By Sara De Vido

Violence against women is characterised by its universality, the multiplicity of its forms, and the intersectionality of diverse kinds of discrimination against women. Great emphasis in legal analysis has been placed on sex-based discrimination; however, in investigations of violence, one aspect has been overlooked: violence may severely affect women's health and access to reproductive health, and State health policies might be a cause of violence against women. Exploring the relationship between violence against women and women's rights to health and reproductive health, Sara De Vido theorises the new concept of violence against women's health in international law using the Hippocratic paradigm, enriching human rights-based approaches to women's autonomy and reflecting on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination. At the core of the book are two dimensions of violence: horizontal 'interpersonal', and vertical 'state policies'. Investigating these dimensions through decisions made by domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies, De Vido reconceptualises States' obligations and eventually asks whether international law itself is the ultimate cause of violence against women's health.

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press,  2020. 273p.

By Cesraéa Rumpf

Recovering Identity examines a critical tension in criminalized women’s identity work. Through in-depth qualitative and photo-elicitation interviews, Cesraéa Rumpf shows how formerly incarcerated women engaged recovery and faith-based discourses to craft rehabilitated identities, defined in opposition to past identities as “criminal-addicts.” While these discourses made it possible for women to carve out spaces of personal protection, growth, and joy, they also promoted individualistic understandings of criminalization and the violence and dehumanization that followed. Honoring criminalized women’s stories of personal transformation, Rumpf nevertheless strongly critiques institutions’ promotion of narratives that impose lifelong moral judgment while detracting attention from the structural forces of racism, sexism, and poverty that contribute to women’s vulnerability to violence.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2023. 234p

Edited by Carol H. Poston

FROM THE PREFACE: “In 1792 a book appeared in London which set out the claim, dramatically and classically, that true freedom necessitates the equality of women and men. Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was so provocative and popular that a second edition appearedin the same year, and Dublin, Paris, and American editions soon followed. The history of the subsequent editions of A Vindication of the Rights of Wcman closely parallels the vicissitudes of the women's movement: when feminism as a political cause comes to the fore, as it periodically does, Mary Wollstonecraft's work is one of the first to be reissued. Yet after nearly 175 years of republication and commentary, the book has never been annotated, nor has there been (save in the case of facsimile editions) an attempt to preserve Wollstonecraft's prose exactly as she wrote it…”

Norton. W.W. Norton. 1975. 248p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP.