The centrepoint of this thesis is an action research project, the Maternal Alienation Project (MAP), implemented during 2002 and 2003 in Adelaide, South Australia. Resourced by two government-funded community health services, it was established to improve organisations’ (health, welfare and legal) and systems’ responses to the newly termed ‘maternal alienation’. MAP was situated within a tradition of feminist participatory and action research. It was designed to work on three levels: practice, systems and policy-making, and research. The outcomes, processes and events of MAP at the different levels of its operation are examined in the thesis through the employment of a gendered analysis drawn mainly from materialist feminism and standpoint theories. Post-project interviews and focus groups provided further data to the fieldnotes written throughout MAP, and the project’s formal and informal documents. A recent example of a contested gendered concept, “maternal alienation” was first identified and named in 1999 as a component of gender violence (Morris 1999). It forms part of a spectrum of violence perpetrated in households, and had been identified within domestic violence and child sexual abuse. It is a term for the range of tactics used by mainly male perpetrators, predominantly the mothers’ intimate partners and the children’s fathers or step-fathers, to deliberately undermine the relationship between mothers and their children. The mother-blaming discourses and degrading constructions of mothers conveyed to children and those in the family’s orbit are strongly related to wider socio-cultural constructions of women and mothers. The thesis examines theories of gender, gendered organisations and gender violence. It develops the concept of an abusive household gender regime, characterised by perpetrators’ imposition of a coercive and abusive regime on household members, and particular patternings of gendered relations. Comparisons are made between household and organisational gender regimes, which are also viewed in relation to the local gender order at the time of MAP. It was found that services that lack an analysis of gender are likely to re-inscribe the dynamics of maternal alienation in their responses to families. Language was found to play a significant part in addressing maternal alienation, particularly in developing congruence between language and women’s and children’s “lived” experiences. The principles that were developed were founded on supporting mothers and rebuilding their relationships with children, and making visible the tactics employed by perpetrators, thereby reducing their power to coerce and increasing their accountability. The concept of maternal alienation and MAP itself were attacked by a coalition of men’s rights and Christian Right lobbyists. This compromised the operations of MAP, and of its key supporters, managers of feminist and gender-aware organisations. In many ways these attacks, played out at a macro level, reflected the techniques and dynamics of maternal alienation at a micro level. This thesis raises questions about the strategies that feminist organisations need to develop to more effectively pursue feminist agendas, and to re-invigorate a women’s movement. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2008

Esta pesquisa parte da leitura de uma cobertura jornalística e desvenda o processo de produção das notícias e as condições de sua veiculação, com mediações dos estudos de jornalismo, estudos de direito e dos estudos de gênero. Iniciamos com a análise empírica do conteúdo jornalístico produzido pelo jornal Folha de S.Paulo entre janeiro de 2009 e maio de 2015, sobre os acontecimentos relacionados à investigação, ao julgamento, à fuga e à prisão de Roger Abdelmassih, especialista em reprodução humana assistida condenado a 278 anos de prisão por cometer crimes contra a dignidade sexual de 37 pacientes. O processo de leitura colocou-nos interrogações sobre a cobertura jornalística. Em busca de respostas, entrevistamos jornalistas e profissionais do direito envolvidos no caso e constatamos diferenças e relações de interdependência no trabalho deles, que condicionam os acontecimentos em 1) fatos jurídicos culminados em processos de caráter privado na Justiça e 2) em fatos jornalísticos culminados em informações traduzidas em textos publicáveis na imprensa, conforme demonstramos no Capítulo 2 desta dissertação. Estudos de jornalismo apontam as limitações do fazer jornalístico e sua inserção na vida cotidiana e o processo de repetição do senso comum que pode ser desafiado em condições especiais (MORETZSHON, 2007). Mas pesquisa da feminista (SEGATO, 2003) destaca a importância da informação veiculada pela imprensa para a defesa dos direitos das mulheres. Estudos de gênero rastreiam a construção dos estereótipos de gênero e a ordem patriarcal de gênero que embasam valores morais a partir dos quais são forjados os estigmas e preconceitos que atingem as vítimas de estupro (SAFFIOTI, 2015). Na análise de conteúdo do jornal Folha de S.Paulo, constamos uso de termos inadequados para nominar vítimas e agressor, erros jurídicos e julgamentos morais impertinentes ao caso. Essas visões dominantes e equivocadas sobre as vítimas de estupro precisam ser desconstruídas por outro modo de fazer jornalismo. Esta pesquisa nos mostrou que, ao descolar-se dos fatos jurídicos, a cobertura jornalística confinou no universo privado a violência sexual. Deixando de tratá-la como questão de saúde pública, não promoveu a divulgação de informações que poderiam contribuir para a construção da cidadania das mulheres. / This research stems from the reading of a news story coverage and unveils the production process of news stories and their dissemination, negotiated by media, law, and gender studies. We begin with the empirical analysis of the journalistic content produced by Folha de São Paulo between January 2009 and May 2015 about the incidents involving the investigation, trial, escape and arrest of Roger Abdelmassih - specialist in assisted human reproduction condemned to 278 years of prison for committing crimes against the sexual dignity of 37 patients. The process of reading posed questions about the news coverage. In search for answers, we interviews journalists and lawyers involved in the case and found differences and relations of interdependence in their work, which condition the events in 1) legal facts culminating in private processes in the legal system and 2) in journalistic facts culminating in information translated into publishable texts in the press, as demonstrated in the 2nd chapter of this dissertation. Media studies point the limitations of journalistic procedures and its insertion in the daily lives and the repetition process of commen sense that may be challenged in special conditions (MORETZSHON, 2007). But feminist research (SEGATO, 2003) highlights the importance of the information circulated by the media to defend women\'s rights. Gender studies trace the construction of gender stereotypes and the patriarchal gender order that ground the moral values on which the stigma and prejudice that affect rape victims is forged (SAFFIOTI, 2015). In the content analysis of Folha de São Paulo we found the use of inadequate terms to name the victims and the aggressor, legal errors, and unconnected value judgments about the case. These dominant and erroneous views about rape victims must be deconstructed by a different type of journalistic procedure. This research demonstrates that in disconnecting from legal facts, the news coverage confined sexual violence to a private realm. By not treating it as a matter of public health, it did not promote the circulation of useful information that would help the women\'s rights cause.

Die begriffliche Unterscheidung von Geschlecht als einerseits biologischem Faktum (Sex) sowie anderseits als Produkt kultureller und sozialer Prozesse (Gender) geht auf Arbeiten zur Transsexualität in den sechziger Jahren zurück. Der feministische Diskurs griff die Unterscheidung auf und verstand sie in einem antibiologistischen Sinne. Die Sex-Gender-Unterscheidung impliziert jedoch auch die unhaltbare Annahme, dass es ein biologisches Substrat der Geschlechterdifferenz gäbe, welches kulturellen Unterscheidungen stets vorgängig wäre (latenter Biologismus). Wissenschaftstheoretische Arbeiten verweisen demgegenüber darauf, dass Natur stets durch die Brille der Kultur gesehen wird.

This thesis provides the first rigorous history of the concept of midlife crisis. It highlights the close connections between understandings of the life course and social change. It reverses accounts of popularization by showing how an idea moved from the public sphere into academia. Above all, it uncovers the feminist origins of the concept and places this in a historically little-studied tradition of writing about middle age that rejected the gendered "double standard of aging." Constructions of middle age and life-planning were not always oppressive, but often used for feminist purposes. The idea of midlife crisis became popular in the United States with journalist Gail Sheehy's Passages (1976), a critique of Erik Erikson's male-centered model of ego development and psychoanalytic constructions of gender and identity more generally. Drawing on mid-century notions of middle life as the time of a woman's entry into the public sphere, Sheehy's midlife crisis defined the onset of middle age, for men and women, as the end of traditional gender roles. As dual-earner families replaced the male breadwinner model, Passages circulated widely, read by women and men of different generations, including social scientists. Three psychoanalytic experts-Daniel Levinson, George Vaillant, and Roger Gould-rebutted Sheehy by putting forward a male-only concept of midlife as the end of a man's family obligations; they banned women from reimagining their lives. Though this became the dominant meaning of midlife crisis, it was not universally accepted. Feminist scholars, most famously the psychologist and ethicist Carol Gilligan, drew on women's experiences to challenge the midlife crisis, turning it into a sign of emotional instability, immaturity, and egotism. Resonating with widespread understandings of mental health and social responsibility, and confirmed by large-scale surveys in the late 1990s, this relegated the midlife crisis to a chauvinist cliché. It has remained a contested concept for negotiating the balances between work and life, production and reproduction into the present day.