Creation and healing: an empowering relationship for women artists

Healing has conventionally been discussed in the disciplines of the medical sciences. Yet, everyone speaks of the ‘art of healing’. Today women artists in many media of expression are reclaiming their legitimacy as artists and as healers. Symbolically, through the creative arts, they are wresting healing away from the professionalization of the sciences and returning it to the arts where it once belonged when women were midwives and shamans, holistic healers of the mind-body totality.     

Pension Privatization: Evolution of a Paradigm

From 1981 to 2004, a paradigm shift occurred in pension systems worldwide as more than 30 countries fully or partially replaced their state‐administered pay‐as‐you‐go pension systems with ones based on individual, private savings accounts. Yet in 2005, pension privatization abruptly stopped. After the 2008 crisis, several countries that had privatized their pension systems scaled back or even canceled individual accounts. Is the new pension paradigm dead? And if so, why? This article shows that fiscal and ideational factors caused a temporary halt to pension privatization worldwide and induced transnational pension policy networks to find new ways to respond to perceived failures. Adjustments to the new pension paradigm such as emphasizing minimum pensions and recommending that governments “nudge” rather than mandate pension savings will enable pension privatization to continue in years ahead, albeit in a revised form.     

The Face-to-Face Mediation Program: A Massachusetts success story

Summary An effort that began as an experimental alternative to small claims court for consumer cases has fostered the application of alternative dispute resolution to many other conflicts in Massachusetts. The Attorney General's Face-to-Face Mediation Program, unique in the country, has proven to be an effective local resource to citizens of the state for resolving consumer disputes. The influence of the program has been felt outside the Attorney General's office as well as within.In the two years since this report was written, the Attorney General's Face-to-Face Mediation Program has shown a steady increase both in referrals and in quality of service. Today, all but one of the seven remaining mediation programs is running at or near capacity. In 1988, 84 percent of the approximately 700 cases that were mediated reached agreement, and 96 percent of those agreements were upheld. Suzanne Goulet Orenstein, who is Senior Associate, Program on Environmental Dispute Resolution with The Conservation Foundation, Washington, D.C., formerly was Chief, Local Consumer Groups and Dispute Resolution Activities with the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General.Kathleen Grant is Coordinator of the Face-to-Face Mediation Program, Public Protection Bureau, The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, 131 Tremont St., Boston, Mass. 02111.