The Girls’ Leadership Academy: A Promising, Empowerment-Based Approach to the Prevention of Sexual Violence

Sexual violence (SV) is a pernicious issue that disproportionally impacts girls and women. Although few initiatives have demonstrated effectiveness in leading to reductions in SV, global health organizations have identified empowerment-based programs as a promising approach to SV prevention. The purpose of this article is to discuss the Girls Leadership Academy (GLA), a program of the Nebraska's Women's Center for Advancement, which is a “homegrown,” theoretically grounded, practice-based SV prevention program for adolescent girls. More specifically, we discuss previous research relevant to the GLA; the theoretical underpinnings of the GLA; and the history, context, and content of the GLA.

“Where Is the Women’s Center Here?”: The Role of Information in Refugee Women’s Help Seeking for Intimate Partner Violence in a Resettlement Context

A qualitative study examined factors that hinder help seeking for intimate partner violence among women who resettled to the United States as refugees. A refugee resettlement agency recruited female clients ( n = 35) and service providers and stakeholders ( n = 53) in the metropolitan area. The study employed individual interviews and focus group discussions to collect data. An inductive and interpretive thematic approach guided the analytical process. The analysis revealed challenges related to information gaps and communication struggles complicating help-seeking processes. The findings point to the importance of bolstering information sharing within and across informal and formal networks to help women navigate support and services in resettlement.

The Power of Four Million Women

In the late 1960s, the National Council of Negro Women's (NCNW) poverty programs in Mississippi, drew interest to the organization. The NCNW tried to use this enthusiasm to help build its membership in the 1970s. In hopes of building its direct membership, the NCNW tried to push members of its affiliate organizations to become NCNW direct members as well. It also created more local sections at this time. In addition to building its membership, the NCNW continued to sponsor black self help by founding the Women's Center for Education and Career Advancement, sponsoring Operation Sisters United to help girls deemed at risk of delinquency, and advocating for reformed federal food policies. The NCNW's poverty programming also bolstered its reputation as a national organization that could work both with politicians, professionals, and other formal leaders and with working class and radical women.

One Step for a Hospital, Ten Steps for Women: African American Women’s Experiences in a Newly Accredited Baby-Friendly Hospital

Background: Despite strides made by the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative to improve and normalize breastfeeding, considerable racial inequality persists in breastfeeding rates. Few studies have explored African American women’s experience in a Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative system to understand sources of this inequality. Research aim: This study aimed to explore African American women’s experiences of the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding at a women’s center associated with a university-affiliated hospital that recently achieved Baby-Friendly status. Methods: Twenty African American women who had received perinatal care at the women’s center and the hospital participated in qualitative interviews about their experiences. Data were organized using the framework method, a type of qualitative thematic analysis, and interpreted to find how African American women related to policies laid out by the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. Results: Three key themes emerged from the women’s interviews: (a) An appreciation of long-term relationships with medical professionals is evident at the women’s center; (b) considerable lactation problems exist postpartum, including lack of help from Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative sources; and (c) mothers’ beliefs about infant autonomy may be at odds with the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. Conclusion: Hospitals with Baby-Friendly status should consider models of breastfeeding support that favor long-term healthcare relationships across the perinatal period and develop culturally sensitive approaches that support breastfeeding beliefs and behaviors found in the African American community.

A Revolution in Ephemera

This chapter uses feminist periodicals to demonstrate the significance of the local, quotidian, and daily scale at which Women's Liberation occurred in the 1970s. Offering local interpretations of grander ideals, shifts in ideas and ideals through time, a variety of different texts and voices, and local specificity, periodicals temper and texture the political images that characterized feminism on a national scale. In their content and in their intertextuality, periodicals highlight how feminist ideals were manifested in different communities and how communities developed distinct practices to reach these ideals. To illustrate the complexity and provisionality of feminism during this time, the chapter focuses on four different facets of periodicals: spatial intertexuality, temporal intertextuality, the significance of location, and the way periodicals make feminism visible at a local, quotidian scale. It examines periodicals published in New Orleans, Louisiana (Distaff), Northampton, Massachusetts (Valley Women's Center Newsletter), Cambridge, Massachusetts (Female Liberation Newsletter), Iowa City, Iowa (Ain't I a Woman?), and Los Angeles, California (L.A. Women's Liberation Newsletter, later published as Sister).