On the “Exporting” of Morality: Its Relation to Political Conservatism and Epistemic Motivation

A new phenomenon, moral exporting (ME), is introduced to capture active attempts to promote certain views of morality to others. It was hypothesized that political conservatives would be more likely to exhibit ME, due in part to strong epistemic concerns for certainty that may become attached to the moral domain. Related items from the 1988 and 2006 General Social Surveys were analyzed, and new scales were developed to better assess ME and specific moral-related epistemic concerns (moral absolutism). In a second study, these scales were administered to a large college student sample along with measures of political ideology and need for closure (NFC). Results generally showed that political conservatism was strongly related to the new ME factor. Further analysis determined that both moral absolutism (MA) and NFC accounted for significant portions of this relationship, but that the specific epistemic construct (MA) was a more proximal mediator. Discussion centers on further distinguishing ME and MA from related constructs, as well as on future research and applications.     

Risk, fear, harm: Immigrant women's perceptions of the ``policing solution' to woman abuse

Over the last two decades in Canada, police intervention inwoman abuse cases has become one of the primary responsesto this form of violence against women. As a review of the literature reveals, however, very few studies have soughtto examine women's perceptions of the ``policing solution'to woman, and only a handful have explored the views ofimmigrant women. This is an unfortunate hiatus as studiesindicate that criminal justice intervention in woman abusecases can often bring in tow a multitude of harms to womenwho are socially and economically marginalized. As a steptowards addressing this hiatus, this article reports on theperceptions held by forty-eight immigrant women about the``policing solution' to woman. The data were generated fromfocus group interviews that occurred in New Brunswick in thespring of 1997. Many of the women indicated that they held anumber of fears about police intervention in woman abusecases and they identified a myriad of forms of harm thatcould and often does occur pursuant to police involvementin such situations given immigrant women's socio-economicvulnerability. The concerns and feelings that the womenexpressed about police intervention mirror, at some level,many of the emotional responses and dynamics that arise forwomen when they experience woman abuse.     

Recognising the People's Republic of China: A Reappraisal of Australian Foreign Policy During the First Menzies Ministry 1950–51

The attitude of the early Menzies Government towards the recognition of the People's Republic of China has not been well understood in the literature on Australia's international relations. The early Menzies regime has been taken by some scholars to be implacably opposed to communism, including Chinese communism, by others to have ceased to consider recognition because of the Korean War and by a third contingent to have been responsive to United States pressure not to recognise the Chinese communist government. A perusal of the foreign policy documents of the period of the first Menzies ministry reveals that both Menzies and Spender were giving favourable consideration to recognising the People's Republic of China during late 1950 and early 1951 and that none of these three views were decisive in preventing recognition. The question for Menzies and Spender was not whether to recognise but when to recognise and the actions of the Chinese communists themselves, in particular their attitude to British recognition, created the greatest impediment to recognition by Australia at that time.     

Results of a curriculum intervention with seventh graders regarding violence in relationships

This research measured the effects of a violence prevention curriculum on the knowledge and attitudes of seventh grade health education students (N=239) about woman abuse using a valid and reliable inventory. Pretests, post-tests, and post-post-tests were administered to experimental and comparison groups. The experimental group received the curriculum intervention,Skills for Violence-Free Relationships. Significant differences were found between the experimental and comparison groups from pretest to post-test on both the knowledge (p=.0027) and attitude (p=.0089) sections of the inventory. This impact did not remain stable at post post-test. These results confirm those found in other studies and reinforce recommendations of the battered women’s movement to integrate violence-free principles into school curricula. Within the experimental group, significant gender differences were found only on the attitude section from post-test to post post-test (p=.0335); females showed greater change over time. Such limited change was not unexpected in a middle school population given the reported formative nature of the subjects’ gender acquisition as contrasted with those at an older age.     

Public sector primary care and Medicaid: trading accessibility for mainstreaming

Facilities operated by public and nonprofit agencies have become increasingly important sources of primary care for Medicaid patients. These facilities are particularly important sources of care in segregated, competitive urban areas, where they are more geographically accessible than many private physicians and expand the availability of care to Medicaid patients rather than substituting for care provided by private physicians. In rural areas, in contrast, the availability of care from public facilities appears to reduce the level of care Medicaid patients receive from private physicians in the counties where these facilities are located. These findings suggest that policymakers can expand urban Medicaid patients' access to care by spending on public care, but at the cost of increasing the segregation of Medicaid patients into a two-tier system of care.     

‘Suddenly you've become somebody else’: A study of pregnancy and the creative woman

This pilot study is a woman-centered exploration of the effects of pregnancy on a woman artist's work, asking what changes in the work occur during pregnancy or as a result of pregnancy.Conventionally, conditions for artistic creation and for reproduction have been thought to be mutually exclusive, the one requiring self-centeredness and the other, selflessness. The women in this study reported instead that their work was augmented by this change and its product, motherhood. Subject matter and imagery, use of time, attitude about the world and the self were seen in retrospect—if not always at the time—to have benefitted. Having enough time to spend on one project or the other was the most significant conflict reported.Recent theories about and explorations of women's lives and ideas, particularly regarding preparation for motherhood, support what the subjects of this study reported about the multi- layered complexity of the experience. Beauvoir, Rich, Ruddick and Gilligan provide the theoretical background: patriarchal culture's use of biology marks women off as being significantly different from men; while this bodily distinction has been used to limit women, it need not be and may instead be a source of power and growth; maternal thinking has its own previously unacknowledged structures; and women's development, particularly in the valued category of morality, has a different basis than men's, in responsibility rather than in rights.Instead of dividing art from life, motherhood, if not pregnancy specifically, allowed, demanded, or called up a vision of enlargement and unity in social, spiritual, and universal terms, a transcendent philosophy that is not an escape but an embrace.     

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.