Abbott’s ‘budget crisis’, CALD women’s loss? Service providers explore the impact of funding cuts

Women have been disproportionately affected by funding cuts to services following the 2008 global financial crisis. Using a feminist intersectional analysis of austerity measures applied to family violence (FV) services in Victoria, Australia, including 11 service provider interviews, we find that: the Australian government drew on global narratives of austerity in constructing a ‘budget crisis’, with subsequent cuts to funds addressing FV; budget cuts negatively impacted services’ abilities to address the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women; there is a lack of qualified interpreters and multilingual services, and; there are missed opportunities to engage and support young CALD people in FV services. Policy recommendations to support FV services and their abilities to help CALD women and young people are provided.     

The Uterus in History

Books reviewed in this article: Rickie Solinger (ed.), Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950-2000 Nicola Beisel, Imperilled Innocents: Anthony Cornstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America Helen Hardacre, marketing the menacing Fetus in Japan Karen Newman, Fetal Positions: Individualism, Science, Visuality     

Cadence,war and security

An increased incidence of attack has been identified as a major characteristic of the new threat posed by terrorist groups such as al Qaeda. This article considers what such a change means for Western national security systems by examining how different parts of the system change over time. It becomes evident that Western national security systems are structured on an assumption of comparatively slow state-based threats. In contrast, terrorist franchises operate at a faster pace, are more 'lightweight' and can adapt within the operational and capability cycles of Western governments. Neither network-centric warfare nor an improved assessment of the threat, called for by some, offers a panacea in this regard. Rather, it is clear that not only do Western governments need to adjust their operational and capability cycles, but that they also need a greater diversity of responses to increase overall national security resilience and offer more tools for policy-makers.     

Hauling Down the Double Standard: Feminism,Social Purity and Sexual Science in Late Nineteenth‐Century Britain

Nineteenth‐century feminism and the related social purity movement, and the emergent scientific discourse of ‘sexology’, are usually seen as antagonistic. Both trends, in fact, were in profound opposition to the widespread assumption that the double moral standard was an embodiment of ‘natural’ transhistorical law. This article suggests that feminist agitation against the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s (and other manifestations of the deleterious legal status of women) overtly attacked unthinking social assumptions about sex and gender, destabilising concepts about the naturalness of the existing sexual system and creating the context for the pioneers of sexology to interrogate even further accepted notions of gender and sexuality.