ATTORNEYS' OPINIONS REGARDING CHILD CUSTODY MEDIATION AND ASSESSMENT SERVICES

Family attorneys (N = 161) completed a questionnaire about mediation and assessment of child custody issues. Comparisons by gender, years of family law practice, and status as a mediator revealed more similarities than differences among attorneys. There were gender differences in the strength of conviction of the importance of attending to abuse issues in mediation and assessment, with female attorneys holding stronger views than did their male counterparts. There were few differences among the opinions of lawyers based on their years of experience or their training in mediation, although, compared to nonmediators, mediators rated the positive effects of mediation more highly.     

Margaret Thatcher is my sister: Counselling on divisions between women

This paper looks at the ways in which women are divided from themselves and each other as women: at the internalised oppression which results from THE oppression of patriarchy, at the systematic mistreatment of women as a group by men as a group reinforced by the social structures of male power. It also looks at the ways in which women are divided from each other as a result of other oppressive systems such as class and/or race or religion or physical ability or age.The paper then describes how the particular theory and practice of Re-evaluation Counselling can be used to ‘deconstruct’ or ‘discharge’ the internalised oppression of patriarchy and other oppressive systems, making the principles of Women's Liberation and sisterhood a practical possibility for ‘everywoman’ and all women—including Margaret Thatcher. Throughout, the word ‘patriarchy’ is used to mean the system of male power usually regarded as synonymous with sexism.The paper includes a basic summary of Re-evaluation Counselling theory and practice.     

Migration and Social Reproduction at Critical Junctures in Family Life Course

This review paper focuses on low-income migrants in (or from) developing countries and their social reproduction, and asks what this means for their social protection. We focus on the recognition that migration involves (re)negotiations of social reproduction by migrants and their families. These renegotiations are heavily inflected with gendered power relations in ways that are specific to individual and family life course. As such, migration involves taking on new risks and dynamic vulnerabilities in sustaining everyday and intergenerational social reproduction. These are sharpened by the increasing feminisation of migration flows and obstructed by wider changes in social provisioning and exclusionary citizenship regimes. The resulting social protection challenges unfold over lifetimes, and are especially marked at critical periods of transition. Life-course thinking has the potential to theoretically integrate emerging insights from rich empirical studies; doing this supports the rationale for revaluing the importance of social reproduction within debates about migration and social protection.