Parliament,public engagement and legislation in Bangladesh: a case study of Domestic Violence Act of 2010

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the process of enactment of the domestic violence bill in Bangladesh. One of the distinctive features of the bill, passed in 2010, was that it originated in civil society and widespread public engagement characterised its enactment process. The paper explores the factors that encouraged different actors to agree to enact the law. There are, however, not many examples of parliament–CSO interaction in the legislative process. The paper identifies reasons that discourage engagement in other areas of public concern. Prominent among the reasons underlying weak public engagement in the legislative process are: monopoly of the government in the legislative process and its eagerness to pass laws in haste, dominance of part-timers in parliament, legal restriction on ‘independent’ voting in parliament, over-centralization of power in political parties and politicisation of CSOs.     

1970年以后韩国妇女运动的发展与变化

20世纪70年代韩国妇女运动兴起,开展修改家族法的运动和反对性旅游的运动以及改善女工劳动条件和待遇的斗争。80年代,韩国女性创建多个左派妇女团体,妇女运动走向联合,展现出妇女运动集结的力量。90年代,妇女运动采取社会性别主流化战略,成功地制定和修改诸多女性相关法律,年轻的女性主义运动小组崭露头角,妇女运动趋向多样化。2000年以后,展开以废除户主制为核心的妇女运动,互联网上的妇女运动也活跃,而且边缘女性群体也展开了各种活动。     

中国第一所女子大学概览——记华北协和女子大学

通过对华北协和女子大学的建校背景、学校前身、学校校长、建校时间、学校名称、规模概况、课程设置、学生运动及学校最终走向等方面的叙述,可以勾勒出中国第一所女子大学的基本面貌。该校填补了中国女子高等教育的空白,为培养中国近代第一批知识女性做出了贡献,在中国女子教育史上有着不可忽略的历史作用。另外,通过对史料的考证,可以发现燕...     

《湖南妇女报》节育思想管窥(1956～1958年)

20世纪50年代所推广的节制生育政策通过各种途径得以传播,但毫无疑问的是,报刊尤其是女性报刊在传播节育知识的过程中起到了举足轻重的作用。当时的《湖南妇女报》不仅及时宣传国家政策,树立节育典型,还在人们对避孕知识一无所知或者沉默不语的情况下,介绍避孕方法,给妇女带来了福音。当然,作为湖南省妇联所创办的一份女性报刊,它也是党和政府联系妇女群众的桥梁和纽带,与政府的导向息息相关。     

THOMAS AND LUCY ATKINSON: PIONEERING EXPLORERS OF THE STEPPE

Thomas and Lucy Atkinson were pioneering explorers of the Russian, Siberian and Central Asian Steppe in the 1850s. They both wrote books about their journeys which were feted in their own time, and in particular Lucy Atkinson was one of the first women to describe travels in this region in her 1863 work Recollections of Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants. Thomas Atkinson was also an accomplished painter, and his sketches of the steppe were highly sought after in the period. However, these two trail-blazing explorers have been largely forgotten today. How do we explain this anomaly? Is there any reason we ought to know more about the Atkinsons? Why have they fallen from public view? Did they add to the knowledge of the physical world or to ethnography? This article will try to put their journeys and their achievements into some kind of context and, hopefully, make the case for a reassessment of their contribution to the history of exploration.     

Housing chronically homeless women: “Inside” a safe haven

Abstract

This case study of an innovative pilot project for chronically homeless, mentally ill women in Toronto exposes assumptions that professionals embarking on initiatives to house chronically homeless women may bring to the design of such facilities. The value of in‐depth ethnographic research in charting the effectiveness of initiatives to alleviate chronic homelessness for women and in understanding the barriers that hinder the development of effective programs is highlighted.

This article challenges conventional static understandings of the concepts of “private” and “public” and explores issues related to spatial privacy and communality, sense of ownership, ideas about the safe haven being both a home and a hostel, planning for flexibility, accountability to public flinders, and accommodation of individual needs.     

Do female politicians empower women to vote or run for office? A regression discontinuity approach

Persistent gender gaps in political officeholding and mass political participation jeopardize women's equal representation in government. This paper brings new evidence to the longstanding hypotheses that the presence of additional female candidates and officeholders helps address these gaps by empowering other women to vote or run for office themselves. With a regression discontinuity approach and data on 3813 US state legislative elections where a woman opposed a man, I find that the election of additional women in competitive US state legislative elections has no discernible causal effects on other women's political participation at the mass or elite levels. These estimates are precise enough to rule out even substantively small effects. These results stand in stark contrast to a number of findings from India, suggesting that although electing the first women in a society can have these empowering effects, remaining barriers to women's inclusion in American democracy go beyond what further increases in female officeholding can themselves erode.     

试论铁凝《玫瑰门》中的“疯女人“形象

铁凝的《玫瑰门》以其独特的意义塑造了司猗纹、姑爸等"疯女人"形象,揭露出女人被"形成"的过程。司猗纹一生为了挤进男性主宰的历史而不断地失去自我,乃至疯狂。姑爸有意逃离自身作为一个女人的命运,历史却将其还原为一个"疯女人"。在这里,女性话语呈现出理性的力量,它可以反思和重新叙述历史,包括反思和重新叙述妇女解放的历史。     

Establishing a Relationship Between Behavior and Cognition: Violence Against Women and Children within the Family

The goal of our study is to determine whether a person’s cognitions regarding violence against women and violence against children within the family are associated with recourse to violent behavior toward them; and (2) the extent to which an adult who has a narrow conception of violence against women also has a narrow conception of, tolerant attitudes toward, and biased attributions with regard to violence toward children. Thirty men and 32 women took part in the study. Generally speaking, respondents more easily recognized physical aggression than psychological aggression, rated it more severely, and used it more often against their children than their spouses. Further, cognitions regarding violence against women and of parental violence against children appear to be strongly associated. Our results also suggest that the conception of violence toward women is associated with violence toward children.     

A Domestic Violence Course For Medical Students: A Study on Its Effectiveness

International health institutions emphasize the necessity of including the topic of domestic violence which is accepted as a health problem worldwide, into the training of physicians. The fact that physicians should diagnose domestic violence victims who over the years were either neglected or overlooked is also mentioned. The present study aims to measure the effectiveness of the interactive domestic violence course given to Dokuz Eylul University Faculty of Medicine (DEUFM) Year V students, with tests implemented before and after the course. The same students were given the same test during Year VI (internship). The students’ average knowledge scores were found respectively as follows: pretest 78.66?±?10.54, second test 94.13?±?3.95 and third test 89.65?±?7.48. There was a statistically significant difference between tests’ average scores. It was observed that, after the course, 4 out of 19 students (21.1%) changed their answers from “no” to “yes” for the question “Have you ever been a victim of physical domestic violence?” A statistically significant difference was found between pre-course answers and the after course answers given to this question. This study showed that the course on domestic violence increased students’ knowledge level and awareness on this issue. Considering that average knowledge level will decrease over time and aiming to improve future physicians’ approach to domestic violence cases, addition of other interactive educational methods to Year V’s course program and proposal of an advanced training session to Year VI’s curriculum are being planned.