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Internet-mediated focus groups (FGs) have become a feature of qualitative research over the last decade; however, their use within social sciences has been adopted at a slower pace than other disciplines. This paper considers the advantages and disadvantages of internet-mediated FGs and reflects on their use for researching culturally sensitive issues. It reports on an innovative study, which utilised text-based asynchronous internet-mediated FGs to explore attitudes to abortion, and abortion as a workplace issue. The authors identify three key elements of text-based asynchronous online FGs as particularly helpful in researching culturally sensitive issues – safety, time and pace. The authors demonstrate how these elements, integral to the actual process, contributed to ‘opinion change/evolution’ and challenged processes of stigmatisation centred on over-simplification, misinformation as to the incidence of a culturally sensitive issue in a population, and discrimination.

This article analyses discourses on so-called female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C) in Northern Ireland. We identify a tension between affected communities' need for improved supports and resources on the one hand, and the absence of resources and support, or inappropriate and sometimes harmful interventions, on the other hand. We conclude that this mismatch between requirements and actual provisions is one effect of the isolated politicization of FGM/C, in ways that reinforce global North gender norms. We argue that non-hypocritical transcultural engagements require critical assessment of how the (historically and culturally specific) gender binary organises global North perspectives on all forms of non-therapeutic genital cutting. Two significant barriers are identified. First, there is a lack of awareness in Northern Ireland of the origins of current double standards in the regulation of genital cutting. Second, the ‘two communities’ model of Northern Irish politics impedes the development of interlinked and contestatory publics.

This article interrogates health care professionals' (HCPs) decision to withdraw from or provide abortion care using cultural theories of affect and emotion. It argues that emotional reactions to imagined futures influence the actions of health care practitioners. This proposition draws together cultural theory of affect with qualitative evidence from a scoping study of abortion care and Ireland. Our analysis suggests that discussions as to why care is or is not provided need to look at the emotional entanglements and affective feel of (written) legal frameworks from the position of the subjects of those frameworks as well as the frameworks themselves. In doing so, our interrogation provides critical insight for considerations of abortion access in the Irish context and globally. This is an important contribution given the concurrent global debates about why abortion care is or is not provided and how to ensure abortion is completely accessible.

ObjectivesTo evaluate web-based information on accessing abortion services retrieved through internet searches in different jurisdictions from the perspective of service users. To provide a formative evaluative mechanism for enabling user-focused design of abortion access information web pages.DesignWeb searches were conducted in three countries—England, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland—using two search engines in the summer of 2016. Four search terms were used and the first two pages of results were analysed. The perspective of someone seeking abortion services was used. Sources were evaluated using a five-item tool combining user-based indicators identified in other instruments and a question on jurisdictional accuracy.ResultsA total of 619 web pages were retrieved through initial searches, 83 of which related to accessing services; 22 pages were retrieved from the Republic of Ireland, 31 from Northern Ireland, and 30 from England. Fewer than a third (n=31) were judged as good or excellent by the tool. The jurisdictional relevancy of information retrieved varied; almost half of all results in each country provided information that was either inaccurate within or irrelevant to the jurisdiction where the search took place.ConclusionsIf online information is to support abortion access, the circumstances and perspective of the user requires more attention. Designers of abortion information pages online need to ensure that information about access is relevant to the jurisdiction in which users are based.

Despite the relatively unusual (by global standards) involvement of women in negotiations to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), it is generally recognised that gender has been marginalised both in the descriptive and substantive representation of women in conflict transformation. Twenty years after the Agreement, this article discusses and reflects on the implications of the exclusion of gender policy issues both for women and wider society. Within the agreement itself women are only briefly mentioned with regard to political participation, and the institutional structures created from the GFA through their very design deprioritise any identity cleavage which is not ethno-national. In addition to impacting on the representation of women in formal politics, gendered issues such as gender-based violence either become sectarianised or marginalised, but ultimately remain unresolved. The article addresses the potential for developing and creating gender-sensitive policy concluding that processes of civic engagement and mobilisation offer increasing potential to disrupt the limitations of the overarching macro-political institutional structures.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on ‘women, peace and security’ was passed in 2000 to recognise and enhance women’s participation in peace-building. The Resolution has growing global significance in conflicted societies yet there is limited analysis of its implementation in specific social contexts. Utilising feminist theory on gender in conflicted societies and original empirical evidence from key grassroots community activists in Northern Ireland, I will consider the potential of the 1325 framework as a tool for conceptualising and achieving gender security and equality. This article contributes to an understanding of the importance of deep contextual interpretation for implementation of the women, peace and security agenda and argues for a feminist intersectional interpretation of the Resolution to enable its transformative potential for both peace-building and gender equality.

In divided societies gender research has a relatively low profile. In regions where divisions are perceived to be driven by ethnicity, research and activism focused on anything but ethno-nationalis...

Consociational democracy has become the most influential paradigm in the field of power-sharing institutional design and post-conflict peacebuilding. Consociation institutes representation for certain formerly excluded groups. However, it simultaneously inhibits effective political representation for groups that do not align with the societal divisions that consociation seeks to accommodate, specifically the ‘additional’ cleavage of gender. Given the extensive use of the consociational model as a peacebuilding tool in divided states and the growing awareness of the disproportionate negative effect of conflict on women, there is a surprising lack of consideration of the effect that consociational power-sharing has on women’s representation. This article considers the specific impact that the consociational model has on women’s representation. We argue that because gender is an integral factor in conflict, it should therefore be integral to post-conflict governance. With empirical reference to contemporary Northern Ireland, it is illustrated that consociationalism is a ‘gender-blind’ theory.

This chapter contextualised the politicisation of abortion and sets out the significant gap in the synthesis of the literature examining global trends in abortion politics and the need for a critical, comparative analysis of contemporary issues within the global north and south. The authors each provide a personal perspective on their motivations to write about abortion politics.

This chapter details the criminalisation of abortion. A review of the history of the criminal law on abortion reveals that for most of history abortion remained outside the law. Criminalisation when it did occur was closely tied to the religious positioning of abortion in western societies. This chapter considers trends in the latter part of the 20th century abortion when countries which had criminalised abortion began to relax the laws, whilst in other settings restrictions were introduced. The impact of restrictive laws and restricted access include an exploration of the data related to death and serious injury resulting from unsafe abortion as well as the risk of criminality. A consideration of methodological issues in measuring the impact of unsafe abortion identifies new methods to quantify this. Case studies of Ireland and Uruguay highlight how restrictive laws are experienced in contrasting settings. The chapter concludes by considering the case for decriminalisation of abortion laws.

This chapter explores the interplay of culture, nationalism and religion and their interaction with legality and access to abortion in particular contexts. Starting from the position that institutions do not operate in a vacuum but are influenced by values and norms which makes them part of the cultural fabric of a society, the chapter explores gendered notions of nationalism and culture. The role of faith based organisations in shaping international policy illustrates how religious norms shape conservatism and alternately how liberal organisations challenge such norms. A consideration of transitional societies allows for an analysis of how abortion is positioned in a framework whereby cultural, national and religious norms typically influence conservative discourses. In such settings gender rights becomes subservient to national and cultural identity or alternately may become core to legal reform. Two case studies, Northern Ireland and South Africa, illustrate how abortion discourses are shaped in transitioning societies.

What are the contemporary issues in abortion politics globally? What factors explain variations in access to abortion between and within different countries? This text provides a transnationally focused, interdisciplinary analysis of trends in abortion politics using case studies from around the global north and south. It considers how societal influences, such as religion, nationalism and culture, impact abortion law and access. It explores the impact of international human rights norms, the increasing displacement of people due to conflict and crisis and the role of activists on law reform and access. The book concludes by considering the future of abortion politics through the more holistic lens of reproductive justice. Utilising a unique interdisciplinary approach, this book provides a major contribution to the knowledge base on abortion politics globally. It provides an accessible, informative and engaging text for academics, policy makers and readers interested in abortion politics.

This chapter discusses the development of the bio-medicalisation of abortion. Recent history reveals the key role played by pharmaceutical companies in the development of a medication to induce abortion (Mifepristone) and how localised knowledge amongst women identified the abortifacient properties of a second medication (Misoprostol). Whilst the bio-medicalisation of abortion was initially hailed as a way to put women at the centre of the process, its implementation was not without problems. The impact of commercial pressures on pharmaceutical companies is discussed, as well as challenges faced by those accessing the medication without adequate information on dosage and usage. The case study of Brazil highlights the hugely significant role played by women in communities experiencing multiple barriers to accessing abortion, sharing knowledge about medication which having been developed for other purposes, became known for its abortifacient purposes. The impact of the Zika virus in 2015 highlights how severe inadequacies within reproductive health policy affected women and their families. The chapter concludes by considering the impact of the bio-medicalisation on health professionals and the changing dynamic in the relationship between clinician and the woman seeking an abortion.

Reproductive rights are an under-theorised aspect of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, most clearly typified in United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 1325 and successive resolutions. Yet reproductive rights are central to women’s security, health and human rights. Although they feature in the 2015 Global Study on 1325, there is less reference to reproductive rights, and to abortion specifically, in the suite of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions themselves, nor in the National Action Plans (NAPs, policy documents created by individual countries to outline their implementation plans for 1325). Through content analysis of all resolutions and NAPs produced to date, this article asks where abortion is in the WPS agenda. It argues that the growing centrality of the WPS agenda to women’s rights in transitioning societies means that a lack of focus on abortion will marginalize the topic and stifle the development of liberal legalization.

Feminist critics of power-sharing argue that power-sharing structures privilege ethnic/ethnonational identity and impede women's descriptive and substantive political representation. This paper extends these arguments to consider the extent to which consociational theory addresses the role of civil society and women's political voice in postconflict societies. We argue that power-sharing is overly concerned with formal representation to the detriment of understanding the role civil society can play in peace building. Whilst we acknowledge the importance of civil society retaining a critical distance from political institutions, we suggest several mechanisms for incorporating civil society into power-sharing arrangements. We argue that a consideration of civil society can highlight the gendered issues that are ignored in power-sharing settings, and we conclude that a broader understanding of both “politics” and “conflict” is required for power-sharing to be more equitable to women's descriptive and substantive representation.

Pierson’s chapter addresses a topical and still fiercely contested issue for Irish Catholics. Gendered conceptualisations of nationalism present resonant imagery of women as mothers of the nation, often stereotyped in Irish nationalism through the highly Catholic image of the Virgin Mary. Viewing women’s key contributions to national identity through the role of motherhood creates assumed notions of nurturing and self-sacrificing identity. Abortion and its assumed rejection of motherhood crosses boundaries of ideal womanhood and as such is presented as abhorrent to Irish Catholic nationalism and to Irishness more widely on the island of Ireland. This chapter calls on liberal theological conceptions of Catholicism such as that voiced by Catholics for Choice to envision how abortion stigma could be broken down in Northern Ireland.

How abortion is dealt with in law and policy is shaped through the multiple political and societal discourses on the issue within a particular society. Debate on abortion is constantly in flux, with progressive and regressive movements witnessed globally. This paper examines the translation of human rights norms into discourses on abortion in Northern Ireland, a region where abortion is highly restricted, with extensive contemporary public debate into potential liberalization of abortion law. This paper emanates from research examining political debates on abortion in Northern Ireland and contrasts findings with recent civil society developments, identifying competing narratives of human rights with regard to abortion at the macro- and micro-political level. The paper identifies the complexities of using human rights as a lobbying tool, and questions the utility of rights-based arguments in furthering abortion law reform. The paper concludes that a legalistic rights-based approach may have limited efficacy in creating a more nuanced debate and perspective on abortion in Northern Ireland but that it has particular resonance in arguing for limited reform in extreme cases.