The New Chum girl: Upending Colonial Clichés in Lilian Turner's Emigration Novel

This essay analyses Lilian Turner's Three New Chum Girls (1910) to show how settler authors played with colonial clichés as part of a critical reaction to shifting imperialist and nationalist ideologies at the turn of the century. In particular, Turner redefines the derogatory colonial term “new chum”—commonly used to describe a recent emigrant in the settler colonies—to suggest what the welcome of new arrivals ought to be like. Yet if her deliberate reworking of stereotypes consequently contains an element of wish-fulfilment, the narrative also offers a startlingly stark portrayal of settler life. Emigration, Turner contends in the novel, is neither easy nor a solution to problems at home. Nor does settler Australia provide a convenient space for fortune-seeking sojourns. Turner thus dismantles two clusters of common clichés: emigration as a pat ending in fiction and settlers' return to the homeland as an equally expedient plot twist. The self-irony that runs through much of her intertextual rewriting of both metropolitan fiction and male-coded settler writing reveals how emigration and return were being imagined and written about differently in the settler colonies and how Turner was utilising the exposure of false expectations to promote her vision of a welcoming settler community.     

Pregnancy and Intimate Partner Violence in Canada: a Comparison of Victims Who Were and Were Not Abused During Pregnancy

The purpose of this study was to examine risk factors, indicators of severity, and differences in post-violence health effects for victims who experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy compared to victims who experienced IPV outside the pregnancy period. Data were from Statistics Canada’s 2009 General Social Survey. Among IPV victims, 10.5 % experienced physical and/or sexual violence during pregnancy. Victims who had experienced violence during pregnancy were more likely than victims who were not abused during pregnancy to experience both less severe and more severe forms of violence. In fully adjusted models, younger age, separated or divorced marital status, as well as partners’ patriarchal domination, destruction of property, and drinking were significant predictors of pregnancy violence. Measures indicative of more severe violence and of a number of adverse post-violence health effects were significantly elevated among victims who experienced pregnancy violence relative to victims who were not abused during pregnancy. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Risky Sexual Behavior: A Race-specific Social Consequence of Obesity

Scant attention has been given to the consequence of actual weight status for adolescents’ sexual wellbeing. In this article, we investigate the race-specific connection between obesity and risky sexual behavior among adolescent girls. Propensity scores and radius matching are used to analyze a sample of 340 adolescents aged 16–17 who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Young Adult Survey in 2000 or 2002. Nearly even numbers of these participants identified as white and black (183 and 157, respectively). We find that compared to their non-obese white peers, obese white adolescent girls exhibit higher rates of multiple sex partners and sex with older partners, and are also less likely to use condoms. None of these factors are significantly related to high BMI within the black sample. These findings indicate that the negative social consequences of obesity extend beyond future economic and marriage outcomes to adolescent white women’s sexual outcomes. They also highlight the importance of context: the implications of being obese during adolescence depend on cultural meanings of obesity.     

Aggressive Parental Discipline Experienced in Childhood and Internalizing Problems in Early Adulthood

Parental use of aggressive discipline, specifically corporal punishment (CP) and psychological aggression (PA), has been shown to increase the risk for a number of problem behaviors in children and adolescents. How CP and PA experienced in childhood contribute to adverse developmental outcomes in adulthood remains to be understood. Survey data collected from University of Manitoba students (n?=?1133) was used to assess the effects of childhood experiences of CP and PA on internalizing problems (i.e., depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem) in early adulthood. Because aggressive disciplinary techniques do not occur in isolation, a number of protective factors were also considered in analyses. Both CP and PA were associated with lower levels of parental warmth/support and responsiveness, and more inconsistency in discipline. However, highly inductive parents tended to use CP and PA more frequently than less inductive parents. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that childhood PA predicted anxiety and lower self-esteem in adulthood, even after the effects of positive parenting were taken into account. These findings suggest that not only do CP and PA tend to occur within environments that are less conducive to positive development, but also predict problematic developmental outcomes in adulthood even after the effects of protective factors are taken into account.     

Verfassungspolitologie?

Die Verzahnung von Recht und Politik durch die hybride Institution der Verfassung würde für ihre Erforschung auch ein klar politikwissenschaftliches Terrain er?ffnen. Doch Verfassungsfragen gelten in ?sterreich weitgehend als Juristenfragen, weswegen zahlreiche Themenfelder einer „Verfassungspolitologie“ allein der Rechtswissenschaft überlassen werden, die jedoch in ihrer Betrachtung normativer Fragen über eine spezifische Sicht der Dinge verfügt. Der vorliegende Beitrag versucht unter Einbezug der jüngsten Studienreformen eine Darstellung des Status quo ?sterreichischer Verfassungsforschung und -lehre und empfiehlt nicht zuletzt aus demokratiepolitischen Gründen eine explizit politologische Verfassungsanalyse sowie mehr Kooperation zwischen Rechts- und Politikwissenschaft.     

Gender differences in personality and cancer-related pain among older cancer patients

Indicators explaining gender differences in personality and pain among older cancer patients have not been adequately addressed. This study examined gender differences in cancer-related pain severity, the Five Factor Model of personality, and affect among older cancer patients (86 women, 64 men). No significant differences were found in pain severity between the gender groups. Analyses indicated that women scored significantly higher for the personality trait of neuroticism than men (p < .05). Further analyses showed that different demographic, health, and personality variables predicted pain severity in women and men. Gender was found to be a significant moderator in the association between the personality trait of neuroticism and average pain. These findings suggest that both gender and different personality types may influence reported pain severity. Specifically, the results suggest that how patients experience and report pain severity may be gender-specific, and that it may be inappropriate to assume that women and men experience, report, and manage their pain in similar ways. Future studies focusing on the influence of personality and gender on health outcomes are needed to assist healthcare providers in tailoring treatment, thereby promoting optimal symptom management.     

Sex Equality as Substantive Justice

Books reviewed in this article:
Sandra Fredman, Women and the Law
Aileen McColgan, Just Wages for Women