Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Sexual revictimization of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) survivors occurs at a disproportionately high rate when compared to non-victims and results in more severe and lasting psychological wounds and disabilities. Understanding the underlying psychological forces influencing the survivor of CSA, which lead to heightened vulnerability, could result in more effective interventions and the prevention of revictimization. Research has found that sexual revictimization of CSA victims is partially mediated by shame and poor sexual self-esteem. Using data drawn from a prospective study of 206 urban, low-income, African-American women, sexually victimized before the age of 13 in the early 1970s, and a matched comparison group, this study explores whether specific characteristics of CSA and if experiencing additional forms of child abuse contribute to the poor sexual self-esteem, measured by the level of shaming sexual beliefs and behaviors. Ordinal logistic regression revealed that even when the occurrences of sexual victimization were taken into account, those neglected as children, physically abused, or involved in child prostitution had a greater likelihood of higher levels of poor sexual self-esteem. Only one of the analyzed characteristics of CSA, the use of force during CSA, had a significant effect, decreasing the likelihood of higher levels of poor sexual self-esteem.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper uses panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) to conduct a comparative analysis of the impact of unemployment spells on workers’ subsequent careers in the United States and twelve Western European countries. Using difference-in-difference (DID) propensity score matching, we empirically estimate the causal effect of unemployment on subsequent careers in terms of workers’ employment prospects as well as post-unemployment earnings, and also assess whether the established scar effects are temporary or persistent over time. The cross-national comparison reveals that scarring is more severe in countries undergoing recessions, whereas successful institutional mediation of unemployment scarring occurs through either generous unemployment benefits or strict labor market regulation, but not both.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Self-injurious behaviour, more commonly known in the carceral context as ‘slashing’, is an unfortunately frequent act for many criminalized women in Canada (at both the provincial and federal levels of imprisonment). Despite the fact that for nearly thirty years both correctional staff and feminists have been aware that women prisoners engage in self-injury, very few researchers have investigated this behaviour. The vast majority of literature on self-injury comes from the ‘psy’ disciplines and characteristically resorts to explaining it as an indicator of some greater mental pathology rather than a rational coping response to an individual’s life stressors, including, but not limited to, imprisonment. Rejecting the construction of self-injury as an indicator of madness, this research adopts the feminist framework that women self-injure as a way of coping. However, engaging in self-injury as a coping strategy results in the unintended consequence of having to cope not only with the stigma of having been criminalized but also with the stigma of being a ‘slasher’. This stigma comes on three different levels – the symbolic (individual/micro), the structural, and in the form of ‘sticky’ stigma where the stigmatic attribute is transferred onto others who do not primarily carry it. In this paper I will discuss all three forms of stigma as they pertain to self-injurious behaviour by criminalized women. In addition, I will identify some of the main ways that the women negotiate their identities as ‘slashers’ and how they manage the stigma associated with this label.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Sexual victimization has one of the highest repeat victimization rates of all types of crime with as many as two-thirds reporting revictimization. Extending previous research, the present study utilized structural equation modeling to examine effects of poor mother/child attachment, child neglect, juvenile sexual victimization, and Finkelhor and Browne’s (1985) proposed construct of traumatic sexualization on vulnerability to adult sexual victimization. Findings suggest that child neglect worsens with poor mother/child attachment, resulting in greater likelihood of juvenile sexual victimization (JSV); both neglect and JSV impact shaming sexual beliefs and behaviors. JSV and shaming sexual beliefs and behaviors contribute to the risk for adult sexual victimization. The network of variables accounted for 27 percent of the variance in adult sexual victimization.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Feminists have produced important scholarly work centered on women’s bodies, yet the economic dimension of the body has been underexplored. I examine the relationships between women’s bodily experiences and broad socio-economic processes; namely, the neoliberal policies that were applied in Argentina and the crisis that erupted in 2001. Disembodied economic analyses hide the extent to which economic crises drain women’s bodily resources. But the bodies of many women in Argentina have been increasingly exhausted, stressed, neglected, and wounded as a result of adverse economic conditions. Economic processes leave marks on women’s bodies, emotions, and consciousness, and gender and class locations structure such experiences, and how different women weather economic crises. This paper draws on and contributes to the literature on sociology of the body, feminist theory, and women in Latin America, and it is based on the results of a fourteen-month qualitative research carried out in Argentina during 2002-2003. This study combines ethnographic observations; in-depth interviews with 50 women, and 4 focus groups with women with different social statuses. Women’s narratives of their embodied experiences of the crisis provide a window from which to learn about social suffering, resiliency, and resistance. As life deteriorates because of economic problems, women’s relatively invisible bodies have come to the fore as workers, community organizers, mothers, volunteers, professionals, and in many more capacities. They appear not only in the form of suffering bodies, but also as bodies of resistance and renewal.