Celebrating Women,Addressing the Wounds

A consultation commemorating the 20th anniversary of the culmination of the Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women took place in Kingston, Jamaica, in October 2018 to reflect on the achievements and challenges in building a just community of all people in church and society, and to strengthen ecumenical collaboration in reading the signs of the times. The Decade was launched in 1988, following a decision of the central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC). It was “addressed to churches and to women at the local level to empower women to challenge structures and to respond to the issues in the society around them” and focused on “the situation of women in the churches as well as the churches’ participation in improving the conditions for women in society.” It concluded in December 1998 with a festival held in Harare, Zimbabwe, immediately before the WCC’s 8th Assembly. The global consultation in October 2018, hosted by the Jamaica Council of Churches, gathered intergenerational women and men from WCC member churches and their theological institutions and ecumenical partners. Below we document several of the contributions at the Jamaica consultation as well as the report of the event.     

Men,Women, and the Self-Presentation of Achievement

This study examined men's and women'sself-presentation of academic achievement in aninteractional context. First-year college students wereled to expect an interaction with a peer to discussacademic achievement. However, the peer was actually aconfederate who portrayed his or her achievement in aboastful, moderate, or self-deprecating manner. Prior tothe anticipated interaction, subjects were induced to describe their own academic achievement andmake predictions about their first-semester grade pointaverages (GPAs) to be shared with the peer. Men's GPApredictions were highest in the boastful condition (and higher than their actual GPAs), nexthighest in the moderate condition, and lowest (and lowerthan their actual GPAs) in the self-deprecatingcondition. Women's predicted GPAs,unexpectedly,didnotvary by condition. Women were less comfortable inpredicting their GPAs than men, and there was a tendencyfor men to be more comfortable than women whileobserving the boastful peer and women to be morecomfortable than men while observing the self-deprecatingpeer. Results are discussed with regard to past researchand self-in-relation theory.     

Hegel, Women, and Hegelian Women on Matters of Public and Private

This paper introduces America's first women Idealists and discusses their appropriation and reconfiguration of Hegel's public/private distinction. Through their philosophies of education two of these women, Susan E. Blow (1843--1916) and Anna C. Brackett (1836--1911), legitimized women's active involvement in public life. A third, Marietta Kies (1853--1899), put forth a political theory of altruism. Her theory anticipates feminist critiques of male-centered political theory and has important implications for today's ethic of care. Blow and Brackett were associates of William T. Harris (1835--1909) in the St. Louis Philosophical Movement (ca. 1860--1880) and contributors to The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Kies was associated with Harris through the Concord Summer School of Philosophy (1879--1888). She was also a student of John Dewey at the University of Michigan.     

The Common Agenda Between Old Women,Women with Disabilities and All Women

Popular belief assumes a common agenda between old women and women with disabilities. The stereotype is that all old women are disabled and all women with disabilities may as well be old; both groups are stigmatized and marginalized, even in the feminist community. While the two groups share social invisibility and oppression, they are different in terms of their history, political goals and philosophy. Both groups desire to distance themselves from each other; those who are disabled because they have too often been warehoused into nursing homes with the old, the old who may not be disabled and don't want to face that possibility. Yet there exists compelling common ground as both groups struggle against their oppression. All women face a dual task: to confront their oppressor as well as their own internalization of that oppression. Since women with multiple oppressions are more sharply confronted with both tasks, they are on the cutting edge of the vital issues all women face. They can therefore become the teachers and heroes for all women in the common struggle for empowerment and freedom.     

Women,Depression and the Global Folie

No abstract available for this article.     

Women,Work, and Disability

This article describes career development, labor market utilization, occupational and career mobility, achievement, and attainment paths of both women and disabled women as workers.     

Women, Motivation, and Achievement

Women's educational and occupational achievements are crucial to the economic productivity and prosperity of the nation, as well as to the mental health of women and their families. In this article we review psychological research on motivation and on educational achievement, focusing on gender and the contributions that have been made by feminist researchers. Feminist psychologists noted the sex bias and methodological flaws in traditional research on achievement motivation and proposed vastly improved models, such as Eccles's expectancy x value model of achievement behavior. Contrary to stereotypes, gender similarities are typically found in areas such as mathematics performance. Policymakers should be concerned about gender bias in the SAT and about the Female Underprediction Effect. Additional threats to girls' and women's achievements include stereotype threat and peer sexual harassment in the schools.     

Women,Illiteracy, and Employment

This article presents public policy issues that affect literacy among women, as identified by the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education.     

Women,Weight, and Power

No abstract available for this article.     

Women,philosophy and the history of philosophy*

ABSTRACT

It is only in the last 30 years that any appreciable work has been done on women philosophers of the past. This paper reflects on the progress that has been made in recovering early-modern women philosophers in that time and the role of the history of philosophy in that process. I argue that as women are integrated into the broader picture of philosophy, there is a danger of overlooking the different conditions under which they originally philosophized and which shaped their philosophies. Having retrieved them from oblivion, we now face the challenge of avoiding a ‘new amnesia’ by developing historical narratives and modes of analysis which acknowledge the different conditions within which they worked, without diminishing their contribution to philosophy. I offer these remarks as a contribution to current debates about the forms that historical narrative should take, and the best way to promote women in philosophy today, in the belief that we can learn from our own more recent history.     

HIV, Cognition and Women

Although the incidence of HIV in the United States is higher among men compared to women, the global proportion of women versus men who are infected has been approximately 50% since the late 1990s. Women have been under-represented in neuropsychological studies of HIV. A small number of studies have reported a significantly higher prevalence of neurocognitive impairment among HIV+ women compared to HIV− controls regardless of symptom status and with or without an AIDS diagnosis. Impairment was most evident on psychomotor tasks. The risk of neuropsychological impairment was increased among HIV+ women not on antiretroviral therapy. Age and depressive symptoms also increase neurocognitive risk. New neurocognitive studies of ovarian steroid hormones, PTSD and other psychiatric conditions are critical for addressing potential female-specific aspects of HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorder. Such studies will also address questions regarding involvement of the hippocampus and verbal memory, which may be of particular significance among HIV+ women.

Women, careers, and work-life preferences

There are no sex differences in cognitive ability but enduring sex differences in competitiveness, life goals, the relative emphasis on agency versus connection. Policy-makers' and feminist emphasis on equal opportunities and family-friendly policies assumes that sex discrimination is the primary source of sex differentials in labour market outcomes—notably the pay gap between men and women. However, some careers and occupations cannot be domesticated—examples are given—and this also poses limits to social engineering. Recent research shows that high levels of female employment and family-friendly policies reduce gender equality in the workforce and produce the glass ceiling. Preference theory is the only theory that can explain these new trends, the continuing pay gap and occupational segregation. Preference theory implies that there are at least three types of career rather than one. However, the differences between men and women's career goals are smaller than sometimes thought.