“Suffragettes in Satin Shorts”? Gender and Competitive Boxing

This study is an empirical and theoretical contribution to the burgeoning literature on gender and competitive boxing. By using Connell's concepts of labor, power, cathexis, and representation and a combination of content and semiotic analysis, interviews, and observations, we argue that competitive boxing can be studied productively as a paradoxical gender regime that simultaneously enables and constrains how women do gender. On one hand, the sport encourages individual women to display physical aggression when such behavior traditionally has been deemed the antithesis of femininity. Some feminists argue that this form of physical feminism enables women to transcend essentialist discourses that restrict their corporeal power. On the other hand, women boxers in general also encounter resistance to their aspirations. For example, they are still positioned by essentialist discourses about both their bodies and capacity to develop the requisite form of controlled aggression. Strongly gendered links between bodily labor and bodily capital also mean that women have less access to resources than do men and, consequently, fewer opportunities to develop their pugilistic capital. We also maintain that competitive women boxers are implicated in a body project that tends to replicate sporting practices that some feminists and pro-feminists argue are damaging to both men and women.

Progesterone supplementation for preventing preterm birth: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Aim. The aim of this study is to assess the role of progesterone in preterm birth prevention. Methods. A MEDLINE search (from 1966 to the present; date of last search January 2005) was performed - using the key words progesterone, pregnancy, preterm birth, preterm labor, and randomized, controlled trial - in order to identify randomized, controlled trials in which progesterone (either intramuscular or vaginal administration) was compared with placebo or no treatment. Data were extracted and a meta-analysis was performed. Results. Seven randomized, controlled trials were identified. Women who received progesterone were statistically significantly less likely to give birth before 37 weeks (seven studies, 1020 women, RR = 0.58, 95% CI = 0.48-0.70), to have an infant with birth weight of