Elizabeth Ettorre

Women and alcohol

In recent years evidence gathered on the increased prevalence of alcohol problems amongst women (Shaw, 1980; Ferrence, 1980; Alcohol Concern, 1988); the growing numbers of women problem drinkers seeking help (Wilson, 1976; Kent, 1981; NIAAA, 1983); the atypicality and relatively small numbers of women treated in specialist settings, particularly in the UK (Thorn, 1984; Ettorre, 1985c) and the implied links between women’s heavy drinking and stress (for example, Breeze, 1985; Snell, Belk and Hawkins, 1987) suggests that problem drinking amongst women has achieved status as a social problem as well as greater visibility as a women’s issue.

Decision-making, uncertainty and risk: Exploring the complexity of work processes in NHS delivery suites

Abstract The concept of the ‘risk society’ has focused on growing uncertainties about the benefits of scientific innovation and the reliability of professional judgement. Paradoxically, this has gone hand in hand with reductions in the actual risk associated with many activities and is often accompanied by demands for a technological fix. These contradictory impulses are especially evident in maternity care. While maternal and infant mortality rates have fallen, risk conscious patients are increasingly concerned about the possibility of professional mistake or malpractice. As a result, further categories of risk are created for organizations and professionals, particularly in relation to expensive litigation. Against this background, the paper reports on an ethnographic study of two delivery suites in which a computerized decision support system will be implemented. In the paper, we attempt to highlight some of the intricacies of work processes in delivery suites, specifically involving decision-making, risk, uncertainty, professional autonomy and medical knowledge. Our findings suggest a range of complexities that may considerably complicate the implementation of the computerized decision support system when it finally emerges and becomes embedded in delivery suites.

Mental Distress: Gender Aspects of Symptoms and Coping

The article examines mens and womens views on their reasons for mental distress and on their coping styles, respectively. The data were taken from written statements given on two open-ended questions from a survey questionnaire returned by 43 men and 57 women who were self-reported, long-term users of these drugs, and from taped interviews with 10 respondents. Mens accounts (n = 25) expressed a layered theory of mental health: alcohol was a remedy to alleviate temporary strain caused by external pressure, while the use of psychotropic drugs indicated a loss of a mens assumed self-regulatory powers and autonomy. Womens accounts (n = 31) were stories of emotional pain related to their caring work in the private sphere, and psychotropics restored their capacity to carry out emotional labor.

Nuns, Dykes, Drugs and Gendered Bodies: An Autoethnography of a Lesbian Feminist’s Journey Through ‘Good Time’ Sociology

This article provides an autoethnographic account of my personal journey through ‘good time’ sociology. Telling my story involves recounting my experience as a Catholic nun and closeted lesbian in 1970s’ USA; providing a picture of what it was like to do the first PhD on lesbians in the UK; explaining the impact of drugs and alcohol research on my lesbian feminist sociological imagination and reflecting upon the place of ‘deviant bodies’ in the new genetics and generally in society. My stories are framed by the backdrop of being a lesbian feminist sociologist in academia and informed by a small yet, emerging body of work by LGBT scholars who use autoethnography. Autoethnography is introduced as a methodological tool for speaking and writing reflexively about being out in academia. I demonstrate that telling one’s story can become a gift — ‘a telling creating conversations that transcends our traumas’ and a way of healing ourselves and others.

Feminism confronts the genome: introduction

IntroductionContemporary genetics has generated both pervasive cultural transformation andconsiderable hyperbole. The notion that life has become and is increasingly beingrearticulated through genetification is evidenced amply by foundationaltransformations in everyday as well as professional vernaculars of kinship,health, personal and social identity, and in social–institutional practices crossingover the labours and economic futures of science and medicine, agriculture,pharmaceuticals, business marketing and policing, to name only a few. Theideological reach of genetics and the ideological work of the gene has beenindisputably profound and extensive. Interestingly this has occurred notwith-standing that genes and the science of genetics, in material terms, have for themost part not delivered on the extravagant claims attributed to them. Geneticshas not paid off in a transformation of curative medicine and genetic diagnosticinnovations have had little appreciable impact on either disease prevention orcare. The mapping of the human genome has not paid off significantly in theway of understandings, biological or social, of the human condition or the distinc-tions between or interrelatedness of species. Genetically modified foods have notredressed poverty or hunger; pharmacogenetics has not produced ‘smart’ drugs.So the spread of genetic ideas and investments in the possibilities of the genewould seem to owe much to their ‘fit’ with the times, to both comfortablecommon sense as well as uncomfortable points of social and cultural rupture,which genetification would seem to fill.One of the key achievements of feminist scholarship, and one of the centre-points of both feminist activism and feminist epistemology, has been the develop-ment of a critique of science. The advent of genetics and the purported geneticsrevolution has been articulated on a conceptual terrain in which critical ideas con-cerning reproductive rights, ecology, embodiment, bioethics, choice and agencyhave been reshaped by feminism, whether or not this is explicitly acknowledged

Recognizing Diversity and Group Processes in International, Collaborative Research Work: A Case Study

The myth that most if not all senior researchers who have national prominence can ‘successfully’ manage international research is alive and well in the academy today. Many researchers believe that research management and consultancy is acquired through a process of trial and error and demands little contemplation or training. The purpose of this paper is to break these myths and to establish various benchmarks for good research management, particularly on an international level. The guiding assumption of the paper is that as research becomes more global, high-quality research management is a necessary resource, which demands sensitivity to diversity as well as an awareness of group processes. This means those issues such as language, race, ethnicity, gender, disability and group work should not only inform our research findings but also guide our research practice in international collaborative settings. Throughout this paper, I use a case study of a large EU-funded project as a way of illustrating key themes.

Women and drug abuse with special reference to Finland: Needing the ‘courage to see’

Abstract This article is born out of feminist fury tempered by a deep feminist awareness that women who hurt in our societies often remain invisible. It attempts to develop a feminist perspective and to provide visibility for the issue of women and drug abuse. The field of addiction studies urgently needs to generate a greater sense of visibility for women. It is only when we are really able to ‘see’ womens use and abuse of drugs that we can mount a feminist response, sensitive to womens pain. In this work, I offer a brief review of literature and highlight four main problems which have inhibited the development of a feminist perspective. In the final section of the article, I look at Finland, a country in which women have achieved a high level of participation in society. Here, I use Finland as a case study in order to demonstrate why the women-and-drug issue is of interest, how this issue remains hidden from public view, and ways in which this important issue could become socially visible. My conclusion is that in order to create a feminist perspective we need the ‘Courage to See’. We need to see the pain of female drug abuse with women-sensitive eyes.

Empowering depressed women: Changes in 'individual' and 'social' feelings in guided self-help groups in Finland

The Women and Depression Project began in 1994 within a Finnish national research programme. We developed professionally guided self-help groups as a therapeutic intervention in mental health clinics. Through a gender lens, we explored the effect of group participation on depressed womens ‘individual’ and ‘social’ feelings over three time periods. The central research question was: were there significant changes in members’ individual and social feelings between these time periods? Using an innovative, culturally sensitive measurement tool, we measured these changes. We analysed quantitative data from the feelings questions on Questionnaires 1, 2 and 3 and qualitative data from the question, ‘How has the group helped you to create changes in your life?’. We applied the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks z-test to the quantitative data to assess statistically between the time periods. Responses to the open-ended question generated qualitative data that were mainly descriptive, an important contribution considering the paucity of information on depressed women. Our findings advance, albeit in a small way, an understanding of how women accepted managed or healed their depression as they broke down the public and private boundaries of their emotional lives. Members became empowered to understand themselves and believe in their potential as social individuals through their participation in the group. In the long term, they altered their feelings and relationships to themselves and their environment.

Prenatal Genetic Technologies and the Social Control of Pregnant Women: A Review of the Key Issues

This article provides a review of literature of articles and texts on prenatal genetic technologies and is limited specifically to research that focuses on the intersection between the dynamics of prenatal screening; the regulation of family life and reproduction; the issues of disabilities, risk, and shame; embodied affect; and contemporary molecular medicine. Three themes emerge from the literature: the fact that these technologies have a transformative impact on the social process of human reproduction, are powerful ways of regulating family normality and health, and have the unintended consequence of dividing women into “good” and “bad” reproducers. It is argued that in reviewing the literature it is important to take a critical focus to expose some of the repressive dynamics embedded in the diffusion and proliferation of these technologies.

Gaining agency through healthy embodiment in groups for depressed women

The paper explores the effect of group participation on depressed womens ‘doing depression’ and ‘doing pleasure’ in Finland over three time periods. Quantitative data and qualitative data are analysed. To assess statistically the differences between the time periods, the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks z-test is applied to the quantitative data. Coping with emotions through self-focused attention, depressed women are reluctant to initiate instrumental behaviour. They tend to respond to their lives in a ruminative way. Moving towards pleasure rather than depression characterized womens activities as a result of the group process; they learned to embody health, while envisaging hope for the future. Our emphasis on embodiment allows us to consider agency as a contemporary group therapeutic effect as well as to contextualize psychotherapy research within post-modern thinking. While the findings do not provide an indisputable list of the ways womens activities changed over time or all the advantages of group participation, they do suggest areas for future exploration in connection with depressed womens healthy embodiment in a healing group context and advance an understanding of how the experience and duration of depression can be altered if the public and private boundaries of depressed womens embodied routines are broken down and self-isolation is challenged.