Any of this material can be requested from Isis Intemational, Santiago, by citing the Isis reference number and sending money to cover photocopies and postage.

Bonds of Love. Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination

Benjamin, Jessica
1988
304 pages
Isis Ref No:02094.00

Pantheon Books
USA

The book is an analysis of the interplay between love and domination. It conceives domination as a two-way process, a system involving the participation of those submitted to power as well as those who exercise it. In order to consider anew the problem of domination, the book makes use of feminist criticism and the reinterpretation of psychoanalytical theory. The author shows ho w the structure of domination can be traced from the mother-infant relationship into adult erotism. She begins with the conflict between dependence and independence in infant life and moves outward toward the opposites of power and surrender in adult sexual life. She shows how masculinity and femininity become associated with the postures of master and slave and she observes the identification of girls as object and boys as subject in the Oedipus complex. Finally, she follows this idea into culture at large, which preserves the structure of domination even while it appears to embrace equality.

Bread and Roses: Women Living Poverty and Popular Feminist Education in Santiago, Chile.

Lehmann, Carolyn
1990
96 pages
Isis Ref.No:02387.00

Lehmann, Carolyn
Canada

Women living in poverty reflect on their childhood, their identity, their social and cultural roles as mothers, and describe their transformation. These women have experienced powerful changes as a result of their participation in popular feminist education programs at the Casa Sofia women's center in Santiago, Chile. Popular feminist education is a liberating force. Literacy classes, support groups, sexuality programmes and a theatre groups operate out of the Casa Sofia to provide often denied knowledge which opens the door for women to make changes in their own lives and within the community. Women encounter the possibility of change in the context of a community of women. Together they are demanding a gender specific analysis of their lives. These pobladoras (women living in poverty) can play new roles in Chile in the transition from military dictatorship to democracy.

Earth, Air and Water.

Philipose, Pamela
Winter 1989
4 pages pp.22-26
Isis Ref.No-.0292.01

Healthsharing (Vol.11) (n.I)
Canada

The author invites the reader to take a guided lour of India. She makes three stops. The first one, which she calls "Earth", is a case study from the northernmost villages of Utar Pradesh, where the region has witnessed a remarkable nonviolent ecological movement known as Chipko Andolan (the huge trees movement). The second slop is entitled "Air" and deals with the Bhopal tragedy and the third stop, called "Water" describes a thirty-four year movement by fishermen in the state of Kerala, focused on obtaining clear drinking water.

Report on the First African Regional Conference on Women and Health

Baumslag, Naomi
June 1990
21 pages
IsisRef No:02466.00
WIPHN (Women's International Public Health Network) US

A report on the conference held in Uganda with representatives from twenty-one African countries, Holland, USA and Sweden, which centered on women's health in Africa, particularly in Uganda. Women in Uganda comprise fifty-three percent of the population and their potential is not reached because of chronic ill health and early death. They are trained to be submissive and accept corporal punishment as their duty. Health wise, women in Uganda are usually unattended during pregnancy and there is a high maternal mortality: fifty percent of deaths from all causes in females are pregnancy related. In Sudan and Ethiopia half the cases of female circumcision end in death. The AIDS problem with respect to women was discussed, as well as reproductive rights. Recommendations on action to be taken were made. A list of the activities of the four-day conference is attached, as well as the names and addresses of the participants who attended.

Women's Rights as Human Rights. Toward a Re-vision of Human Rights.

Bunch, Charlotte
1990
12 pages
lsisRef No:02312.00

US

The most insidious myth about women's rights is that they are trivial or secondary to the concerns of life and death. Nothing could be farther from the truth: sexism kills, before birth, during childhood and in adulthood. The most pervasive violation of females is violence against women: from wife battery, incest and rape, to dowry deaths, genital mutilation and female sexual slavery. Yet few governments exhibit more than a token commitment to women's equality as a basic right. There are four approaches to linking women's rights to human rights: a) adding women's specific needs to the already recognized first generation human rights of political and civil liberties; b) adding women's particular plight to the second generation rights issues - that is socio-economic rights to food, shelter, health care and employment; c) the creation of new legal mechanisms to counter sex discrimination, based on efforts to make existing legal and political institutions work for women; d) transforming the concept of human rights from a feminist perspective so that it will lake more account of women's lives, through placing violation of women's rights at the center of attention.

Women's Networks. Redes de mujeres

Heim, Susanne;
Schonfield, Annette Von.
May 1988
101 pages
IsisRef No:02144.00

Terre des Hommes Germany

This is a directory of women's groups and institutions which are integrated into regional, national or international networks. The international networks include: The Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network; the computerized INTERDOC Networks; the Women's Alternative Communication Network FEMPRESS; the Networks dealing with Traffic of Women and Forced Prostitution, the Worldwide Network for the Reproductive Rights of Women and the Research and Information Network.

Global Politics of Abortion

Jacobson, Jodi July
1990
69 pages
lsisRef No:02377.00

WorldWatch Paper, the Worldwatch Institute (no.97)

Worldwatch Institute US

Although abortion politics is dominated by men, women bear the burden of restricted access. Criminalizing abortion makes one of the safest of all surgical procedures highly dangerous by driving it underground into the hands of unskilled and often unscrupulous practitioners. In the Third World the incidence of illegal abortion is high. Where abortion is legal, abortion mortality is very low. In Poland legalization of abortion contributed to the elimination of infanticide and of suicides by pregnant women. In some countries where abortion is illegal in principle it is carried out quite freely in practice. To keep abortion rates down, a widespread contraceptive practice must be encouraged. Statistics on abortion worldwide are given in this paper, along with short descriptions of abortion and contraceptive policies in different parts of the globe.

Women and the World Economic Crisis

Vickers, Jeanne, ed.
1989
125 pages
Isis Ref. No. 02391.00

Women and Development Kit, The JUNIC/NGO Programme Group on Women and Development (no.6)
United Nations Switzerland

This kit focuses on debt and adjustment issues and their effect on development in general and upon women in particular. Part I analyses in depth the origins and mechanisms of the world economic crisis, including the impact of the international debt problem and of structural adjustment policies as distinct from the severe "ordinary" consequences of underdevelopment. Part II details policy responses on the part of governments and intergovernmental bodies, nongovernmental organizations, and action groups at the grassroots level. Part III contains case studies on a number of developing countries which have been severely affected by the crisis, and Part IV outlines a development education agenda and guide to further action. Part V, a resources guide, includes a bibliography, a list of organizations active in questions relating to debt, adjustment and women, and a glossary of the terms to be found every day in the newspapers in relation to the subject. The kit's main thrust is that there is a great deal that groups, and indeed individuals, can do to enlighten public opinion and attitudes with regard to the role of women at a time of extreme economic and social upheaval in both industrialized and developing countries.

Population Policy and Women's Political Action in Three Developing Countries

Dixon-Mueller, Ruth; Germain, Adrienne
December, 1989
48 pages Isis Ref. No. 02392.01

"Symposium on the Politics of Induced Fertility Change", (Bellagio, Italy; February. 1990)

U.S.

This paper explores the role of individual women, women's organizations and the women's movements in the recent evolution of national population policies and family planning programs in Brazil, Nigeria and the Philippines. Women's health advocates in Brazil are committed to state provision of contraception on health and human rights' grounds and to overseeing the quality of care under the National Integrated Women's Health Program guidelines. The achievements of Brazilian feminists offer inspiration to women's groups in the struggle for reproductive health and freedom in other Latin American countries. Until recently Nigerian women's organizations have taken very little action on population, health and reproductive rights, despite their activism in other speres. There is not yet mass support of progressive reproductive health strategies that can stand opposition or affect policy positively. Thus abortion continues to be a criminal offense for both the women and the abortionist resulting in high rates of maternal morbidity and mortality. In the Philippines, women were to be robbed of their right to information and the means to plan their families. The Roman Catholic hierarchy capitalized on its connection with a deeply religious President to establish its hegemony on family planning.