A journey towards development: the impact of local NGO programmes on women living in the char lands of Bangladesh

Both national and international policy-making institutions have acknowledged the contribution of NGOs in alleviating poverty, through empowering the poor and continuing to support their endeavours. In Bangladesh NGOs are working at national and local levels, but very few are working with the poorest and most vulnerable groups who live in the riverine and coastal areas, known as the char lands. These areas are unlike other parts of the country in terms of their physical, economic, and social structures, and they require a different approach in order to address the unique set of problems facing those who live there. Using experimental and innovative programmes, a small number of local NGOs have begun to make an impact in an area where government interventions and success are rare.     

非农化进程中农村劳动力转移的性别分析

农村劳动力的非农转移是我国非农化进程的重要特征.运用社会性别的视角,分析我国改革开放以来农村劳动力非农转移过程中的性别转移顺序和劳动性别分工,可以发现这种性别差异是一种性别发展差距,而性别发展差距的实质是性别不平等的体现.这种性别发展差距危害农村妇女的利益和社会公正的实现,而且性别发展差距的存在有着直接的现实原因和深层次的社会文化原因.     

群体性事件激发的群体认知基础

群体性事件是一种多因素共同作用下的一种特殊社会群体行为。民众"相对剥夺感"是群体行为的根本动力,而民众的社会认知偏差,则是影响调控群体事件行为进程与方向的重要因素。     

Gender Inequality and Patterns of Abuse Post Leaving

Drawing on Connell’s (Gender and power: Society, the person and sexual politics. California: Stanford University Press, 1987; Masculinities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995) model of gender relations, this paper examines patterns of intimate partner violence among women who have recently left an abusive partner. In so doing, we attempt to better understand the social structural factors that shape the relations of power and control in intimate violent heterosexual unions. The data come from the first wave of a longitudinal prospective survey of 309 women who had left an abusive partner in the previous 3 years. Our data suggest that structured relations of inequality, namely relations of production, power and cathexis, shape women’s risk of abuse and harassment after leaving, and do so in ways that shape relations of coercive control. These results have implications for understanding the social context within which male violence against women occurs, and how this context constrains and/or enables women’s strategies for leaving and safety. This research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) New Emerging Team Grant #106054 and Institute of Gender and Health Operating Grant #15156 (Marilyn Ford-Gilboe, Principal Investigator). The authors thank the participants in the Women’s Health Effects Study. We also thank Julie McMullin, Kim Shuey, and the Health Effects research team for their helpful feedback.     

Marriage and Desistance from Crime in the Netherlands: Do Gender and Socio-Historical Context Matter?

Over the last two decades, research examining desistance from crime in adulthood has steadily increased. The evidence from this body of research consistently demonstrates that salient life events—in particular, marriage—are associated with a reduction of offending across the life course. However, previous studies have been largely limited to male samples in the United States. As a result, questions regarding the universal effect of these relationships remain. Specifically, research is needed to assess whether the desistance effect of life events like marriage varies by gender and/or socio-historical context in countries other than the U.S. The present research addresses these gaps by examining the relationship between marriage and criminal offending using data from the Criminal Career and Life Course Study (CCLS). The CCLS includes criminal conviction histories spanning a large portion of the life course for nearly 5,000 men and women convicted in the Netherlands in 1977. Because we assess change over multiple observations within and between individuals, we utilize hierarchical models to estimate gender and contextual effects of marriage on criminal offending (i.e., any, violent, and property convictions). Overall, we find consistent support for the idea that marriage reduces offending across gender and socio-historical context. Notably, we find that the reduction in the odds of offending due to marriage is significantly greater for individuals in the most contemporary context. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Contact disputes and allegations of gender violence in Spain

ABSTRACT

In Spain, progress is being made to restrict contact between aggressors and their children in cases of gender violence. However, visits and communication, even shared custody, are still granted by judges despite shared custody being prohibited by law in such cases since 2005. Under recent legal reforms, children are now considered primary victims of gender-based violence. However, even today, Spanish judges frequently allow contact and even grant shared custody to the aggressor. This is despite the fact that in cases of gender violence, there are usually measures in force that include restraining orders and prohibitions against communicating with the mother. In these cases, communication between the father and his children is effected through grandparents or at the so-called ‘family meeting points’ – neutral spaces supervised by professionals. Insufficient budgets and shortcomings in the management of these meeting points have led to many problems, including women being murdered by their partners after leaving one of these meeting places.     

Systemic error: measuring gender in criminological research

This study examines how sex and gender are measured and operationalized in studies on criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) through content analysis of peer-reviewed journals. Despite that they are distinct and not always parallel, the terms sex and gender are often used interchangeably in CCJ research. Moreover, despite increasing recognition that gender-responsive practices are important at every stage of the criminal justice process, gender is almost exclusively measured as a male-female binary, miscategorizing and failing to properly account for those who do not fit in one of those gender identities. There are important implications for the safety of such individuals, as both victims and offenders throughout the criminal justice process, therefore it is essential that we more accurately measure gender in this field. Recommendations for improvement are addressed.     

Crime Victims Serving as Jurors: Is There Bias Present?

This project examined the decisions of 2435 mock jurors of whom 984 reported being a victim of some type of crime and 982 reported knowing a close friend or relative who had been a victim. Participants watched a videotape of a trial of a burglary of a habitation and were asked to give individual verdicts. Results indicated that jurors who identified themselves as victims of the same crime convicted significantly more frequently than those who had not been victims. Victims of violent crimes (a type of crime dissimilar to that for which the defendant was on trial) were not more likely to convict than were non-victims. Implications of this research are discussed.