masculinist’ truths; (2) substance abuse as a “gender illuminating notion”; (3) the “unacceptable” and “acceptable” faces of dependency; (4) the development of a women- orientated methodology in the field of substance abuse; and (5) substance abuse and “pleasure”: is this relevant for women? While pointers for future research are indicated, it is suggested that more work “by women and for women” is needed in the area.     

Disrupting Identity through Visible Therapy: A Feminist Post-structuralist Approach to Working with Women Who Have Experienced Child Sexual Abuse

This article draws on feminism and post-structuralism to theorize a narrative framework for developing and critiquing therapeutic practices with women who have experienced child sexual abuse. I argue that both objectivism and relativism provide poor guides for conducting therapy and that it is only through situating our knowledges precisely that more liberatory therapy practices may be developed. This approach, termed ‘visible therapy’, is used to directly and explicitly challenge normative constructions of women, child sexual abuse and therapy. I argue that it is necessary to explicate the embedded assumptions produced through practices of abuse, and which serve to construct children's experiences of that abuse, in order to ward against their reproduction within therapy relationships. I demonstrate that it is through situating and explicating the operations of power that the authenticity of experience and identity may be questioned and women's ongoing positioning as guilty victims may be challenged. Thus, I am concerned not with who women ‘really are’ but with how they come to know and be known through practices of both abuse and therapy. This, then, is about making the tactics of abuse and therapy visible. Problems are not located within individuals, but rather within the narratives which situate both past and current relationships but which, through reiteration, obscure their own social production. I conclude that it is only when categorical identity is no longer assumed that progressive therapy practices with women who have been sexually abused can be developed and maintained.     

same old story? children and young people’s continued normalisation of men’s violence against women

Globally, nationally and locally men’s violence against women is an endemic social problem and an enduring human rights issue within all societies and cultures. Challenging attitudes that condone violence both at the individual and community level is a key priority in its prevention. This paper brings together findings from two separate studies based on children’s and young people’s understandings of men’s violence against women. Both studies were located in Glasgow, Scotland, and used qualitative methods to explore children’s and young people’s views of men’s violence against women. The two studies, conducted nearly ten years apart, involved children aged 11 and 12 and young people aged 15 to 18. Despite the differences in age and the interval between them, there are remarkable similarities identified within both studies centring around children and young people’s normalisation of men’s violence against women. This paper presents a discussion of three of the key themes identified from these studies: the construction of men’s violence; gender roles and the naturalisation of difference; and the normalisation of men’s violence. In both studies the techniques of normalisation were employed by the participants to minimise both the seriousness of the violence and the significance of it to the victims. The findings clearly illustrate the widespread justification of gendered violence by both boys and girls. Thus, while the development and implementation of domestic violence/abuse education programmes need to take into account gender differences, targeting only boys’ attitudes fails to acknowledge an important component in reducing domestic violence/abuse: the internalisation of patriarchal norms by girls and women.     

Secret Things and the Confinement of Walls

This article explores the under-examined issue of sexual abuse of children by women. It asks what are the conditions under which such things become knowable or when are they rendered unthinkable? The private sphere, marked by domestic walls, has been identified as the space most influenced and shaped by women. Its walls symbolise shelter and protection, and they are associated with the safety of all within. At the same time, however, the walls which constitute the private also enable a space within which women's actions can take place with limited oversight by others. Walls foster secrecy and what happens within can include elements of transgression. The sexual abuse of children by women—either their own or those entrusted into their care by others—is one such transgression. This article analyses a series of case studies derived from different historical sources in order to highlight how walls and the understandings of privacy that they support help to perpetuate a widespread belief that women can be unquestioningly trusted in their relations with children.     

Developmental Growth Trajectories of Self-Esteem in Adolescence: Associations with Child Neglect and Drug Use and Abuse in Young Adulthood

Neglectful rearing is linked with young adults’ substance use and abuse, though the developmental mechanisms that underlie this association are unclear. The present study examines links between self-esteem growth during adolescence, childhood supervisory versus physical neglect severity, and substance use and abuse in young adulthood. A sample of youth was obtained from the Add Health study (N = 8738; 55.4 %-Female; 20 %-African American, 14.7 %-Hispanic). Growth mixture modeling analyses supported declining, ascending, and stable high self-esteem trajectories. The declining and ascending trajectories reported greater neglect and alcohol abuse (but not use) as well as cannabis use and abuse. The findings suggest that compromised development of self-esteem underlies associations between neglect and substance use and abuse. Preventive interventions may benefit from targeting self-esteem among neglected youth.     

The continuum of violence against women in canadian universities : Toward a new understanding of the chilly campus climate

This paper examines various components which constitute the “chilly climate” for women in universities and argues that such behaviours and institutional practices must be understood as forms of violence against women. The instances of violence against women on campus are connected to each other because each incident represents men's attempts to socially control women through force, coercion, abuse, and silencing.     

Domestic Violence and the Gendered Law of Self-Defence in France: The Case of Jacqueline Sauvage

Legal responses to battered women who kill have long animated scholarly debate and law reform activity. In September 2012 after 47 years of alleged abuse, Frenchwoman Jacqueline Sauvage fatally shot her abusive husband three times in the back. The subsequent contested trial, conviction for murder, unsuccessful appeal and later presidential pardon of Sauvage thrust the French law of self-defence into the spotlight. The Sauvage case raises important questions surrounding the adequacy of the French criminal law in this area, the ongoing proliferation of gendered stereotypes in law and the need for reform. In the wake of the Sauvage case, this article provides a timely analysis of the gendered law of self-defence in France. Drawing from an in-depth analysis of the judgments imposed in the Sauvage case, this article examines the adequacy of French legal responses to battered women who kill and ignites an argument for further law reform.     

Women's studies and men's careers: How the ‘social problem’ of women in education maintained the academic status of men in the 1970s

This paper investigates the changing status of research of women and education during the 1970s. All articles published in the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal of Educational Psychology, Child Development, Sociology of Education, and the Journal of Educational Measurement from 1973 through 1978 are included in this study. A total of 2239 research articles are identified and examined for article content and authorship. Of these articles, 13.5 per cent deal with women and education, 15.9 per cent are authored by women solely and 28.0 per cent are co-authored by women and men. There is a significant increase in the number of articles on women and education, and it appears that proportionately more of these articles are written by women; however, there is no proportional change in women's authorship of (1) total articles written by women, (2) articles on women and education, or (3) articles on topics other than women and education. It is concluded that women and education became a legitimate topic for scholarly inquiry during the 1970s, but that this increased legitimacy did not benefit women specifically.     

‘talk about a cunt with too much idle time’: trolling feminist research

Given the growing popularity of online methods for researchers and the increasing awareness of the levels of harassment and abuse directed at women online—especially women expressing feminist views—it is critical that we address the implications of online abuse for feminist researchers. Focussing on an often hidden yet significant part of our methodological decisions and recruitment, this paper details the online abuse levelled by men’s rights activists against a research project on women’s experiences of men’s stranger intrusions in public space. It argues for the need to locate such experiences within a violence-against-women frame, extending the concept of a continuum of sexual violence. Such an extension renders visible the added labour of ‘safety work’, which forms an invisible backdrop to the methodological decisions of many feminist researchers.     

Willingness to Self-Disclose among Late Adolescent Female Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

The primary aim of this study was to compare the willingness of sexually abused (n = 22) and non–sexually abused (n = 36) late adolescent women to self-disclose both general and sexual information to strangers and intimate partners. Results, based on a sample of college women, indicate that those who were sexually abused in childhood are less likely than nonabused counterparts to be highly disclosing of sexual and general information to intimate partners. Avoiding extensive disclosure of personal information to intimate partners may serve to keep survivors of abuse at a relatively safe distance from their own dysphoric feelings and suggests that mistrust of others is an ongoing issue for this population.     

State Facilitated Economic Abuse: A Structural Analysis of Men Deliberately Withholding Child Support

Economic abuse is well established as a widespread and damaging element of intimate partner violence. However research largely addresses cohabiting couples, with few detailed explorations of women’s longer-term experiences after separation. Further, researchers have not developed a gendered analysis of child support related economic abuse. Such an analysis requires understanding gender as a framework that organises institutions and relationships in ways that build and reproduce hierarchical relations of difference. In this paper, I present data from in-depth interviews with 37 single mothers to pursue a structural analysis of how men’s deliberate withholding of child support (termed child maintenance in some countries) can be a form of economic abuse that is facilitated through gendered state processes and institutions that order child support transfers. I argue that masculine financial discretion structures policy and organizational practices in ways that legitimate men’s financial agency at the expense of women’s financial autonomy. On-going compliance issues are not the result of a failure of Australia’s Child Support Program, but suggest that the state’s role can be one of regulation, not prevention, of economic abuse. Thus, Australia’s Child Support Program normalises the potential for post-separation economic abuse.     

Violence against women: A Palestinian women's perspective : Personal is political

Through the true story of Fatma, the author reveals and examines the underlying cause and effect of violence against women in Palestinian society in Israel. By following a path of abuse and violence that lasted for 10 years and several desperate attempts to seek help, we get a clearer view of the true problems and obstacles facing these women today. The women has to face: Social norms that legitimize violence; religious beliefs; internalized attitudes; self-blame — feelings of guilt; blaming the victim; economic, emotional, and social dependency; unfriendly police system; unfriendly courts (religious courts).     

Nordic women's documentation centres

The Norwegian au pair documentaries Mammaranet (“The Mummy Robbery”) (2006) and Herskap og tenarar (“Masters and Servants”) (2013) tell the stories of two Filipina women who have left behind their children to become au pairs in Norway. The films portray the hardship of au pairing and focus on trafficking and labour and sexual abuse. Both films are problem-orientated, and I explore the way in which they construct the figure of the au pair. I argue that the films draw on a global care chain framework to construct au pairs as mothers who are primarily financially motivated, while their children in the home country are cast as self-evidently suffering. Furthermore, the films cross-cut between stories of sexual abuse and scenes of the au pairs' highly feminized self-presentation. This cross-cutting contributes to a construction of the au pairs as vulnerable “girls”, but also as sexually available women. Using Bhattacharyya's concept of “the exotic”, I argue that this particular construction draws on a colonial discourse that makes unequal racialized power relations appear more attractive to the privileged. In conclusion, I discuss the implicit solutions to the problems presented in the films, and argue that their constructions of au pairs contribute to a certain cultural circulation of “truths” that allows for discourses favouring certain policies—namely closing the scheme to mothers and, eventually, to all au pairs from outside the EU/Schengen Area.     

‘Free from all uninvited touch of man’: Women's campaigns around sexuality, 1880–1914

The history of sex in the last 100 years has generally been represented as a triumphant march from Victorian prudery into the light of sexual freedom. From a feminist perspective the picture is different. During the last wave of feminism women, often represented as prudes and puritans by historians, waged a massive campaign to transform male sexual behaviour in the interests of women. They campaigned against the abuse of women in prostitution, the sexual abuse of children, and marital rape. This article describes the women's activities in the social purity movement, and the increasingly militant stance taken by some pre-war feminists who refused to relate sexually to men, in the context of the developing feminist analysis of sexuality. The main purpose of the paper is to show that in order to understand the significance of this aspect of the women's movement we must look at the area of sexuality not merely as a sphere of personal fulfilment but as an arena of struggle in which male dominance and women's subordination can be most powerfully reinforced and maintained or fundamentally challenged.     

Association of Contextual Factors with Drug Use and Binge Drinking among White, Native American, and Mixed-Race Adolescents in the General Population

Large-scale surveys have shown elevated risk for many indicators of substance abuse among Native American and Mixed-Race adolescents compared to other minority groups in the United States. This study examined underlying contextual factors associated with substance abuse among a nationally representative sample of White, Native American, and Mixed-Race adolescents 12–17?years of age, using combined datasets from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH 2006–2009, N?=?46,675, 48.77?% female). Native American adolescents displayed the highest rate of past-month binge drinking and past-year illicit drug use (14.06 and 30.91?%, respectively). Results of a logistic regression that included seven predictors of social bonding, individual views of substance use, and delinquent peer affiliations showed that friendships with delinquent peers and negative views of substance use were associated significantly with both substance abuse outcomes among White and Mixed-Race adolescents and, to a lesser extent, Native American adolescents. The association of parental disapproval with binge drinking was stronger for White than for Native American adolescents. Greater attention to specific measures reflecting racial groups’ contextual and historical differences may be needed to delineate mechanisms that discourage substance abuse among at-risk minority adolescent populations.     

The Canadian Supreme Court and Domestic Violence: R v Ryan, 2013 SCC 3

This paper analyses the judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of R v Ryan, 2013 SCC 3. This is a very significant decision from a variety of perspectives. The judgment is an important addition to the Canadian criminal law jurisprudence as it clarifies the scope of the defence of duress. However, from a feminist perspective, the case also highlights issues relating to situations in which victims of domestic violence eventually kill their partners following long cycles of abuse. In addition, the judgment serves as a reminder of the substantial problems which still exist regarding the responses of criminal justice systems to victims of domestic violence and the abuse they have suffered.     

Distress Intolerance Mediates the Relationship between Child Maltreatment and Nonsuicidal Self-Injury among Chinese Adolescents: A Three-Wave Longitudinal Study

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a serious public health concern among adolescents. Identifying risk factors of NSSI is important to effectively prevent or reduce such behavior. Child maltreatment is one of the most widely recognized risk factors for NSSI. How child maltreatment and NSSI is related, however, is still unclear. The present study tested the temporal relationship between physical and emotional abuse and NSSI, with distress intolerance as the potential mediator. Potential gender differences on these associations were also tested. We assessed all study variables among 2259 Chinese adolescents (53.8% females; M_age?=?15.11 years, SD?=?1.57) for three times at 6-month intervals. The results showed that distress intolerance only mediated the relationship between emotional abuse and NSSI, but not between physical abuse and NSSI. In addition, this mediation effect of distress intolerance was significant only for females. The findings of this study can help researchers and practitioners understand pathways by which child maltreatment impacts adolescent NSSI. Implications for preventions and interventions of NSSI were discussed.     

Expert Evidence As Context: Historical Patterns and Contemporary Attitudes in the Prosecution of Sexual Offences

In H.M. Advocate v. Grimmond ¹ the judge in a Scottish High Court trial refused permission for expert psychological evidence to be admitted on behalf of the Crown in a prosecution involving sexual offences against two children. The Crown had sought to lead an expert witness to explain to the jury about patterns of disclosure in child sexual abuse cases. The case was remarkable, not so much for the strict application of the longstanding rule in R. v. Turner that constrains the use in the courtroom of expert evidence from the behavioural sciences, but for the way in which the arguments presented by the Crown in Grimmond resonate with enduring feminist critiques regarding the treatment of women in rape trials. The theoretical issues raised by the decision include the quest for context to counter rigid evidential frameworks, and the choice of a child sexual abuse case as the medium for challenging the boundaries of the admissibility of expert evidence in the courtroom. The ramifications of Grimmond are tangible as legislation intended to benefit children and women has already been enacted by the Scottish Parliament to ameliorate the effects of the decision. This article suggests that while this legislation should be given a cautious welcome it remains to be seen whether the heralded benefits will actually materialise. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.