Can Media Campaigns Empower Women Facing Gender-Based Violence amid COVID-19?

Women's exposure to gender-based and intimate partner violence (GBV and IPV) is particularly acute due to COVID-19, especially in the Global South. We test whether edutainment interventions that have been shown to successfully combat GBV and IPV when delivered in person can be effectively delivered using social (WhatsApp and Facebook) and traditional (TV) media. To do so, we randomized the mode of implementation of an intervention conducted by an Egyptian women’s rights non-governmental organization seeking to support women while accommodating social distancing amid COVID-19. We found WhatsApp to be a more effective way to deliver the intervention than Facebook, but no differences across outcomes between WhatsApp and TV dissemination. Our findings show that these media campaigns had no impact on women's attitudes toward gender or marital equality, or the justifiability of violence. However, the campaign did increase women's knowledge, hypothetical, and reported use of resources available to those exposed to GBV and IPV.

Bandits, Collaborators, and Wives and Concubines

Chapter 6 provides concrete cases in criminal and civil justice to flesh out the effects and defects of the reforms during the Republic (1912–1949). For criminal justice, it looks into how robbers and bandits were punished under a special law reminiscent of the imperial-era precedents and how Chinese collaborators working for the Japanese occupiers during the war (1937–1945) were prosecuted and punished after the war (1946–1949). For civil justice, the chapter focuses on marriage and divorce and the issue of concubines, showing the movement toward gender and marital equality and the agency of women in pushing for such changes and in using the law and courts to pursue their own interests.

“Contradictions among the People”

Chapter 8 turns to the Maoist practices of resolving civil disputes through mediation by courts, workplace leaders, and residents committees, guided by the notion that such disputes were “contradictions among the people.” The focus is on the impact of the Marriage Law of 1950, since other kinds of civil disputes were rather rare under the Maoist Socialist system. The principle of gender and marital equality and the way marital disputes and divorces were handled by community and workplace leaders as well as courts were continuation of the same practices in the revolutionary years. The emphasis on mediation before adjudication in divorce cases was also similar to the earlier times, even though mediators were different.

Ocena zgodności z prawem międzynarodowym poselskiego projektu ustawy o równości małżeńskiej

The Deputies’ Bill on Marital Equality provides for the possibility of marriage between two people regardless of their sex. It introduces the possibility of adopting children by a single-sex couple. It does not regulate matrimonial property relationships. The opinion presents the jurisprudence of the ECtHR and international regulations which indicate that they do not contain a clear and commonly accepted definition of marriage. As a result, it cannot be claimed that the parliamentary draft law breaches, international law.

Gender Relations among Indian Couples in the UK and India: Ideals of Equality and Realities of Inequality

This paper explores young heterosexual Indian Gujaratis’ ideals and experiences of intimate relationships in the UK and India, focusing particularly on gender relations. Men and women in both contexts had similar aspirations of intimacy, but women were likely to be more in favour of egalitarian values. What this meant was interpreted differently in India and the UK. In neither setting, however, was gender equality fully realised in the lives of the participants due to both structural and normative constraints. Despite this gap between ideals and experiences, participants portrayed their relationships as broadly equal and conjugal. It appears that the heavy emphasis on love and intimacy is making it difficult for women to negotiate a more egalitarian relationship with their partner, since any ‘flaw’ in the relationship potentially brings into question its loving foundations. In this way, women tend to ignore or justify the gendered roles and inequalities apparent in their relationships and paint a picture of blissful marital equality despite evidence to the contrary.

Gender equality during the transition to parenthood

Few studies of marital equality have addressed the issue in a collectivist context. This grounded theory analysis examined movement toward gender equality among 12 dual-career Singaporean couples interviewed as newlyweds and interviewed again five years later when all had children. The analysis focused on the relational processes that reproduced gender patterns and those that undid them. Whether or not parenting was shared depended on four factors: (a) mutual prioritization of women’s careers; (b) fathers' willingness to restructure to actively engage in parenting; (c) conscious discussion of how to share parenting responsibility; and (d) availability of external support. Results suggest that to the extent that parenting is viewed as a shared family responsibility, the processes of gender equality may be somewhat different in collectivist contexts.