Suchergebnisse

This essay places Christa Moog's Aus tausend grünen Spiegeln (1988) in the tradition of women's autobiographical writings that resort to multiple displacements of subjectivity. Moog, who bases her novel on her expatriation from the GDR in 1984 and her subsequent travels throughout Europe and New Zealand in the 1980s, retreats behind a first-person narrator who, in turn, disappears behind the life and writings of Katherine Mansfield. A closer look at the narrative strategies, which interlace the lives of Moog's narrator and Mansfield, can reveal that Moog presents freedom from restrictive structures quite ambivalently. In the case of both women, the desire for self-realization and independence results in lives overshadowed by a sense of displacement and the loss of orientation and identity. (HM)

Introduces an edited vol that examines the borderlands (1) between feminisms & conventional ways of knowing & (2) between various feminisms. Contributions share a focus on the borderlands between the academy & outside groups, organizations, & audiences. Historically, women have always existed at the margins of the academy. Their reaction to this status has been to construct feminist theories that eventually became part of the mainstream academy. This success has produced a loss of certainty & purpose in feminist circles as disciplines have fragmented along various epistemic & ontological lines. It is concluded that this fragmentation must be dealt with on the basis of a politics of location that insists that all knowledge is grounded in specific & contextualized acts of knowing. D. M. Ryfe

[This brief note discusses the philosophical basis of the Scottish vision of civil society and the Scots championing of Democratic Intellectualism. The Scottish tradition of academic generalism, trust in lay scholars, and the practice of technical and practical competencies is alive at the Arctic Institute and is expressed in the ASTIS database, the journal Arctic, PAR and co-management research. The article notes that intermarriage between Native women and Scotsmen has produced an intermarriage of intellectual traditions, particularly among the Canadian Metis.] . The challenge now before us as citizens is to continue championing the Democratic Intellect, especially in settings such as academia and corporations where the arguments of specialization, hierarchies, and elites still find appeal and adherents. .

Much has been written about the "gendered" nature of many occupations, especially to explain how they have developed and maintained their female-dominated identity. This article reports the findings of one study of women working as secretaries in England, France, and Germany, in an attempt to assess the validity of this explanation. Data were collected by questionnaire and interview from secretaries, and by interview from their bosses. It was found that secretarial work in all three countries does conform to some of the gender stereotypes, but that organizational and societal factors impinge on the social construction of secretarial work. Some consideration is given to the role of the secretary as agent, acting to shape her work identity, which has hitherto been ignored in the literature.

SummaryA comparative study of 1100 women aged 25–45 years, users and non-users of modern methods of contraception, in the urban centres of Lahore and Faisalabad was conducted in 1991. The objective of the study was to investigate reproductive behaviour and the extent to which social, cultural and attitudinal variables, such as beliefs and values about family life, religiosity and fatalism, influence the fertility decision-making process. Preferences for smaller families were found to be consistently associated with modern attitudes and behaviour towards family and religious values and obligations. Family income, husband's occupation and religiosity offered no explanation of reproductive behaviour. It is concluded that cultural setting and tradition exert an important influence on reproductive behaviour, independent of economic development.

Examines the problems of coalescing the peasantry & socialist revolutionaries of Nicaragua's Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN). It is argued that the Sandinistas came to power influenced by an orthodox Marxism, leading to a particular interpretation of their countryside. This point of view led the FSLN to promote a project of statist modernization of these areas. The crisis of this project & threat to the revolution is reviewed, ie, the US used the peasantry as human resources for the contra war. It is contended that what was missing from the picture was perhaps simple feminist insight that gender divides class, & that rural women should have been engaged as potential partners in transformation, an observation still missing from the FSLN's self-critique. C. Mariani

In response to a critique by Mitchell A. Seligson (see abstract in this section of SA 43:3) of an earlier study on Mexican maquiladora workers (see SA 40:6/92S26483/ASA/1992/7598 [republished in this issue of Social Science Quarterly]), it is asserted that the original design of the study did not mandate a probability sample of non-maquiladora maquiladora workers. Characteristics from both groups demonstrate that the non-maquiladora sample was drawn from the same pool of women that comprised the maquiladora work force. Additional evidence about the pay differences in the 2 groups is presented, & the role of household factors in women's decisions about where they work is emphasized. 1 Table, 4 References. D. Schwartz

A discussion of the TV feminist age through an examination of Prime Suspect, Parts I & II, which aired as part of the Mystery! series on PBS in the 1992/93 seasons. It is argued that these shows fail in their attempt to significantly challenge conventional representations of race & gender. The series uses conventional plotting & characterization in its reliance on stereotypes, which reinforces the relationship between women & people of color to the law & society. The white woman lead character & her black male assistant in Part II are said to be objects, despite their marginal claims of subjectivity. It is concluded that this failed attempt at transgressing conventional associations of law & order with white male values is actually an active subversion. 15 References. D. Schwartz

This study explores the rationales for and consequences of voluntary com munity participation in the life of a school. Thirty-one teachers and vol unteers from three schools were identified and Jormally interviewed. The six types of involvement reported were found to be more needs-based when participants were asked about the rationales of others. Women reported more personal and social rationales, men more instrumental rationales; personal empowerment was a fundamental consequence of involvement; and the situational characteristics of volunteers were essential to under standing their personal needs and sources of empowerment. The findings challenge the institutional rationale, support the idea that volunteers can achieve altruistic and egoistic goals simultaneously, and affirm a belief in lifelong education.

The survey behavior of a group of women was compared across 2 mail surveys to examine the possibility that refusers may have different predispositions toward mail survey participation than other types of nonresponders or responders. The sample for the second survey, on survey participation, included all the nonreturners (N = 108), refusers (N = 43), & 50% of the respondents (N = 191) to a previous survey about personal finances. Results suggest that refusers do indeed differ from both responders & other nonrespondents with regard to survey participation. Almost 90% of previous responders responded again, while 55% of previous refusers refused again. Of the previous nonresponders, almost 60% responded to the second survey, while approximately 30% again did not. 2 Tables, 4 References.

Within psychology, as in other areas of science, rationality continues to be equated largely with the rules of logic and objectivity. It is also associated typically with masculinity. Psychological theories of rationality and of gender have been used, consciously or otherwise, as an effective social control strategy in the continuing social suppression of women, by portraying them as more suited to subordinate social roles. This paper shows how this has occurred through the imposition and maintenance of rules and ideologies based on rationality as objective logic. In order for the current locus of male social control to shift, several changes are necessary, including the recognition that rationality involves more than logic and that women's knowledge and its expression have their own equal validity.

An overview of major solutions to the "woman's question" advocated by Marxist women in prerevolutionary Russia, focusing on a comparison of images espoused by Alexandra Kollontai & Nadezhda Krupskaia. Dialogue on the woman's question is set against the backdrop of the revolutionary agenda, on the one hand, & the reformist feminist movement of the early twentieth century, on the other. Kollontai's ideal of the "new woman" is contrasted with Krupskaia's "worker-mother" model, arguing that the latter image formed the basis for policies adopted in the USSR & remained unchallenged until the era of glasnost', despite wide-spread recognition of women's burdens. Some alternative perspectives on the woman's question that have emerged in recent years are also reviewed. 34 References. Adapted from the source document.

SummaryFrom 1 January 1981 to 31 December 1982 information on all births to Bedouin Arab women residing in the Negev Desert of Israel showed a previously unreported seasonal pattern. The peak season, November-February, coincided with the period of cool temperatures and the Bedouin Arab cultural seasons of winter and spring. This pattern is different from those of Jewish and Christian groups in the same region, a difference not attributable to religion alone.Sociodemographic factors associated with the peak season of birth include traditional occupations of fathers, multiparae 2+, and traditional place of residence. This pattern has persisted over the past 15 years although it is less apparent among the more recently sedentarized Bedouin Arabs.

This paper examines the roles of primary subsistence base and women's contributions to food production in the etiology of polygyny. Cross-cultural data from the Ethonographic Atlas are employed. Polygyny is differentiated into categories of absent (monogamy only), occasional (less than 20% of all marriages), and frequent (20% or more of all marriages). The results show that polygyny is very likely to be allowed, but infrequently practiced, in exploitative and incipient agriculture economies. It is most likely to be widespread in herding and extensive agriculture economies, but decreases in" frequency as agricultural technology develops further. These patterns are explained by variation in the roles of men and women in subsistence production.in combination with variation in the labor-intensiveness of subsistence activities.