Leaking urine in Australian women: Prevalence and associated conditions

The paper aims to (1) assess the prevalence of leaking urine and to (2) explore associations between leaking urine and a variety of other symptoms, conditions, surgical procedures and life events in three large cohorts of Australian women, who are participants in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health. Young women aged 18-23 (N = 14,000), mid-age women, 45-50 (N 13,738) and older women, 70-75 (N = 12,417), were recruited randomly from the national HIC/Medicare database. Leaking urine was reported by approximately one in eight young women [estimated prevalence 12.8% (95% CI: 12.2-13.3)] and one in three mid-age women [36.1% (CI: 35.2-37.0)] and older women [35.0% (CI: 34.1-35.9)]. Leaking urine was significantly associated with parity, conditions which increase the pressure on the pelvic floor such as constipation and obesity, past gynecological surgery and conditions which can impact on bladder control. The study showed that fewer than half the women had sought help for the problem and that younger women were less likely to be satisfied with the help available for this problem. Strategies for continence promotion, including opportunistic raising of the issue at the time of cervical screening and pregnancy care are suggested, so that the health and social outcomes of untreated chronic incontinence in women might be improved.

Constipation in Australian women: Prevalence and associated factors

A postal health survey was completed by 14761 young women (aged 18-23 years), 14070 middle-aged women (45-50 years) and 12893 older women (70-75 years). The prevalence of constipation was 14.1% (CI 13.5-14.7) in young women, 26.6% (CI 25.9-27.4) in middle-aged women, and 27% (CI 26.9-28.5) in the older women. The prevalence of hemorrhoids was 3.2% (CI 2.9-3.4 young), 17.7% (CI 17.1-18.4 middle-aged) and 18.3% (CI 17.6-19.0 older). In the middle-aged and older women, those who reported previous gynecologic surgery were between 18% and 63% more likely to report constipation; in the younger cohort, women with one or two children were also more likely to report constipation (adjusted OR 1.43-1.46); One-third of the young women and half the middle-aged and older women had sought help for constipation; the majority indicated that they were satisfied with the help available to them.

The Cuala Press: Women, publishing, and the conflicted genealogies of 'feminist publishing'

The Cuala Press, a fine art press run by Elizabeth Yeats around Dublin during the first half of the twentieth century, has long been recognised amongst scholars of Irish literature and history. But the press has been analysed almost exclusively through the interpretative lenses of poet W.B. Yeats, the Yeats family, and the Irish Renaissance. The article challenges such received understandings of Cuala by considering the press as a gendered publishing enterprise: one run by a woman, employing only women, and designed to create work and economic independence for Irish working girls. Through examining the origins of Cuala, the locus of editorial power within the press, and Cuala's complexly ambivalent relationship with modernist Irish suffrage and nationalist women's networks, the article situates the post-1970 feminist publishing boom within a historical trajectory. It suggests that scholarly knowledge of women's publishing history may be crucially dependent upon the health of contemporary feminist presses. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Women, violence and nonviolent resistance in east Timor

A growing literature in peace and conflict studies assesses the relationship between women and nonviolence. Numerous national liberation fronts and academic critiques assess how women participate in nonviolent resistance from Tibet and West Papua to Palestine and Eritrea. However, many liberation struggles that include female nonviolent resistance remain undocumented, and this article aims to delve into one case study in particular. The article examines the nonviolent roles adopted by women in the East Timorese liberation struggle, a national liberation movement in which the participation of female combatants was low but nonviolent participation by women in the resistance movement overall was high. However, the consequences for such women was, and remains, shaped by the overarching patriarchal structures of both the Indonesian occupiers and East Timorese society itself Female nonviolent resistance was met with highly violent responses from Indonesian troops, especially in the form of rape and sexual exploitation. Yet, this study also found that women acting under religious auspices faced less violent responses overall. Interviews with East Timorese women are used to reveal some of the sexual dynamics of nonviolent action and reprisal. This material is placed in the context of theoretical work on gender, violence and nonviolence.

The functions of societies and the evolution of group living: Spider societies as a test case

Many models have been advanced to suggest how different expressions of sociality have evolved and are maintained. However these models ignore the function of groups for the particular species in question. Here we present a new perspective on sociality where the function of the group takes a central role. We argue that sociality may have primarily a reproductive, protective, or foraging function, depending on whether it enhances the reproductive, protective or foraging aspect of the animal's life (sociality may serve a mixture of these functions). Different functions can potentially cause the development of the same social behaviour. By identifying which function influences a particular social behaviour we can determine how that social behaviour will change with changing conditions, and which models are most pertinent. To test our approach we examined spider sociality, which has often been seen as the poor cousin to insect sociality. By using our approach we found that the group characteristics of eusocial insects is largely governed by the reproductive function of their groups, while the group characteristics of social spiders is largely governed by the foraging function of the group. This means that models relevant to insects may not be relevant to spiders. It also explains why eusocial insects have developed a strict caste system while spider societies are more egalitarian. We also used our approach to explain the differences between different types of spider groups. For example, differences in the characteristics of colonial and kleptoparasitic groups can be explained by differences in foraging methods, while differences between colonial and cooperative spiders can be explained by the role of the reproductive function in the formation of cooperative spider groups. Although the interactions within cooperative spider colonies are largely those of a foraging society, demographic traits and colony dynamics are strongly influenced by the reproductive function. We argue that functional explanations help to understand the social structure of spider groups and therefore the evolutionary potential for speciation in social spiders.