"Here nobody holds your heart": metaphoric and embodied emotions of birth and displacement among Karen women in Australia.

Our objective was to explore the ways in which displaced Karen mothers expressed emotions in narrative accounts of motherhood and displacement. We contextualized and analyzed interview data from an ethnographic study of birth and emotions among 15 displaced Karen mothers in Australia. We found that women shared a common symbolic language to describe emotions centered on the heart, which was also associated with heart "problems." This, along with hypertension, collapsing, or a feeling of surrender were associated responses to extremely adverse events experienced as displaced peoples. A metaphoric schema of emotional terms centered on the heart was connected to embodied expressions of emotion related to illness of the heart. This and other embodied responses were reactions to overwhelming difficulties and fear women endured due to their exposure to political conflict and global inequity.

How the persistence of patriarchy undermines the financial empowerment of women microfinance borrowers? Evidence from a southern sub-district of Bangladesh.

A significant body of multi-disciplinary research supports the proposition that women may experience empowerment from microfinance programs. This is based on the assumption that an increase in women's financial contribution to the household helps to transform gender norms and relations which increases their decision-making power. However, the relationship between the strength and persistence of patriarchal gender norms within the household and women's financial empowerment needs further exploration. This paper presents the findings of a mixed-method study comprising 331 surveys and 33 in-depth interviews with women receiving microfinance and their husbands in a southern sub-district of Bangladesh; it draws upon gender socialisation and gender performance theory to understand how patriarchal gender norms influence women's financial empowerment in households receiving microfinance. Findings demonstrate that participation in microfinance programs has not shifted gender norms, nor financially empowered women. Women's loans were largely controlled by men as prescribed by underlying, unchanged patriarchal gender norms. The inter-generational reproduction of patriarchal gender relations continued to reproduce a strict gendered division of labour that reinforced restrictions on women's behaviour, mobility, and decision-making domains, and men's dominance in household and economic decision-making.

Research priorities in suicide prevention in Australia. A comparison of current research efforts and stakeholder-identified priorities.

This project sought to inform priority setting in Australian suicide prevention research, by empirically examining existing priorities and by seeking stakeholders' views on where future priorities might lie. Existing priorities were examined via reviews of Australian literature published and grants funded during the life of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy (1999-2006). Stakeholders' views of future priorities were elicited via a questionnaire administered to 11 groups comprising 231 individuals with an interest in suicide prevention. The study identified 263 journal articles and 36 grants. The journal articles most commonly reported on studies of descriptive epidemiology, while the grants tended to fund intervention studies. Both gave roughly equal weight to completed and attempted suicide, and gave little emphasis to studies of suicide methods. Young people were the most frequently-researched target group, with people with mental health problems and people who had attempted suicide or deliberately self-harmed also receiving attention. Stakeholders indicated that emphasis should be given to intervention studies, and that completed suicide and attempted suicide are both important. In terms of suicide method, they felt the focus should be on poisoning by drugs and hanging. They had mixed views about the target groups that should be afforded priority, although young people and people with mental health problems were frequently ranked highly. This paper presents a picture of the current focus with regard to suicide prevention research, identifying some areas where there are clear gaps and others where relatively greater efforts have been made. By combining this information with stakeholders' views of where future priorities should lie, the paper provides some guidance as to the shape a future suicide prevention research agenda for Australia should take. A strategic approach to suicide prevention research will help fill internationally-identified gaps in knowledge about what works and what doesn't work in suicide prevention.

Displaced mothers: birth and resettlement, gratitude and complaint.

In narratives of displaced Karen women from Burma, both before and after resettlement in Australia, women framed their birthing experiences with those of persecution and displacement. Although grateful for the security of resettlement in Australia, social inclusion was negligible and women's birthing experiences occurred in that context. Women described the impact of the lack of interpreting services in Australian hospitals and an absence of personal and communal care that they expected. Frequently, this made straightforward births confusing or difficult, and exacerbated the distress of more complicated births. Differences in individual responses related to women's histories, with younger women displaying more preparedness to complain and identify discrimination. The problems identified with health care, coupled with the inability of many of the women to complain requires attention, not just within the health care system, but more widely as part of social attitudes concerning Australia's obligations to those who seek asylum.