Men and Women of the Corporation

1. Contracting In. 2. Patriarchal Confusions. 3. Contract, the Individual and Slavery. 4. Genesis, Fathers and the Political Liberty of Sons. 5. Wives, Slaves and Wage-Slaves. 6. Feminism and the Marriage Contract. 7. What's Wrong with Prostitution?

The Sexual Contract

Personal autonomy is widely valued. Recognition of its vulnerability in health care contexts led to the inclusion of respect for autonomy as a key concern in biomedical ethics. The principle of respect for autonomy is usually associated with allowing or enabling patients to make their own decisions about which health care interventions they will or will not receive. In this paper, we suggest that a strong focus on decision situations is problematic, especially when combined with a tendency to stress the importance of patients’ independence in choosing. It distracts attention from other important aspects of and challenges to autonomy in health care. Relational understandings of autonomy attempt to explain both the positive and negative implications of social relationships for individuals’ autonomy. They suggest that many health care practices can affect autonomy by virtue of their effects not only on patients’ treatment preferences and choices, but also on their self-identities, self-evaluations and capabilities for autonomy. Relational understandings de-emphasise independence and facilitate well-nuanced distinctions between forms of clinical communication that support and that undermine patients’ autonomy. These understandings support recognition of the value of good patient-professional relationships and can enrich the specification of the principle of respect for autonomy.

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Supporting Patient Autonomy: The Importance of Clinician-patient Relationships

Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine

Summary Parental leave laws can support new parents in two complementary ways: by offering jobprotected leave and by offering financial support during that leave. This study assesses the design of parental leave policies operating in 21 high-income countries. Specifically, the study analyzes how these countries vary with respect to the generosity of their parental leave policies; the extent to which their policy designs are gender egalitarian; and the ways in which these two crucial dimensions are inter-related. The study finds that public policies in all 21 study countries protect at least one parent’s job for a period of weeks, months, or years following the birth or adoption of a child. The availability and generosity of wage replacement varies widely, as does the gendered nature of policy designs. Four countries stand out as having policies that are both generous and gender egalitarian: Finland, Norway, Sweden and – unexpectedly – Greece.

Who cares? assessing generosity and gender equality in parental leave policy designs in 21 countries:

This paper asks whether place is significant in understanding the gendering of senior management and how it might be integrated into existing theories. Drawing on interviews and focus group discuss...

Cultural stereotypes and the gendering of senior management

Diane Sainsbury (ed.), Gender and Welfare State Regimes, Oxford University Press, Oxford, xiv + 293 pp., £45.00, £16.99 pbk.

Increasing job insecurity has been associated with the proliferation of nonstandard forms of employment. In order to explore this association, in-depth interviews with 55 women and 56 men were carried out in three different organizations in a local labour market in South Wales. The organizations were in manufacturing, retail and the public sector. The manufacturing organization was characterized by male, full-time employment while the others were female-dominated with various forms of non-standard employment. Levels of insecurity were highest in manufacturing and lowest in retail. Respondents distinguished three types of job insecurity: post, employer and labour market insecurity. There were gender differences in experiences and perceptions of job insecurity, with women feeling less insecure than men. This related to the availability of jobs for women and younger people in the local labour market, women's willingness to take `any' job and the continuing strength of male breadwinner ideology. At an individ...

The Gender Dimensions of Job Insecurity in a Local Labour Market

“I just cope from day to day”: Unpredictability and anxiety in the lives of women

In-depth interviews with 35 women in a working-class community in South Wales suggest that there are generational differences both in the ways women talk about health and in their health experiences. These are linked with women’s differing social circumstances; changes over time in the ways in which health and ill health are explained; and the physical changes which are an unavoidable part of embodiment.



The ability to perform their roles with respect to social reproduction was a key element in women’s definitions of their health. Older women talked about arthritis and the ways in which it was a challenge to keep doing things while younger women talked about the stress they felt in juggling the roles of mother, wife, daughter and worker. Younger women were also more likely to talk about the problematic nature of gender relations and high levels of unemployment. Age thus structures women’s health problems and the ways they explain them.

Nickie Charles

Papers

Cultural stereotypes and the gendering of senior management

Diane Sainsbury (ed.), Gender and Welfare State Regimes, Oxford University Press, Oxford, xiv + 293 pp., £45.00, £16.99 pbk.

The Gender Dimensions of Job Insecurity in a Local Labour Market

“I just cope from day to day”: Unpredictability and anxiety in the lives of women

Age and Gender in Women’s Accounts of Their Health: Interviews with Women in South Wales