Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Women's Studies

Set against the backdrop of the fisheries crisis of the 1990s, Set Adrift examines how coastal and deep-sea fishermen's wives in rural Nova Scotia have adapted to the extraordinary pressures put on their households by the reorganization of the fishing industry. Using in-depth interviews conducted with the wives of deep-sea and coastal fishermen, members of fishermen's wives' support groups, and fish company managers, Marian Binkley explores the role of social origins and family traditions, family and social networks, and the availability of employment opportunities and social...

In India, the legal status of Muslim women within the family is a topic of considerable controversy and debate. It is a complex issue that has implications for matters of not only gender justice, but also religious freedom, minority rights, and state policy regarding the accommodation of difference. Whereas the Constitution of India guarantees equality rights to all women, irrespective of religious affiliation, Muslim personal law, argues Vrinda Narain, explicitly discriminates on the basis of an individual's sex and religion.

Narain begins with an analysis of the historical...

In the early 1970s, when women's history began to claim attention as an emerging discipline in North American universities, it was dominated by a middle-class Anglo-Saxon bias. Today the field is much more diverse, a development reflected in the scope of this volume. Rather than documenting the experiences of women solely in a framework of gender analysis, its authors recognize the interaction of race, class, and gender as central in shaping women's lives, and men's.

These essays represent an exciting breakthrough in women's studies, expanding the borders of the discipline while...

Despite the increasing scope and authority of women's studies, the role of Black women in Canada's history has remained largely unwritten and unacknowledged. This silence supports the common belief that Black people have only recently arrived in Canada and that racism is also a fairly recent development. This book sets the record straight.

The six essays collected here explore three hundred years of Black women in Canada, from the seventeenth century to the immediate post-Second World War period. Sylvia Hamilton documents the experiences of Black women in Nova Scotia, from early...

With the turn of the century came increased industrialization and urbanization, and in Toronto one of the most visible results of this modernization was the influx of young, single women to the city. They came seeking work, independence, and excitement, but they were not to realize these goals without contention.

Carolyn Strange examines the rise of the Toronto 'working girl, ' the various agencies that 'discovered' her, the nature of 'the girl problem' from the point of view of moral overseers, the various strategies devised to solve this 'problem, ' and lastly, the young women's...

Canadians can no longer expect as much from their governments. Rights formerly guaranteed by our 'welfare state' are disappearing. Social spending has been cut drastically in an attempt to combat recession, globalization and restructuring, and the deficit.

The decline of the welfare state poses special risks for women. The policies, benefits, and services of the welfare state are directly linked to women's basic freedoms. The welfare state employs women to deliver services such as childcare, home-help, nursing, and social work. In turn, these services have meant that women can enter...

Bad Attitude(s) on Trial is a critical analysis of pornography in the context of contemporary Canada. The notion that pornography both reflects sexual domination and 'victimizes' women has recently found expression in law in the landmark Canadian Supreme Court decision of R. v. Butler (1992). Many feminists embrace this new law as progressive, but in the post-Butler years, straight, mainstream pornography is still flourishing, while sexual representations that challenge conventional notions of sexuality, such as those centering on gay and lesbian sex and s/m sex, are the focus of...

Our perception of women's roles has changed dramatically since 1945. In this collection Joy Parr has brought together ten studies from a variety of disciplines examining changing ideas about women.

Mariana Valverde writes about teenage girls in the immediate postwar years and finds that stereotypes of a supposedly simple, secure, politically quiescent, and sexually conformist life do not really hold. Joy Parr follows women shoppers of the early 1950s, in their sometimes comical encounters with male designers, manufacturers, and retailers, in search of the tools and totems of...

Until this century, married women had no legal right to hold, use, or dispose of property. Since the ownership of property is a critical measure of social status, the married women's property acts of the nineteenth century were important landmarks in the legal emancipation of women. Reform campaigns represented the first organized attempts by women in Upper Canada to challenge their status in society. Ironically, emancipation was not the first goal of reformers: their demands reflected a concern with protection from economic instability. The laws granting women new rights and privileges...

Patriarchal ideals have long played a major role, even decisive role in the Christian church and in its understanding of its scriptures, community, ministry, and mission. This reality, and women's often creative response to it, for the subject of this collection.

Written by experts in church history, the articles take a close look at women's status in ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary Christianity. Contributors explore such themes as women's role in early Christian communities, their role models in the Roman Empire, Elizabeth I's exploitation of women's cultural...

While the designated rights of capital to travel freely across borders have increased under neo-liberal globalization, the citizenship rights of many people, particularly the most vulnerable, have tended to decline. Using Canada as an example of a major recipient state of international migrants, Negotiating Citizenship considers how migrant women workers from two settings in the global South-the West Indies and the Philippines-have attempted to negotiate citizenship across the global citizenship divide.

Daiva K. Stasiulis and Abigail B. Bakan challenge traditional liberal and...

Marilyn Waring probes the 'world behind the mask' in these three remarkable essays on women in politics, economics and work, and human rights.

First, she pulls away the masks that women who are elected to parliamentary office are forced to wear. How do we women find ourselves trapped in the institution's games? How does that affect our ability to make progress on issues of primary importance to us? What does that do to our self-image? Can we even afford to be aware of this? The second essay continues Waring's powerful writing on economics and the concept of work. She updates the...

With the knowledge and sensitivity of a teacher and counsellor, Ruth M. Mann details a community effort to establish a shelter for abused women in a small Ontario municipality. While other literature presents the ostensibly cohesive views of particular interest groups on the issue of domestic violence, Mann exposes the conflicts that actually occur, and the ways these conflicts fuel unintended outcomes. In Who Owns Domestic Abuse? The Local Politics of a Social Problem, the author ventures bravely into the politically charged debate over the definition of abuse, and emphasizes the...

The lives of women in religious communities in late medieval Europe are the main focus of this volume which brings together a body of original research by historians and literary scholars and discusses a variety of such communities in France, Germany and Wales. The perspective is also broadened to include the lives of women in relation to the local community in places as far apart as East Anglia and southern Italy.

The volume is a significant contribution to a fast developing field and should appeal not only to medieval specialists but all those with an interest in women's history...

During the past decade, media and medical forces have combined to create an alarming view of pregnant mothers who use illicit drugs. The result has been increased state control of these women and their infants. This in-depth study is the first in Canada to look at how mothers who use illicit drugs regard the laws, medical practices, and social services that intervene in their lives.

Focusing on practices in western Canada, Susan C. Boyd argues that licit and illicit drug categories are artificial and dangerous and that the evidence for neonatal syndrome (NAS) is suspect and...

Current feminist debate finds itself at an impasse concerning the significance of magazines for adolescent girls- are they full of oppressive prescriptions of femininity, or celebrations of female-centred pleasure and resistance against the patriarchy? The question has been examined largely by middle-aged academics, in some cases far removed in age and education from the intended consumers of these magazines, and the assumptions they have reached about the messages absorbed by young women may be completely wrong.

Dawn Currie takes a new approach, by looking at the readers themselves...

Eve has been supposed to have remarked to Adam as they left the garden, my dear, we are in a state of transition, and of course they were. It is no coincidence that Eve delivers this line. While humanity in every era and stage in history has been marked by a strong sense of itself as being in a state of transition, women have always had a particularly close relationship to changeable terrain. In their quest for self knowledge, boundaries, and names, women have found themselves between varying cultural demands. In one view, perhaps the dominant one, the only way to gain positive status is...

Set against the backdrop of the fisheries crisis of the 1990s, Set Adrift examines how coastal and deep-sea fishermen's wives in rural Nova Scotia have adapted to the extraordinary pressures put on their households by the reorganization of the fishing industry. Using in-depth interviews conducted with the wives of deep-sea and coastal fishermen, members of fishermen's wives' support groups, and fish company managers, Marian Binkley explores the role of social origins and family traditions, family and social networks, and the availability of employment opportunities and social...

Thirty-nine women and their strategies of survival are the central focus of Aysan Sev'er's newest study on women who have left abusive situations. Through a mainly feminist orientation, Sev'er analyzes abuse, its many definitions, and existing theories surrounding violence against women, and incorporates an extensive literature review of Canadian and American sources that investigates feminist, non-feminist, and social-psychological theories of abuse. She then proceeds to relate the intimate stories of women who survived.

These interviews, from women outside institutional settings,...

The transnational migrations of the early twentieth century had a profound impact on the lives of many people, but none more so than those who were left behind. In this lively interdisciplinary study, Linda Reeder examines the lives of rural Sicilian women and the changes that took place as a result of male migration to the United States.

Tracing the changing notions of female and male in rural Sicily, Reeder uses a wide variety of primary sources, including birth and death records, government records, novels, and newspapers, to explore the impact of industrialization on motherhood,...