‘The World is Her Home’: The Role of Women Volunteers in Dutch Civil Defence in the 1950s and 1960s

This chapter describes, and attempts to explain, the contrast between a successful campaign by women volunteers to prepare women for protecting their families in the event of nuclear war and the stumbling efforts of the official Dutch civil defence organisation. The explanation is sought in the perception (or sociotechnical imaginary) of these women of their role in the nuclear age, and the grassroots quality of their work, as opposed to the top-down views and practices of the civil defence organisation, in a society which had a low opinion of the government’s efficacy in the extreme emergency of a nuclear war. The chapter illustrates the influence of widespread and deeply engrained perceptions, such as trust in the government and gender stereotypes, on attitudes towards a new threat.

Predicting Blood Glucose Level in Malaysian Women Based on Glutathione and Anthropometric Parameters

Blood glucose is conventionally determined by the level of sugar present in our blood. Lesser known to the public that antioxidants in our body are also said to influence the level of blood glucose. Glutathione (GSH) as the main antioxidant parameter in our body helps in reducing the production of oxidative stress caused by a high blood glucose level. Particularly in women, high antioxidant activities are reported due to the presence of oestrogen hormone. However, in Malaysia limited study was done on the significance of GSH in influencing the blood glucose level. Thus, this study focuses on finding the significance of GSH and some other health predictors in affecting the blood glucose level of women volunteers. This study was carried out on 118 Malaysian women volunteers and blood samples were collected for GSH analysis and blood glucose. All data were trained and tested for the development of prediction models in classifying the blood glucose into normal and abnormal levels. The model construction is using three different classifiers: namely logistic regression, k-nearest neighbour classifier and decision tree. Five predictors that were used are GSH, weight, body mass index (BMI), waist-hip ratio (WHR) and groups (oral supplementation dosage). Results showed all predictors are significantly correlated with the blood glucose level at p < 0.10. The model with a combination of GSH, BMI, WHR, weight and supplementation dosage (groups) as predictors gave the best performance. The k-nearest neighbour classifier model displays the best accuracy (84.7%) in predicting the normal and abnormal level of blood glucose. This finding shows that by altering the amount of GSH via oral supplementation and other significant predictors in women, there are chances to modify the blood glucose level from abnormal to normal

‘I volunteer at home too!’ Gendering affective citizenship

This article argues for gendering affective citizenship and humanitarianism. Both of these ‘regimes of care’ are understood to work through benevolent affect, to mobilize citizens in the wake of the retrenchment of the welfare state. Ethnography with Italian-origin women volunteers at a Milanese association shows that the affect and motivations of affective citizens can starkly deviate from benevolence and ‘do-gooderism’. Analyses of post-Fordist affective citizenship focus on the shift from waged labour and state-mediated forms of social security to precarious labour and privatized responsibilities for welfare, implicitly centring the (male) breadwinner as the subject of these transformations. By contrast, this article seeks to call attention to the continuities in unwaged care. In so doing, it shows how the Fordist legacy of gendered citizenship ‘haunts’ its post-Fordist affective and humanitarian reconfigurations and highlights the contradictions and contestations that mark ongoing transformations of social citizenship in Europe.

Who Is Pulling the Leash? Effects of Human Gender and Dog Sex on Human–Dog Dyads When Walking On-Leash

Previous studies have indicated that human gender and canine sex influences human–dog interactions. However, the majority of studies have considered the interaction when dogs were off-leash and the behavioural interactions when dogs are walked on a leash have not been addressed. This study investigated human–dog interactions when shelter volunteers take shelter dogs for an on-leash walk. Video records were made of 370 walks, involving 74 volunteers and 111 shelter dogs, and a leash tension meter was used to determine the pull strength of dogs and walkers. Human gender and canine sex had dyadic effects during the walk. Male dogs tended to pull more frequently and created increased leash tensions. Dogs displayed more stress related behaviours when interacting with men than women, with the signs being spending less time holding the tail in the high position, and more frequent gazing and lip-licking behaviours. Finally, there was a greater pre-disposition in women to use verbal commands, and language typically used with babies, while men were more inclined to have physical contact with dogs. This study’s results may be used to match shelter dogs with appropriate men and women volunteers for walking exercise of the dog, and to improve potential dog socialisation efforts by shelters.

Epilogue

Peppy Kinsey’s college roommate, Victoria Ferenbach, speculates on what might have happened to Peppy. The chapter reviews the careers of many of the participants in the case: for example, Judge Platt is knighted by Queen Eizabeth after a distinguished legal career in East Africa. The chapter also reviews what has happened to the Peace Corps in the intervening years: decreased numbers of volunteers, congressional funding battles, assaults on women volunteers. But the Peace Corps continues to answer President Kennedy’s exhortation to “ask what you can do for your country.”

Negro Heroines

This chapter examines the role Black women volunteers played as immune nurses in the Spanish-Cuban-American War. To enlist black women’s care labor in the Cuban conflict, army physicians relied on the myth of the plantation nurse, a figure whose biological and thus racial immunity from yellow fever recalled forms of gendered subordination and sacrifice ritualized in U.S. slavery. Black leaders like Namahyoka Curtis helped to recruit immune nurses in New Orleans in the hope that their performances of patriotic service would secure greater citizenship rights for the greater African American community. The experiences of the nurses before, during, and after the conflict offer a counter historiography of the war, and shows how Black women self-consciously presented themselves as matrons of respectability whose labor and sacrifice entitled them to fair and equal treatment under the law.

An Unlikely Refuge: Latvia’s Women Volunteers in the Red Army in World War II

This article examines women’s wartime experiences with a focus on Latvia’s women volunteers in the Red Army in World War II. An estimated 8 percent of the Red Army was composed of women, who played a wide array of roles, including as snipers, combat engineers, medics, and frontline journalists. This level of female participation was unique in World War II, but a close examination of the phenomenon shows that motives and means for entry into the Red Army at the beginning of the war were not uniform. Our examination of the case of women volunteers from the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic reveals key factors that fed women’s fervent desire to “get to the front.” It shows particular ways in which the Red Army functioned as an unlikely refuge, sheltering women from some of the hardships and threats of life in the Soviet Russian interior, including hunger, loneliness, and a lack of warm clothing, while providing a means of exacting revenge against a mortal enemy. At the same time, it exposed women to extremes of violence and conflict. Dominant Soviet narratives of women in war have presented them in largely marginal roles or have silenced stories that failed to comport with triumphalist and masculine representations of World War II. This work uses the voices of women volunteers in the Latvian Riflemen’s Divisions of the Red Army to construct an agent-centered history of motives, experiences, and memories.