15 Part One The social construction of women’s alcohol use
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book is the first to examine how female drug user’s identities, and hence their experiences, are shaped by drug policies. It analyses how the subjectivities ascribed to women users within drug policy sustain them in their problematic use and reinforce their social exclusion. Challenging popular misconceptions of female users, the book calls for the formulation of drug policies to be based on gender equity and social justice. It will appeal to academics in the social sciences, practitioners and policy makers.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book is the first to examine how female drug user’s identities, and hence their experiences, are shaped by drug policies. It analyses how the subjectivities ascribed to women users within drug policy sustain them in their problematic use and reinforce their social exclusion. Challenging popular misconceptions of female users, the book calls for the formulation of drug policies to be based on gender equity and social justice. It will appeal to academics in the social sciences, practitioners and policy makers.
3534 COERCION AND WOMEN CO-OFFENDERS FOUR A FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF REPRESENTATIONS OF POTENTIALLY COERCED WOMEN Introduction This chapter will discuss the media construction of women co- offenders and their relationship with their male partner/co-offender, using the case and court file material as a comparative tool. It will particularly consider the ways in which the women’s representation served to minimise and discredit their perspectives and defence, particularly in relation to the potential influence of their relationship with their male partner on
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
Gendering Women is an engaging and accessible account of how constructions of femininity fundamentally affect women’s mental wellbeing through the life course.
Led by women’s life history accounts of growing up and growing older in the north of England, this book shows how experiences of becoming and being a woman – in family life, education, employment, motherhood and situations of violence – both enable and erode self confidence and esteem. The challenges to women’s mental wellbeing cut across age and class differences and have profound impacts on the material conditions of women’s lives throughout the life course. This is in turn a driver of inequality that is often under-recognised in mainstream policy.
Based on feminist and ethnographically informed research with over five hundred women Gendering women provides a critical link between gender theory and the lived realities of women’s daily lives and will appeal to students and academics in sociology and social sciences.
Examining the changing pluralities of contemporary abortion debate in Britain, this innovative and important book shows why it is necessary to move beyond an understanding of abortion politics as characterised in binary terms by ‘pro-choice’ versus ‘pro-life’.
Amery traces the evolution of political and parliamentary discourses from the passage of the Abortion Act in the 1960s to the present day, and argues that the current provision of abortion in Britain rests on assumptions about medical authority over women’s reproductive decision-making which are unsustainable.
She explores new arguments around sex-selective abortion, disability rights, pre-abortion counselling and the push for decriminalization, and radically reconceptualizes the debate to account for these new battlegrounds in abortion politics.
Issues relating to alcohol ‘misuse’ can only properly be understood within their social and environmental contexts. This research and practice based book explores social models of alcohol misuse to offer a sociological approach to its treatment.
Through considering the social meaning of women’s alcohol use, the book challenges current policy and practice in the field. It raises concerns about the political role of ‘treatment’ in making women behave, or to be ‘well’, and aims to develop a new approach to women’s drinking and new ways of aiding recovery, at national and local levels.
With contributions from service users, academics and practitioners, this is essential reading for those studying addiction, gender and the social background to alcohol problems.
What role does coercion play in women’s involvement in crime?
This is the first book to explore coercion as a pathway into crime for co-offending women. Using newspaper articles and case and court files, it analyses four cases of women co-accused of a crime with their partner who suggested that coercive techniques had influenced their involvement in the offending.
Based on a feminist perspective, it highlights the importance of gender role expectations and gendered discourses in how the trials were conducted, and the ways in which the media framed the trials (and the women).
Considering the legal and social construction of coercion, this fascinating book concludes by exploring the implications for public understanding of coercion and female offending more broadly.
In the century since women were first eligible to stand and vote in British general elections, they have relied on news media to represent their political perspectives in the public realm.
This book provides a systematic analysis of electoral coverage by charting how women candidates, voters, politicians' spouses, and party leaders have been portrayed in newspapers since 1918.
The result is a fascinating account of both continuity and change in the position of women in British politics. The book demonstrates that for women to be effectively represented in the political domain, they must also be effectively represented in the public discussion of politics that takes place in the media.
Pussy grabbing; hot mommas; topless protest; nasty women. Whether hypersexualised, desexualised, venerated or maligned, women’s bodies in public space continue to be framed as a problem. A problem that is discursively ‘solved’ by the continued proliferation of rape culture in everyday life.
Indeed, despite the rise in research and public awareness about rape culture and sexism in contemporary debates, gendered violence continues to be normalised.
Using case studies from the US and UK – the de/sexualised pregnancy, the troublesome naked protest, the errant BDSM player – Fanghanel interrogates how the female body is figured through, and revolts against, gendered violence.
Rape culture currently thrives. This book demonstrates how it happens, the politics that are mobilised to sustain it, and how we might act to contest it.
