In search of protection : sexual minority women in Canadian refugee determination

Le Canada accepte des demandes d’asile sur la base de l'orientation sexuelle depuis plus de 20 ans. Quoi qu’il en soit, cette recherche permet de douter du fait que les demandes sur la base de l’orientation sexuelle déposées par des femmes soient traitées de façon adéquate. Pour garantir l’accès à la protection des femmes appartenant à des minorités sexuelles, une analyse du risque de persécution fondé sur l'orientation sexuelle doit incorporer des considérations de genre ainsi que divers autres facteurs d’ordre social et culturel. À partir d’une étude de cas de demandes du statut de refugié déposées par des femmes sur la base de l’orientation sexuelle et rejetées par la Commission de l'immigration et du statut de réfugié entre 2010 et 2013, cette recherche identifie des procédés décisionnels problématiques qui font obstacle au droit d’asile de ces femmes. Les résultats de cette étude révèlent qu’une analyse intersectionnelle, laquelle prend acte des formes variées et multiples de l’oppression dans un contexte social donné, est d’importance cruciale pour une évaluation éclairée et non tronquée des risques de persécution pour les minorités sexuelles féminines. À la lumière de ces résultats, ce mémoire propose qu’une analyse intersectionnelle accompagne une nécessaire formation pour les membres de la Commission de l'immigration et du statut de réfugié du Canada sur des questions particulières à des minorités sexuelles.

Les articulations de l'arabité et du genre à travers les chaines d'équivalence : le cas de Uprising of Women in the Arab World

Ce mémoire de maîtrise s’intéresse aux nouvelles expressions protestataires qui ont émergé après les soulèvements connus sous le « printemps arabe » en prenant, comme objet d’analyse, Uprising of Women in the Arab World (UWAW), une page Facebook qui œuvre pour les droits des femmes à travers le « monde arabe ». Ce travail propose de saisir cette page Facebook à travers les croisements d’enjeux d’arabité et de genre, dans une perspective discursive critique. La notion d’arabité désigne une appartenance commune au « monde arabe » qui reposerait sur la production de référents religieux et linguistiques partagés par l’ensemble des pays arabes. Le genre est abordé comme un langage privilégié pour signifier les rapports de pouvoir (Scott, 1988). Afin de mettre en lumière les différentes intersections de l’arabité et du genre, je propose de recourir au concept d’articulation (Hall, 1980). Ce dernier réfère à l’assemblage de différentes pratiques de production qui constituent un discours. Cette mise en relation, non-nécessaire, s’effectue dans une conjoncture régie par les forces hégémoniques du moment. Ainsi, le concept d’articulation permet d’explorer ce que font dans leur (co)présence les discours hétérogènes par et dans lesquels l’arabité et le genre sont rendus visibles dans et à travers la page UWAW. Ces articulations sont questionnées à partir du concept de chaine d’équivalence de Laclau (2008) qui désigne une condensation de revendications hétérogènes, à travers des relations d’équivalence et de différence. Ces dernières se produisent à travers l’affirmation des particularités des revendications, tandis que les relations d’équivalence sont basées sur la mise en avant de la communalité des revendications. Cette recherche est guidée par la proposition de recherche suivante : UWAW peut être comprise comme un espace discursif traversé par des chaines d’équivalences où les articulations de l’arabité et du genre se matérialiseraient selon des relations d’équivalence et de différence. Elle fait l’objet d’une analyse critique de trois campagnes ayant eu cours sur l’UWAW en 2014. Ces dernières sont abordées comme des lieux de discours, soit des espaces construits dans et par un recours à des discours spécifiques qui participent à la production de savoirs situés dont ils sont aussi, de quelque manière, les produits. Ainsi, l’analyse s’attarde à comprendre comment la production de sens repose sur des discours concurrentiels qui puisent dans des savoirs différents qu’ils contribuent à faire circuler. L’analyse démontre la grande hétérogénéité de l’arabité qui s’est manifestée sous un visage distinct dans chaque campagne. Elle est homogénéisée et universalisée dans Do You know, clivée dans Israël Apartheid Week, et citoyenne dans « Je ne resterai pas silencieuse ». Le genre est davantage stabilisé, puisqu’il agit principalement comme force universalisante dans les trois campagnes.

Uncover the Concealed Link: Gender & Ethnicity-Divided Local Knowledge on the Agro-Ecosystem of a Forest Margin

This research is a study about knowledge interface that aims to analyse knowledge discontinuities, the dynamic and emergent characters of struggles and interactions within gender system and ethnicity differences. The cacao boom phenomenon in Central Sulawesi is the main context for a changing of social relations of production, especially when the mode of production has shifted or is still underway from subsistence to petty commodity production. This agrarian change is not only about a change of relationship and practice, but, as my previous research has shown, also about the shift of knowledge domination, because knowledge construes social practice in a dialectical process. Agroecological knowledge is accumulated through interaction, practice and experience. At the same time the knowledge gained from new practices and experiences changes mode of interaction, so such processes provide the arena where an interface of knowledge is manifested. In the process of agro-ecological knowledge interface, gender and ethnic group interactions materialise in the decision-making of production and resource allocation at the household and community level. At this point, power/knowledge is interplayed to gain authority in decision-making. When authority dominates, power encounters resistance, whereas the dominant power and its resistance are aimed to ensure socio-economic security. Eventually, the process of struggle can be identified through the pattern of resource utilisation as a realisation of production decision-making. Such processes are varied from one community to another, and therefore, it shows uniqueness and commonalities, especially when it is placed in a context of shifting mode of production. The focus is placed on actors: men and women in their institutional and cultural setting, including the role of development agents. The inquiry is informed by 4 major questions: 1) How do women and men acquire, disseminate, and utilise their agro ecological knowledge, specifically in rice farming as a subsistence commodity, as well as in cacao farming as a petty commodity? How and why do such mechanisms construct different knowledge domains between two genders? How does the knowledge mechanism apply in different ethnics? What are the implications for gender and ethnicity based relation of production? ; 2) Using the concept of valued knowledge in a shifting mode of production context: is there any knowledge that dominates others? How does the process of domination occur and why? Is there any form of struggle, strategies, negotiation, and compromise over this domination? How do these processes take place at a household as well as community level? How does it relate to production decision-making? ; 3) Putting the previous questions in two communities with a different point of arrival on a path of agricultural commercialisation, how do the processes of struggle vary? What are the bases of the commonalities and peculiarities in both communities?; 4) How the decisions of production affect rice field - cacao plantation - forest utilisation in the two villages? How does that triangle of resource use reflect the constellation of local knowledge in those two communities? What is the implication of this knowledge constellation for the cacao-rice-forest agroecosystem in the forest margin area? Employing a qualitative approach as the main method of inquiry, indepth and dialogic interviews, participant observer role, and document review are used to gather information. A small survey and children’s writing competition are supplementary to this data collection method. The later two methods are aimed to give wider information on household decision making and perception toward the forest. It was found that local knowledge, particularly knowledge pertaining to rice-forest-cacao agroecology is divided according to gender and ethnicity. This constellation places a process of decision-making as ‘the arena of interface’ between feminine and masculine knowledge, as well as between dominant and less dominant ethnic groups. Transition from subsistence to a commercial mode of production is a context that frames a process where knowledge about cacao commodity is valued higher than rice. Market mechanism, as an external power, defines valued knowledge. Valued knowledge defines the dominant knowledge holder, and decision. Therefore, cacao cultivation becomes a dominant practice. Its existence sacrifices the presence of rice field and the forest. Knowledge about rice production and forest ecosystem exist, but is less valued. So it is unable to challenge the domination of cacao. Various forms of struggles - within gender an ethnicity context - to resist cacao domination are an expression of unequal knowledge possession. Knowledge inequality implies to unequal access to withdraw benefit from market valued crop. When unequal knowledge fails to construct a negotiated field or struggles fail to reveal ‘marginal’ decision, e.g. intensification instead of cacao expansion to the forest, interface only produces divergence. Gender and ethnicity divided knowledge is unabridged, since negotiation is unable to produce new knowledge that accommodates both interests. Rice is loaded by ecological interest to conserve the forest, while cacao is driven by economic interest to increase welfare status. The implication of this unmediated dominant knowledge of cacao production is the construction of access; access to the forest, mainly to withdraw its economic benefit by eliminating its ecological benefit. Then, access to cacao as the social relationship of production to acquire cacao knowledge; lastly, access to defend sustainable benefit from cacao by expansion. ‘Socio-economic Security’ is defined by Access. The convergence of rice and cacao knowledge, however, should be made possible across gender and ethnicity, not only for the sake of forest conservation as the insurance of ecological security, but also for community’s socio-economic security. The convergence might be found in a range of alternative ways to conduct cacao sustainable production, from agroforestry system to intensification.

Women's Labour Market Performance in Europe: Trends and Shaping Factors. CEPS Special Report, September 2012

We investigate the changes in women’s employment patterns across EU countries over the last 20 years both in terms of labour market participation and type of jobs using individual data from ECHP and EUSILC databases. Using a logistic multilevel model, we then pin down the role played by institutional and policy changes in explaining women’s employment. The key results indicate that women’s employment trends are related to the institutional and policy changes that have been introduced in almost all European countries since the end of the 1990s. Such changes had an important impact on the labour market opportunities’ of women by affecting the quality of potential jobs available, the chances to (re-)enter the labour market and the opportunity costs of employment (vs. non-employment).

Gender differences in early accommodation and vergence development

A remote haploscopic photorefractor was used to assess objective binocular vergence and accommodation responses in 157 full-term healthy infants aged 1-6 months while fixating a brightly coloured target moving between fixation distances at 2, 1, 0.5 and 0.33 m. Vergence and accommodation response gain matured rapidly from 'flat' neonatal responses at an intercept of approximately 2 dioptres (D) for accommodation and 2.5 metre angles(MA) for vergence, reaching adult-like values at 4 months. Vergence gain was marginally higher in females (p = 0.064), but accommodation gain (p = 0.034) was higher and accommodative intercept closer to zero (p = 0.004) in males in the first 3 months as they relaxed accommodation more appropriately for distant targets. More females showed flat accommodation responses (p = 0.029). More males behaved hypermetropically in the first two months of life, but when these hypermetropic infants were excluded from the analysis, the gender difference remained. Gender differences disappeared after three months. Data showed variable responses and infants could behave appropriately and simultaneously on both, neither or only one measure at all ages. If accommodation was appropriate (gain between 0.7 and 1.3; r(2) > 0.7) but vergence was not, males over- and under-converged equally, while the females who accommodated appropriately were more likely to overconverge (p = 0.008). The apparent earlier maturity of the male accommodative responses may be due to refractive error differences but could also reflect gender-specific male preference for blur cues while females show earlier preference for disparity, which may underpin the earlier emerging, disparity dependent, stereopsis and full vergence found in females in other studies.

The absent body: representations of dying early modern women in a selection of seventeenth-century diaries

This article seeks to explore the absence of the body in the depiction of dying women in a selection of seventeenth-century diaries. It considers the cultural forces that made this absence inevitable, and the means by which the physical body was replaced in death by a spiritual presence. The elevation of a dying woman from physical carer to spiritual nurturer in the days before death ensured that gender codes were not broken. The centrality of the body of the dying woman, within a female circle of care and support, was paradoxically juxtaposed with an effacement of the body in descriptions of a good death. In death, a woman might achieve the stillness, silence and compliance so essential to perfect early modern womanhood, and retrospective diary entries can achieve this ideal by replacing the body with images that deflect from the essential physicality of the woman.

Gender and the business cycle: an analysis of labour markets in the US and UK

Starting from an improved understanding of the relationship between gender labour market stocks and the business cycle, we analyse the contributing role of flows in the US and UK. Focusing on the post 2008 recession period, the subsequent greater rise in male unemployment can mostly be explained by a less cyclical response of flows between employment and unemployment for women, especially the entry into unemployment. Across gender and country, the inactivity rate is generally not sensitive to the state of the economy. However, a flows based analysis reveals a greater importance of the participation margin over the cycle. Changes in the rates of flow between unemployment and inactivity can each account for around 0.8-1.1 percentage points of the rise in US male and female unemployment rates during the latest downturn. For the UK, although the participation flow to unemployment similarly contributed to the increase of the female unemployment rate, this was not the case for men. The countercyclical flow rate from inactivity to employment was also more significant for women, especially in the US, where it accounted for approximately all of the fall in employment, compared with only 40% for men.

Scriptural Archeology: Excavating the Presence of Women in the Torah

Women's roles in religious history have been traditionally described in terms of their relation and value to men. The normative religious texts provide an androcentric perspective on the gender relationships within the early community, the growth of Judaism in "Jacob's House" and the monotheistic worship of God. Yet these literary representations omit an entire half of the experience of the Jewish community: the perspective and participation of women. As Judith Plaskow argues extensively in Standing Again at Sinai, women are defined not in her own terms or in her own voice, but by her relationship and value to men through the androcentric vocabulary of the Torah. This statement is textually illustrated by the authorial and editorial presentation of women and their place in ancient Israelite society in the Torah. As Judaism grew increasingly androcentric in its leadership, women were increasingly reduced to marginal figures in the community by authorial and editorial revisions. Yet the participation of women of ancient Israel is not lost. Instead, the presence of women is buried beneath the androcentric presentation of the early Judaic community, waiting to be excavated by historical and scriptural examination. The retelling of the past is influenced by the present; memory is not static but takes on different shapes depending on the focus of concentration. However, tradition greatly influences the interpretation of religious history as well. In the book of Genesis, the literature emphasizes the divine appointment of male figures such as Abraham the father of the covenant and Jacob who is renamed and claimed by God as "Israel," placing them at the center of Jewish history. As a result, the other figures in these biblical narratives are described in relation to the patriarchs, those male bearers of the covenant, by their service or their value to him. Women are at the bottom of this hierarchy. Although female figures of exceptional quality are noted in later chronicles, such as Ruth, Deborah and Miriam, it is the very nature of their exception that highlights the androcentric editorial focus of the Torah. I agree with Peggy Day, whose own scriptural examination in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, makes the important distinction between the literary representation and the reality of ancient Israelite culture: they are not coextensive nor equivalent. Although the text represents the culture of ancient Israel as male dominated from the time of Abraham, this presentation omits the perspective of half of the population-the women. By beginning at the point of realization that women did exist and were active in their culture, and placing aside the androcentric perspective of the text and its editors, the reality of women's place in ancient Israel may be determined. Through this new perspective, the women of the Torah will emerge as the archetypes of strength, leadership and spiritual insight to provide Jewish women of the present with female, ancestral role models and a foundation for their gender's heritage, a more complete understanding of the partial record of Jewish history recorded in the Torah. Those stories that appear as the exception of women's presence will unveil an exceptional presence. As Tamar Frankiel eloquently states in The Voice of Sarah, "the women we call our 'Mothers'-Sarah, Rivkah (Rebekah), Rachel, and Leah-are not merely mothers, any more than the 'Fathers'-Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-are merely fathers "(Frankiel 5).

Gender and Health Status Response to Long-Term Oxygen Therapy in COPD Patients

Introduction: The association of gender with health status (HS) response to long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT) in very severe COPD is unclear. The aims of this study were: (1) to compare dyspnea perception and HS between male and female with very severe COPD at baseline and (2) to provide a prospective assessment of HS response to LTOT, according to gender.Patients and methods: Hypoxemic COPD (n =97, age: 65.5 +/- 9.6 years, 53% males) were enrolled in a prospective longitudinal study over 12 months or until death. St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) and baseline dyspnea index (BDI) were assessed.Results: At baseline, HS impairment and dyspnea sensation were similar between genders. After 12 months of LTOT, women presented improvement in symptom (64.1 +/- 120.6 versus 40.6 +/- 122.9; P < 0.0001) and total SGRQ scores. Men also showed improvement in symptoms after 12 months (62.7 +/- 23.3 versus 49.6 +/- 22.8; P < 0.0005); however, they presented deterioration of activity, impact and total scores during the study period, with markedly decline of activity domain (68.5 +/- 20.0 versus 75.9 +/- 16.9; P = 0.008). BDI did not show significant difference by gender over the study period.Conclusions: Our results show that the HS course in very severe COPD patients differs according to gender, as females show greater response longitudinally to LTOT. (C) 2010 SEPAR. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.