Women physicians in late 19th century Russia emerge just as the Russian professions begin attempting to achieve some degree of autonomy from bureaucratic interference. Women took advantage of this discourse to portray themselves as competent professionals dedicated to bettering the lives of Russian people. Quite often these attempts to justify their work in the profession also motivated them to...

Women’s efforts to influence policies have complex effects, which are often difficult to evaluate. This paper identifies four themes in feminist politics through which to analyse whether a particular intervention involving substantial numbers of women – that of counselling in the UK – can be understood as a feminist practice. These themes are concerned with gender equality, women’s autonomy, re...

The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of a pilot study that promoted productive and capacity-building activities among deprived rural women of Mexico. The evaluation design is observational; 1,278 women are interviewed, and the comparison group is estimated by propensity score matching. The results show a positive impact on the carrying out of agricultural activities, in the aut...

BACKGROUND Patient autonomy in antenatal screening is a high priority for policy developers in many countries. OBJECTIVE This paper presents women's understandings of how health professionals should facilitate informed screening choices with an emphasis on their understandings of autonomy and advice. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS The study was carried out in 2009 in the UK, using a quali...

We examine how the impact on women empowerment varies with respect to the location and type of group linkage of the respondent. Using household survey data from five states in India, we correct for selection bias to estimate a structural equation model. Our results reveal that in the southern states of India empowerment of women takes place through economic factors. For the other states, we fin...

Sexual gender norms promoting sexual prowess for men, but sexual modesty for women have been shown to negatively affect sexual and mental health in both men and women. Knowledge about the relationship between gender norms and sexual cognitions and emotions might further the understanding of continued gender-norm conformity. In the present study, we investigated whether and how gendered sexual a...

This paper discusses the responsibility of general practitioners who are consulted by women who have been physically injured by the men with whom they live. The paper draws on a study of 50 women who were interviewed at a refuge for battered women, and considers the help which they received, or did not receive, from their general practitioners. Such women are likely to face many difficulties: i...

Special thanks to The Ford Foundation for its support of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and Building Comprehensive Solutions to Domestic Violence, the initiative under which these materials were produced. We also wish to acknowledge the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for their ongoing funding of the NRC. The ideas expressed herein are those of the author and do ...