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This article briefly describes the context of women's drinking and alcohol policy in Aotearoa/New Zealand and the methodology of interviewing service providers about the impacts of women's alcohol consumption. It then analyses the views of 40 health and social welfare professionals about their perceptions of alcohol-related harms to women. It describes three spiralling factors that these workers perceived as both causing and resulting from women's drinking and the impacts on their staff and sectors of women's alcohol-related trauma. The study concludes that gender analysis is essential in addiction research and that qualitative research with experienced service providers may be a useful element in evaluating changes in social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canterbury earthquakes and the rebuild are generation-defining events for twenty-first century Aotearoa/New Zealand. This article uses an actor network approach to explore 32 women's narratives of being shaken into dangerous disaster situations and reconstituting themselves to cope in socially innovative ways. The women's stories articulate on-going collective narratives of experiencing disaster and coping with loss in 'resilient' ways. In these women's experiences, coping in disasters is not achieved by talking through the emotional trauma. Instead, coping comes from seeking solace through engagement with one's own and others' personal risk and resourcefulness in ways that feed into the emergence of socially innovative voluntary organisations. These stories offer conceptual insight into the multivalent interconnections between resilience and vulnerabilities and the contested nature of post-disaster recovery in Aotearoa/New Zealand. These women gave voice to living through disasters resiliently in ways that forged new networks of support across collective and personal narratives and broader social goals and aspirations for Aotearoa/New Zealand's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]