Assisted reproductive technologies: professional and legal restrictions in Australian clinics

The professional and legal regulation of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in Australia is a vast maze of intersecting laws and guidelines which place restrictions on the provision of services such as infertility treatment, surrogacy, sex selection for social reasons, donor insemination, pre-implantation diagnosis and human embryo research. This study investigated the application of these restrictions on clinical practice in New South Wales, a relatively unregulated State, and Victoria, a relatively highly regulated State. The results of the survey indicate that the range of ART services in Victorian clinics was far more limited than in New South Wales clinics. The Victorian clinics uniformly restricted access of single and lesbian women and did not offer social sex selection procedures. The New South Wales clinics adopted different polices regarding these services. It was found that restrictive laws governing "social" issues have a significant impact on the availability of ART services and some respondents seemed unclear about the nature of restrictions and laws relevant to their work. It was also found that "reproductive tourism" is prevalent and restrictions were circumnavigated by patients with assistance from clinics. It was concluded that more evidence is required to evaluate regulation in this field of medicine.     

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.     

Litigating Corporate Human Rights Information

This article analyzes trends in litigation brought against corporate actors regarding human rights information. Such information includes, but is not limited to, statements on packaging claiming that products are “ethically sourced” and investor-facing disclosures representing that an issuer's operations are environmentally friendly. It proceeds by outlining the sources of human rights-related disclosures as they arise under both legal and voluntary regimes. The article then addresses the case law. Recent years have seen an increase in lawsuits involving human rights information, or lack thereof, imparted by companies. Consumer protection or consumer fraud cases are being filed, alleging that companies have either provided false and misleading information or omitted information about corporate human rights impacts and mitigation efforts. Investors are filing similar claims. The article examines the trend and considers the role of this litigation both in holding companies to their word and in providing corporate accountability for the underlying human rights abuses that false or misleading human rights information may mask. It ultimately argues that, although success at trial in such cases remains elusive, litigation is a useful and potentially growing tool for holding companies to their word regarding human rights claims. It contextualizes this litigation, arguing that other means by which companies can be held to their word should be strengthened, including public enforcement and—potentially—new disclosure and due diligence laws.     

Failures,downsizings, and mergers among community development corporations

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, community development corporations (CDCs) have become increasingly important actors in low‐ and moderate‐income communities. One prominent view of CDCs is that they have experienced uninterrupted growth since the 1970s. Despite their growth and productivity, however, many are facing serious challenges to their continued viability. When confronted by such challenges, CDCs are likely to respond in one of three ways: go out of business, downsize, or merge with one or more other groups. The major goal of this research was to assess the causes of these failures, downsizings, and mergers.

First, we found that these changes do not appear to be isolated instances; rather, they are prevalent across the country. Second, we identified a number of contextual and organizational factors leading to CDC failures, downsizings, and mergers. Finally we suggest a series of actions CDCs, support communities, and policy makers can take in response.     

Postrecession Drivers of Preferences for Homeownership

The analysis presented in this article finds little evidence to suggest that individuals' preferences for owning versus renting a home have been affected by their exposure to recent house price declines and loan delinquency rates, or by knowing others in their neighborhood who have defaulted on their mortgages. Instead, this analysis finds individual characteristics, particularly current housing tenure, to be the strongest predictors of postrecession demand for homeownership.     

Safety in small numbers: Local strategies for survival and growth in Romania and the Kyrgyz Republic

Using a comparative study of farm households from poor rural communities in Kyrgyzstan and north-east Romania this paper explores the intricacies of a variety of forms of cooperation in agriculture. The findings highlight the safety net, labour specialisation, asset-pooling and service delivery functions of different groups that enable rural livelihoods to, at times, cope and at times improve in situations of imperfect information, sluggish labour and land markets, and constrained capital markets. The research presented here indicates that small to medium forms of cooperation provide the rural poor with predictable livelihood strategies under conditions of uncertainty. Specifically, cooperative action, in the form of groups, substitutes for imperfect markets. Despite the push for decollectivisation and privatisation across transition countries there remains a place for encouraging group initiatives, at least for the medium term, on the grounds of both poverty alleviation and agricultural growth.     

‘Votes for women’: An analysis of the militant campaign

When one reads the literature on the militant suffragettes, one is left with the impression that the extent of their militancy was confined to smashing a few windows, slashing some works of art and, at most, setting fire to empty houses. This picture does not, however, stand up to closer examination. This article seeks to show how the militant campaign for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom embodies the characteristics of terrorism. The militant campaign involved the use or threat of use of violence, the targets selected were symbolic and the methods employed were extreme. Although the aim was to instil fear or to terrorise, one form of militancy not entertained by the suffragettes was the indiscriminate killing and injuring which has become a familiar tactic in violent protest. Even with this consideration the militant campaign can be viewed as one involving terrorism.