Articles

Its in our hands: Stop Violence Against Women By Amnesty International

Violence against women is endemic. It is one of the most pervasive human rights abuses, as well as one of the most hidden. It is almost universally under-reported. Violence against women cuts across cultural, regional, religious and economic boundaries affecting women of every class, race, ethnicity, age, religion or belief, (dis)ability, nationality and sexual identity. Although violence against women is universal, many women are targeted for specific forms of violence because of particular aspects of their identity. Women face additional discrimination because of their race, ethnicity, culture, language, sexual identity, poverty and health. Values and beliefs in many societies that discriminate against women mean that violence against women is too often seen as "natural" or "normal", and so goes unchallenged.

BackLash:Angry Mens Movements By Dr Michael Flood

Men have responded in complex and contradictory ways to the profound changes of the last three decades, changes set in motion by the women’s movements, changes in family organisation, economic and social shifts and other forces. Small numbers of men have responded by mobilising in support of feminist goals, changing their own behaviour and working with women to shift gender relations in progressive directions.1 Yet other men have mobilised in opposition to feminism and the changes in gender with which it is associated, forming “men’s rights” and “fathers’ rights” groups. An organised backlash to feminism is now visible among men in Australia, as in most other Western capitalist countries.

Fathers' Rights Groups in Australia and their Engagement with Issues in Family Law By Miranda Kaye and Julia Tolmie

There is a constant and persistent view pursued by people who are often discontented litigants sometimes obviously dysfunctional, that the court is in some sense designed by anti-family groups to destroy the institution of the family in society... An unfortunate concomitant of this approach is that some people and some politicians with limited knowledge of the issues involved, tend to latch on to such dysfunctional persons for apparent political gain. This has the further unfortunate effect of empowering such persons to feel that their behaviour is not only acceptable but is the subject of sympathy and approval by politicians and government. It is all too often the experience of this court that its most persistent critics have behaved in a way which cannot stand up to public scrutiny, particularly in relation to issues of violence against women and children. Such persons, who often espouse the rights of fathers, do very little for their cause. There are legitimate matters that can be advanced on their behalf and it is equally as important that the court and those within it do not adopt stereotyped attitudes towards men as well as women. However, the behaviour and attitude of those who espouse so-called fathers' rights leaves little opportunity for rational discourse.

Angry Mens Movements By Anonymums

Groups of men all over the world disatisfied by the decisions by the family courts lobbyed governments to change the family laws. Whilst their main concern was the amount of time they have with children, they often tagged their time with the monetary value in their child support payments and expressed anger over their obligations to pay it.Publicly, they maintained an agenda that they wanted more time with their children but added occasionally that should also pay less child support the more time they spend. Researchers that no one had ever heard of began to emerge, with what seemed credible - That we have too many fatherless children.

‘A Feminist Family Agenda: Putting the mother back into sole parenting’ Liz Branigan and Shannon Keebaugh Council of Single Mothers and their Children

Dominant contemporary family policy and work-family discourses tend to situate discussion in the de-gendered realm of ‘parenting’. When gender is invoked within these discourses it is invariably on behalf of the needs of men. The federal government and opposition have recently focused on concerns about fatherhood, masculinity and lack of role models for [predominantly male] children. Within this framework, single mothers are commonly scape-goated and blamed for ills as numerous as male suicide, the poor health and low literacy of their children and for being a burden on the ‘welfare state’. In this paper we offer a feminist approach to ‘re-gendering’ debates around sole parenting. Single mothers still head 83% of sole parent families in Australia and are consistently recognised in research as being among the poorest, most disadvantaged, marginalised and stereotyped social groups in the country. This disadvantage is due to more than just the fact that they are parenting alone; it is also due to the fact that they are women. The needs and concerns of many single mothers who access the services provided by the Council of Single Mothers and their Children, are presented in this paper.

Truth About Australian Fathers Organizations By Ilya Shambat

The present effort against domestic violence in Australia is being led by Australian women who have experienced domestic violence and have decided to take strong and informed action against it. That is commendable on the part of the organizers and all the women involved. I write this as a man who loves my wife and my daughter, hates domestic violence, and seeks for them to exist in a climate where they can have meaningful human rights and be treated with dignity.

War of The Wounds By Judith Tucker

As someone who cares very much about the social and economic welfare of mothers, I’ve been keeping tabs on the father’s "rights" movement for several years. Although the movement and its most aggressive advocates come across as little more than a fringe element in a society that's still trying to figure out the meaning of manhood and fatherhood in a half-changed world, the legislative activism of fathers’ rights and "shared parenting" proponents could limit the power of family courts to award custody based on the best interests of the child. The movement's more moderate adherents complain that the inalienable rights of divorced and never-married dads -- particularly their right to due process and equal access to their kids -- are routinely trampled by vindictive custodial mothers and the family court system. Less image-conscious supporters are fond of the kind of hateful misogynist invective that makes me want to double-check the locks on my doors and windows at night.

Books

Deadbeat Dads: Subjectivity and Social Construction By Deena Mandell

The "deadbeat dad" is a common figure in today's news media. As an experienced social worker, family therapist and mediator, Deena Mandell is intimate with legal and institutional discourses on the topic, but also with the lived reality of those involved in support conflict. In Deadbeat Dads, she addresses the question: "Why hasn't child support enforcement solved the problem of non-payment?" Non-payment of child support is all-too-easily categorized as an individual act of deviance or moral failing, or as having purely economic ill effects. One consequence of this is to actually reinforce resistance and disengagement on the part of fathers, by causing them to see themselves as victims, whose personal rights are under threat. Thus, in the author's words, "In the discursive struggle between the state's protection of its financial interests…and the fathers' focus on their personal rights, the needs of children literally disappear." Dr Mandell constructs a complex, nuanced argument around findings from interviews with a small sample of separated fathers, augmented with the perspectives of enforcement personnel such as judges, mediators and lawyers, and with firsthand observation of courtroom discussion. This is a qualitative study that lets informants speak for themselves, but subjects the resulting insights to critical analysis. Deena Mandell is a professor in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Family Law Processes, Practices, Pressures Edited by John Dewar and Stephen Parker

Family Law Processes, Practices, Pressures Edited by John Dewar and Stephen Parker This volume contains an edited selection of the papers by contributors from around the world delivered at the 10th World Conference of the International Society of Family Law. The papers cover three broad themes: innovations in processes for resolving and determining family disputes; changing patterns in family and professional practices; and the political and other pressures operating on family law systems and law reform processes. Professor John Dewar is Dean and Head of School,Griffith Law School, Griffith University. Professor Stephen Parker is Dean of the Faculty of Law, Monash University.

War against Women by Marilyn French

Synopsis This stunning work of research by Marilyn French, both a best-selling novelist and a leading feminist philosopher and theorist, constructs a powerful and convincing argument that there is, indeed, a war against women. Here, Marilyn French shows that negative attitudes toward women are not simply a current media trend but are part of a consistent and systemic global phenomenon that dates back over millennia. Shocking, convincing, and sure to be controversial, The War Against Women combines exhaustive research with an accessible style to document the economic, political, and physical suppression and abuse of women and children everywhere in the world. Building an inescapable web of facts, The War Against Women argues that the attack on women is an intrinsic part of our culture, values, and ideology. And here, Marilyn French documents the universal oppression of women through current economic policies in both industrial and developing countries, through international political systems, and through the nearly universal religious war to control women's bodies--from the regulation of women's appearance and habits to legislated reproduction. Marilyn French reminds us, for example, that although women do between 65 and 75 percent of the world's work and produce 45 percent of the world's food, they hold only 10 percent of the world's income and 1 percent of the world's property. But the economic disadvantages of women pale in comparison to the statistics on physical assaults on women's bodies. In many countries, men still hold the legal right to beat, torture, imprison, or kill the women they "own." In the United States, a man beats a woman every twelve seconds; four women die every day as a result of beating by a man; and the United States has one of the highest, if not the highest, rates of rape in the world. In the industrialized nations, assaults on wives and female lovers and male incest with female children are treated as individual acts. Yet Marilyn French demons Annotation Bestselling novelist and feminist scholar Marilyn French has written a shocking and fascinating analysis of the history of women's political, cultural, physical, and economic repression that is as controversial as it is utterly convincing. Backed with often-ignored statistics, she argues that the supression of women in society is an intrinsic part of our culture. Publishers Weekly Men's tendency to subjugate and abuse women operates on personal, institutional and cultural levels, notes novelist and feminist French ( Beyond Power ). Boys' desire to dominate girls is instilled in childhood, while grown men see women as mothers owing them caretaking services, she observes. In her sharp analysis a major goal of male-conceived religious movements like Christian fundamentalism and militant Islam is to keep women subservient. Other examples of institutional suppression of women explored by French are discrimination in the workplace, biased divorce judgments and widespread rape, wife beating and male incest, a systemic pattern tolerated by society. On the cultural front she examines male sadomasochism against women in the arts and advertising. A landmark in feminist analysis, this powerful indictment reveals the global extent of men's assault on women, drawing implicit connections between the drive to criminalize abortion, starvation wages paid to women by transnational corporations, genital mutilation in Africa, Third World brothel tours and sociobiology's characterization of male aggression as normal, female aggression as nonadaptive. Author tour. (Apr.)