Power, Law and Blood: Sources of Patriarchy in the Middle East

This unpublished article was kindly provided to BU's institutional repository for deposit by the author

Birthing practices of traditional birth attendants in South Asia in the context of training programmes

Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA) training has been an important component of public health policy interventions to improve maternal and child health in developing countries since the 1970s. More recently, since the 1990s, the TBA training strategy has been increasingly seen as irrelevant, ineffective or, on the whole, a failure due to evidence that the maternal mortality rate (MMR) in developing countries had not reduced. Although, worldwide data show that, by choice or out of necessity, 47 percent of births in the developing world are assisted by TBAs and/or family members, funding for TBA training has been reduced and moved to providing skilled birth attendants for all births. Any shift in policy needs to be supported by appropriate evidence on TBA roles in providing maternal and infant health care service and effectiveness of the training programmes. This article reviews literature on the characteristics and role of TBAs in South Asia with an emphasis on India. The aim was to assess the contribution of TBAs in providing maternal and infant health care service at different stages of pregnancy and after-delivery and birthing practices adopted in home births. The review of role revealed that apart from TBAs, there are various other people in the community also involved in making decisions about the welfare and health of the birthing mother and new born baby. However, TBAs have changing, localised but nonetheless significant roles in delivery, postnatal and infant care in India. Certain traditional birthing practices such as bathing babies immediately after birth, not weighing babies after birth and not feeding with colostrum are adopted in home births as well as health institutions in India. There is therefore a thin precarious balance between the application of biomedical and traditional knowledge. Customary rituals and perceptions essentially affect practices in home and institutional births and hence training of TBAs need to be implemented in conjunction with community awareness programmes

Reconstructing Liberty

It is commonly and rightly understood in this country that our constitutional system ensures, or seeks to ensure, that individuals are accorded the greatest degree of personal, political, social, and economic liberty possible, consistent with a like amount of liberty given to others, the duty and right of the community to establish the conditions for a moral and secure collective life, and the responsibility of the state to provide for the common defense of the community against outside aggression. Our distinctive cultural and constitutional commitment to individual liberty places very real restraints on what our elected representatives can do, even when they are acting in what all of us, or most of us, would consider our collective best interest. For example, we cannot outlaw marches by the Ku Klux Klan, or the burning of flags by political extremists, or the anti-Semitic, racist, or hateful speech of incendiary and potentially dangerous bigoted zealots. Nor can we simply outlaw those practices of religious sects that may have deleterious effects on the members, such as the refusal of certain Amish sects in the Eastern United States to allow their children to receive a public education past the eighth grade, the explicit exclusion (until recently) of blacks from positions of influence in the Mormon Church, or the continuing exclusion of women from positions of power, prestige, and influence in our dominant, mainstream, Protestant, Catholic, and Judaic faiths. We may believe correctly that a full civic education for every individual is not only desirable for its own sake but is an absolute prerequisite for meaningful participation in our shared political life. We may believe that racist speech is antithetical to the racial tolerance necessary to our continued existence as a pluralistic society, that flag-burning communicates no message worth hearing, and that women and blacks are entitled to the opportunity to aspire to positions of full participation and responsibility in religious life. Nevertheless, we are precluded from legislating in a way that would put the weight of the law behind these values because to do so ostensibly would do great violence to something we hold even more dear: the right and responsibility of the individual to think, speak, and act autonomously in matters of religious, political, and social life-to reach one\u27s convictions on one\u27s own and for oneself, unfettered by the moral dictates of the state, even where those dictates are benign and wise. In constitutional discourse, this complex aspiration is often captured by the phrase ordered liberty. The first thing to note about this aspiration of ordered liberty is that it is a relatively modern and distinctively liberal interpretation of our constitutional heritage. Thus, although Justice Cardozo coined the phrase ordered liberty in the 1930s, our modern understanding of ordered liberty protected by the Constitution came to full fruition with the liberty-expanding cases of the liberal Warren Court era. Quite possibly it received its most definitive formulation in the 1960s case Poe v. Ullman. To paraphrase a bit, our modern understanding of ordered liberty implies that the state may not interfere with the personal or individual decisions that are most fundamental to a free life or with those liberties the protection of which is what prompts individuals -- or would prompt individuals if given the explicit option -- to enter civic society in the first place. The driving idea behind this notion of ordered liberty is that the protection of those liberties by the state against its own tendency to intrude in the name of some shared political end is of a higher order or of greater importance to civic life than any other conceivable and temporal state goal. Which particular liberties we view as fundamental and hence requiring this constitutional protection against even wise and benign state regulation is, of course, a subject of deep and profound disagreement. There is, however, a remarkably broad consensus in our contemporary legal culture and in our national community generally about the quite modern and quite liberal idea or aspiration of ordered liberty: that there are some liberties, whatever they may be, so essential to an autonomous life that they must be kept free of state control. In my comments, I will be largely critical of this understanding of ordered liberty, which I occasionally will call the modern or liberal interpretation of our constitutional heritage. I want to make two objections to this concept of liberty, one political and one historical. The political objection is that the modern conception of ordered liberty is a largely empty promise for women. My claim, very briefly, will be that even the ideal expressed by this conception of ordered liberty-to say nothing of the actual practices it protects is skewed against women in a significant manner. The historical objection is that the liberal conception of liberty is also a cramped, inaccurate understanding of our constitutional history. I will conclude by arguing that we could fundamentally reconceive liberty in a more generous and explicitly feminist way without doing violence to either liberalism or to the document we have inherited

Family health narratives : midlife women’s concepts of vulnerability to illness

Perceptions of vulnerability to illness are strongly influenced by the salience given to personal experience of illness in the family. This article proposes that this salience is created through autobiographical narrative, both as individual life story and collectively shaped family history. The paper focuses on responses related to health in the family drawn from semi-structured interviews with women in a qualitative study exploring midlife women’s health. Uncertainty about the future was a major emergent theme. Most respondents were worried about a specified condition such as heart disease or breast cancer. Many women were uncertain about whether illness in the family was inherited. Some felt certain that illness in the family meant that they were more vulnerable to illness or that their relatives’ ageing would be mirrored in their own inevitable decline, while a few expressed cautious optimism about the future. In order to elucidate these responses, we focused on narratives in which family members’ appearance was discussed and compared to that of others in the family. The visualisation of both kinship and the effects of illness, led to strong similarities being seen as grounds for worry. This led to some women distancing themselves from the legacies of illness in their families. Women tended to look at the whole family as the context for their perceptions of vulnerability, developing complex patterns of resemblance or difference within their families

The impact of training and development on career advancement of professional women in the UK construction industry

The redressing the gender imbalance in the UK construction industry has been emphasised on numerous occasions and many researchers have identified that women can contribute in an immense way towards the construction industry development. However, construction industry has failed to attract and retain women who are interested in a construction career. Participation of women is still very low in some parts of the industry, in particular, at a time when skilled people at all levels of the industry are in demand. Further, Training and Development (T&D) activities have been identified as one of the vital element for professional women’s career advancement in the construction industry. However, most of the concepts related to competitive advantages of T&D on professional women’s career advancement are imprecise and unstructured in the construction industry. There is little evidence of an accepted theoretical framework for applying the ideas and there is even less in the way of empirical evidence concerning the validity and utility of these concepts. This paper presents the how much/how little impact T&D has on women’s career advancement. This paper is based on data collected from professional women in the UK construction industry

The Hidden Side Of Group Behaviour: A Gender Analysis Of Community Forestry Groups

Communities managing common pool resources, such as forests, constitute a significant example of group unctioning. In recent years community forestry groups have mushroomed in South Asia. But how participative, equitable and efficient are they? In the short term, many have done well in regenerating degraded lands. Are they, however, performing at their best potential, and will they sustain? Equally, are the benefits and costs being shared equitably between rich and poor households and between women and men? The paper demonstrates that seemingly successful groups can cloak significant gender exclusions, inequities and inefficiencies. It argues that these outcomes can be traced especially to rules, norms, perceptions, and the personal and household endowments and attributes of those participating. Reducing the gender bias embedded in these factors would depend on women's bargaining power with the State, the community and the family. The paper outlines the likely determinants of women's bargaining power in these arenas, and analyses ground experience in terms of progress made and dilemmas encountered

Still on the Sidelines: Developing the Non-Discrimination Paradigm under Title IX

I. Introduction Despite the promises of equal opportunity for women signalled by the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX), 1 little progress in the creditable realization of this goal occurred in intercollegiate or interscholastic athletics between 1972 and 1992. 2 This lack of progress was unfortunate. 3 In many ways, most women were still on the sidelines. However, recent judicial decisions have allowed many, but certainly not all, women to leave the sidelines and enter the playing fields as equals. By virtue of three landmark cases, Cohen v. Brown, 4 Roberts v. Colorado State Board of Agriculture, 5 and Favia v. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 6 women who are blessed with great athletic ability have earned a mandate for nu- merical parity with men in intercollegiate athletic programs. In these three cases, federal district courts issued injunctions to prevent post-secondary institutions from eliminating certain women\u27s intercollegiate athletic teams, 7 or reducing them to a lower level status. 8 Every decision was affirmed on appeal. 9 The various courts held that the defendant institutions in each of the three cases had engaged in gender discrimination, prohibited by Title IX, 10 by failing to meet any one of three alternative measures established in the Policy Interpretation. 11 These three measures, which are designed to be considered consecutively, attempt to provide for assessment of the opportu- nity for individuals of both genders to compete in athletic programs by de- termining: 1. Whether intercollegiate [or interscholastic ..

The right language? Reproduction, well-being and global social policy discourse

Wellbeing, Rights and Reproduction Research Paper

Perceived eating norms and children's eating behaviour: an informational social influence account.

open access articleThere is initial evidence that beliefs about the eating behaviour of others (perceived eating norms) can influence children's vegetable consumption, but little research has examined the mechanisms explaining this effect. In two studies we aimed to replicate the effect that perceived eating norms have on children's vegetable consumption, and to explore mechanisms which may underlie the influence of perceived eating norms on children's vegetable consumption. Study 1 investigated whether children follow perceived eating norms due to a desire to maintain personal feelings of social acceptance. Study 2 investigated whether perceived eating norms influence eating behaviour because eating norms provide information which can remove uncertainty about how to behave. Across both studies children were exposed to vegetable consumption information of other children and their vegetable consumption was examined. In both studies children were influenced by perceived eating norms, eating more when led to believe others had eaten a large amount compared to when led to believe others had eaten no vegetables. In Study 1, children were influenced by a perceived eating norm regardless of whether they felt sure or unsure that other children accepted them. In Study 2, children were most influenced by a perceived eating norm if they were eating in a novel context in which it may have been uncertain how to behave, as opposed to an eating context that children had already encountered. Perceived eating norms may influence children's eating behaviour by removing uncertainty about how to behave, otherwise known as informational social influence

Middle-aged women negotiating the ageing process through participation in outdoor adventure activities

This study sought to examine the motivations middle-aged women give for belonging to an outdoor adventure group. As part of this, how the women were negotiating the ageing process was also examined. Fourteen women aged 36–64 (average age 51.4 years) were individually interviewed with the purpose of exploring their perceptions, values, motivations and the beliefs they attach to their participation. Findings highlight the women’s belief that participation delays the ageing process, gives them confidence in their lives and offers social support from other group members. In addition, pride, satisfaction and pleasure were expressed in the belief that they challenged the cultural norms and expectations of older women. Whilst delaying the ageing process, they also highlighted that they thought about a time in the future when they would not be able to continue to participate. The study emphasises that more adventurous activities are becoming more normalised and can be undertaken by women in middle age. This may also suggest that more needs to be done to promote diverse activities such as outdoor adventurous activities to women