Community effects on women’s help-seeking behaviour for intimate partner violence in India: gender disparity,feminist theory,and empowerment

ABSTRACT

While prior research has shown empowerment and gender disparity affect risk of intimate partner violence (IPV) in India, little research attention has been given to the effects of gender disparity and empowerment on the likelihood of help seeking for IPV. The present study used the nationally representative population-based 2005–2006 Indian National Family Health Surveys to assess individual/relationship- and community-level factors that influence help-seeking behaviour among a sample of women who reported having been involved in IPV. Results from the multilevel analyses revealed that working status, decision-making in the partner dyad, illiteracy, controlling behaviour, and severe physical or sexual abuse at the individual/relationship level affected the likelihood of help seeking. At the community level, age at marriage for women and the proportion of severe physical or sexual abuse affected help-seeking behaviours. Significant variation remains unexplained at the state level. Implications for programming are discussed.     

Carceral feminisms: the abolitionist project and undoing dominant feminisms

In this article we explore the intersections between white liberal feminisms and the carceral state, particularly within nonprofit agencies. We find a strong collusion between ‘dominating feminisms’ and the carceral state, through funding structures and the belief that the legal system can provide protection to victimized women. We use evidence from our own research on rape crisis centers and gender-responsive programming for criminalized women, respectively, to investigate how some nonprofit agencies further threaten the safety, stability, and self-determination of women of color, queer women, transgendered clients, economically disadvantaged women, and disabled women. As a result, when white liberal feminists seek to intervene in the criminal legal system, we often see reform efforts that directly strengthen institutions that perpetuate economic exploitation, colonialist notions of progress, and white supremacy. We conclude our article with an exploration of some guiding principles within noncarceral antiviolence organizations that espouse a liberatory feminist framework.     

Bruised Inside Out: The Adverse and Abusive Life Histories of Incarcerated Women as Pathways to PTSD and Illicit Drug Use

The majority of incarcerated women who suffer from diverse traumatic life histories including abusive home lives and intimate partner violence (IPV), develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and struggle with heavy illicit drug use. While many have offered examinations of these relationships, the current study is among the first to utilize an integrated feminist pathways and general strain theory (GST) approach to explain them. Using data from a stratified random sample of all incarcerated women in Oklahoma (N = 334), we explore the links between, adverse childhood experiences, including physical, sexual, emotional, and childhood neglect, IPV, PTSD, and heavy illicit drug use. Our findings indicate that the effects of IPV on heavy illicit drug use are mediated by PTSD symptoms suggesting that PTSD plays a significant role in the pathway to illicit drug use among Oklahoma women prisoners. Implications for the importance of utilizing an integrated feminist pathways and GST approach in future research are offered.     

The forgetting of Mary Wollstonecraft’s religiosity: teleological secularism within feminist historiography

ABSTRACT

Religious concepts and themes are central to many of Mary Wollstonecraft’s writings, yet rarely feature within popular representations of her life, work and legacy today. This paper examines the forgetting of Wollstonecraft’s religiosity in light of the broader narratives that western feminism circulates about its past and present, focusing particularly on the historiographical practices and temporal tropes that construct feminism as a quintessentially secular project. It also considers the potentially transformative impact that unforgetting Wollstonecraft’s religiosity could have within feminist historiography and politics in the present, in terms of parochializing the political certitude of secular feminism and the politics of division conducted in its name.     

When Equality Is not Equity:Homosexual Inclusion in Undue Influence Law

In Barclay's Bank v. O'Brien(1993) the House of Lords extended the undue influence rules to heterosexual and homosexual cohabitees, a move that was widely welcomed and has been endorsed in Royal Bank of Scotland v. Etridge (No. 2) (2001). The paper argues that the extension to homosexual couples is inappropriate, since undue influence is largely a problem of heterosexuality. It is not accidental that there have been no reported cases of undue influence between lesbian or gay partners, not because abuses of power do not occur within such relationships, but because they are free of the central causal factor of undue influence: not intimacy per se but the gendered power dynamic within heterosexual intimacy that has characterised almost all reported cases. The first part of the paper examines the courts' treatment of gay and lesbian couples in other areas of equity and concludes that the absence of gender role assumptions leads courts to treat lesbian and gay claimants more equitably than they do heterosexual women. The second part focuses on the potential for gay and, especially, lesbian relationships to act as models of more egalitarian relationships than heterosexual ones. The dominant discourse of inclusion within the gay and lesbian legal lobby is problematised, and the paper concludes that what is needed is social and judicial recognition of what is different, not what is the same, about our relationships. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

浮出历史地表之后——对女性文学批评当下境遇的思考

本文从"批评主体的沉浮"、"批评方式的选择"、"批评精神的裂变"三个层面,对女性文学批评现状进行了全面的回顾与反思,以期找出困扰女性文学批评发展的症结所在.呼吁"浮出历史地表"之后的女性文学批评站稳立场、往纵深处发展的紧迫性与重要性.     

On Not Making Ourselves the Prey of Others: Jean Hampton's Feminist Contractarianism

This article assesses Jean Hampton’s feminist contractarianism by considering the way in which she draws together the contradictory positions of Hobbes and Kant to produce a test for exploitation in personal relationships. The ways in which this work fits with her other analysis of retribution, gratitude and self-worth are examined. Hampton’s work is evaluated in the context of Carole Pateman’s argument that moral theories distract from the political analysis of who has a voice in relationships. Hampton’s work presumes the social and economic structures that Pateman has done so much to understand. It is useful as a claim for justice in personal relationships, to be considered as part of consciousness-raising or public debate.     

当经济学遭遇性别--女性主义经济学的纲领与范畴

起源于20世纪90年代的女性主义经济学,是在后现代哲学思潮和新古典经济学内在缺陷的理论背景下产生的一个异端经济学流派.女性主义经济学对新古典经济学进行了拓展与修正,甚至颠覆.由于性别视角的采用,女性主义经济学具有批判性、政治性和人文性等与新古典经济学不同的新特征,并提出了与新古典经济学不同的理论框架和政策建议.女性主义经济学作为一个新生学派,存在着一定的局限性和继续发展的空间,但其对经济学研究方式的革新与批判应受到重视.     

中国现代女性散文的性别意识

中国现代女性散文是中国现代文学的重要组成部分,其中的不少作品因为重点探讨了两性关系的诸多问题而凸显出浓重的性别色彩和性别意识,具体表现为“性别自省意识”、“性别批判意识”和“性别平等意识”。这种鲜明的性别意识的文学表达,不但整体上拓展了中国现代文学的意义空间,更体现出现代女性散文写作别具一格、意义深远的价值追求。     

斯皮瓦克"属下"研究及其女性主义文学批评——基于性别和种族的双重视角

斯皮瓦克在其著名的"三位女性的文本以及对帝国主义的批判"论文中,从后殖民女性主义的立场重读文学经典,对三部西方女性小说文本进行后殖民批评和分析,并将"属下不能发言"的政治伦理运用到对文学文本的批判阅读之中。斯皮瓦克以性别和种族的双重视角,对西方白人女性文学文本进行后殖民解读和充满洞见的批评,对后殖民批评有着独特的贡献和重大意义,不仅拓展了女性主义文学批评空间,并且丰富和发展了后殖民批评理论。斯皮瓦克所倡导和践行的文学、文化批评的政治伦理观以及对帝国主义的批判,使她成为一位颇具影响和独树一帜的后殖民女性主义批评家。