Women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion in Mexico City: citizenship,experience and clientelism

In April 2007, after a period of intense social debate, the Mexico City Legal Assembly legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which was an unprecedented development in women's rights in Mexico. Within the context of a proliferation of public discourses about women's citizenship rights changes in women's social status in Mexico, this article explores the extent to which the newly legalized character of abortion is interpreted by women as a right. Drawing on 24 interviews with women who had a legal termination of pregnancy between 2008 and 2009, this research shows that legalization opens up new and complex relationships between women as subjects of rights and the state. Such relationships are expressed as three discursive figures: legal abortion (1) as a concession from the government, (2) as ‘excessive’ tolerance by the state, and (3) as a right to be protected and guaranteed. The analysis shows that women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion are mediated by profound transformations, which Mexican society is currently undergoing. These include changes related to a shift from a clientist political culture to one more framed in terms of citizenship, the subjective effects of family planning policies, and their ambivalent relationships with Catholic notions of women and motherhood, and the effects of feminist discourses of women's citizenship, abortion, and reproductive rights.     

Share repurchase regulations: Do firms play by the rules?

Open market share repurchases are strictly regulated to prevent managers from taking advantage of selling shareholders. We examine compliance with these rules in France, where the mandatory disclosure of share repurchases provides detailed information on repurchases actually undertaken. Using a database containing 36,848 repurchases made by 352 French firms over the period 2000–2002, we show that very few firms fully comply with the regulations for all their buybacks. We document that illegal repurchases before earnings announcements are the most detrimental to selling shareholders.     

When crimes are joined at trial

In two experiments, subject-jurors read evidence from actual criminal cases, decided on the guilt of the defendant, and answered several additional questions. The defendant was accused of one charge (murder or rape) or two charges (both murder and rape). In both experiments, the defendant was more likely to be convicted of either crime if the two charges were joined in one trial. Trait ratings indicated that the defendant was perceived in a more negative way when standing trial on two offenses. The order in which the charges were heard had no effect, nor did instructions to subjects to judge the cases separately.Portions of this paper were presented at the American Psychology-Law Society Meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, October, 1981. The research was supported by a grant from NSF to Elizabeth Loftus.     

Construing Motive in Videotaped Killings: The Role of Jurors' Attitudes Toward the Death Penalty

Death-qualified jurors are generally able to impose the death penalty, whereas excludable jurors are generally either unable or unwilling to do so. A long line of research studies has shown that the former are more likely than the latter to convict criminal defendants. Ellsworth (1993) argues that jurors' attitudes toward the death penalty predict verdicts because they are embedded in a cluster of beliefs and theories about the criminal justice system. Her studies show that jurors interpret ambiguous conduct based on these belief structures. The present study examines the possibility that death penalty attitudes also influence jurors' conceptions of criminal intent. We showed mock jurors the filmed murder of a convenience store clerk and examined the inferences they drew from this evidence. Jurors who favored the death penalty tended to read criminal intent into the defendant's actions and jurors who opposed the death penalty were less likely to do so. These data provide further explanation of the conviction-proneness of death-qualified jurors.     

An economic appraisal of urban housing assistance: rental supplments versus public housing

Abstract. The benefits and costs of rental supplements versus public housing are analysed in this study. The role of social assistance and public housing in improving housing standards of low income households is assessed. Housing standards for households with incomes below 3, 000 and the dollar return to private property owners renting to social assistance recipients are studied as two measures of effectiveness of the alternatives. Measures of housing standards for low income households are reviewed. It was concluded that, for welfare and non-welfare households, low income is the critical factor determining the existence of low quality housing. Data on target clientele reached by current housing programs are not available, so it is difficult to determine the effectiveness of such programs in improving housing standards of low income households. Various public and private costs critical to the assessment of housing assistance are discussed. In conclusion, it is pointed out that a simple benefit/cost analysis is inadequate for deciding on public housing versus rental supplements. Several additional studies are required, including: decisions on minimum levels of housing standards, comparison of other housing assistance progrm, and costs of all housing and nonhousing programs. Sommaire. Cette étude porte sur les coêts et les bénéfices d'une politique de subvention des loyers par opposition à une politique de logement public. Les auteurs évaluent le rôle que jouent l'assistance sociale et le logement public dans l'amélioration de l'habitation des économiquement faibles. Ils étudient la qualité de l'habitation des familles ayant un revenu inférieur à 3, 000 et la rentabilité des propriétés privées louées am assistés sociaux en tant que critères d'évaluation. Ils passent en revue les normes de qualité du logement des économiquement faibles. Ils concluent que c'est le faible revenu qui est la cause déterminante de la mauvaise qualité du logement peu importe que les familles dépendent ou non du bien-être social. Il n'existe pas de données concernant la clientèle profitant, à l'heure actuelle, des programmes de logement et il est donc difficile de déterminer la contribution de ces programmes à l'amélioration du logement des économiquement faibles. Les auteurs discutent des différents coûts, publics et privés, ui entrent dans l'évaluation d'une subvention au logement. Ils concluent en faisant remarquer qu'une simple analyse coûts/bénéfices est insuffisante pour choisir entre le logement public et le loyer subventionné. D'autres études seront donc nécessaires, plus particulièrement sur les normes minimales de logement, sur la comparaison àétablir avec d'autres programmes d'assistance au logement, et sur les coûts de tous les programmes de logement en comparaison avec les coûts des autres programmes.     

Negotiating Gender

This paper analyses the parliamentary debates over two key pieces of legislation on family law approved in Chile between 1994 and 2004. The aim is to identify the discursive representations on gender and family predominant in these debates. These representations and the way in which they were negotiated in Congress, it will be argued, were a key factor in determining the approval and final text of each of the bills examined. When women's demands for greater autonomy were in tension with prevalent ideas on the traditional, hetero-normative family, such tension was resolved in favour of the latter as the discursive category that allowed negotiations to progress. As a result, although the new legislation brought about positive change, it did retain the ideal of the traditional, sanctioned-by-marriage family at its basis, and as the one the State should protect. Methodologically, this paper is based on the qualitative analysis of 4000 pages of parliamentary debate and in-depth interviews with legislators and government officials directly involved in the debate on each of the laws examined here.