The main aim of this paper is to investigate how Moroccan women prisoners interpret and practice their religion in prison and the consequences of this in their lives, on an individual level and on a group level, in short the role religion plays for them in prison. Based on the qualitative method, and by using in-depth interviews as the investigative technique, the results show that, in general, religion brings important benefits such as psychological well being, helping the (...) class='Hi'>women prisoners to adapt to prison life, alleviating the pain of separation from their children and giving them hope for the future. However, the Islamic religion is the principal point of difference among the Moroccan women prisoners, according to the degree of influence that they exercise over each other which is influenced by various factors: where they come from, their socialization process and for the time that they have spent in prison. Based on these factors three distinct profiles for Moroccan women prisoners have been identified which differentiate them as women and as prisoners. In short, our results show that religion is key to understanding the identity of these women in prison. Our work opens a new line of investigation that encompasses religion, gender, nationality and prison not addressed until now. (shrink)

This article describes the innovative job performance strategies used by women who work as guards in men's prisons. It suggests that women guards perform the job differently from men guards not only because women face structural and discriminatory barriers on the job but also because most women bring to the job a set of prior experiences, skills, and abilities different from those of most men. One of the reasons women may fail to receive positive performance (...) evaluations in jobs traditionally held by men is that they are being evaluated on the basis of how well their work behavior matches that of men doing the same work. This article argues that there are multiple ways to perform jobs and that to expect women to perform jobs in the same manner as their male colleagues is a form of gender bias. Women should be judged by how effective they are, not by whether their approaches to work are similar to those of men. (shrink)

The problem of providing mandated medical care has become commonplace as correctional systems in the United States struggle to manage unprecedented increases in its aging prison population. This study explores older incarcerated women’s perceptions of prison health care policies and their day-to-day survival experiences. Aggregate data obtained from a sample of 327 older women residing in prison facilities in five Southern states were used to identify a baseline of health conditions and needs for this vulnerable group. With an (...) average of 4.2 chronic health conditions, frequently histories of victimization, and high rates of mental health issues, the women’s experiences of negotiating health care was particularly challenging. By incorporating the voices of older women, we expose the contradictions, dilemmas, and obstacles they experience in their attempts to obtain health care. It is clear from the personal accounts shared that, despite court mandates, penal harm practices such as delaying or denying medical treatment as well as occasional staff indifferences are common in women’s prisons. With older women having the greatest need for health care, an age- and gender-sensitive approach is recommended. (shrink)

The focus of this article will be on inserting the words of older women in prison into debates on time, agency and gendered identities in total institutions. Specifically, the article will address the complexity and contradictions of the time of ‘a mediated real’, and how this impacts on embodied identities within prison timescapes. This will be explored through looking at how prison-time as a ‘somatic identity cipher’ functions performatively in the construction of older women’s identities. The article will (...) also examine how female elders in prison become agents and negotiate techniques of discipline. The role of prison-time will be shown to be simultaneously experienced as further punishment while also being resisted as we draw out the relationship between temporality, spaces of incarceration and identification. First, we will locate the field in terms of issues of theory and method. Then we will look at performativity, identity and time in negotiating, acquiescing to and resisting the identity ‘prisoner’. This will enable us to understand the role and meaning of time in relation to how females in prison are compelled to reiterate and negotiate the identity ‘prisoner’ within the discipline of ‘the time of incarceration’. We hope to demonstrate through the voices of the women that there is no single abstract imprisoned body. These are real bodies, fleshy, sensate bodies that experience real pain; at the same time, these bodies are not simply given but also interpreted, mediated and in part constituted in social and cultural meanings. This enables us to show that the body can be both a generator and receptor of meanings. (shrink)

Although much has been written about the centrality of reflexivity in qualitative research, the literature on researcher’s reflexivity in prison research is limited. I conducted a PhD qualitative study with a sample of 30 women convicted of murder from one female prison in Uganda. This paper demonstrates the value of reflexivity in research with respect to oppressed women. It does this by discussing what reflexivity is and at what stage of the research process reflexivity is deemed important. Most (...) importantly, the paper discusses different forms of reflexivity that I exercised, which include personal reflexivity, feminist reflexivity, emotional reflexivity, methodological reflexivity and reflexivity on research context and participants. The paper demonstrates how these different forms of reflexivity helped in various research aspects such as the evolution of the topic that empowered women to tell their stories in a context that was without any research on women convicted of murder, in recruitment of participants, avoiding harming participants and in dealing with emotion during data collection. (shrink)

Scant attention given to gender in Latin American prison experiences implies that men and women suffer similarly and react according to their shared beliefs. This essay explores the prison memoirs of four Latin American women. Each account uses a standardized prison narrative adjusted to suit the narrator's own purpose and hints at how sexuality and motherhood, which shape women's experiences in prison, have been removed from sight.

The 1980s and 1990s have witnessed an explosion in the population of women prisoners in Europe, North America and Australasia, accompanied by a boom in prison construction. This article argues that this new pattern of women's incarceration has been forged by three overlapping phenomena. The first is the fundamental shift in the role of the state that has occurred as a result of neo-liberal globalization. The second and related phenomenon is the emergence and subsequent global expansion of (...) what has been labelled a ‘prison industrial complex’ made up of an intricate web of relations between state penal institutions, politicians and profit-driven prison corporations. The third is the emergence of a US-led global war on drugs which is symbiotically related and mutually constituted by the transnational trade in criminalized drugs. These new regimes of accumulation and discipline, I argue, build on older systems of racist and patriarchal exploitation to ensure the super-exploitation of black women within the global prison industrial complex. The article calls for a new anti-racist feminist analysis that explores how the complex matrix of race, class, gender and nationality meshes with contemporary globalized geo-political and economic realities. The prison industrial complex plays a critical role in sustaining the viability of the new global economy and black women are increasingly becoming the raw material that fuels its expansion and profitability. The article seeks to reveal the profitable synergies between drug enforcement, the prison industry, international financial institutions, media and politicians that are sending women to prison in ever increasing numbers. (shrink)

The Yugoslav socialist framework enabled major advances in what concerns the legal, economic and social equality of women, advances which radically changed their traditionally subordinated family and social position. In spite of the postwar period of revolutionary enthusiasm, female political activism and the access of women intellectuals to the male-dominated spheres of journalism, diplomacy, administration and governmental offices did not exist for long. Taking into account memoirs and oral histories of five distinguished women, the article reveals the (...) reasons for the Party’s antifeminist attitudes: a) the political fear of ambitious female “quality staff ”; b) the ideological fear of the women guardians of the traditional and religious foundations of collective identity; c) a cultural mistrust toward the mobile woman who easily transcends family, social and ethnic boundaries. These biographical sources reveal that any attempt at free thought and autonomous action outside of the party line was severely punished. (shrink)

Carceral spaces such as prisons are designed to restrict freedoms and keep inhabitants confined and under surveillance through various mechanisms. As a result, prisons are spaces where movement is restricted through confinement, while prisoners’ ability to move is conflated with freedom. We aim to move beyond this dichotomy and consider a complex rethinking of the body in criminological theory and practice through dance in carceral space. In doing so, we explore under what conditions movement represents agentic practices. Understanding these (...) nuances requires an interrogation of prisoner agency, including prisoners’ subtle maneuverability of power dynamics within the prison. We explore these dynamics using feminist and arts-based methods, specifically dance workshops delivered to twenty participants incarcerated in a Canadian provincial women’s prison. We find that movement and expression in prison may create moments of agentic freedom for incarcerated women under certain conditions. We argue that more nuanced understandings of incarcerated women’s agency can be found in their daily negotiations of time and space, and movement can provide numerous meanings. Our findings suggest arts-based approaches within prison environments create opportunities for women to express their identity and sexuality through movement in ways otherwise not permitted in prison. For many incarcerated women in this study, this sense of freedom may be associated with the ability to focus and take care of themselves while confined. (shrink)

This article uses Acker's theory of gendered organizations to frame an analysis of the ways in which policies and practices in a men's and a women's prison reflect and reproduce gendered inequalities. The article offers a working definition of one of Acker's key theoretical concepts, the notion of “gendered organizational logic.” Then, using interview data collected from correctional officers in a men's and a women's prison, the article examines the ways in which officer training and assignments, although designed (...) to be nominally generic, assume a male worker and disproportionately benefit male officers working in men's institutions. These findings imply that the perspective could more usefully be conceived as a theory of “masculinized” organizations. (shrink)

The development of early childhood care, education, and development programs in Indonesia suggests unexpected linkages between democratization, empowerment, and neoliberal policy regimes. Despite the shift to grassroots organizing and to empowerment as a goal of development, in Indonesia there is tremendous continuity in the use of women's work to provide social welfare at the community level. Ethnographic research illuminates the impact on women's work and their own interpretation of programs to empower children.

The aim of this research is to analyse the socio-pedagogical actions carried out in Spanish prisons. To do so, we begin by analysing the main regulations covering educational policy in prisons, share as an essential axis the orientation of the custodial sentence towards the re-education and social reintegration of the prisoners, serving as a basis for justifying social intervention. Secondly, we analysed the prison population, where we observed a prevalence of men over women, a greater presence of crimes (...) related to material offences and an average age of the population between 35 and 45 years old. Thirdly, based on the legislative and contextualized review, we analysed the programmes that are carried out in prison, the socio-educational potentials that may arise, through their principal objectives and the target groups they are aimed at, with the purpose of detecting good socio-educational practices. We underline the social and pedagogical function of these activities, as opposed to the therapeutic vision from which they emanate, highlighting the emancipatory potential of such an approach. Finally, we conclude with the professionalizing principles that can guide good practices in socio-educational intervention in prison, both in the Spanish context and in other countries with similar characteristics. (shrink)

A trenchant and wide-ranging look at this alarming national trend, _Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline_ is unsparing in its account of the problem while pointing in the direction of meaningful and much-needed reforms. The “school-to-prison pipeline” has received much attention in the education world over the past few years. A fast-growing and disturbing development, it describes a range of circumstances whereby “children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” Scholars, educators, parents, students, and (...) organizers across the country have pointed to this shocking trend, insisting that it be identified and understood—and that it be addressed as an urgent matter by the larger community. This new volume from the _Harvard Educational Review _features essays from scholars, educators, students, and community activists who are working to disrupt, reverse, and redirect the pipeline. Alongside these authors are contributions from the people most affected: youth and adults who have been incarcerated, or whose lives have been shaped by the school-to-prison pipeline. Through stories, essays, and poems, these individuals add to the book’s comprehensive portrait of how our education and justice systems function—and how they fail to serve the interests of many young people.". (shrink)

This article discusses the work of Dr Mary Louisa Gordon, who was appointed as the first English Lady Inspector of Prisons in 1908, and remained in post until 1921. Her attitude towards and treatment of women prisoners, as explained in her 1922 book Penal Discipline, stands in sharp contrast to that of her male contemporaries, and the categorisation of her approach as ‘feminist’ is reinforced by her documented connections with the suffragette movement. Yet her feminist and suffragist associations (...) also resulted in the marginalisation and dismissal of her work, such that Mary Gordon and Penal Discipline are virtually unknown today. Nevertheless, her insights into the position and needs of women prisoners retain a striking contemporary relevance. (shrink)

This contribution deals with the relationship between psychiatry and prison, taking a pedagogical perspective, despite the complexity and interdisciplinary nature of the subject. We started from the reconstruction of the historical and cultural context by linking up with the teachings of Franco Basaglia (one hundred years after his birth), recovering his model of democratic psychiatry that is still relevant and to be reread in a contemporary key, also in the light of new emergencies, as shown by the data collected by (...) the Antigone Association. In particular, a research project carried out at the “Vittorio Madia” Institute in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, a former Judicial Psychiatric Hospital, was resumed, also with a view to valorising good educational and cultural practices carried out at other institutes in the national territory in line with what was promoted by the Sicilian reality. The gender perspective was therefore assumed for the development of further research on the topic. (shrink)

Based on the personal experience of the author, who is involved in theatre projects with women convicts, the article moves across issues of detention, migration, and precarity. Foucault's concept of governmentality is instrumental in describing the arbitrary exercise of power on incarcerated people and their precarious living conditions. Life in jail is especially uncertain for clandestine migrants. In the article, recollections from the rehearsals of the show / racconti del corpo (Tales of the body) alternate with images and quotes (...) from the play, poems by women convicts, and reflections on detention as the ultimate condition of precarity for migrant women. (shrink)

For six decades, scholars have relied on Erving Goffman’s (1961) theory of total institutions to understand prison culture. Viewing prisons as total institutions offers insights into role performance and coercive control. However, mounting evidence suggests that prisons are not, in fact, total institutions. In this article, I first trace two credible challenges to the idea of prison as a total institution based on existing data: that prison gates open daily and that prisons operate within a context of overlapping surveillance and (...) punishment supported by broader political and economic interests. Second, I draw on empirical findings from my own yearlong ethnographic study inside one U.S. state women’s prison to illuminate a third challenge to the total institution paradigm. Using religion in prison as a case study, I describe the process of institutional infusion, in which an outside institution proffers attitudes, practices, and resources that individuals may draw on to shape their material and interpretive experiences within a host institution. Prisons are structured to accommodate institutional infusion, further calling their totality into question. I conclude that we can learn far more about the realities and inequalities of the prison experience by viewing prisons as porous institutions. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to generate knowledge about how parents who have been part of an ethical decision-making process concerning a son or daughter in a neonatal unit experience life with a severely disabled child. A descriptive study design was chosen using 30 hours of field observations and seven in-depth interviews, carried out over a period of five months with parents who had been faced with ethical decisions concerning their own children in a neonatal unit. Strauss and (...) Glaser’s constant comparative method was used for the analysis. The findings seem to indicate that these parents have an extremely tough life. Their relationships with their children are somewhat ambivalent. The children are very dependent on their parents, who in some ways both love and hate them. Too little rest and sleep and feeding the children are the most serious problems. The parents require respite facilities. The home can seem like a prison, from which it is impossible to escape. It is like having a baby who never grows up. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Modernity conceived prison as a primary vehicle for the humanization of criminal punishment. Contrarily to this theoretical and normative model, the practice of imprisonment has conserved several elements of the physical and psychological affliction typical of pre-modern forms of criminal retribution. Prison actually embodies a major theme of dystopian fiction because of the useless suffering it somehow implies. Nonetheless, the concrete dystopian experience of incarceration has frequently been challenged by the utopian horizons of opera, which Charles Fourier once conceived (...) as a passionate pivot for social change. From Fidelio to The Shawshank Redemption, opera has represented a utopian wonder of voices that soar “higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream.” Surrounded by the walls of prison, opera is not merely a snobbish artistry: it may constitute a real pre-text for the rights and dignity even infamous men and women deserve. (shrink)

Shulamith Firestone argues that for women to embrace equal rights without recognizing them for children is unjust. Protection of children is merely repressive control: they are infantilized by our treatment of them. I maintain that many children no longer get much protection, but neither are they being provided with an environment conducive to learning prudence or morality. Recognizing equal rights for children is likely to worsen this situation, not make it better.

This volume offers both theoretical and research-based accounts from mothers in academia who must balance their own intricate knowledge of school systems, curriculum and pedagogy with their children’s education and school lives. It explores the contextual advantages and disadvantages of "knowing too much" and how this impacts children’s actions, scholastics and developing consciousness along various lines. Additionally, it allows teachers, administrators and researchers to critically examine their own discourses and those of their students to better navigate their professional (...) and domestic roles. Gathering narratives from academic women in traditional and nontraditional maternal roles, this volume presents both contemporary and retrospective experiences of what it’s like to raise children amidst educational and sociocultural change. (shrink)

Abstract: -/- In this paper we discuss how through our bi-weekly Socratic dialogue groups with inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown San Diego, we were able to bring the inmates to a sense of aporia or puzzlement. Not only did the dialogues help to uncover assumptions, uncovering the dots, so to speak, but also to help reconnect the dots and see their world from a different perspective. It allowed them to question their lives in a safe and non-judgmental environment. (...) They felt empowered by these dialogues to become their own life’s judges, freeing themselves from feeling oppressed by the judgments of others. (shrink)

Rising rates of female incarceration within the United States are incompatible with the lack of federal standards outlining the rights of incarcerated mothers and their children. A robust body of evidence demonstrates that prison nurseries, programmes designed for mothers to keep their infants under their care during detainment or incarceration, provide essential and beneficial care that could not otherwise be achieved within the current carceral infrastructure. These benefits include facilitation of breastfeeding, bonding during a critical period of child development, (...) and decreased recidivism rates for participants. Legal precedent exists to support the rights of the mother to continue to parent their child but remains in stark opposition to current prison infrastructure that could allow them to do so. Existing state policies also have inconsistent mechanisms for determining child eligibility and should move to centre decision-making on a case-by-case basis. This work will demonstrate that a just society, supported by law and ensuring maternal–child welfare supports the establishment of prison nursery programmes as a part of the existing right to healthcare for incarcerated individuals. (shrink)

Feminists have re-visioned women as active subjects in knowledge by granting them agency and diversity and by challenging divisions like public versus private. But both feminist and traditional knowledge remain deeply adult centered. Adult perspectives infuse three contemporary images of children: as threats to adult society, as victims of adults, and as learners of adult culture. We can bring children more fully into knowledge by clarifying ideological constructions, with attention to the diversity of children's actual lives (...) and circumstances; by emphasizing children's agency as well as their subordination; and by challenging their conceptual privatization. The re-visioning of children involves complex issues of gender, generation, autonomy, and relatedness. (shrink)

A critique of public policy rhetoric from multiple feminist perspectives.

Infants, children, adolescents, and pregnant and lactating women have been described as groups with special needs. Regardless of diet chosen, these groups are at higher risk for nutritional deficiencies than adult males. Vegan diets can be safely used by these groups if foods, and in some instances supplements, are selected which provide a healthful and nutritionally adequate diet. Guidelines have been developed for those choosing to follow vegan diets. In many instances vegan diets offer health benefits. Studies of (...) vegans are limited by factors such as heterogeneity of diets, the size and extent of this type of study, and difficulty in subject identification. There is a scarcity of studies of newer vegetarians who are often more mainstream than the vegetarians of the 1960s and 1970s. In some instances this has led to assumptions about today's vegans which are based on out-dated information. Thorough scientific studies of today's vegetarians, especially of those in groups with special needs, are needed. (shrink)

Participatory action research (PAR) is a form of community-driven qualitative research which aims to collaboratively take action to improve participants’ lives. This is generally achieved through cognitive, reflexive learning cycles, whereby people ultimately enhance their wellbeing. This approach builds on two assumptions: (1) participants are able to reflect on and prioritize difficulties they face; (2) collective impetus and action are progressively achieved, ultimately leading to increased wellbeing. This article complicates these assumptions by analyzing a two-year PAR project with mothers of (...) disabled children from a South African urban settlement. Participant observation notes, interviews, and a group discussion served as primary data. We found that mothers’ severe psychological stress and the strong intersectionality of their daily challenges hampered participation. Consequently, mothers considered the project ‘inactionable’. Yet, many women quickly started expressing important individual and collective wellbeing transformations. To understand these ‘unlikely’ transformations, a feminist relational account, in particular, that of relational wellbeing, proves essential. We reflect on the consequences of these findings for the dominant PAR methodology and operationalization, and propose to sensitize future PAR with marginalized women by employing relational wellbeing as an overarching ontological awareness. (shrink)

In the early 1970s Japan witnessed the emergence of a new women's liberation movement that put forward an unprecedented gendered critique of Japanese post-war society. Known as ūman ribu (woman lib) or simply ribu (lib), this movement appeared at a historical time when the numerical increase in cases of mothers who killed their own children prompted the news media to describe maternal filicide as a dramatic social phenomenon. This article explores ribu's engagement with the increased public visibility of (...) mothers who kill. It contends that the solidarity and support the movement demonstrated for these criminalised mothers radically challenged idealised notions of motherhood, maternal love and the sanctity of the mother—child bond, and deeply questioned the post-war nuclear family as the cornerstone of society. The article investigates the revolutionary potential of ribu's preoccupation with murderous mothers by framing it in the context of the movement's call for consciousness transformation and for the pursuance of a more genuine relationality, and it gestures towards an understanding of what might be at stake in reading maternal filicide through the interpretative grid of a revolutionary agenda. (shrink)

During the past fifteen years, the relationship between literature and medical ethics has evolved from the occasional use of stories as a substitute for the traditional case study in medical ethics to the emergence of a narrative approach to ethical analysis and decision making. Thus far, literary theory has been more important to narrative medical ethics than have works of literature themselves. Perri Klass's novel Other Women's Children deserves special scrutiny, however, because an analysis of it demonstrates ways (...) that a narrative approach could enhance traditional philosophical and legal approaches to resolving ethical dilemmas in medicine. (shrink)

The concept of vulnerability has been the topic of considerable discussion in research bioethics, largely because of dissatisfaction with early constructions of the concept that were based on subpopulations of research subjects. These subpopulations have attributes likely to undermine their capacity to provide autonomous informed consent: persons who are relatively or absolutely incapable of protecting their own interests through negotiations for informed consent. Several subpopulations were seen as requiring special protections, including children, pregnant women, prisoners, racial minorities, (...) the economically disadvantaged, the very sick, and the institutionalized. Recent years have witnessed the identification of other subpopulations with attributes that could render them vulnerable, as well. For example, the Council for the International Organization of Medical Societies has named such potentially vulnerable groups as the homeless, nursing home residents, patients with incurable diseases, patients in the emergency department, employees, students, and members of communities who are unfamiliar with modern medicine. (shrink)

McLachlan and Swales dispute my arguments against commercial surrogatemotherhood. In reply, I argue that commercial surrogate contractsobjectionably commodify children because they regardparental rights over children not as trusts, to be allocated in the bestinterests of the child, but as like property rights, to be allocatedat the will o the parents. They also express disrespect for mothers, bycompromising their inalienable right to act in the best interest of theirchildren, when this interest calls for mothers to assert a custody rightin (...) their children. (shrink)

The priorities for women in England are not automatically ours. There is a war going on in Ireland, we are living in a country divided by British rule. (Rita O'Hare, Women's Department Sinn Fein, in Collins, 1985:115).

It is widely known that criminal punishment, especially imprisonment, has negative effects for innocent persons, most notably the families of prisoners. This is an issue attracting increasing attention from penal theorists and philosophers. Adding to this literature, this article examines the extent to which incarceration of a parent is consistent with fundamental rights that are often ascribed to children. In particular, we focus on children's rights against being separated from their parents. To this end, we begin with (...) a discussion of the philosophical basis for children's rights against being separated from their parents against their will. Drawing from recent work by Kimberley Brownlee and Matthew Liao, we argue that children have such a right and that it is grounded in children's welfare interest and the importance of parent–child relationships for children to develop adequately into autonomous agents. We then examine three arguments why imprisoning a parent is justified despite the fact that children have a right against being separated from their parents. For each of these arguments, we argue that while they may show the imprisonment of a particular parent to be sometimes compatible with respecting the right against parent–child separation, an extensive use of imprisonment as punishment of the sort that persists in many states is not. (shrink)

In 1963 the American journalist Betty Friedan published her book The Feminine Mystique, in which she identified, on the basis of an analysis of women's magazines and surveys of women, a paradox in the self- awareness of American women: in striving to achieve the ideal of femininity, they devote themselves zealously to serving the family, and at the same time they feel they are "different" human beings from men, who have access to the world at large. Friedan (...) compared the situation of the housewife with the situation of a prisoner in a concentration camp. In both, a person is deprived of self-identity, of self-respect, and of manifesting one's individuality and is isolated from the large world of ideas and events. Friedan's general conclusion was that the ideal of "femininity" that guides women is not a natural bent of their natures but an inhumane stereotype that is imposed by advertising, business, and government because it is useful to society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist Women and Interfaith Work in the United StatesKate DuganWomen from a wide array of backgrounds and interest areas continue to shape the face of Buddhism in the United States—from women who encountered Buddhism during the women's movement in the 1960s to ordained women founding temples for large immigrant populations; from women carving out a space for Buddhism in colleges and universities to Buddhist (...) women engaged in interfaith dialogue and working in interreligious settings. As Buddhist scholar Rita Gross notes, the experiences of women in Buddhism in the United States are wide and varied.1Increasingly, whether they are ordained Buddhist nuns or are Buddhist activists, women in the United States are engaging with questions of interfaith conversations within this multireligious nation. Around the country, Buddhist nuns dialogue with their Catholic counterparts. In local communities, Buddhist women assume leadership roles in interfaith groups. Behind prison walls, women offer Buddhist meditation instruction. Some women introduce tenets of Buddhism to their communities, while others promote justice with people from various faith traditions. On college campuses, Buddhist women work as chaplains and women Buddhologists integrate Buddhism and interfaith dialogue into their academic interests. This article aims to explore several snapshots of Buddhist women engaged in interfaith dialogue and working as Buddhists in interreligious settings; it is not intended to provide all-inclusive coverage of the many and diverse women in Buddhism in the United States engaged with an increasingly religiously diverse country.2Historical Glance: Buddhist Women and Interfaith Dialogue in the United StatesRita Gross suggests that women in the United States began practicing Buddhism in the 1960s and 1970s because "the basic teachings [of Buddhism] were gender-free and gender-neutral, and many found the practice of meditation... intensely liberating."3 Yet, the history of Buddhism is dominated by patriarchal structures and male-centered liturgical and ordination practices. As Buddhism [End Page 31] grew American roots, women found that "deeper explorations into the traditional texts revealed misogynistic passages as well as a strong overall tendency to favor men over women in matters of study and practice."4 No longer certain that Buddhism was any less fettered by patriarchy than other traditions, uneasiness bubbled within the experiences of Buddhist women.In the early 1980s, Cambridge Buddhist Association member Suzie Bowman noted the similarities among women's experiences of American Buddhism—including struggles of motherhood in a tradition that emphasizes the quiet of meditation halls and an alarming number of stories about abusive male teachers. In 1983, Bowman and the Providence Zen Center hosted a conference called "The Feminine in Buddhism"; seventy women attended. A two-day conference, with 120 participants, followed in 1984. In 1985, they hosted a three-day gathering.5These inspired budding Buddhist Sandy Boucher to take to the road to understand Buddhism in women's lives. She interviewed more than one hundred Buddhist women in their homes, workplaces, sangha. In Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism, Boucher paints portraits of women in Buddhism in the United States in the mid 1980s—immigrant women from Asia who transplanted their Buddhism, white women who discovered Buddhism in tandem with feminism, women of color who encountered a white-dominated Buddhism. In these women's experiences, she suggests, is American Buddhism with "the possibility for the creation of a religion fully inclusive of women's realities."6Against this background, Rita Gross was blazing a trail for Buddhist women in interfaith dialogue. In 1980, an eager Gross attended the first International Buddhist-Christian Dialogue conference. She presented ideas that, twenty years later she says, encompassed "everything to which I have devoted my scholarly attention:... feminism, non-Christian religions, accurate information about world religions, Buddhism, Buddhism and feminism, interreligious interchange, even theology of religion."7 After this first splash, Rita Gross attended the 1984 International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter—the only woman in attendance.8 The organizers were eager to have more women participate; so was Gross. After that conference, she made her further involvement contingent upon more women's involvement. Because of this insistence, members did, and continue to, work toward equal gender representation.9 In 1992, Gross explained, from a personal perspective, the potential... (shrink)

Several recent authors have argued that children are subject to testimonial injustice in the same way as are women, Blacks, and several other social identity groups. Testimonial injustice is standardly conceptualized, following Miranda Fricker’s seminal account, as a wrongful credibility deficit. I argue that this concept of testimonial injustice is too narrow to capture testimonial injustice against children. There is good reason to think that children are less reliable testifiers than adults, so it is not necessarily (...) wrong to assign a credibility deficit to a child speaker, in the way it is wrong in the case of a female or black speaker. However, I argue that children are nevertheless subjected to testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice against children is constituted primarily by a failure to actively inquire into assertions by children — that is, by a failure to patiently and reflectively engage in discourse with the child to discover what they may know. (shrink)

Through its analysis of history, race, and theology, this essay offers a unique and compelling approach to the discussion of ministry among women and child migrants. The critical discussion of Asian immigration and sociological patterns will be new and challenging to many readers.

Core moral concepts in Confucianism, such as benevolence, righteousness, and faithfulness, are often so vague that in moral teachings one must rely on intuitive understanding aided by metaphor and etymology that illustrate them. In addition, case stories play a crucial role in clarifying these abstract moral concepts. Confucian ethics heavily depends on stories of wise men and exemplary figures who have been revered throughout Confucian history. In this paper, I will explore the role of examples in Confucian ethics, particularly within (...) the context of moral education. (shrink)

In this article, I show that women are depicted in the early Confucian texts not primarily as undertaking household duties or nurturing children but rather as partaking in rituals of mourning and ancestor worship. To make the argument, I analyze, besides the more philosophical texts like the Analects and the Mencius, texts known as the “Five Classics,” which describe women in their social roles in much more detail than the former. What women’s participation in rituals reveals, (...) I contend, is that the domestic-political distinction does little to illuminate the philosophical vision offered by the early Confucian texts. Relatedly, while women’s involvement in communal religious rituals has also been noted about early Greece, the political import of such participation is even more pronounced in the Confucian case. Specifically, I show that, by embodying intergenerational continuity, the mourning and ancestor rituals that women partake in are foundational to the Confucian state. (shrink)

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion of how the gender gap in foreign and security policy issues can be explained by examining how early the gender differences manifest themselves. All told, 251 Swedish children between the ages of six and nine were interviewed about their views on foreign aid, refugee policy, weapons exports, armed resistance, self-defense, and concern or fear about the outbreak of war. Opinion differences between boys and girls were then compared to the differences between (...) adult men and women. The results showed that the differences between boys and girls were very small or nonexistent. Only in the question of fear about the outbreak of war did girls differ significantly from boys, displaying a much higher degree of worry. In the conclusion, these results are discussed in relation to different theories about the causes of the gender gap in foreign policy issues. (shrink)