This paper examines the multiple oppressions faced by Aboriginal women as a result of Canada's sexist and racist colonial past. We explore the destructive affects of colonization on gender relations and societal structures and argue that Aboriginal women suffer higher rates of poverty, ill-health, violence and sexual exploitation than non-Aboriginal women as a result. The Sisters in Spirit Campaign (2004) and Amnesty International's "Stolen Sisters" report (2004) illustrate how violence is a result of the social and economic marginalization of Aboriginal women. Short term solutions focus on serious jail sentences and fines on those who procure, exploit and prepetrate crimes on girls and women while long term solutions must address the elimination of poverty among Aborignal women while simultaneously revaluing Aborignal women and their culture. Unless these underlying causes of poor health for Aboriginal women are addressed there is little chance of improvement.

Water has often been the source of crises and their frequency will intensify due to climate change impacts. The Niagara River Watershed provides an ideal case to study water crises as it is an international transboundary system (Canada-United States) and has both historical and current challenges associated with water quantity and quality, which resonates broadly in water basins throughout the world. The aim of this study was to understand how stakeholders perceive ecosystems and the relationship with preferences for governance approaches in the context of water governance. An online survey instrument was employed to assess perceptions of the system in terms of resilience (engineering, ecological, social-ecological, or epistemic), preferences for governance approaches (state, citizen, market, and hybrid forms), and the most pressing issues in the watershed. Responses showed that, despite demographic differences and adherence to different resilience perspectives, support was strongest for governance approaches that focused on state or state-citizen hybrid forms. The validity of the resilience typology as a grouping variable is discussed. The roles of institutional constraints, pragmatism in governance approach preferences, and the influence of multiple crises are explored in relation to the context of the study site, as well as to water governance scholarship more broadly.

This research examines the impact of Western beauty pressures on a select group of young Canadian women. I gathered data using qualitative semi-structured interviews and analysed the data using an intersectional analysis of oppression in order to learn how women"s race, class and culture backgrounds shape their experiences with Western beauty pressures. The interviews were analysed using the voice-centred relational method of data analysis. The thirteen women interviewed discussed their perceptions of Western beauty pressures, how these pressures shape their engagement or lack thereof in beauty practices, and strategies they employ for resistance. The results are organized under six main themes: (a) gender roles and beauty (b) education, careers and beauty practices (c) influence of family, friends, relationships and peers (d) cosmetics (e) weight, and (f) resistance.

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Abstract:A shift appears to be occurring in thinking about flooding, from a resistance-based approach to one of resilience. Accordingly, how stakeholders in flood-prone regions perceive the system and its governance are salient questions. This study queried stakeholders' internal representations of ecosystems (resistance-or resilience-based), preferences for governance actors and mechanisms for flooding, and the relationship between them in five different regions of the world. The influence of personal experience on these variables was also assessed. Most respondents aligned themselves with a resilience-based approach in relation to system connectedness and response to disturbance; however, respondents were almost evenly split between resistance-and resilience-based approaches when considering system management. Responses generally were considered to hold for other disturbances as well. There was no clear relationship between internal representations and preferences for governance actors or mechanisms. Respondents generally favoured actor combinations that included governments and mechanism combinations that included regulations and policies. Those who had personal experience with flooding tended to align themselves with a resilience-based internal representation of system management, but personal experience showed no clear relationship with governance preferences. The findings support an evolutionary perspective of flood management where emerging paradigms enhance preceding ones, and prompt a critical discussion about the universality of resilience as a framing construct.

In our contemporary post-feminist media culture, new forms of constraint and regulation emerge through a seeming proliferation of female "freedoms" that are adopted by advertisers using the surface terminology of feminism to sell products. Rosalind Gill has addressed a significant shift in ads, where women are no longer presented as passive sexual objects, but are seen as active, desiring sexual subjects, who enthusiastically participate in practices and forms of self-presentation that earlier generations of feminist scholars considered to be forms of sexism and subordination. In our contemporary post-feminist media culture, post-feminist ideology adopts discourses of feminist "resistance" in order to reinforce patriarchal norms. Thus, women are only "empowered" to make choices insofar as they do not disrupt patriarchal norms that govern marriage, motherhood, consumerism, female beauty and female sexuality. This paper will address the ways in which "empowerment" is utilized as a part of an ideological agenda to direct women"s attention away from the fact that they have not gained equality, with particular attention being paid to media representations of female beauty and female sexuality.

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