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This book deals with bioethical issues relevant to women across the life span. “Gender justice” is the starting point and the end point of the author’s approach to the issues addressed. The first section offers an overview of bioethics, critiques prevalent approaches to bioethics and models of the physician-patient relationship, and sketches distinguishing aspects of women’s health care. Classical pragmatists and feminist standpoint theorists are enlisted in support of “an egalitarian perspective”, and positions on the moral status of fetuses and those already born are examined. The second section identifies topics that are directly or indirectly related to women’s health; these include prenatal testing, childbirth and newborn decisions, treatment of minors and the elderly, assisted reproduction, abortion, eating disorders, domestic violence, breast and gynecological cancer, end of life care, and research on women. Brief cases illustrate variables related to each topic. Empirical and theoretical considerations follow each set of cases; these are intended to precipitate more expansive and critical examination of the questions raised. The book concludes with discussion of an egalitarian ideal to be pursued through an ethic of virtue or supererogation rather than obligation. By embracing this ideal, according to the author, moral agents support a more demanding level of morality than guidelines or laws require.

The purpose of the book is to provide researchers with a framework to conduct research in a culturally sensitive manner with individuals, families, and communities in diverse cultural settings in the United States, as well as in a global context within the context of three aims: (1) To understand and describe the nature and extent to which a particular problem occurs; (2) To understand the etiology or potential factors associated with the occurrence of a particular problem; (3) To evaluate programs or interventions designed to ameliorate or eliminate a problem. For each of these three aims, applications of different research methods with various population groups are discussed with considerable detail. The work presented falls into different sides of the emic–etic continuum, with some studies taking a more emic perspective (i.e., Chapter 2, a mixed methods study with American Indian populations), others presenting more of an etic approach (i.e., Chapter 3, a multicountry study of drug use in Central America), and yet others presenting an emic–etic distinction that is less salient (i.e., Chapters 4–6, a longitudinal studies of ecological factors and drug use in Santiago, Chile; a longitudinal study of ecological factors and PTSD in the City of Detroit; and a randomized clinical trial and community-based participatory research project both also conducted in Detroit). Two central themes that guided this work are that culture is not static, rather it is fluid and changing, and that cross-cultural researchers should avoid making sweeping generalizations that risk taking on essentialist characteristics. The book concludes with a call for anyone conducting cross-cultural research to include an intersectionality lens, one that encompasses a broader range of multiple identities, into their work.

Most economists think that unemployment is high in Europe because of rigid labour market institutions such as minimum wages, unemployment benefits, and employment protection. The book develops a theory of labour market institutions as the outcome of the political process. A central hypothesis is that they will be chiefly determined by the interests of employed workers with intermediate skill levels. We show that redistributive conflict between these workers and more skilled workers may lead to an outcome where a set of rigid institutions arise. We analyse why reform may be difficult because of status‐quo bias, and discuss how it may nevertheless be implemented by choosing an appropriate design or timing for the reform.

This book presents original research on women who never married in early modern England. It reintroduces us to the category of marital status and to the significant ways it shaped the life experiences of early modern women. The book argues that to understand early modern women we need to de-center marriage and not accept the marital couple as the norm. It is both a socio-economic and cultural study of singlewomen. It reveals the importance of kinship for women without husbands and children as well as the significant roles that singlewomen played in their own kin groups as caretakers and providers. It examines the contributions of working and propertied singlewomen in early modern towns. It also traces the origins of the spinster and old maid stereotypes to the late 17th century, revealing how singlewomen became marginalized in Protestant English society. The book concludes by examining the writing of never-married women and what it reveals about their own views on singleness. While few women chose singleness outright, many women who never married lived full lives and made important contributions to their families and communities.

We are told that ‘work is good for us’ and that ill-health is caused by ‘individual lifestyles’. Drawing on research from public health, social policy, epidemiology, geography, and political science, this evidence-based inter-disciplinary book firmly challenges these contemporary orthodoxies. It systematically demonstrates that work — or lack of it — is central to our health and wellbeing and is the underlying determinant of health inequalities. Work is the cornerstone of modern society and dominates adult life with around a third of our time spent working. It is a vital part of self-identity and for most of us, it is the foundation of economic and social status. As such, the material and psychosocial conditions in which we work have immense consequences for our physical and mental wellbeing, as well as the distribution of health across the population. Recessions, job-loss, insecurity, and unemployment also have important ramifications for the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities. Chronic illness is itself a significant cause of worklessness and low pay. Drawing on examples from different countries, this book shows that the relationship between work, worklessness, and health varies by country. Countries with a more regulated work environment and a more interventionist and supportive welfare system have better health and smaller work-related health inequalities. The book provides examples of specific policies and interventions that mitigate the ill-health effects of work and worklessness. It concludes by asserting the importance of politics and policy choices in the aetiology of health and health inequalities.

This book offers a new approach to Flaubert's major writing and to gender studies as a whole. Through a combination of close reading with a knowledge of current gender studies and particular attention to the sociohistorical and legal contexts of 19th-century France, it examines the masculine in the six very different literary contexts that are Flaubert's fictions. His characters, male and female, are reassessed for their masculinity: Baudelaire's famous view of Emma Bovary as ‘masculine’, like other critical idées recues that have propped up a canonical Flaubert, finds a new interpretation within the wider discussion of the book, as does the term ‘masculine’ itself. While it is mostly Flaubert's men, both those who conform to patriarchy's models and the non-conformists, who offer new insights into masculine identities in crisis, the structures of society that endorse male status — legal, social, institutional, and literary-critical — also come under scrutiny. The book challenges the primacy of gendered terms over sex, and provides various methodological resources to further scholarship in French Studies, Gender Studies, and masculinities theory, arguing strongly for the adroitness of literature to formulate representations that are as relevant today as in Flaubert's time.

The regulation of ‘flexible’ or ‘non-standard’ forms of work is among the key challenges in adapting labour laws to the needs of the contemporary workforce. In recent decades, labour laws have been exposed to be designed around the ‘standard’ model of the full-time permanent employee. In response, efforts have been made to identify techniques of regulating working arrangements that diverge from this paradigm and extend protection to workers engaged in what can be highly precarious forms of work. This book contributes to that endeavour by examining the evolution in the treatment of non-standard workers under United Kingdom labour law. To do this, it focuses on a number of the most prominent of these forms of work, including part-time, fixed-term, casual, and temporary agency work. It examines how the divergence of these working arrangements from the standard model has precluded or tempered the protection of the workers engaged in them. It also evaluates the more recent set of legislative reforms tailored towards enhancing the protection of non-standard workers. The central concern of the book is the articulation of these measures within a policy discourse centred on the need for a flexible labour market. It recognizes that non-standard workers have gained visibility and protection through being recognised as distinct subjects of labour law. It is argued, however, that the regulation of non-standard work within the context of an overarching quest for labour market flexibility has reduced the level of protection afforded to the workers involved.

This book answers two basic but under-appreciated questions: first, how does the American criminal justice system address a defendant's family status? And, second, how should a defendant's family status be recognized, if at all, in a criminal justice system situated within a liberal democracy committed to egalitarian principles of non-discrimination? After surveying the variety of “family ties benefits” and “family ties burdens” in our criminal justice system, the book explains why policymakers and courts should view with caution and indeed skepticism any attempt to distribute these benefits or burdens based on one's family status. This is a controversial stance, but this book argues that in many circumstances there are simply too many costs to the criminal justice system when it gives special treatment based on one's family ties or responsibilities. It offers an important synthetic view of the intersection between crime, punishment, and the family. Although in recent years scholars have been successful in analyzing the indirect effects of certain criminal justice policies and practices on the family, few have recognized the panoply of laws (whether statutory or common law-based) expressly drawn to privilege or disadvantage persons based on family status alone. It is critically necessary to pause and think through how and why our laws intentionally target one's family status and how the underlying goals of such a choice might better be served in some cases.