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This paper considers the neglected mobilities associated with a sample of UK women reported as missing. Refracted through literatures on gendered mobility and abandonment, the paper argues that the journeys of these women in crisis are not well understood by police services, and that normative gender relations may infuse their management. By selectively exploring one illustrative police case file on Kim, we highlight how reported and observed socio-spatial relationships within private and public spaces relate to search actions. We argue that Kim's mobility and spatial experiences are barely understood, except for when they appear to symbolise disorder and danger. We address the silences in this singular case by using the voices of other women reported as missing, as collected in a research project to explore the agency, experience and meaning of female mobility during absence. We argue that women reported as missing are not abandoned by UK policing services, but that a policy of continued search for them may be at risk if they repeatedly contravene normative socio-spatial relationships through regular absence mobilities. By way of conclusion, we address recent calls for research that explores the relationships between gender and mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article unpacks the fantasy of the Russian online bride and its striking contamination with geopolitical language. Drawing on critical geopolitics and psychoanalysis, it explores the economy of desire and anxiety that accompanies British men's quest for sexually available 'traditional' housewives that are still untouched by 'modern' feminism. The paper argues that these men desire the slippery substance of Easternness - an ideal object of desire which is too elusive to be conquered or held. The paper thereby inverts existing accounts of the sexualised nature of the geopolitical gaze to expose the traces of geopolitics in sexual fantasies themselves. In doing so, it formulates the basis for a triadic understanding of otherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the study `The political-economy of violence against women in prehistory,' by D.L. Martin. Prevalence and degree of violence against women among Native Americans; Analysis of remains of women; Reasons behind the violence against women.

This paper is based on interviews with a sub-sample of 13 women who had been both raped and had avoided being raped when attacked. Both acts had to occur when the woman was an adult, and at least one attack had to have taken place not more than two years prior to the interview. These women were part of a larger convenience sample of 94 women, 18 and over, who had either been raped or had avoided being raped when threatened within two years prior to the interview. The interviews examined both background and situational variables. Because for these 13 women the background factors, except for the prior assault, were held constant since each woman was her own control, it is possible to see the impact of situational variables on the outcome--rape or rape avoidance. Women were more likely to avoid rape under the following circumstances: 1) when they were attacked by strangers, 2) when they used multiple strategies, screamed and physically struggled, 3) when the assault took place outside, and 4) when their primary concern was with not being raped. Women were more likely to be raped under the following circumstances: 1) when they were attacked by men they knew, particularly if they had had a prior sexual relationship with them, 2) when the only strategy they used was talking or pleading, 3) when the assault took place in their homes, 4) when their primary concern was with not being killed or mutilated and 5) when there was a threat of force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of articles published in the June 2005 issue of the "International Social Science Journal." "Changing Sources of Support for Women's Political Rights," by Katherine Meyer, Helen Rizzo, and Yousef Ali; "Gender Violence and Development Discourse in Bangladesh," by Farida C. Khan; "Women in Politics in Indonesia in the Decade Post-Beijing," by Sharyn Graham Davies.

ABSTRACT This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study of the response of social workers within a community care setting, in a large Dublin suburb, to cases involving men's abuse of women. This research aims to focus on what child protection workers do regarding this abuse, and what they say about what they do, thereby giving readers a sense of the action taking place in this social work team. The data, generated from both qualitative and quantitative methodological research, reflects this aim, as it taps into the working model of responses to men's abuse of women held by social workers, and identifies what influences that, thereby reflecting the realities and constraints of everyday work. At the time the research was carried out (2000), the results confirm that the prevalence of cases involving men's abuse of women on this team was in line with international findings. This research revealed an absence of a team policy, an agreed definition of intimate violence in this context and agency practice guidelines, and illuminated how these gaps act as a deterrent to effective intervention. This paper explores some of the ethical and practical dilemmas that may arise for child protection social workers intervening in cases where the abuse of women by men is present. Recommendations arising from this research identify a need for a clear policy and best practice guidelines for social work staff in relation to this abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how cultural beliefs (cultural constructions) about women influence how women survivors of rape make sense of their traumatic experience. A thematic content analysis of interviews with female survivors of rape was undertaken to provide a systematic description of the phenomenology of the experience. This paper reports on one major finding which highlighted the ways in which cultural beliefs about women, sexuality, and rape become salient to women, and are accessed by them as they struggle to bring meaning to the experience of being raped. The nature of these beliefs and their implications for response and recovery are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the most significant public policy initiatives that apply to known sexual offenders who live in the community. It is argued that while registration schemes, community notification, and offender residency restrictions have become a prominent feature of contemporary sex offender policy, the evidence base supporting their implementation is, at best, limited. There is a need to develop policies which are more tailored to the needs of individual offenders and which are explicitly designed to manage risk. Policies which mandate and facilitate interagency and partnership working represent one way in which individualised and research-informed approaches can be developed. It is suggested that the implementation of this type of approach may ultimately lead to more effective community responses to preventing sexual reoffending than those which rely solely on monitoring and supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empowering women victims of domestic violence has been a goal of advocacy since its inception. The concept of empowerment is also widely shared in social science disciplines where the goal of applied research is to address the lived effects of social injustice. While in some fields, such as community psychology, there has been a long history of engaging theoretically with the concept of empowerment, elsewhere theory has received less attention. In the case of addressing domestic violence, victim advocacy has often been assumed to be empowering. Advocates worked to establish support services for individual women and participate in coordinating community responses to domestic violence that included the criminal justice system so as to improve women's safety. The question of whether this kind of social action is empowering domestic violence victims has been discussed in the literature for almost a decade. In this paper, we consider a proposed theory of empowerment and recommendations of advocacy practices by Kasturirangan (2008) to consider how her conceptualisation of empowerment processes has influenced the field and whether it provides a scaffold for bridging the theoretical gaps that have been identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Please cite this paper as: Nerum H, Halvorsen L, Øian P, Sørlie T, Straume B, Blix E. Birth outcomes in primiparous women who were raped as adults: a matched controlled study. BJOG 2010;117:288–294. Objective To compare the duration of labour and the birth outcome in a group of primiparous women who had been raped after the age of 16, with a control group from the same birth cohort. Design Cohort study. Setting University Hospital of North Norway. Sample Fifty women raped as adults and 150 controls. Methods Data about birth outcomes in the first pregnancy were collected from the patient files and data concerning the assault were obtained in a subsequent pregnancy through consultations with the women who had been raped. Birth outcomes in the group of women who had been raped were compared with matched controls using a multivariable logistic regression model. Main outcome measures Caesarean section, operative vaginal delivery and duration of labour. Results During their first delivery, the women who had been raped had an increased risk for caesarean section (adjusted odds ratio 15.7, 95% CI 5.0–49.1) and for assisted vaginal delivery (adjusted odds ratio 13.1, 95% CI 4.9–34.5) when compared with controls. The group of women who had been raped had a longer second stage of labour than the control group (120 versus 55 minutes, P < 0.01). They were more often single mothers, unemployed and smokers, and had a higher body mass index and more previous pregnancy terminations and miscarriages than the control group. Conclusions The women who had been raped had a longer second stage of labour, and an increased risk of caesarean section and operative vaginal delivery compared with controls from the general birth cohort. These findings indicate that the consequences for delivery for women who had been raped as adults could be specific and may warrant particular attention. The birth experience of women who had been raped should also be illuminated in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim. This paper is a report of an integrated review to identify cross-cultural factors that have an impact on women's disclosure of intimate partner violence, specifically related to Mexican-American women. Background. Intimate partner violence was once recognized as a private matter. Disclosure is a complex concept; furthermore in our multi-cultural society, a woman's decision whether or not to disclose abuse can be attributed to several factors influenced by her culture. Data sources. The World Wide Web and multiple databases including Academic Premier, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsychArticles, PsychInfo, Medline, Eric, MedicLatina, and Psychology and Behavioral Science Collection were searched for studies published between 1996 and 2007. Methods. A search was conducted using databases including the CINAHL, PsychINFO, MEDLINE, ERIC and MedicLatina. Both qualitative and quantitative studies published between May 1996 and July 2007 were included. Forty-two studies were included in the review. Appraisal of study quality was not undertaken. Results. Fear was the most common cross-cultural factor interfering with disclosure. Most of the literature examines factors influencing and interfering with disclosure of abuse among white and African-American women. Only one study was found to include a sample of Mexican-American women. Conclusion. Increased efforts are needed to understand disclosure of intimate partner violence in minority women so that service providers can tailor services and ways to encourage disclosure with appropriate strategies based on women's culture. Further research is needed to understand the lived experiences of minority women, including Mexican-American women living in intimate partner violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high number of murder, rape, and child abuse cases in South Africa has led to increased numbers of bite mark cases being heard in high courts. Objective analysis to match perpetrators to bite marks at crime scenes must be able to withstand vigorous cross-examination to be of value in conviction of perpetrators. An analysis technique is described in four stages, namely determination of the mark to be a human bite mark, pattern association analysis, metric analysis and comparison with the population data, and illustrated by a real case study. New and accepted techniques are combined to determine the likelihood ratio of guilt expressed as one of a range of conclusions described in the paper. Each stage of the analysis adds to the confirmation (or rejection) of concordance between the dental features present on the victim and the dentition of the suspect. The results illustrate identification to a high degree of certainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violence against women during pregnancy is a global problem with adverse outcomes for the mothers and their children. This paper provides a discussion of the prevalence rates of pregnancy-related violence, associated factors, and outcomes. Most of the outcome literature focuses on perinatal and postnatal outcomes, but little is known about the longer term psychological outcome of children born to women abused during pregnancy. Moreover, the question as to whether the abuse increases during pregnancy remains unanswered given the equivocal findings in the literature. Findings from a small study conducted with women in the region of northwestern Ontario, Canada, are presented. The pattern of abuse during pregnancy over the three trimesters was examined. The long-term psychological outcomes of the children born to women abused during pregnancy were also investigated by comparing these children to a sex- and age-matched cohort of children born to women who were not abused during pregnancy. Although key confounding variables were controlled in the study, the results still showed that children born to women abused during pregnancy had greater behavioral problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last 30 years, rapid social change has dramatically altered the conditions and meanings of women's lives in Bangladesh. After generations of public neglect and exclusion, women are now widely exposed to a globalised world of foreign aid, migration, trafficking, factory work, and urbanisation. The sharp rise in women's participation in the labour force, involvement in governmental and non-governmental programmes, and migration to urban centres as well as other countries augment their greater social and political visibility. The presence of women in the marketplace and public space has improved opportunities for greater access to resources and the capacity to act, but exposed large segments of the population as highly vulnerable targets of sexual violence, repression in workplaces, and religious persecution. This paper frames the realities of escalating violence against women within the contemporary discourses of gender empowerment and development. It argues that current development policy in Bangladesh assumes increased welfare for women in the process of economic development when, in fact, women are subjected to new and intensified forms of violence during these changes in the economy and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three hypotheses have been used to describe the male propensity for sexual aggression towards women: a general propensity to offend, a specific propensity lo sexually offend and a combination of both. In this paper., using structural equation modeling., we compared the relative utility of these three hypotheses in explaining criminal activity in adulthood of .sexual aggressors of women, hi total, 209 adult males who were convicted of at least one sexual offence were included in the study. Results indicate that a propensity model emphasizing the role of an early and persistent general propensity to act in an antisocial manner during childhood and adolescence is most adequate to explain sexual aggressors' criminal activity. After controlling for the role of this propensity, a specific propensity characterized by high sexualization and deviant sexual interests explained only a modest proportion of variance of the sexual criminal activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines imagery vividness and anxiety during Prolonged Exposure (PE) for chronic PTSD among 69 female survivors of sexual or nonsexual assault. All participants received between 9 and 12 individual sessions of either PE alone or in combination with cognitive restructuring. As hypothesized, vividness and anxiety ratings from early imaginal exposure sessions were moderately to highly correlated, but these correlations decreased in later sessions. Both subjective distress and vividness decreased significantly with exposure. Greater reductions in subjective distress between the first and last exposure session were related to better outcome. However, contrary to hypothesis, vividness was not related to outcome. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper summarizes the activities of the WHO in response to violence against women. These focus on research and development of norms and standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper describes how violence against women has become part of the United Nations agenda. It focuses on violence as a human rights issue, analyzing the mechanisms and agreements relevant to addressing it. It also looks at implementation at a national level, focusing on national legislation and responses of the judicial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper discusses the experiences of the Khonkaen provincial hospital, which has been selected as an intervention case site for a one‐stop crisis service for women who have been physically or sexually assaulted. It will be compared with another provincial hospital where no intervention has taken place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of violence against individuals with severe mental illness (SMI) has received relatively little notice, despite several studies suggesting an exceptionally high prevalence of victimization in this population. This paper describes the results of an investigation of the prevalence and correlates of past year physical and sexual assault among a large sample of women and men with SMI drawn from inpatient and outpatient settings across 4 states. Results confirmed preliminary findings of a high prevalence of victimization in this population (with sexual abuse more prevalent for women and physical abuse more prevalent for men), and indicated the existence of a range of correlates of recent victimization, including demographic factors and living circumstances, history of childhood abuse, and psychiatric illness severity and substance abuse. The research and clinical implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical feature of many undesirable life events is that they often shatter the victim's perception of living in an orderly, meaningful world. Many authors have suggested that following such outcomes, the .search for meaning is a common and adaptive process. This paper explores the validity of that claim by considering data from a recent study of 77 adult women who were victimized as children: survivors of father-daughter incest. In the process, several central questions regarding the search for meaning are addressed. How important is such a search years after a crisis? Over time, are people able to make sense of their aversive life experiences? What are the mechanisms by which individuals find meaning in their negative outcomes? Does finding meaning in one's victimization facilitate long-term adjustment to the event? Finally, what are the implications of an inability to find meaning in life's misfortunes? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual harassment is new as a social issue, although it is not a new problem for the women who are its victims. Only within the past decade has the term sexual harassment been coined to characterize certain sets of interactions in organizational settings that heretofore had gone unnamed and undiscussed. By labeling a broad range of behaviors as sexual harassment, the feminist and union activists who were crucial in the initial formulation of this issue broke through the prevailing silence about this aspect of women's work experience, helped clarify it, and legitimized it as a problem. It got relatively widespread media coverage-including a hit movie whose title this volume paraphrases. This provided a basis on which women could redefine their own personal experience. It also fostered some legislative actions that provided potental avenues for redress.

After reviewing previous work on psychological effects of a rape experience, this paper reports the results of a longitudinal investigation of victim reactions to rape. Adult victims (N = 20) were assessed at 1 month, 6 months, and 1 year postrape, and a group of matched non-victims (N 20) were assessed at similar intervals. Findings were that victims were significantly more anxious, fearful. suspicious. and con- fused than nonvictims for at least a year after their assaults. However, there was significant improvement on those as well as other measures of personality and mood state over Lime, particularly between 1 and 6 months. Implications of these findings with regard to both social learning and feminist theory and therapy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the literature on the crisis and the aftermath of rape. This review suggests that women experience both short and long term psychological difficulties as a result of being raped. Two questionnaires were sent to various rape crisis centers across the country in an attempt to identify the nature and extent of services provided by the centers, to determine the number of rape victims seen at the centers, and to understand some of the problems confronted by the service providers. From the data gathered from the centers it is clear that women are receiving crisis intervention and supportive services immediately following a rape incident. However, the areas of crisis counseling and long term follow-up remain problematic. It was found that 62% of rape victims received one follow-up contact, 33% received two to five follow-up contacts and only 8% received six or more follow-up contacts. Differences found based on center location and staffing patterns are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates police officers' definitions of different rape situations. On the basis of the concept of 'cognitive prototypes' a methodology is developed which elicits consensual feature lists describing six rape situations: the typical, i.e., most common rape, the credible, dubious, and false rape complaints as well as the rape experience that are particularly hard v's,.. relatively easy for the victim to cope with. Qualitative analysis of the data allows the identification of the characteristic features defining the prototype of each rape situation, as well as comparisons between the situations in terms of their common and distinctive features. It is shown that police officers, while sharing some of the widely held stereotypes about rape, generally perceive rape as a serious crime with long-term negative consequences for the victim. The quantitative analysis of prototype similarity between the six situations corroborates this conclusions by demonstrating a high similarity between the prototypes of the typical and the credible rape situation. In addition, subjects general attitude towards rape victims is measured to compare the prototypes provided by respondents holding a positive v's, negative attitude towards rape victims. findings for the two groups, however, reveal more similarities than differences in their descriptions of rape prototypes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the feasibility of the prototype approach presented in this study as a strategy for investigating implicit or common-sense theories of rape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides information on the relation between victimization status, crime factors, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and several other psychological disorders among a community sample of women. Results indicated that victims of crime were more likely than nonvictims to suffer from PTSD, major depressive episode, agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social phobia, and simple phobia. Furthermore, life threat was associated with increased risk of major depression, agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social phobia. Completed rape was strongly related to almost every disorder assessed, while robbery and burglary were not related to any disorder. When demographics, victimization status, and crime factors were entered hierarchically into multivariate logistic regressions with PTSD in the final step, associations between victimization status, other crime characteristics (e.g., life threat, injury), and non-PTSD Axis I disorders were greatly reduced. This suggests that PTSD may be an important mediating factor in the victimization-psychopathology relation for many disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychologists have neglected the role of the social, economic and political systems in determining behaviour. Rather, our field, consciously or unconsciously, has been instrumental in upholding the status quo. We have accepted society's ruling ideas that perpetuate exploitation, especially of women in the world of work. Women are often the last to be hired and the first to be fired. They are employed part-time and fired early to avoid the cost of fringe benefits and retirement costs. Ideas about women's roles, generated by capitalism and patriarchal religions, are responsible for widespread sexism and the exploitation of many powerless groups, but especially girls and women. This paper reviews several examples of sexist exploitation that have an economic base. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines the arguments of Claudia Card in the article concerning genocidal rape in Bosnia that a military rape for enforced pregnancy is a genocide and a form of biological warfare. After examining the explanation of Card, the author argues that what Card thought of as genocide may be better describe as femicide, as a global war against women. The author also considers the definition of genocide according to the United Nation.

This paper describes how the values of a feminist research team influenced methodological decisions in a study of rape survivors. Building upon concepts from community psychology and urban sociology, the authors created a community-based research design that respected the emotional needs of rape survivors without sacrificing methodological rigor. We developed relationships with community members in diverse settings, such as nail and hair salons, child care centers, churches, and bookstores, to advertise the study and recruit participants. Consistent with feminist approaches to interviewing, our goal was to create a safe setting for survivors to tell their stories. Although the purpose of this study was research rather than intervention, most survivors reported that participating in these interviews was healing. Our experiences in this project suggest that allowing values to influence the process of research may have beneficial outcomes for both researchers and participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on rape. An examination of the scientific and legal literature focusing on rape would likely lead one to the inappropriate conclusion that rape has only recently become a problem. Unfortunately, rape has a long disturbing history; societal attention to the problems surrounding rape is the recent phenomenon. A crime receives attention only when the actual and potential victims have enough power to demand such attention. In most legal definitions of rape, the crime requires a female victim and a male criminal. Thus, the correspondence between the emergence of the women's rights movement and the increase in attention to rape is no mere coincidence. In a male oriented society, rape seems to occupy a position somewhere between accepted practice and unacceptable crime. The extent to which rape is integrated into the accepted social system at some levels is exemplified by the fact that until recently, and in many jurisdictions still, actions that apparently fit the legal definition of rape were excluded from prosecution.

This article focuses on a power-control theory related to rape rates in the U.S. According to a study, sex ratios (the number of men per 100 women) affect the roles of both men and women. They suggest that although high sex ratios decrease men's dyadic power, when sex ratios are high men use their structural power to control women. The importance of historical events in shaping a cohort's "generational consciousness" has long been recognized. Major historical events, however, are only one of the factors that shape cohorts. Birth cohorts are also affected by the basic demographic characteristics that distinguish them from other birth cohorts. The sex ratio of a cohort can have profound effects on the cohort's divorce rate, age at marriage, female labor force participation and female educational attainment. Men have more economic and political power and status. This power enables their agents to influence and shape social customs and practices, which in turn are a powerful source of control over people's lives.

This study examines the ways that females meet violent death and the role that illegal drug use plays in precipitating such deaths. The sex role hypothesis and the transactional risk sliest: are explored to help account for homicide victimization of women. Data were drawn from the records of the Medical Examiner's Office in Philadelphia. Records of all illegal drug using homicide victims were compared with a random sample of non-drug-using victims. Data included Interviews with relatives of the deceased, autopsy reports, police and other records. Both hypotheses received support. The importance of these findings can only be assessed, however, when more is known about how sex role constellations Yank in drug-using groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One core concern of workplace sexual harassment is the low rate of reporting, which arguably adds to its suppression and consequent individualization of harassment. The recent #MeToo movements across the globe have been focal points for women to report incidents of sexual harassment. I examined what it has meant for women in India to speak about their experiences of sexual harassment in broadcast media news interviews during the #MeToo movement. Discursive psychological examination showed that interviewers and interviewees (women who were reporting) attended to and managed issues with the perceived legitimacy of reporting sexual harassment. Interviewees had to account for their reporting in the context of the #MeToo movement while managing not to be seen as being swept up by it. Women treated these concerns as gendered phenomena rather than merely interpersonal in justifying their reporting and the #MeToo movement. These findings are discussed in relation to research on silencing of women's voices in reporting, the role of media, and broadly addressing sexism and sexual harassment at the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a theoretical treatment of feminist epistemology of crime, which advocates the centrality of gender as a theoretical starting point for the investigating of digital crimes. It does so by exploring the synergy between the feminist perspectives and the Tripartite Cybercrime Framework (TCF) (which argues that three possible factors motivate cybercrimes – socioeconomic, psychosocial, and geopolitical) to critique mainstream criminology and the meaning of the term "cybercrime". Additionally, the article examines gender gaps in online harassment, cyber‐bullying, cyber‐fraud, revenge porn, and cyber‐stalking to demonstrate that who is victimised, why, and to what effect are the critical starting points for the analysis of the connections between gender and crimes. In turn, it uses the lens of intersectionality to acknowledge that, while conceptions of gender and crime interact, they intersect with other categories (e.g., sexuality) to provide additional layers of explanation. To nuance the utilitarian value of the synergy between the TCF and the feminist perspectives, the focus shifts to a recent case study (which compared socioeconomic and psychosocial cybercrimes). The article concludes that, while online and offline lives are inextricably intertwined, the victimisations in psychosocial cybercrimes may be more gendered than in socioeconomic cybercrimes. These contributions align the TCF to the feminist epistemology of crime in their attempt to move gender analysis of digital crimes "from margin to centre". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates the collaborative work of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and the Trusteeship Council to define the role of women and gender in the transitional moment from colonialism to self-rule in Africa (1948–65). In this historical context, women became a contentious symbol of national unity, as both anti-colonial activists and UN delegates saw them as the ‘guardians of tradition’. Within this framework, the female body became the locus of contested politics involving myriad historical actors from local rulers to religious NGOs. I argue that UN actors claimed to advance women’s rights, while simultaneously undermining them through an approach that went from outrage to acceptance. UN representatives were not always in agreement; they assumed different positions regarding the practice of polygamy and female circumcision. This article draws on original UN sources and contributes to ongoing debates within histories of gender, colonialism and diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a new approach to the study of college sexual assault by conducting an analysis of female students' most recent 'hookup.' By isolating a particular hookup event and examining the features of that event, I am able to examine predictors of sexual assault during hookups. My analysis focuses on the implications of alcohol consumption and knowing a male partner before a hookup, while controlling for multiple individual, school, and situational characteristics, using data from the Online College Social Life Survey collected 2005-2011. In my sample, 2.4% of women experienced sexual assault during their most recent hookup. Results show women do not experience an increased risk of physically forced intercourse until they have consumed nine or more drinks. In addition, women were more likely to report sexual assault during a hookup with a man they did not know well. Together, these findings suggest that men are more likely to assault women who are drunk, possibly because the double standard has made them respect such women less, or because they target women who are likely unable to resist or recall what happened. It also appears that the 'in-network stranger' may be the individual most dangerous to women in college hookups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the identity and experiences of Maryknoll Sister Ita Ford, one of the four U.S. churchwomen murdered by the El Salvadoran military in December 1980, shaped her relationships with host communities as she engaged in the work of Catholic foreign mission. In contrast to prevailing views of Western missionary history, which emphasize patterns of domination and difference, Ford's story provides an alternate perspective on the dynamics of transnational encounter, one that casts her pastoral endeavors as a form of international solidarity. Through her mission work in Chile and El Salvador, Ford often stood apart from the people she served, even as she engaged in grassroots community-building efforts. Although this community organizing was central to her work as a pastoral agent, it was Ford's willingness to take risks and assume the suffering of those around her that ultimately allowed her to forge the most enduring relations of solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, domestic violence policy has shifted towards supporting women to stay at home with the perpetrator of violence excluded. However, the practical realities indicate that this is a complex arena in which the rhetoric of rights for 'women and children to stay in their own home' needs to be underpinned by additional support to provide safety and protection for those choosing this option. The current study examines decision making about accommodation options and the role of civil protection orders among 138 women accessing domestic violence support services in Victoria Australia. It shines a light on the intersection between justice responses and the housing needs of women and their children leaving a violent relationship. Our findings reveal that for this sample of women, staying in their own home left them more open to breaches of intervention orders than those who re-located. In spite of the frequency of breaching, a majority of women believed that they were safer with the protective order in place. We conclude that supporting women to 'stay at home' with the perpetrator removed may be a pathway to safety for only a minority of women particularly if support from police and courts is not proactive and reliable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to look broadly at Second World War violence through the lens of gender; to shift the focus from attacks on ethno-national groups to the ways that women were targeted within and across ethno-national lines. It asks why the occupiers and inhabitants of Eastern Europe unleashed such tremendous brutality against females in the region, civilians who, according to the Hague Conventions and moral norms, were supposed to be shielded from the ravages of war. Given the enormity of the topic of the violence women suffered during the war and its immediate aftermath, I focus on Poland and the western part of the Soviet Union, the epicenter of wartime brutality. This territory suffered alternating occupations by the Nazis and Soviets, with broad swaths changing overlords three times. The article is organized by stages of the war, each of which bore a distinct character of violence. The focus on gender-based violence by no means assumes that women were only victims during the war. They exercised varying degrees of agency, as fighters, perpetrators, resisters, collaborators, and simply as individuals trying to survive - experiences that space will not allow in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay discusses violence against the Indigenous women of Canada as a result of settler colonialism. It argues that acts of violence which including the sexual assault, murder, and missing women of the First Nations is a result of systemic issues with the administration of criminal justice by the police and judicial system.

This article analyses how employees in the service sector respond to sexual harassment from customers and attempts to explain why this is so. There are only a small number of previous studies examining the issue of customer-perpetrated sexual harassment. Those that have been conducted have detailed the nature and prevalence of sexual harassment from customers, but this research lags behind employee experience and some emerging policy responses to this issue. The extant literature, whilst growing, remains largely limited to documenting the phenomenon. In this article, we attempt to create a deeper analysis of customer-perpetrated harassment by conducting a new review of the literature to develop propositions about how employees respond to it and the factors that influence their responses. These propositions are analysed in relation to a qualitative pilot study with 15 interviewees who had experienced sexual harassment from customers to understand how they reacted and why. The article shows how the social norms and precarious working conditions of the service sector constrain employees from seeking formal redress, leading to the enactment of informal coping strategies and temporary contestations of the situation. This research is important for building our understanding of the influence of workplace context for framing employee responses to customer sexual harassment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious congregations are uniquely poised to provide programs to support survivors of violence against women; yet little is known regarding the prevalence of such programs. In this study, we used data from three waves of the National Congregation Study ( N = 3334) to examine change across time in the presence of a congregational program to support survivors of sexual assault or domestic violence. We also explored results among different Christian religious traditions across time. Given the gendered nature of this violence, we also tested whether the (a) gender of the head clergy (i.e., religious leader), and (b) ability of women to serve in congregational leadership roles predicted the presence of programs. As points of comparison, we also examined the total number of congregational social service programs and food programs in particular. Overall, we found different patterns of change across religious traditions for the different programs. Moreover, clergy gender and the ability of women to serve in leadership roles predicted the presence of different types of programs. Limitations, implications, and directions for future research also are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Honor-based violence (HBV) is a serious concern for women and girls from particular ethnic backgrounds. Unfortunately, while the sociology discipline pays significant attention to gender-based violence in western contexts, HBV is a topic under-studied in the field. This article reviews the literature on HBV, typically coming from social work, cultural studies, and feminist studies, and focuses on the phenomena's link to notions of masculinity and femininity, its collective nature, and the ways an Orientalist discourse has developed in western regions that address HBV. The article closes by identifying gaps in the existing literature, and offers suggestions for future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to explore the consequences of domestic violence against rural Bangladeshi women. Drawing on in-depth qualitative phenomenological interviews with 39 female victims of domestic violence from 8 rural settings of the Netrokona and Mymensingh districts, it was found that domestic violence not only causes serious consequences to the overall health and wellbeing of victims, it also causes negative impacts to their children and family members. For victims, consequences were physical, sexual, reproductive, psychological, and economic. For the children of the victims, consequences were mostly behavioral and psychological, while for family members of the victims, consequences were mainly economic and psychological. This study has significant academic implications because it could trace the consequences of domestic violence in a three dimensional manner. Based on empirical findings, this study proposes policy recommendations, such as campaigning against domestic violence and the proper implementation of laws related to domestic violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rape of Jyoti Pandey, popularly known as Nirbhaya, sparked a groundswell of public protest because her story represented the perils faced by ‘everywoman’ in India. This article examines the parallels between the Nirbhaya incident and historical debates on women’s sexuality in South Asia, namely the Age of Consent Act of 1891 and the Abolition of Act of 1826. The artistic/literary production of the rape victim as a middle-class, upper-caste, Hindu woman has become a political platform through which came to symbolise and represent ‘everywoman’. Pandey’s representation as ‘everywoman’ allowed for her to be claimed by competing discourses of liberal feminist modernity, Hindu nationalism and Leftist critiques of capitalism, each of which tried to legitimise their claim to politically represent the nation. Through the study of historical events and the discursive manipulation of history by political forces, this article demonstrates the ways in which the Nirbhaya incident reproduced the Hindu, middle-class, upper-caste woman as the normative subject of protest. Furthermore, just as Pandey’s body became the site for protest, the bodies of lower-caste, lower-class, rural women remained ‘useless’ for politics because they are unable to generate affect in the middle class. This differential treatment suggests that the legalistic measures launched by mainstream feminist groups are inadequate for addressing the rape of lower-class, lower-caste, non-Hindu, rural women, whose access to these legal and political frameworks is limited by their subalternity. To conclude, I examine the Delhi rape in a global context, particularly in relation to the assaults in Steubenville, Ohio, to suggest that sexual assault is viewed as endemic to the world, following in the spirit of second wave feminists, but that its redress must arise from local epistemologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dowry violence against women in India is among the highest in the world. In 2005, India enacted the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) to help female victims of domestic violence. I develop a model of domestic violence and evaluate the effects of the PWDVA on dowry violence. I estimate an empirical model of dowry violence using district level data from 2001-2012. I find that in the post-policy period, the reporting rate of harassment for dowry has significantly increased in north and central India where female leadership is high. In these districts, dowry deaths have also declined significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women report greater concerns about the danger posed by strangers despite greater victimization by acquaintances. Using a survey of Seattle residents, this article investigates one understudied dimension of this seeming incongruity: the actual effect of victimization by a stranger or acquaintance on concerns about crime. The results suggest different patterns for different crimes: relationship to the offender does not matter for burglaries while acquaintance sexual assaults and stranger nonsexual assaults, respectively, hold the largest associations with concerns. Implications are discussed for research on fear of crime, acquaintance victimizations, and perceptions of neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces articles in a 1982 issue of "The Journal of Social Issues," which focuses on sexual harassment in the workplace. Sexual harassment is an old problem for its victims and potential victims, but a relatively new one for public concern and debate. But although we have all had our consciousness raised vis-a-vis this matter, there is as yet really only a sprinkling of empirical work on it and hardly any theoretical work at all. What theoretical work there has been has often leaned too heavily on the apparent similarities between sexual harassment and sexual assault, rape. But the substantial differences between the two are at least as prominent as the similarities. What empirical work there has been has often leaned too heavily on sample surveys that simply tally incidence rates and reactions from the victim's standpoint.

When seen as the theocentric political confession it is, the confession 'only Christ' is possible and meaningful for victim/survivors of violence against women. To confess only Christ undoes what is 'required' in an empire of violence against women and is the recognition that Jesus Christ embraces our bodies, all of them. Moreover, this confession changes the body's response-individual and communal-to violence in an empire of violence against women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]