viii, 296 leaves : tables ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of History, 1979

Thesis (B.A. (Hons.))--University of Adelaide, 1977. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 126-129).

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, Discipline of Gender and Labour Studies, 2005. / "May 2005" Includes bibliographical references. Also available in a print form.

Bibliography: leaves 230-248. This thesis examines the causes and consequences to women who, as a result of their marital of de facto relationship incur debt from their spouse/partner. First, it aims to describe the legal and social construction of sexually transmitted debt through a feminist analysis of the 1998 Australian High Court legal case of Garcia v National Australia Bank Ltd. It aims, second, to contribute to feminist understanding of financial decision-making within households by focussing on those decisions that lead to the accumulation of debt within the domestic sphere.

Includes examples of information booklets as appendices / Includes bibliographical references: p. 232-251 / xiv, 251 p. : photo. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Community Medicine, 1994

Bibliography: leaves 230-248. / v, 248 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / This thesis examines the causes and consequences to women who, as a result of their marital of de facto relationship incur debt from their spouse/partner. First, it aims to describe the legal and social construction of sexually transmitted debt through a feminist analysis of the 1998 Australian High Court legal case of Garcia v National Australia Bank Ltd. It aims, second, to contribute to feminist understanding of financial decision-making within households by focussing on those decisions that lead to the accumulation of debt within the domestic sphere. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Social Inquiry, 2001

Includes examples of information booklets as appendices Includes bibliographical references: p. 232-251

Typescript. Bibliography: leaves 202-207.

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