Restrained Voices

Abstract

This research presents the voices of women inmates on health care services in prisons. Foucault's discourse analysis as a means of bringing to the surface restrained voices provides the theoretical basis for this study. The research is based on face-to-face interviews of fifty-six women inmates to understand better the role gender plays in prison health care delivery. The results show that women are willing to discuss only physical ailments and are reluctant to speak about mental health care or HIV. While women benefit from health care services in prison, they still feel that a female-oriented approach to health care in general will improve the services tremendously. This approach is not dictated by the “difference” in the ailments between men and women, but by the “difference” in the way men and women encounter health care providers and illnesses.     

The Impact Imprisonment has on Women's Health and Health Care from the Perspective of Female Inmates in Kansas

This multimethod study, conducted at the Topeka Correctional Facility during the summers of 2001, 2002, and 2003, investigated the impact of imprisonment on women's health and health care. The researcher hypothesized that 3 independent constructs—(a) extended strain, (b) level of health care received either before or during incarceration, and (c) detrimental social structural influences—could predict the health status of female inmates prior to and during incarceration. Multiple regression analyses conducted on 1 survey sample of 120 inmates revealed that only health care prior to incarceration and extended strain contributed significantly to explaining the inmates' self-perceived health status prior to and during incarceration. When life history interviews with 22 inmates were examined to determine inmates' perceptions of their health status and the health care they had received, prior to and during their imprisonment, qualitative results revealed inmates expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of health care received in prison, as well as the manner in which it was administered.     

Perceptions and experiences of intrusive behavior and stalking within a culture

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have compared perceptions and experiences of intrusive activity and stalking between countries and the present work compares subcultures within a single country. Singaporean women (89 Chinese, 69 Indian and 68 Malay) with similar age profiles completed a modified version of the ‘Stalking: International perceptions and prevalence’ questionnaire (SIPPQ). This contained measures of individual perceptions and experiences of a range of 47 intrusive behaviors, and a measure of stalking. Between the three ethnic groups, few differences were found in terms of how unacceptable the 47 intrusive acts were judged to be. The small number of differences identified related to courtship behaviors. Women across ethnicities reported largely the same experiences of intrusive behaviors, differing on just two of the 47 behaviors. This suggests that overarching national attitudes towards women are better determinants of the types of intrusive behaviors they are likely to experience, as opposed to their subculture. Finally, no differences were found in stalking rates between the three ethnic groups, but the overall stalking rate within the sample was high at 54.9%. This finding may provide impetus to increase awareness of stalking in Singapore, given that it was only recently criminalized in the sovereign city–state.     

Widows and unmarried women as taxpayers in England before 1800

A variety of taxes levied at various dates between the 1540s and the early nineteenth century are analysed to ascertain whether the frequency with which widows and unmarried women are listed as taxpayers matches the ratio between the numbers of widows and unmarried women and the number of men in the adult population. Examination of the tax assessments indicates that the proportion of taxpayers who were women often fell well below their proportion in the general population. This applies in the case of all taxes levied between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries and regardless of whether a tax was assessed primarily on goods, houses occupied, or land owned or occupied. That double the proportion of female than of male householders were exempted from payment of the hearth tax on houses they occupied in the second half of the seventeenth century indicates that many women maintained households on very depleted resources. However, the proportion of taxpayers who were women amongst those paying the least tax did not usually exceed the proportion of women amongst those paying most tax.     

Sexual harassment of women in athletics vs academia

Abstract

Sexual harassment at institutions of higher learning is not a new phenomenon but discussions of this problem in the sporting arena are still scarce. Many studies have focused on student-teacher relationships, few investigations have researched athlete-coach relationships, and hardly any have conducted comparative analyses. This study compares the perceptions and the experiences of sexual harassment of athletes and students. It is not a surprise that most harassing behaviors are extended from men towards women. Thus, this investigation analyses and compares female student/male teacher interactions with female athlete/male coach relations. The findings indicate that sexual harassment is slightly more prevalent in academia than in athletics. However, in order to guarantee a safe learning environment for all participants in both domains, it is necessary to formulate clear guidelines, to set up educational workshops and to implement intervention programs.     

Violence against Women in Scandinavia: a Description and Evaluation of two new Laws Aiming to Protect Women

Violence against women by a present or former male partner has over the last decade been given a higher priority in the political discussion in all of the Scandinavian countries. Increasingly, violence in intimate relationships is viewed as a public rather than a private matter in these countries. With this change in attitudes and levels of political interest, higher expectations are placed on official authorities, including the criminal justice system, to deal actively with this social problem. In all of the Scandinavian countries it may, for example, be decided by a prosecutor that a woman should be protected from a man by issuing a restraining order. Moreover, a new offence called ‘gross violation of a woman's integrity’ was introduced into the Swedish penal code in 1998. With this offence, less serious but repeated violent acts committed by a man against a present or former female partner are to be judged as one serious offence. The stipulated sanction for this offence is imprisonment between 6 months and 6 years. The purpose of this article is to evaluate how the police, the prosecutors and the courts deal with this new offence. The article also present results from an evaluation of restraining orders in Sweden.     

Violence against women as conveyed by surveys – the Finnish case

The methodological choices made in a survey may partly shape the picture a survey conveys of partnership violence. This article considers some of the choices made in the Finnish survey on violence against women, such as the way the violence was defined and how the definition tried to take into account the special characteristics of this kind of violence, in order to help the respondents to identify and recall different events of it. The empirical analyses showed that the used definition of violence had not reached all the respondents representing different population groups. The experiences of partner violence among older, less educated women, and the experiences of those who felt embarrassed or ashamed to speak about issues concerning their partner or partnership, were more probably under-represented in the survey.     

How to construct your sexuality according to French magazines

Gendered magazines are a major contemporary form of mediation, (re)production and organization of (hetero)sexuality. They illustrate how sexual activity and performance become the concern and responsibility of individuals who are able to invest time and resources in the construction of a sexually-skilled self. Drawing on contemporary research, the article seeks to promote a dialogue between media and communications research, analysing French media narratives on sexuality through the reading of a selection of articles from the best-selling summer magazines aimed at 18- to 25-year-old readers. The article uses a semiodiscursive analysis to understand how didactic models are made to (re)produce specific knowledge on sexuality and to ascertain that this knowledge is coded in an expertise discourse. Through the hypothesis of a didactic ambition, three didactic models are identified, and attention is here focused on the short-coming/reparative model, that simultaneously creates a dysfunction and a fix. The analysis eventually reveals that didactic models are made to organize social life by strictly dividing sexual and therefore social roles between “men” and “women”. The moral criteria called upon regulate the ideal treatment of those didactic modalities and the discourse in magazines ends up shaping sexuality as a contemporary moral economy, a problem that should be pragmatically treated through the use of a certain type of knowledge.     

高校高学历女教师角色压力及疏解

作为“传统的现代女人”,高校高学历女教师有着强烈的自我发展需求、主体意识和成就动机,但在沉重的学术压力面前她们更容易出现职业倦怠;作为“现代的传统女人”,未婚的高学历女教师往往面临“结构性剩余”的境地,已婚的高学历女教师则在事业与家庭之间做着“鱼与熊掌”的艰难选择。多种角色压力归根到底是由于传统社会期待与现代价值追求的冲突,疏解这些压力要全社会共同努力,推进社会性别文化的良性发展,高学历女教师也要对自我作理性认知,提高对不同角色的适应能力。