Contenu du sommaire : Femmes et sociétés

Nicole Gabriel, The 183 and the Stork Abortion legislation was the subject of intense controversy at the time of German reunification. For the first time, a matter of criminal law played a role in a matter of State. This article sums up how the legal situations and actual behaviour developed differently in the former GDR and FRG and analyses the decisive intervention made by women. The result of this mobilisation by women — a "reprieve" for the more liberal legislation of the former GDR until 1992 — denotes, above and beyond the general shift towards more conservative values all over Europe and in the United States, the persistance of a certain conception of the mother's social role in Germany and the preeminence of "private virtues" there, despite the socialist State's attempt to challenge that preeminence.

Jacqueline Heinen, Women between Church and State, or Challenging Legal Abortion in Poland The Catholic Church's crusade for "the right to life" has recently emerged in Poland in the form of a law intending to outlaw abortion. Despite tremendous opposition to this proposed legislation in the country where the rate of abortion is highest among industrialized countries, Polish women are disarmed faced with this challenge. Their vulnerability is as much the result of incoherent state policies in this area pursued by the communist regime as it is the effect of pressure from the Church. In addition, the involvement of the Church in political life limits the efforts of feminist groups in their attempts to respond to the situation.

Monique Gadant, The Dominated Body of Women : Reflections on the Value of Virginity in Algeria The Islamic tradition, contrary to the Christian tradition, holds sexual pleasure to be legitimate, but only within marriage. The state of virginity within Islamic culture is connected with conceptions of honor and centers upon the preservation of the hyman before marriage of the woman. This phenomenon is present in contemporary Algeria where it is expressed in part by the Islamic fundamentalist movements. In this context, respect for honor is transformed into conformism which centers upon social control rather than respect for the individual.

Didier Paquette, The Crisis of the Couple : Social and/or Psychological Crisis ? Analysis of the social-historical factors, and the elements of the unconscious present in the crisis of the couple indicates two distinct levels of explanation. Between the historical decline of its traditional family functions and the limits of a social individualizing totality, the couple remains a recourse, but one devoid of illusions. The couple founds its existence on the desires and the fears inherant in a sexual impulse that cannot be satisfied. The couple is, therefore, indissociable from an historical crisis linked to the limits of desire conditioned by the castration complex.

Larry Portis, Sex, Morality and Social Order in the Work of Emile Durkheim Durkheim's conservative attitudes in regards to sex, marriage, divorce and related matters are not surprising given the epoch and his social-cultural background. But they are important in any attempt to understand the practical implications of his sociology. Underlying his theoretical work on social integration and the collective consciousness is a more ideological respect for constituted authority, the virtues of discipline, moderation, regularity, and unquestioning national patriotism. His sociology was inspired by a profoundly conservative vision of human nature and social relations that was revealed clearly when he debated the questions of male-female relations and sex education.

Claude Maillard-Chary, The "Feminism System" of the Surrealists. Problematic and Analysis of "the Other Prism" A late theorization (1945) of André Breton, the "feminism system of the world" endeavors to circumscribe the poetic universe and the archetypes of surrealist thought, from ethnology to ontology, from mythology to aesthetics to history. Beyond the standard literary convention of the '"muse", this is an attack on patriarchy and an expansion of the immediate elements of psychism based upon the "other prism of vision". It is a moral and cognitive transfer that leads to a redefinition of male-female relations.

Liliane Crips, On Feminism as Decadence : the Debate about Women's Rights on the Conservative and the Revolutionary Right during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich In Germany after the First World War, feminism was considered by a large part of conservative public opinion to be a symptom of decadence. One of the most influential antifeminists was Oswald Spengler who, in his Decline of the West, claimed that western culture at its apogee was animated by a masculine principle of will, "the faustian soul", whereas women represent the principle od duty. The transition from cultural antifeminism to biological antifeminism is accompanied by the nationalist concept of "demographic decline". For nazi ideologists like Hans F.K. Gunther or Alfred Rosenberg, the "Nordic" woman, defined as the "guardian of the race", could not demand either sexual liberty or socio-professional activity.

Claudie Lesselier, From the Virgin Mary to Joan of Arc : Images of Women on the Far Right The Far Right considers sex and gender to be natural facts forming the foundation of the social order and attempts to incorporate French women into its political project of returning to certain traditions and its defense of national "identity". To do this, the Far Right emphases the difficulties of women today in relation to their familial and maternal responsibilities. The Far Right legitimizes this discourse by making references to symbolic feminine figures and by using metaphors from the realm of the family and household. However, this appeal is limited by the fact that within its own ranks the Far Right offers only a subordinate role to women.

Bruno Péquignot, Women in the Modern Sentimental Novel Contrary to the impression often given by pseudo-feminist and "cultivated" accounts, the sentimental novel does not give a more degraded image of women than literature in general, the press, or television. It is even possible, because of its idealization of male-female relationships, that the modem sentimental novel contributes to their "positive" evolution.

Marion O'Callaghn, Race, class and gender. The case of Trinidad Race, class and gender raise certain theoretical issues not only with regard to linkages but also with regard to ways in which exclusion is arranged, social mobility restricted, social formations inter-lock, group boundaries maintained and ideology — or ideologies — formulated. In this article one society is studied : Trinidad, in the former British West Indies. Trinidad is studied over a period of time from Spanish conquest until the 1970's. Historical sociology is used in order to pin-point certain key features which govern the incorporation of certain groups into Trinidad society and the differential incorporation of women into slave plantation and colonial societies. A complex picture to emerges. At every level woman are incorporated into different segments of the economy even where as a "group" or "race" that race 'itself is specifically incorporated and ranked. Sexism serves to perpetuate racial exclusion while the concept of the "natural" permits the perpetuation of barriers both by "sex" and by race'. Both categories are social categories created socially and maintained socially.

Claude Zaidman, The "Gains" of Women from a European Perspective The notion of "gains" is frequently used in order to describe the changes in the social position of women in western societies. However, this term remains ambiguous. Regardless of indeniable "gains" from a juridical point of view over the past twenty years, there remains a sexual division of labor throughout the society. This division reveals the maintenance of traditional conceptions of male-female relationships more or less based upon the representation of biological differences. The importance of masculine violence against women remains evidence of a "male power" expressed as much in private life as in politics.

Andrée Michel, Research on Women and Development From 1974 to 1984, received ideas about women in the Third World were systematically tested by critical reflection and empirical study. Particularly significant was the critique of traditional economic indicators which ignored sex or social class differentiation. During this period, research encouraged by international organizations produced both quantitative and qualitative criteria that are today accepted by the international scientific community. Since 1986, a new, holistic approach has attempted to include women in the policies governing North-South relations. This new effort holds out the promise of enriching feminist, university research on the question of women and development

Anne-Marie Bataillon, Raymonde Blanchard, Sylvie Hochet, Marie-Paule Peyre, Nicole Pouet, Aline Roy, Women in the CNRS From its beginning to the present day, the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) has not progressed with respect to the proportions of women within the different categories of professional researchers employed there. This conclusion is borne out by study of the evolution of the proportion of women doing research, directing research, being recruted, and represented on the National Committee and other administrative bodies, and within the labor organizations which represent the CNRS.

Monique Sélim, Contact and the Imagination : Letters from Readers and Sexual Separation in Bangladesh Analysis of press articles concerning the "insecurity" and the "security" of women permits an examination of the links between the hierarchical organization of Bangladeshi society and the norms regulating sexual relations. Social and sexual distance can be considered a foundation of imagination relative to status, and the women question appears inevitably in this context. The difference between the concept of "liberty" and the endogenous meaning of "contact" can be elucidated by reference to the general process of the hierarchization of the social body.

Fariba Adelkhah, The Utility and Rationality of Religious Practices among Islamic Women in Iran The study of the motivations which lie behind certain practices relative to women in post-revolutionary Iran indicate the existence of a space-time matrix within which conjunctival factors are determinant The examples of the gift and alms illustrate new interrogations about religious activities and the motivations associated with them. Such study is not intended to question the intensity or legitimacy of religious traditions, but rather to explore areas of liberty which exist within such traditions.

Andrée Michel, The Military-Industrial Complex, the Gulf War, and Democracy in France The French government's support for a military solution to the crisis in the Persian Gulf region can be explained in terms of socio-political and economic factors such as the elitism of the French system of education, the structural weakness of French parliamentary democracy, energy policy, and the reorientation of the French economy over the past ten years. These factors explain what appears to be the weakness of civil society in France. The military-industrial complex has penetrated virtually every dimension of social and cultural life in France including education, mass communications, scientific research, and the "entertainment industry".