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In this submission, we discuss why women and people from ethnic backgrounds (BAME) are, and will be, negatively affected by the COVID-19 virus and the government response. We describe how COVID-19 exacerbates underlying health inequalities. We highlight how existing medical guidance compound these inequalities by failing to take them into account. We discuss the negative effects that pandemic measures have had on women, in particular women asylum- seekers and women seeking reproductive health services. Finally, we present recommendations for short and long-term change to the pandemic response to avoid further harm and discrimination of people with these protected characteristics.

The risk of death or serious injury from ‘backstreet abortions’ was an important narrative in the 20th century campaign to liberalise abortion in the UK. Since then, clinical developments have reduced the overall health risks of abortion, and international health organisations have been set up to provide cross-border, medically safe abortions to places where it is unlawful, offering advice and, where possible, supplying abortion pills. These changes mean that pro-choice campaigns in Europe have often moved away from the risks of ‘backstreet abortions’ as a central narrative when campaigning for abortion liberalisation. In contrast, in the UK, anti-abortion activists are increasingly using ideas about ‘backstreet abortions’ to resist further liberalisation. These claims can be seen to fit within a broader shift from morals to risk within moral regulation campaigns and build on anti-abortion messages framed as being ‘pro-women’, with anti-abortion activists claiming to be the ‘savers’ of women. Using a parliamentary debate as a case study, this article will illustrate these trends and show how the ‘backstreet’ metaphor within anti-abortion campaigns builds on three interconnected themes of ‘abortion-as-harmful’, ‘abortion industry’, and ‘abortion culture’. This article will argue that the anti-abortion movement’s adoption of risk-based narratives contains unresolved contradictions due to the underlying moral basis of their position. These are exacerbated by the need, in this case, to defend legislation that they fundamentally disagree with. Moreover, their attempts to construct identifiable ‘harms’ and vulnerable ‘victims’, which are components of moral regulation campaigns, are unlikely to be convincing in the context of widespread public support for abortion.

In the UK, there is evidence of a recent increase in anti-abortion activism outside clinics. In response, abortion service providers have called for the introduction of ‘buffer’ zones to protect women from ‘harassment’ while accessing abortion services. Drawing on two datasets – extensive ethnographic fieldwork, and a content analysis of clinic client comment forms – we deploy Goffman’s concept of ‘civil inattention’ to further our understanding of the material practice of anti-abortion clinic activism. We find that although anti-abortion activists understand their own actions to be supportive, practices of religious observance outside clinics inescapably draw attention to the site and to the act of accessing healthcare, inherently challenging normative expectations of privacy and confidentiality. Our analysis suggests that anti-abortion activism outside clinics consequently violates social rules governing encounters with strangers in specific places and reinforces gendered hierarchies. As such, they are often experienced as acts of gendered harassment.

In the UK, there has been growing concern about young people’s understanding of sexual consent, with the views of young people themselves often lost in academic and educational policy debates. However, the focus on high rates of sexual violence has meant a lack of attention on the everyday negotiation of consensual heterosexual activity, leading to assumptions being made regarding young people’s lack of understanding of sexual consent. This paper emerges from a wider study of over 500 young people which sought to uncover their understanding of the issues. Drawing on data from workshops and the open text responses to an on-line survey the findings presented in this paper show that the majority of heterosexual young people understood the complexity of sexual consent as an embodied process, which can be difficult to define, talk about or practice uniformly. This complex understanding, in which sexual consent is a continuum rather than a dichotomy, has implications for sexual education initiatives. We argue that it is only by providing a closer understanding of how - within consensual sexual activities - young people understand and enact sexual consent through a range of embodied communication strategies that education surrounding sexual assault will become meaningful.

This article discusses the findings of a study tracing the incorporation of claims about infant brain development into English family policy as part of the longer term development of a ‘parent training’, early intervention agenda. The main focus is on the ways in which the deployment of neuroscientific discourse in family policy creates the basis for a new governmental oversight of parents. We argue that advocacy of ‘early intervention’, in particular that which deploys the authority of ‘the neuroscience’, places parents at the centre of the policy stage but simultaneously\ud demotes and marginalises them. So we ask, what becomes of the parent when politically and culturally, the child is spoken of as infinitely and permanently neurologically vulnerable to parental influence? In particular, the policy focus on parental emotions and their impact on infant brain development indicates that this represents a biologisation of ‘therapeutic’ governance.

In recent years, claims about children's developing brains have become central to the formation of child health and welfare policies in England. While these policies assert that they are based on neuro-scientific discoveries, their relationship to neuroscience itself has been debated. However, what is clear is that they portray a particular understanding of children and childhood, one that is marked by a lack of acknowledgment of child personhood. Using an analysis of key government-commissioned reports and additional advocacy documents, this article illustrates the ways that the mind of the child is reduced to the brain, and this brain comes to represent the child. It is argued that a highly reductionist and limiting construction of the child is produced, alongside the idea that parenting is the main factor in child development. It is concluded that this focus on children's brains, with its accompanying deterministic perspective on parenting, overlooks children's embodied lives and this has implications for the design of children's health and welfare services.

In the last decades we have seen a growing interest in research into children's own experiences and understandings of health and illness. This development, we would argue, is much stimulated by the sociology of childhood which has drawn our attention to how children as a social group are placed and perceived within the structure of society, and within inter-generational relations, as well as how children are social agents and co-constructors of their social world. Drawing on this tradition, we here address some cross-cutting themes that we think are important to further the study of child health: situating children within health policy, drawing attention to practices around children's health and well-being and a focus on children as health actors. The paper contributes to a critical analysis of child health policy and notions of child health and normality, pointing to theoretical and empirical research potential for the sociology of children's health and illness.

Using postings from an internet forum, this paper explores the ways in which some women try to influence the sex of a future child. The extensive reproductive work involved give an indication of the women’s commitment to being able to choose a particular sex; in this case a preference for girls rather than boys. The findings revealed stereotypical views of masculinity and femininity at the heart of the preference. The presumption of fixed gendered identities helped to frame this desire as ‘natural,’ lessen the threat to maternal identities, and reinforce the logic of ‘choice,’ and support their reproductive work practices.

Despite growing interest in learning and teaching as emotional activities, there is still very little research on experiences of sensitive issues. Using qualitative data from students from a range of social science disciplines, this study investigates student's experiences. The paper highlights how, although they found it difficult and distressing at times, the students all valued being able to explore sensitive issues during their studies. The paper argues that it is though repeated exposure to sensitive issues within the classroom that the students became more comfortable with the issues. This process of lessening sensitivity is an important part of the emotional journey through higher education. It will argue that good student experiences need not always be positive emotions and that sensitive issues should be seen as an important part of transformational education.

This article reviews a particular aspect of the critique of the increasing focus on the brain and neuroscience; what has been termed by some, ‘neuromania’. It engages with the growing literature produced in response to the ‘first three years’ movement: an alliance of child welfare advocates and politicians that draws on the authority of neuroscience to argue that social problems such as inequality, poverty, educational underachievement, violence and mental illness are best addressed through ‘early intervention’ programmes to protect or enhance emotional and cognitive aspects of children's brain development. The movement began in the United States in the early 1990s and has become increasingly vocal and influential since then, achieving international legitimacy in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the UK and elsewhere. The movement, and the brain-based culture of expert-led parent training that has grown with it, has been criticised for claiming scientific authority whilst taking a cavalier approach to scientific method and evidence; for being overly deterministic about the early years of life; for focusing attention on individual parental failings rather than societal or structural problems, for adding to the expanding anxieties of parents and strengthening the intensification of parenting and, ultimately, for redefining the parent–child relationship in biologised, instrumental and dehumanised terms.

Background The role of applied theatre in engaging both lay and professional publics with debate on health policy and practice is an emergent field. This paper discusses the development, production performance and discussion of ‘Inside View’.\ud \ud Objectives The objectives were to produce applied theatre from research findings of a completed study on genetic prenatal screening, exploring the dilemmas for women and health professionals of prenatal genetic screening, and to engage audiences in debate and reflection on the dilemmas of prenatal genetic screening.\ud \ud Methods ‘Inside View’ was developed from a multidisciplinary research study through identification of emergent themes from qualitative interviews, and development of these by the writer, theatre producer and media technologist with input from the researchers.\ud \ud Findings Inside View was performed in London and the Midlands to varied audiences with a panel discussion and evaluation post performance. The audiences were engaged in debate that was relevant to them professionally and personally. Knowledge translation through applied theatre is an effective tool for engaging the public but the impact subsequently is unclear. There are ethical issues of unexpected disclosure during discussion post performance and the process of transforming research findings into applied theatre requires time and trust within the multidisciplinary team as well as adequate resourcing.

In Spring 2009, the School of Languages and Social Sciences (LSS) at Aston University responded to a JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and Higher Education Academy (HEA) call for partners in Open Educational Resources (OER) projects. This led to participation in not one, but two different OER projects from within one small School of the University. This paper will share, from this unusual position, the experience of our English tutors, who participated in the HumBox Project, led by Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (LLAS) and will compare the approach taken with the Sociology partnership in the C-SAP OER Project , led by the Centre for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP). These two HEA Subject Centre-led projects have taken different approaches to the challenges of encouraging tutors to deposit teaching resources, as on ongoing process, for others to openly access, download and re-purpose. As the projects draw to a close, findings will be discussed, in relation to the JISC OER call, with an emphasis on examining the language and discourses from the two collaborations to see where there are shared issues and outcomes, or different subject specific concerns to consider.

Contraception is often a taken-for-granted element of actively heterosexual women’s lives. Yet while modern contraceptives have technically enhanced women’s ability to control their fertility, the history of women’s struggles to achieve this control shows the importance of understanding the social context within which women’s contraceptive decisions are situated. Previous feminist studies of contraception in the UK have tended to concentrate either on aspects of medicine or on heterosexuality. Whilst both areas have highlighted the need to understand how power relationships structure women’s contraceptive experiences, these two aspects have not been integrated adequately. There has also been a tendency to focus research on younger women, and mature women’s ongoing use of contraception has generally been overlooked.\ud \ud This thesis is based on qualitative interviews with twenty-two mid-life British women aged between 30 and 40, as well as observations at a family planning clinic. It demonstrates that only by giving full consideration to the extent and complexity of the power relationships surrounding contraception can an understanding of women’s decisions and everyday practices be achieved. The concept of ‘subjective power’ is developed to explore how these women make strategic and creative use of circulating discourses, interact with disciplinary regimes, and situate themselves within multi-faceted webs of power relationships, such as in relation to the institutions of medicine, the media, and heterosexuality. The embodied nature of both the risk of pregnancy and the use of contraceptive technologies is argued to lead the women to assert a right of bodily autonomy. Yet this assertion conflicts with their expectation of equitable coupledom within heterosexuality and their routine consideration of men’s preferences. In addition, this thesis will show that taking ‘proper’ responsibility for preventing pregnancy constructs women as respectable, yet may increase their risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections.