Women’s Religious Authority in a Sub-Saharan Setting Dialectics of Empower…

Western scholarship on religion and gender has devoted considerable attention to women�s entry into leadership roles across various religious traditions and denominations. However, very little is known about the dynamics of women�s religious authority and leadership in developing settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of powerful and diverse religious expressions. This study emplo…

“I’m Not One of Those Girls” Boundary-Work and the Sexual Double Stand…

Sexual morality is not keeping up with the new sexual practices of young people, even in cultures oriented toward gender equality. The Norwegian high school graduation celebration constitutes an exceptionally liberal context for sexual practices. Many of the 18-year-old participants in this three-week-long celebration engage in �hookup� activities, involving kissing, fondling, and sexual interc…

Altruistic Agencies and Compassionate Consumers Moral Framing of Transnation…

What makes a multimillion-dollar, transnational intimate industry possible when most people see it as exploitative? Using the newly emergent case of commercial surrogacy in India, this article extends the literature on stratified reproduction and intimate industries by examining how surrogacy persists and thrives despite its common portrayal as the �rent-a-womb industry� and �baby factory.� Usi…

Indigenous Women’s Political Participation Gendered Labor and Collective R…

In Latin America, rights to local political participation in many indigenous communities are not simply granted, but rather �earned� through acts of labor for the community. This is the case in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where almost three-fourths of municipalities elect municipal authorities through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and universal suffrage. The alarmingly low rat…

“I Am Not Just a Feminist Eight Hours a Day” Youth Gender Justice Activi…

This article focuses on youth feminist political action in Ecuador and Peru and its relationship to contemporary gender hierarchies. I examine how and why youth gender justice activists understand their political action differently from the professionalized adult feminists who mobilize them. Grounded theory was used to collect and analyze interviews with 21 young women and men activists on gend…

Plastic Bags, Pollution, and Identity Women and the Gendering of Globalizati…

Research and policy interest in questions of environmental waste is growing, especially plastic bag pollution. Where trash disposal and recycling are not highly regulated, the proliferation of plastic bags has created dramatic social and environmental consequences. In this article, we draw on 30 interviews with women who sell goods in markets in Mali as an entry point into investigating this is…

Logics of marginalisation in health and social care reform: Integration, choi…

The period 2010�2013 was a time of far-reaching structural reforms of the National Health Service in England. Of particular interest in this paper is the way in which radical critiques of the reform process were marginalised by pragmatic concerns about how to maintain the market-competition thrust of the reforms while avoiding potential fragmentation. We draw on the Essex school of political di…

Roma rights and Roma expulsions in France: Official discourse and EU responses

McGarry (2012) in CSP presented significant aspects and dilemmas of European Union (EU) policy towards Roma. Developing points raised there, this article analyses French government statements and practices concerning Roma in the period from summer 2010 to late 2013 as a case study. It puts into relief the contrasts between EU emphasis on Roma as citizens with rights, and official French attitud…

Rights, responsibilities and refusals: Homelessness policy and the exclusion …

Since 1977 homelessness legislation in England has offered limited statutory accommodation rights to unintentionally homeless people who are judged to be in priority need and able to demonstrate a local connection. Using data generated in interviews with homeless people and staff working to support them, this paper considers the impact of current homelessness policy and practice and explores ho…

The ethics of predictive risk modelling in the Aotearoa/New Zealand child wel…

The White Paper on Vulnerable Children before the Aotearoa/New Zealand parliament proposes changes that will significantly reconstruct the child welfare systems in this country, including the use of a predictive risk model (PRM). This article explores the ethics of this strategy in a child welfare context. Tensions exist, including significant ethical problems such as use of information without…

Neuroscience and family policy: What becomes of the parent?

Edition

Volume 35, Issue 2 May 2015, pages 228-248

ISBN/ISSN

0261-0183

Collation

-

Series Title

Critical Social Policy

Call Number

-

Let’s get real about the ‘riots’: Exploring the relationship between de…

Despite media and political rhetoric to the contrary, there is persuasive evidence to suggest an association between deprivation and those involved in the English riots of 2011, which continues to be downplayed when developing responses to crime and crime prevention policy. This study explores empirical evidence from two major cities in the North West of England, which highlights an association…

What is customary about customary care? How Dutch welfare policy defines what…

In most welfare states, home care for elderly and disabled persons relies on a combination of private and public responsibilities, with gatekeepers adjudicating access to publicly funded care. Unlike other governments, the Dutch government has codified an explicit �customary care principle� that defines the �normal daily care that partners, parents, co-resident children or other household membe…

Employer sanctions: The impact of workplace raids and fines on undocumented m…

The context of this article is the use of employer sanctions, in the form of raids and fines on businesses found to be employing people who do not have permission to work in the UK, as a method of in-border immigration control. Drawing on qualitative interviews with undocumented migrants and ethnic enclave employers in London, this article examines the impact of sanctions from the perspectives …

“Suits To Self-Sufficiency” Dress for Success and Neoliberal Maternalism

In 1997 the women-run nonprofit organization Dress for Success opened its first location with the aim of empowering low-income women by providing gently used suits for job interviews. Drawing on eight months of fieldwork in an affiliate office, we analyze cross-race and cross-class interactions between privileged volunteers and low-income clients to demonstrate the emergence of what we term �ne…

Gendered Expertise

Based on in-depth interviews with policymakers and archival data, we examine the policy debates over court reform in family law and criminal law in Chile after the democratic transition. We introduce the concept of �gendered expertise� to capture the set of competences and claims organized around perceived gender differences and mobilized through gendered networks that we found in these debates…

Forms of Femininity at the End of a Customary Marriage

This paper explores women�s daily practice of resistance built into the racialized and gendered social structure of customary marriages in South Africa. I argue that women resist, accommodate, adapt, and contest power and authority in the decision to leave the marriage, in negotiating the exit from the marriage, and in their approach to the financial consequences of the separation. By using the…

Victims to Saviors: Governmentality and the Regendering of Citizenship in India

Gender scholars have argued that legal reforms against violence position women as victims in need of state help. Using data collected from 22 months of participant observation with survivors of domestic violence in India, I urge academics to re-theorize the relationship between legal reforms and women�s citizenship during an era of neoliberal governance. Burdened with administrative tasks, Indi…

Patterns of Global Gender Inequalities and Regional Gender Regimes

This article draws on data from various sources for 190 developed and developing nations and uses them to examine gender regimes, or forms of patriarchal structures, at the regional level. I argue for multiple, rather than single, measures of gender inequality and illustrate that using many inequality measures exposes a wider range of outcomes within the Global South than the North, also sugges…

Moral Women, Immoral Technologies How Devout Women Negotiate Gender, Religio…

Catholicism is the most restrictive world religion in its position on assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). The opposition of the Church, combined with the widespread acceptability of ARTs in the United States, creates a profound moral dilemma for those who adhere to Church doctrine. Drawing on interviews from 33 Catholic women, this study shows that devout women have different understandi…