Congratulations to our Spanish colleagues for the approval, in the Lower Chamber of the Spanish Parliament of the project "Organic Law on Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Volutary Interruption of Pregnancy". According to El Pais, 184 MPs voted in favor, 158 against and 2 abstained. The Popular Party, in opposition to the government, changed their spokesperson on the issue for a more moderate one. Amendments include the right to individual conscientious objection, mandatory sexuality education in schools, subsidies for modern contraceptives and the obligation for adolescents aged 16 and 17 to have parental approval for an abortion, unless this consent would entail domestic violence. The socialist government emphasizes that the objective of the law is to prevent unwanted pregnancies and consequently reduce the number of abortions; to grant women the right to decide about becoming a mother and to delete abortion as an item in the penal code. Apparently the Popular Party is divided about the project law, with one MP, Celia Villalobos, showing open disagreement, as she had already done on the law legalizing homosexual marriage. To read the full article in El Pais go to: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Congreso/aprueba/reforma/ley/aborto/elpepusoc/20091217elpepusoc_6/Tes

New research led by people living with HIV shows physical and verbal harassment a common reality for people living with HIV in the UK

Newly published research documenting how people living with HIV in the United Kingdom have experienced stigma and discrimination - and have been able to challenge and overcome it - makes it is clear that the problem is still widespread within UK society. The research, conducted over the last 6 months, asked people to report their experiences in the last 12 months.

The findings of The People Living With HIV Stigma Index will be presented on November 30th at the Houses of Parliament. Andy Burnham, MP, Secretary of State for Health, Annie Lennox, singer, songwriter and founder of the SING Campaign, Professor Jane Anderson, Director for the Study of Sexual Health and HIV at Homerton Hospital, as well as people living with HIV who participated in the research will address the issues of how everyone can help overcome stigma and discrimination.

Key findings show that people living with HIV face significant stigma and discrimination:

* 21% (185 of the 867 participants in the research) of people living with HIV had been verbally assaulted or harassed, while 12% had been physically harassed because of their HIV status in the previous 12 months

The Stigma Index is the first research to comprehensively document the experiences of people living with HIV that is driven by people living with HIV. The results highlight concerns that stigma and discrimination within some parts of the NHS are denying comprehensive and quality care for some people living with HIV and can create obstacles that impede access to care and support services:

* 146 participants (17%) report being denied health services because of their HIV status at least once in the previous 12 months

* 18%, nearly 1 in 5 people, stated that it was clear to them that their medical records were not being kept confidential, a further 42% of participants felt uncertain that their medical records are being kept confidential

Research has indicated there is a need to address attitudes and develop strategies for change, to educate and support the health service to meet the needs of people living with HIV more effectively.

More positively, the research makes it clear that people living with HIV are at the forefront of confronting and overcoming devaluing attitudes, speaking out against prejudice and challenging stereotypes:

* 45 % of people living with HIV had personally confronted, challenged or educated people who were stigmatizing them
* 84 % had supported other people living with HIV

The research also revealed the negative impact on individuals living with HIV, many of whom reported low self esteem as a consequence of stigma and discrimination, often involving feelings of guilt and blame in the previous 12 months.

Annie Lennox said:

“I am delighted to be taking part in the launch of The People Living with HIV stigma Index here in the UK. This initiative will become a significant tool to inform not only those who are personally or professionally involved with the challenges of HIV, but it will hopefully also help to influence change. Stigma and discrimination still remain prevalent, and continue to be a massive obstacle, this will be a hugely significant first step.”

Kevin Osborne, of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, said:

“It is time to Give Stigma the Index Finger! As an initiative by and for people living with HIV, this is research that can really make a difference. Beyond the significant results, the spirit of the research team shows us how to listen to the people at the heart of the issue. People living with HIV are telling us how stigma is affecting their lives today, pointing out the issues that need to be addressed, and suggesting how stigma can be tackled in a positive way. More than 60% of the people who participated in the research said they feel they can influence positive change for the future—the same as the number of people who voted in the last election in this country.”

Secretary of State Andy Burnham said:

"I welcome this report. Effective treatments have transformed the lives of people with HIV and today many more people with HIV can plan for their future with more certainty. But even in the UK, individuals and families affected by HIV can experience stigma and discrimination.

"Tackling HIV stigma is everyone's business. Working with HIV voluntary organisations, we have funded work on tackling stigma as part of the national strategy for sexual health and HIV. We will carefully consider this report's findings."

ENDS

For further information:

Paul Bell at the International Planned Parenthood Federation on 020 7939 8233 or 07799 335533
For a copy of the full report please visit: www.ippf.org
About The People Living With HIV Stigma Index
The People Living With HIV Stigma Index is a community research and advocacy initiative developed by and for people living with HIV. It is part of a global initiative between the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), UNAIDS and two international networks of people living with HIV (GNP+ and ICW). It documents how people have experienced - and been able to challenge and overcome - stigma and discrimination relating to HIV over a 12 month period. It is the first robust attempt to establish a baseline for documenting the stigma and discrimination experienced and overcome by people living with HIV in the UK.

867 individuals took part in the The People Living With HIV Stigma Index research, which championed a community research model, and involved people giving responses to an in-depth questionnaire conducted by trained community researchers. Interviews were carried out in more than 40 locations around the country, from Aberdeen to Portsmouth, including Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Manchester and London.

www.stigmaindex.org

The HIV pandemic which started 28 years ago is officially in decline, two of the world's leading health organisations said yesterday.

The number of new HIV infections peaked in the mid-1990s and has since declined by almost a third, according to the annual update on the pandemic for 2009, published yesterday by the Joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organisation.

It is the first time that UNAIDS and the WHO have confirmed that the pandemic is on a downward trend and represents a landmark in the history of the disease. In their 2008 report, they said suggestions the epidemic had peaked were "speculation" and that it was "difficult to predict the epidemic's future course".

That report warned: "The HIV epidemic has repeatedly defied predictions... HIV is likely to have additional surprises in store that the world must be prepared to address."

But the 2009 update throws scientific caution to the winds and instead states clearly that the pandemic has passed its zenith: "The latest epidemiological data indicate that globally the spread of HIV appears to have peaked in 1996 when 3.5 million new infections occurred. In 2008 the estimated number of new HIV infections was approximately 30 per cent lower than at the epidemic's peak 12 years earlier."

It says that, in sub-Saharan Africa – the worst-affected region – new infections in 2008 were "approximately 25 per cent lower than at the epidemic's peak in the region in 1995".

It adds: "Asia's epidemic peaked in the mid-1990s and annual HIV incidence has subsequently declined by more than half. Regionally, the epidemic has remained somewhat stable since 2000." The annual report from UNAIDS and the WHO is the official record of the progress of HIV/AIDS, and confirmation that the worst disease of modern times is in decline will be widely welcomed. Two years ago the organisations admitted that they had overestimated the numbers affected and revised the total down from 40 million to 33 million.

Despite the fall in new infections, the number living with HIV increased last year to 33.4 million as people are surviving longer with the roll-out of antiretroviral drug treatment. Greater access to drugs has helped cut the death toll by 10 per cent over the past five years.

There are now 4 million people on the drugs worldwide, a 10-fold increase in five years. The report says 2.9 million lives have been saved since effective treatment became available in 1996 but less than half the patients who need them are currently getting them.

The reasons for the decline in new infections are disputed. UNAIDS said prevention programmes involving sex education, HIV awareness campaigns and distributing condoms had had an impact. Critics said the pandemic was already in decline before prevention programmes were widely implemented and the disease was burning itself out.

Ties Boerma, a WHO statistics expert, said countries whose HIV prevalence declined dramatically, like Zimbabwe, were not always those that got the most HIV cash.

Experts at UNAIDS said new infections had fallen 17 per cent since 2001, when the UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/Aids was signed, triggering a global push to deliver anti-retroviral drugs and prevention programmes to the hardest hit parts of the world. Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAids, said: "We have evidence that the declines we are seeing are due, at least in part, to HIV prevention. However, the findings also show that prevention programming is often off the mark and that, if we do a better job of getting resources and programmes to where they will make most impact quicker, progress can be made and more lives saved."

But Philip Stevens of International Policy Network, the London-based think-tank, said with HIV declining it was time to rethink global spending priorities and switch funds currently being spent on HIV to other conditions that kill more people. Globally, HIV causes about 4 per cent of all deaths, but gets 23 pence in every pound spent on development aid for health ($21.7bn in 2007, or £13.1bn).

Mr Stevens said: "In most countries HIV is a relatively minor problem compared with other conditions such as malaria and diarrhoeal disease. The exception is sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa has a 23 per cent prevalence but in many other countries [in the region] it's 3 to 5 per cent. They have a problem but it is not the huge problem that UNAIDS is claiming. We shouldn't let this single disease continue to distort overall global funding, especially when bigger killers like pneumonia and diarrhoea in developing countries are far easier and cheaper to treat."

Mr Stevens said the "single issue advocacy" by UNAIDS, which existed solely to draw money to the disease, had distorted global health priorities. "Governments are now talking about placing a bigger emphasis on primary care and building up public health systems."

Dr Karen Stanecki, senior adviser to UNAIDS, said repeated studies in different parts of the world, comparing the reduction in new infections with what happened where there was no intervention, had demonstrated the effectiveness of prevention programmes.

"The decline was over and above the natural decline in the epidemic. They showed it could only have been explained by behavioural change."

She denied that too much was being spent fighting HIV/AIDS. "We are facing a great many challenges. There are still 7,400 new infections a day. For every five people who become infected, two start on treatment. So we still have a long way to go."

Source: Independent, 25 November 2009

"Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease

The pharmaceutical industry wants you to think that if you don't have sex like a porn star, you're in need of their drugs.

It’s not your fault, ladies (and certainly not your partner’s), that you don’t orgasm every time you have intercourse, or that you lack the libido of a 17-year-old boy. You have a disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the pharmaceutical industry wants to help.

You are among the "43 percent of American women [who] experience some degree of impaired sexual function," according to a Journal of the American Medical Association article. The FDA’s evolving definition of FSD includes decreased desire or arousal, sexual pain and orgasm difficulties, but only if the woman feels "personal distress" about it.

So, convincing women to feel distress is a key component of the drug company strategy to market a multi-billion-dollar pill that will cure billions of women of what may not ail them.

By promoting the belief that "normal" women have explosive sex all the time, BigPharma helped launch the disease. However, the FDA has yet to approve a treatment for women who fall short. Until then, they could try the Orgasmatron: a dial-a-delight spinal implant that rarely works, and risks infection and paralysis. Or, for $60/month, pop LexaFem pills, containing (how-could-it-not-work) "horny goat weed extract" in order to "feel like a real woman today." Its website promises, "You won’t ever feel unhappy again with LexaFem in your arsenal."

But the big swinging dicks of global FSD marketing (and off-label marketing) are Pfizer, whose stop-gap strategy is selling women Viagra based on the fact that it works for men, and Procter & Gamble (P&G), which, using the same logic, has put its money on testosterone.

Viagra’s failure in trial after trial to work on women has not stopped doctors from writing 1.4 million off-label prescriptions. FSD is "a classic example of starting with some preconceived, and non-evidence based diagnostic categorization for women’s sexual dysfunctions, based on the male model," said John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute, in an interview with BMJ (British Medical Journal).

No drug follows the male model more literally than testosterone. Despite FDA refusal to approve P&G’s testosterone patch Intrinsa, U.S. doctors wrote 2 million off-label testosterone prescriptions in 2007. Like Pfizer’s little blue pill, the Intrinsa patch doesn’t really work for women.

No wonder: researchers don’t even know what constitutes a "normal" female testosterone level, and women with low levels of the hormone are as likely as those with high levels to be happy with their sex lives. And as filmmaker Liz Canner shows in her excellent new documentary Orgasm, Inc., (www.orgasminc.org), testosterone is usually teamed with estrogen, which increases risks for stroke, cancers and dementia.

The companies and clinics that narrow the range of sexual normality to porn industry standards suffer their own disease.

Symptoms include: a compulsion to concoct illnesses and then develop drugs to treat them, and vice versa. Either way, the syndrome is typically accompanied by a rash of conflicts of interest.

A Pfizer survey in Malaysia found that Malay women are even more diseased than their American counterparts, with "69.6 percent experiencing some form of FSD," according to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, which also published an industry-supported supplement on FSD.

Journal editor and urologist Irwin Goldstein denies a conflict of interest. "Science is science," he says. "It comes down to the bottom line. What the data shows, the data shows."

Actually, no. Drug company-funded studies are more likely than independent studies to find the new drug superior to the old. Perhaps the bottom line Dr. Goldstein refers to is his income as a paid consultant for drug companies, including P&G and Pfizer.

Goldstein established an FSD clinic with Dr. Jennifer Berman, who now heads a Beverly Hills clinic and appears on Oprah. As one of the health professionals on a 1998 panel that received financial sponsorship from eight pharmaceutical companies, she helped define female sexual dysfunction.

Some 22 drug companies, including Pfizer, had financial ties to 18 of the 19 authors of that panel’s report, the BMJ revealed.

"Maybe the best approach is not ineffective, over-hyped drugs with nasty side effects, but an end to disease mongering and a strong dose of comprehensive sex education," says filmmaker Canner.

Her film hits female erogenous zones that pharmaceutical fixes can’t find: your brain and your funny bone.

Source: Alternet.org, 3 November 2009

China may be ready to fine-tune, if not to end, its 30-year-old family planning policy - rules that helped fuel the country's economic miracle by preventing 400 million births, but which brought their own challenges, including an aging population.

Adjustments, such as the encouragement of urban couples comprising two only-children to have a second child, and the abolition of the four-year interval between births in the countryside, have been made across the country in recent years.

"We've noticed the challenges and are researching a comprehensive and sustainable policy, which covers not only the size, but the structure, quality, and distribution of the population," Zhao Baige, deputy director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, told China Daily.

"The family planning policy, mainly about the quantity, is just part of a comprehensive population policy we are working for," she said.

Zhao, however, stressed that the policy, which restricts most urban couples to just one child, has proven to be successful in improving the lives of Chinese people and in helping to stabilize the world's population growth.

As a result of family planning programs implemented since 1979, couples in China now have an average of 1.8 children, a birth rate that has been steady for 17 years.

The number of children per family had been 5.8 in the early 1970s.

"The ethical obligation of our generation to our children and grandchildren must include slowing rapid population growth by meeting the unmet need for family planning," said Malcolm Potts, director of the Public Health School of the University of California, Berkeley. "Personally, I prefer small families, if they want it as well."

The Human Development Index of China - which measures life expectancy, educational attainment, and GDP per capita - increased by 50 per cent in the past 30 years, twice the world average.

However, experts say the policy has also had its share of problems and they say now may be the time for some amendments.

With a birth rate of 1.8 children per family, China's working population will dwindle by 10 million people each year after 2025, and the number of young people - aged 20 to 24 - will fall by a quarter in the 2030s, estimated Zeng Yi, a population economist with Peking University.

Some argue the decline in the size of the workforce might be offset by advances in technology, such as artificial intelligence, but that will take time.

China has already been experiencing a shortage of skilled workers in the southern economic powerhouse in the Pearl River delta.

"The government needs to make changes before it's too late," said professor Qiao Xiaochun from Peking University.

Dr Gill Greer, Director-General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), echoed the sentiments.

"I hope China will learn from other countries about different ways of doing things and will work hard to be innovative in family planning," she said.

Because China has now entered a period of low fertility, the previous task of controlling the ballooning population is no longer urgent, she said.

In China, where children often take care of their parents and grandparents in later life, people without siblings have the full responsibilities of having to look after dependents.

Currently, China has 41,000 assisted-care institutions with 11.6 beds for every 1,000 people. That is far less than the 50 beds per 1,000 typical in developed countries, said the China National Committee on Aging. Currently, 10 per cent of Chinese are older than 60. That number is expected to rise to 30 per cent by 2050.

Source: Asia One News, 25 October 2009

Julia Nyaberi's* 'clinic' in Majengo, a slum in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, caters to one type of client only - pregnant women seeking abortions.

Young women writhe in pain on the floor of the poorly lit house; the neighbours all know what happens here and have become immune to the moans and wails.

"They come to me and each pays me 50 shillings [US$0.70]," Nyaberi says. "Most of them are sex workers who operate here in Majengo and have conceived by mistake."

She uses a concoction of herbs to induce abortion, and admits there have been fatalities. "Even qualified drivers at times cause accidents; I do not do this job to kill anyone, but at times some are unlucky and go together with the child they came to abort," she said.

Diana Awuor*, 21, is a sex worker in Majengo, and fell pregnant after unprotected sex with a regular client.

"Not that I have sex without a condom every day but there are some regular clients you can excuse at times and I think that is how I became pregnant," she said. "We cannot do our work while pregnant because nobody will want you, so I have to abort to stay in business, and also, I don't want a baby."

Ministry of Health statistics put the number of Kenyan girls and women who have abortions every year at 300,000; abortion remains illegal so many of these take place in back-street clinics like Nyaberi's. According to the International Planned Parenthood Federation unsafe abortions account for between 30 and 50 percent of maternal deaths in Kenya.

"One person attending to up to even five women without sterilizing whatever instruments are being used can spread HIV," said Jacky Abuor, a counsellor at the faith-based Kenyan NGO, Crisis Pregnancy Ministries, which works with young women dealing with unwanted pregnancies.

A recent study by the local NGO, Centre for the Study of Adolescence (CSA), found that four in 10 Kenyan girls had sex before the age of 19, many with multiple partners and often in exchange for gifts such as mobile phone airtime or food. Along with the predictable public outcry, the report re-ignited the legalization debate.

Women's rights groups have long urged the government to legalize abortion to prevent the high number of maternal deaths from unsafe procedures. A Reproductive Health and Rights Bill proposing that "safe and accessible abortion-related care" be enshrined in the constitution as a reproductive right was tabled in Parliament in 2008 by the Federation of Women Lawyers and the Coalition On Violence Against Women; MPs have yet to vote on the issue.

The country's anti-abortion movement has powerful backers, from religious leaders to politicians, such as Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka.

"When you say four out of 10 girls have engaged in sex, how do we keep the remaining six from being lured into early sex? The window lies in counselling and education," said Anne Muisyo, 'Abstinence and worth the wait' programme coordinator at Crisis Pregnancy Ministries.

"Sex education at the early stages of life and especially targeting young people can significantly turn the tide and prevent new cases of HIV," Paul Mitei, head of gynaecology in western Kenya's Nyanza Provincial Hospital.

Kenya's Ministry of Education has an HIV/AIDS prevention and sex education curriculum that focuses on upper-primary and secondary school, but no specific time is set aside for this during the school day, leaving teachers and school heads to fit in the subject at their discretion.

Speaking at a recent meeting in Nairobi, Kenya's director of public health, Shanaaz Sharif, admitted that opposition from parents, religious groups and some civil society bodies had led to a 'censored sex education campaign' in schools...

Responding to the CSA's findings, the head of the National AIDS Control Council, Alloys Orago, said the government was also looking into the promotion of condom use among teenagers.

Currently the government's HIV prevention programme for teens revolves around the promotion of abstinence, with a nationwide media campaign urging young people to 'chill', or abstain, from early sex.

"Many young girls and even boys in rural areas and poor settings do not really know about contraception; those of them who use the condom only know it as a means of preventing HIV," said Mitei. "There is a need to promote condoms to young people both as an HIV preventive measure and birth control measure."

Source: Reuters Alertnet 19, October 2009

Call for papers: “Whatever Happened to Hajnal's Line. ‘East-European’
Family Patterns, Historical Context and New Developments”

A special issue of THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE FAMILY STUDIES

http://soci.ucalgary.ca/jcfs/

Guest editor: Cristina Bradatan (Texas Tech University)

THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE FAMILY STUDIES hereby invites contributions
for a special issue on the topic: “‘East-European’ Family Patterns,
Historical Context and New Developments”

More than forty years ago, John Hajnal introduced the notion of an
‘European’ pattern of marriage/ household, characterized by high age at
marriage, women and men working as servants before marriage and
establishing their own households upon marriage. He called this pattern
‘European’ for brevity, although it applies only to the Northwestern
Europe, west of an imaginary line connecting ‘Leningrad’ (Saint
Petersburg) to Trieste.

Interestingly enough, Hajnal’s line followed quite closely the Iron
Curtain, then dividing Europe into capitalist and socialist societies.
As Churchill put it in a speech he gave at Westminster College,
Missouri, in 1946, an iron curtain has descended after the World War II
‘from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic’. Within a larger
context of ideas, the 1950s – 1960s were the times when Rostov’s theory
of modernization was quite popular in the academic world. Hajnal’s line
brought to life the older Weberian idea that the West is somehow
different (in this case, in terms of family formation patterns) and it
might very well be that the other regions of the world would not follow
a similar route, anytime soon, simply because their history followed a
different path.

Although the notion of a ‘Western’ as opposed to ‘Eastern’ type of
family is currently related to Hajnal’s work, his research relied on the
studies coming from the Cambridge Group for the Population History, and,
in particular, from Peter Laslett and Peter Czap. Eastern European
countries, falling East of the Hajnal’s line, were characterized as
having a non-European household formation system. The concept of an
‘European pattern’ of family formation remained popular over the years,
to such an extent that even today a Google search returns more than
11,000 hits for this concept.

In the meantime, however, a series of political, social and economic
changes affected Eastern Europe and the whole notion of a Western versus
Eastern type of household/family seems to have taken a different path.
First, in his earliest article on the topic (1965), Hajnal defined this
pattern as unstable, since he saw the post-WWII Europe as moving toward
an earlier age at (and high rates of) marriage. Secondly, studies on
Eastern European countries initially excluded from the ‘European’
marriage group yielded unexpected results. Multi-generation households
are a rarity in these countries (Botev, 1990) and age at marriage
presents high variation between different regions of Eastern Europe
(Sklar,1974), making it difficult to simply divide Europe into an
‘European’ and ‘Non-European’ type of household. Thirdly, Ruggles (2009)
using data from 97 historical and contemporary censuses, argues that,
when variables such as demographic structure and level of agricultural
employment are taken into account, the ‘Western’ family pattern does not
seem to be an exceptional case anymore.

This special issue proposes a discussion of the validity of an ‘Eastern’
versus ‘Western’ type of family as a distinct analytic category in
family studies in Europe. Specifically, we seek to address, among
others, the following questions:

- How useful is this distinction nowadays within the European context?
- Does history continue to play an important role in shaping the
household and family characteristics in Eastern as opposed to Western
Europe?
- Is there (has ever been) an Eastern European pattern of family?
- Do countries from Eastern Europe have a common family pattern?
- How are they different from the Western European ones?
- How does history shape family systems in Eastern Europe?
- How have the post-1990s changes affected the family ties in these
countries?
- How relevant is Hajnal’s line today?

Rather than separate case studies, a comparative (in terms of time span,
between countries of the region or in comparison with other regions) and
interdisciplinary perspective is preferred.

For the purposes of this special issue, Eastern Europe is considered to
include Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary,
Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and former Yugoslavian countries.

SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES:

Deadline for submissions: November 1, 2010

This special issue is scheduled for 2012.

Please submit your contributions to: cristina.bradatan@ttu.edu (with
“For JCFS issue” in the subject line). Please allow at least 4-6 months
for the review process and editorial decisions. Receipt of materials
will be confirmed by email in a matter of days.

1. All submissions should be in English.
When using e-mail, articles must be put into the MICROSOFT WORD format.
Include: a TITLE PAGE with your name, title of article, and affiliation
with complete postal mailing address, telephone number, and email
address. NO pdf files please.
Manuscripts should be usually about 5000 words (20-30 pages), line
spacing 1-1/2, text in Times Roman, font 12. It must have an English
Abstract of about 250 words on a separate page. MAIN headings should be
UPPER-CASE, bold lettering and centered. Sub-Headings are in bold and
lower-case. Subset headings in Italics, not bold.
Any ‘Notes’ must be Endnotes, placed at the end of the text on a
separate page.
Each Table, or Figure, must be camera ready, or done on a laser printer,
very clear, each on a separate page at the very end of the entire
manuscript after the references, etc. Always indicate at the exact place
within the text where it is to go, i.e., "Table 2 about here," "Figure 1
about here". (Note: Publishing done only in black/white.)

REFERENCES: Each listed reference must be cited within the text, and
vice versa. Single spaced, no indentations, with one blank line between
each reference listed. Follow the American Psychological Association
(APA) reference style guide (except follow #3 above as your Footnote
example). For information on APA Editorial Style, please go to
www.apastyle.org.

For more information on manuscript preparation, please go to:
http://soci.ucalgary.ca/jcfs/welcome/submission-guidelines

We look forward to your submissions!

Sincerely,

Cristina Bradatan
Guest Editor - Journal for Comparative Family Studies
Assistant professor of Sociology, Texas Tech University
http://www.webpages.ttu.edu/crbradat

Dear colleagues,

fyi - the European Association for Population Studies invites contributions to the European Population Conference, 1-4 September 2010, in Vienna. The deadline for the submission of an abstract is 31 December 2009.

Topics include:

1 Fertility
2 Families and households
3 Sexual and reproductive health
4 Internal migration, regional and urban issues
5 Health, morbidity and mortality
6 International migration and migrant populations
7 Ageing and intergenerational relationships
8 History
9 Data and methods
10 Human capital and well being
11 Economics and labor market issues
12 Life course
13 Policy issues
14 Development and environment
15 Poster sessions

For further information, go to http://epc2010.princeton.edu/.</strong>

On 28 July ILGA took the opportunity to have the presence of many activists at Outgames to launch the new publication

LESBIAN MOVEMENTS: RUPTURES & ALLIANCES

Lesbians have always been present in various civil society movements, with gay men’s organizations, in feminist groups, as well as in the artistic sphere and in the fight for decolonization and independence of their country. In recent decades lesbians have been present in the fight for equal rights for women of colour, aborigen women, and more broadly with feminist movements.

The present publication, in English, is a collection of experiences from individuals worldwide involved in lesbian movements, civil society and human rights organizations. Credit was given to those lesbians* in many parts of the world who have led the way and those who are actively involved in fighting for the wellbeing and recognition of their rights.

Some of the positive examples illustrate that “history can be changed” and that some lesbian groups have managed to mainstream their concerns with those of other movements. Some have fought against apartheid and are denouncing racism, others are working towards building peace in their regions, some others are joining different discriminated and vulnerable groups. Lesbians have shown more solidarity than other groups and the recognition of this fact must follow.
Lesbians apply a revolutionary way of thinking that can be beneficial to all actors within our society fighting for equal rights and justice.

Sharing experiences and knowledge is a way to develop skills and being aware of those achievements is the first step towards empowerment and pride.
The publication has a positive imprint and is aimed at strengthening the future of the lesbian movement rather than lingering on victimization.

This publication will also leave a lot of questions open such as: “What is feminism?”, “Are lesbian concerns more closely related to women issues or to gay issues?”. Here and there you will find an answer that may be contradicted a few pages later by an opposite experience. This is probably the indication of the diversity and complexity of lesbians’ movements.

This piece of work will hopefully raise your curiosity to learn more and be inspired about these different but closely related movements. It can also be used as a training tool to empower young, lesbian feminists within the LGBT movement and to raise awareness of mainstream organizations on the importance at dealing with lesbian rights.

Please do not hesitate to disseminate the publication, post it on your website and, above all, use it to get inspired and empowered in all your actions.

“Lesbians are everywhere” and we can be very proud of it.

Patricia Curzi
Women’s Project Coordinator
ILGA

The term “lesbian” refers to any person who identifies herself as a lesbian, bisexual, butch, femme, androgyn, dyke, trans, queer or does not wish to be identified at all.

Hard copies can be ordered upon payment of mailing costs. Please order or send your suggestions and comments at women@ilga.org.

View the publication

http://www.ilga.org/news_results.asp?LanguageID=1&FileID=1269&FileCategory=1&ZoneID=7