Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican-American War by John M. Belohlavek

Reviewed by: Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican-American War by John M. Belohlavek Amy M. Porter Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican-American War. By John M. Belohlavek. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2017. Pp. xii, 306. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8139-3990-2.) Women have played major roles in wars throughout American and Mexican history, and women have been greatly impacted by all wars, yet historians have only recently started to examine this topic in depth in relation to the U.S.-Mexican War. In Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican-American War, John M. Belohlavek dives into this endeavor, examining Mexican and American women who were actors in the conflict. He also explores the ideas that American men had about Mexican women and the consequences of such ideas. The task of studying women on all sides of the conflict is a major undertaking, but one that adds tremendously to the historiography of the U.S.-Mexican War and women's history. In telling these remarkable stories, Belohlavek examines how women in the United States supported or opposed the war effort. Turning to Mexico, Belohlavek relates the stories of the soldaderas who had long played a major role in the Mexican army as cooks, laundresses, nurses, and sometimes soldiers. In exploring the war's impact in New Mexico, Belohlavek studies two women, Susan Shelby Magoffin, who traveled the Santa Fe Trail with her merchant husband, and Gertrudis Barceló, also known as Dôna Tula, who rose to fame as a businesswoman in New Mexico. Belohlavek also examines the few women who traveled with the U.S. military, women who lived in Mexico, and women writers and editors who wrote about the war. The author continues by examining fantasies that American men had about Mexican women and the actual relationships between them. Finally, Belohlavek examines some Mexican poetry as well as American literature, songs, and poetry written about the war. There are many challenges involved in attempting to examine both American and Mexican women's experiences in the war. Sources on the American side, especially those written by women, are greater in number and more easily accessible than those written by Mexican women. Literacy rates for Mexican women were lower, and printed sources are scarcer compared with those portraying American views. As a result, the stories of American women come to life in this book, but the telling of stories of Mexican women is less complete due to source challenges. The chapter on women editors in the war is fascinating. Belohlavek provides in-depth profiles of three women who had different views of the war but exercised great independence for the time. Another critical chapter examines American men's views of Mexican women. [End Page 741] The writings of American men were sometimes contradictory and often racist and misogynistic, and Belohlavek provides insightful analysis in this section. He also explains the implications for Mexican women who worked for or had relationships with American men. Many of these women faced retribution, sometimes murder, for their interactions with the Americans. Belohlavek also describes the violence that Mexican women experienced at the hands of some American soldiers. Belohlavek does an excellent job connecting the historiography and histories of the U.S.-Mexican War, women's history, and the political history of the era. The author aptly explains how protest against the war was often tied to other reform movements, such as abolitionism and women's rights. The populace in the United States was torn over support for the war, and Belohlavek shows that women, too, were part of these debates. In sum, Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies enlightens readers about women and the U.S.-Mexican War. As Belohlavek notes, "This work seeks to explore and recognize the courage, spirit, and influence of women heralded and unheralded, of varying backgrounds and nationalities, who powerfully impacted the war that changed the continent," and he succeeds in this endeavor (p. 2). Amy M. Porter Texas A&M University–San Antonio Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

Reviewed by: Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican–American War by John M. Belohlavek Michael Scott Van Wagenen (bio) Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican–American War. By John M. Belohlavek. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017. Pp. 306. Cloth, $45.00.) The U.S.–Mexican war has experienced a resurgence of academic interest over the last two decades. Once considered a "forgotten" war, the 1846–1848 invasion of Mexico has provided contemporary scholars an oft-overlooked lens to analyze many of the political, economic, and social challenges of the era. In spite of progress, a significant hole remained in the historiography: a comprehensive analysis of the role of women in the conflict. John M. Belohlavek's transnational study, Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican–American War, has gone a long way in filling that gap. The war with Mexico required great sacrifice of [End Page 814] women on both sides of the conflict, although in very different contexts. Belohlavek places American women's experience within the setting of changing gender roles and expectations created by the Industrial Revolution. He similarly contextualizes Mexican women within the political and social instability of their newly formed nation. While each group labored under differing cultural limitations, both fought vigorously to establish their place within the traditionally masculine sphere of warfare. Belohlavek has a knack for narrative and brings to life the stories of individual women to better understand the challenges they faced as two neighboring republics fought over territory. Expanding beyond the titular roles, Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies documents women serving in a wide variety of positions, including guerilla fighters, combat nurses, seamstresses, porters, camp followers, journalists, financiers, and antiwar activists. Belohlavek examines these multiple roles from varied perspectives including the attitudes of Americans toward Mexican women and those of Mexicans toward American women. This transnational approach is particularly helpful in understanding the major cultural differences between the nations that exacerbated tensions along a tenuous frontier. Belohlavek's account of the women accompanying the Mormon Battalion is particularly interesting. Like the Mormon soldiers, these women suffered under the disdain and distrust of the army, yet marched thousands of miles in support of their husbands and sons. Mexican women in the conquered territories of the north proved far more generous in their treatment of their beleaguered Anglo sisters, suggesting an unspoken bond that surpassed politics and prejudice. Thousands of Mexican women also chose to follow their men to the theaters of war and shared in all the dangers and privations of the army, but without pay or glory. These soldaderas cooked, cleaned, and hauled equipment on campaigns, then rushed headlong into battle to nurse the wounded and comfort the dying. Indeed, contemporary accounts of American soldiers note the dozens of women who lay dead on the battlefields in the aftermath of the violence. Among these was the celebrated "Angel of Monterrey" who braved ball and shell to care for both Mexican and American wounded who littered the approach to this important northern city. To the horror of American troops, the unnamed Mexican woman was cut down by grapeshot, giving rise to numerous tribute poems and songs in the United States and paving the way for a larger acceptance of Mexicans in American culture. [End Page 815] While at times celebrated, Mexican women could just as easily fall prey to American violence. Volunteer troops were notoriously brutal toward local populations and at times raped and murdered civilian women, prompting families with resources to flee occupied villages for the mountains and countryside. While several past authors have cited American fascination with the "señoritas" they encountered in their travels in Mexico, Belohlavek delves deeper to examine the ultimate fate of budding romantic relations between enemies. While some Yankee soldiers overcame the racial prejudices of their culture, military regulations and family pressures from both sides doomed their erstwhile relationships with Mexican women to tragic failure. Poignant scenes of tearful separation likely occurred whenever American troops withdrew from occupied villages. Particularly moving are the stories of Mexican women whom their compatriots viewed as collaborating with the enemy. As is typical of forced occupations throughout history, after the military evacuated, civilians took their...

Reviewed by: The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I by Lynn Dumenil Anita Anthony Vanorsdal (bio) The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I. By Lynn Dumenil. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. xi, 340. $39.95 cloth; $38.99 ebook) [End Page 272] As Americans observe the centennial of the Great War, historians are exposing more about the lives of various actors in wartime mobilization and participation. Lynn Dumenil's history of American women's experiences during World War I provides both field experts and an interested general public an engaging narrative that encapsulates the political and cultural contexts, working lives, and national service opportunities that shaped women's abilities to contribute to the war effort. Dumenil weaves a carefully crafted synthesis of secondary sources on women's progressivism, wartime opportunities, political motivations, and personal desires to underscore her new avenues of research on what the war meant for American women in particular. While her focus is on "the way in which diverse women used the war for their own agendas of expanding their opportunities, sometimes economic ones, sometimes political, sometimes personal," she arranges her chapters to expose how women sought opportunities while encountering challenges from employers and unions, military and government policies, and cultural components that hindered their activism (p. 4). Dumenil does an exemplary job at weaving her new research and theories with a wide variety of secondary sources and reveals the nuances in women's lives that both helped and hindered their wartime participation. She employs a variety of contemporaneous accounts from newspapers, magazines, personal correspondence, films, photographs, and wartime posters alongside official government documents and war committees' reports to reveal that women's hopes for substantial long-term changes in politics, military service, professional advancement, and work opportunities would not last long after the armistice in November 1918. Dumenil does emphasize, however, that although long-term advancement in women's opportunities was not accomplished, the war did help to accelerate changes for women that would impact later generations during the New Deal and in the women's movement of the 1970s. While Dumenil's epilogue does provide an excellent explanation of the First World War's short-term impact on American women, [End Page 273] she does not offer much information on the state and local laws passed during the war, such as mothers' pensions, food benefits, state-supported health care for women and children, which shaped many women's daily lives into the 1920s and 1930s. She does a careful job of delineating the differences among women by class and race (concentrating on white and black women's different experiences), but leaves this reader desiring more information on how age, regional location, access to technological improvements, and club membership may have also segregated women and altered their wartime opportunities. Dumenil does underscore, however, that class and race shaped women's wartime experiences and activism, and she presents a careful analysis of the different ways gender dynamics complicated class and race. While focusing her analysis on racial and class divisions during the war, she also explores some of the subcategories that splintered politically active women in the 1920s and uses these experiences to highlight the lack of long-term change. Dumenil does an excellent job of providing a nuanced understanding of women's wartime experiences, including the political divisions among women, traditional gender role issues that were under siege during the war, economic concerns and the expansion of women's work opportunities, women who served overseas as nurses and aid workers for Allied soldiers, and the depictions of wartime women in popular culture. Rather than focusing on a single aspect of wartime experiences of American women, Dumenil offers a more complete, and more complex, view of women's war experiences that also offers potential for further research by scholars who seek to understand the Great War's impact on Americans, especially American women. [End Page 274] Anita Anthony Vanorsdal ANITA ANTHONY VANORSDAL recently completed her PhD at Michigan State University. Her current research focuses on the Woman's Committee for the Council of National Defense and women's social welfare activism during the Great War...

Enriched by the wealth of new research into women's history, No Small Courage offers a lively chronicle of American experience, charting women's lives and experiences with fascinating immediacy from the precolonial era to the present. Individual stories and primary sources-including letters, diaries, and news reports-animate this history of the domestic, professional, and political efforts of American women. John Demos begins the book with a discussion of Native American women confronting colonization. Leading historians illuminate subsequent eras of social and political change-including Jane Kamensky on women's lives in the colonial period, Karen Manners Smith on the rising tide of political activity by women in the Progressive Era, Sarah Jane Deutsch on the transition of 1920s optimism to the harsh realities of the Great Depression, Elaine Tyler May on the challenges to a gender-defined social order encouraged by World War II, and William H. Chafe on the women's movement and the struggle for political equality since the 1960s. The authors vividly relate such events as Anne Hutchinson's struggle for religious expression in Puritan Massachusetts, former slave Harriet Tubman's perilous efforts to free others in captivity, Rosa Parks's resistance to segregation in the South, and newfound opportunities for professional and personal self-determination available as a result of decades of protest. Dozens of archival illustrations add to the human dimensions of the authoritative text. No Small Courage dynamically captures the variety and significance of American women's experience, demonstrating that the history of our nation cannot be fully understood without focusing on changes in women's lives.

Reviewed by: Women's Antiwar Diplomacy during the Vietnam War Era by Jessica M. Frazier Frances P. Martin (bio) Women's Antiwar Diplomacy during the Vietnam War Era. By Jessica M. Frazier. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. 236. $80.00 cloth; $29.95 paper; $19.99 ebook) As the title suggests, Jessica Frazier's book Women's Antiwar Diplomacy [End Page 139] during the Vietnam War Era examines the role of women in antiwar diplomacy and activism during the Vietnam War. The main crux of Frazier's argument asserts the relationship between the American and Vietnamese women was not U.S. cultural imperialism, but rather a genuine collaborative relationship where each side actively worked to forward their own goals and agenda. Spanning from 1965 to 1978 Frazier documents the collaborative anti-war efforts of Vietnamese and American women and how the nature of the relationships forged by these groups changed over the course of the war as the nature of the Vietnam War also changed. However, while the war provides the context for her primary argument, the women's anti-war activism frames a broader discussion of the role identity and imperialism played in activism during the 1960s and 1970s. Frazier breaks the war into six sections, allowing her to focus on particular issues during each phase. First, Frazier looks at mothers as experts in 1965 to 1967 by focusing on the burgeoning activism of women's antiwar groups in the United States and Vietnam. Motherhood appears as a continuous theme throughout Frazier's argument. She illustrates how both groups used motherhood and maternal duty as a way to justify fighting against the war or fighting in it. After explaining how alliances formed and connections strengthened through international activism and conferences from 1968 to 1970, Frazier uses chapter three to discuss 1970 and the development of "Third World" feminist networks. The chapter focuses on African American, Chicana, and Asian American women activists and how they drew inspiration from the Vietnamese women in their different fight against sexism, racism, and imperialism. In chapter four she examines the years 1969–1972 and focuses on the struggle among feminist movements worldwide to include war as a feminist issue. Using the International Women's Conference as the backdrop for the discussion of war as a feminist issue Frazier shows that the feminist movement and the antiwar movement were hardly a homogenous group with identical goals and agendas. The last two chapters span from 1970–1978 and focus on the more practical ways that women's [End Page 140] antiwar activism impacted the discussion of the Vietnam War concerning women's rights and the conditions of Prisoners of War, and expose the shifting context of alliances between the activists after the war. Overall, Frazier has a well-developed argument aided by a rich set of case studies. By focusing on the individual's experience, she provides a densely woven analysis that propels her argument forward. Frazier also has extensive bibliography-based sources. Her use of oral histories provided the Vietnamese perspective vital to her central thesis and the incorporation of these interviews strengthened the overall narrative. By giving us a glimpse of the Vietnamese women's view, Frazier solidifies her claim of collaborative and mutually beneficial relations between the American and Vietnamese women. Despite the excellent use of oral histories, Frazier's analysis was from a primarily American or western perspective, which at times sidelined the voices of the Vietnamese women involved in the narrative. However, this does not lessen Frazier's contribution to the historiography. This book challenges previous conventions about the level of women's involvement in the anti-war movement and the type of relationships forged on an international level between Vietnams and American women. Rather than creating yet another imperialistic encounter between the United States and Vietnam, Frazier shows that these women came together to fight the imperialism that American intervention in Vietnam represented. Finally, this book shows the underlying complexities and intersections of identity and activism present in the antiwar movement around the world. [End Page 141] Frances P. Martin FRANCES P. MARTIN is a PhD student at the University of Connecticut. She currently researches...

Prenatal care health promotion education is an important strategy for reducing perinatal health disparities. The purposes of this study were to (a) identify differences between the health promotion content women wanted to discuss and the content women reported discussing and (b) determine whether ethnicity was related to health promotion content. A cross-sectional study used face-to-face interviews to obtain data about 159 Mexican American and African American pregnant women's prenatal experience. Women wanted more health promotion content than they discussed. Despite wanting information about more health promotion topics than African American women. Mexican American women discussed fewer topics. Ethnicity, number of topics women wanted to discuss, whether a woman had a primary provider, and type of prenatal provider model were also related to content.

Editors' Note Karen Powell Sears and Stacey L. Brown Recent public health, political, cultural, economic, and environmental changes have refocused public attention on women's intimacy, sexuality, family, and relationship experiences. While academic research in these areas increased in recent years, our understanding of Black women's experiences remains limited. Research and public discourse have often framed Black women's lives through a "problem and pathology" prism. In popular culture, a functional classroom to the masses, essentialist tropes of Black womanhood persist offering contemporary spins on historical notions of our sub-humanity reflected in exaggerations of our power, understatements of our vulnerability and denied evidence of our joy and pain. The storied history of academic research about Black women reflects patterns seen in the public sphere. Across disciplines Black women have been understudied and frequently misrepresented. The dearth of research about our organic needs and desires reflect the priorities of the gatekeeping power structures that define and govern the parameters of knowledge deemed scientific and worthy. We recognize that the opportunity to focus on Black women's experience- in the academy and in general social discourse- in ways that is celebratory and uninhibited is a rarely granted privilege. All too often definitions about what is worthy and valid knowledge reflects the same unequal power structures that question Black women's value outside of the academy. It has often been the case that "worthy science" reflects "outsider" imaginations at the exclusion of Black women's insider knowledge. Black and African Diasporic women continue to experience dramatic and rapid shifts in family/intimacy patterns worldwide. With global changes in Black and African Diasporic women's family and relationship formation patterns, discourse in sociology, psychology, Black Studies and Women Studies suggest a need for additional theoretical and methodological perspectives. [End Page 1] The need to engage these issues is of particular concern as crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate instability, and persistent anti–Black racism pose obvious threats to Black women's lives health and sense of wellbeing in the global context. This special issue attempts to respond to this need by exploring the nuanced experiences of Black women's sexuality, intimacy, and leadership from Black scholars from a range of fields including psychology, sociology, Black studies and women's studies. We are grateful for the courage and determination of academic pioneers, past and present, who have broken through erected institutional boundaries to share the insider stories of Black women's experiences. This volume is a collection of such pioneers, who offer new and renewed perspectives, illuminate social patterns that have been obscured and celebrate a range of Black women's humanity. The authors in this collection explore diverse meanings and constructions of intimacy, sexuality, relationships and satisfaction and contemplate Black women's vulnerability in ways that resist narratives of pathology and make visible offer powerful re-conceptualizations of Black women's humanity. [End Page 2] Copyright © 2023 James C. Wadley

The past 20 years have seen substantial developments in the historiography on women and abolitionism in the United States. These include a focus on the experience of African American women both as activists and as objects of the abolitionist movement. Recent studies explore the ways in which religion inspired and shaped American women's commitment to ending slavery. Important work has been done on the ways in which antislavery women functioned as political actors and the ways in which their efforts influenced antebellum American politics. Abolition historiography has benefitted from the Atlantic perspective as studies have explored the transnational networks created by British and American women and comparisons highlight new aspects of American women's experience in abolitionism. Lastly, studies of women and abolition from each of these perspectives have complicated and problematized the grand narrative of 19th‐century American women's history which enshrined a “path from antislavery to feminism” as a critical consciousness‐raising experience which inspired American women to take up the quest for their own rights.

This article assesses Mexican immigrant women's experiences of isolation and autonomy in three new destination sites in Montana, Ohio, and New Jersey. We highlight six case studies from our cross‐comparative data set of in‐depth interviews and field work with 98 women to illustrate the intersections between contexts of reception and gender relations in shaping women's settlement experiences. We find that women in sites with a concentrated Mexican population and a well‐developed social service infrastructure are relatively autonomous in accomplishing daily activities independent of their relationships with husbands or partners. In contrast, for women living in sites with few social support services, relationships with the men in their lives, what we call their “relational contexts,” matter for women's experiences of isolation or autonomy outside the home. Relational contexts have not been emphasized in previous literature on gender and migration but may be significant in shaping women's experiences across varying contexts of reception.

Reviewed by: From Marriage to the Market: The Transformation of Women's Lives and Work Sandra L. Albrecht From Marriage to the Market: The Transformation of Women's Lives and Work. By Susan Thistle. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2006. This work focuses on the latter half of the 20th century and what Thistle argues persuasively were the profound changes in American women's relationship to marriage, motherhood, and the marketplace. As women were moving into paid employment in record numbers during this period, Thistle draws our attention back into the home to better understand the connections between the domestic economy and women's growing market experiences. With rich detail, and a special emphasis on tracking the different experiences of African American and white women, she shows how familial and institutional arrangements that had supported women's domestic role collapsed in the last half of the 20th century. Post war expansion and greater opportunity, as well as the economic difficulties and economic necessity of the 1970s and 1980s, led to a dismantling of the domestic economy. Not only did women move increasingly to paid employment, but much of the economic prosperity of the period was garnered by the profits made from former domestic labor and goods production. The changes that have occurred for women are dramatic and often invisible; they also help to explain the increased struggles for women, especially those caring for children and dependents. An example of how dramatic these changes have been comes from Thistle's data collection on women's sources of economic support. In 1960, wives relied for the majority of their support on the incomes of their husbands; by 2000, however, this trend was completely reversed and wives relied on their own earnings for the majority of their [End Page 175] support. In 1960, African American women relied on income from husbands for 63% of their economic support while white wives relied on income from husbands for 73% of their economic support. By 2000, African American wives relied on their own earnings for 66% of their economic support, and white wives relied on their own earnings for 53% of their economic support. As Thistle points out, "Today, less than one-third of white women and barely over one-tenth of black women rely mainly on men's income for support. Instead, the livelihood of the great majority rests primarily on their own earnings." (171). Women's reliance on paid employment for earnings has not meant a complete diminishment of domestic labor nor an increase in extra time for the majority of women, but rather increased financial need and overwork with little social policy support. Even though American economic prosperity was significantly helped by moving earlier domestic jobs and homemade products into the marketplace, the profits of such a transferal to the market have not fallen to women and their families. As Thistle argues, ". . . the potential created by market takeover of women's household work has gone primarily to other groups." (172). This book is a significant contribution in understanding the complex links between home and work. It shows how the domestic economy influenced both paid employment and market conditions, and raises important questions about social policy and economic inequality in the 21st century. Sandra L. Albrecht University of Kansas Copyright © 2009 Mid-America American Studies Association

Postpartum depression (PPD) is a devastating mental illness associated with adverse health outcomes for mother, child, and family. Higher PPD prevalence in First American women suggests a racial/ethnic disparity, yet little is known about how PPD is experienced from their perspective. To 1) describe First American women's PPD experiences and the meanings they ascribe to those experiences and 2) describe the cultural knowledge, influences, and practices during the perinatal period. This phenomenological study used a community-based participatory research approach. Criterion and snowball sampling captured First American women who had PPD now or in the past (N = 8). Interviews used a semistructured guide and thematic analysis followed. Mean age was 30.25 years. Most women were multigravidas (n = 7) and rated themselves as "very" (n = 4) or "mostly" (n = 3) Native American. Women were mostly of low socioeconomic status and had a history of depression (n = 7) and/or a history of prenatal depression (n = 6). Themes: 1) stressors that contributed to PPD; 2) how PPD made me feel; 3) what made my PPD better; 4) heritage-centered practices; 5) support through PPD; 6) how I felt after PPD; and 7) am I a good mother? This study provides a better understanding of some First American women's PPD experiences that facilitates judgment of the importance of PPD within a cultural context. Clinicians need to create culturally appropriate responses to First American women's PPD needs.

The association between smoking and breast cancer has been extensively evaluated in epidemiological studies. Some, but not all studies found a positive association between smoking and breast cancer risk, especially among women with long smoking duration. Few studies have included Hispanic women. We evaluated the interaction between active smoking exposure and ethnicity using data from the Breast Cancer Health Disparities Study, a consortium of three population-based case-control studies including U.S. non-Hispanic whites (NHW) (1,525 cases; 1,593 controls), U.S. Hispanics/Native Americans (1,265 cases; 1,495 controls), and Mexican women (990 cases; 1,049 controls). Using multivariable logistic regression, odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to estimate the risk of breast cancer associated with active smoking exposure and assess differences in associations by ethnicity. We also tested for interaction effects between smoking and ethnicity by menopausal status and by history of alcohol use. Assessment of tobacco usage and active smoking exposures by ethnicity showed that there were significant (p value < 0.001) differences between NHW, Hispanic/Native American, and Mexican women with regard to smoking status, total pack-years, total number of smoking years, and average number of cigarettes/day, with women from Mexico smoking fewer cigarettes than women living in the U.S. Risk was increased only among Mexican women who were former smokers (OR, 1.43; 95% CI 1.04-1.96, p interaction=0.03) or who smoked for more than 30 years (OR, 1.95; 95% 1.13-3.35, p interaction=0.04), compared to never smokers. No significant associations were observed among NHW or Hispanic/Native American women. Among NHW premenopausal women, increased breast cancer risk was associated with smoking 20 cigarettes or more/day (OR, 1.61; 95% CI 1.07-2.41, p interaction=0.02), whereas for NHW postmenopausal women the association with the same risk category was null. Additionally, we observed positive associations with breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women from Mexico who were former smokers (OR, 1.65; 1.09-2.50, p interaction=0.003) or who smoked for more than 30 years (OR, 2.13; 95% CI 1.18-3.86, p interaction=0.04). Lastly, there was a significant positive association found among Mexican women who were former smokers with a history of alcohol use (OR, 2.30, 95% CI 1.01-5.21, p interaction=0.003), while there were no significant associations found among nondrinkers who were Mexican, Hispanic/Native American, or NHW in the same risk category for smoking status. Our data suggest that the association between smoking and breast cancer risk is significant among women from Mexico. Furthermore, menopausal status and history of alcohol use should be examined for their potential modifying effects when evaluating the association between cigarette smoking, ethnicity, and breast cancer risk. Citation Format: Avonne E. Connor, Kathy B. Baumgartner, Richard N. Baumgartner, Christina M. Pinkston, Stephanie D. Boone, Esther M. John, Gabriela Torres- Mejía, Lisa M. Hines, Anna R. Giuliano, Roger K. Wolff, Martha L. Slattery. Active smoking and breast cancer risk among Hispanic and non-Hispanic white women from the Breast Cancer Health Disparities Study. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Sixth AACR Conference: The Science of Cancer Health Disparities; Dec 6–9, 2013; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2014;23(11 Suppl):Abstract nr C86. doi:10.1158/1538-7755.DISP13-C86

BackgroundPregnancy yoga is a holistic practice to support the physiological and psychological changes women experience in pregnancy, with the potential to be offered by mainstream maternity services. Evidence suggests benefits of pregnancy yoga are reduced anxiety and stress, enhanced mood and sleep, with reported improvements in physical and overall wellbeing. Women report that yoga in pregnancy assists in their birth preparation and self-efficacy in labour, with improved labour and birth experience. To date, a Qualitative Evidence Synthesis (QES) of qualitative studies of women's experiences of pregnancy yoga has not been undertaken and accordingly, the literature lacks a high-level synthesis of women's first-hand accounts. MethodsThis qualitative systematic review aims to synthesise and present new evidence about women's views and experiences of pregnancy yoga. Qualitative studies reporting women's views and experiences of practising pregnancy yoga as a sole intervention, were eligible for inclusion. Systematic searches of eight academic databases, AMED, ASSIA, CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE, MIDIRS, PsycInfo and Web of Science, accompanied by extensive searches of Grey Literature, and evidence libraries, took place in May 2022. The methodological quality of included studies was formally evaluated, independently, by two reviewers using an adapted quality assessment tool. Data extraction followed and thematic synthesis, using the Thomas and Harden 2008 framework, was the validated method for the development of six analytical themes. ResultsSeven studies, providing the experiences of 92 pregnant women, were included in the review. The methodological quality of the studies was mixed, with three of the seven scoring highly and two scoring medium for weight of evidence. The three key synthesised themes were: Equilibrium; Personal Autonomy in Healthcare; and Connection. There were six analytical subthemes: intuitive knowing, embedding the practice of yoga practice, practical toolkit, holistic care, baby bonding and peer social support. ConclusionSynthesis of pregnant women's voices identified what women want - easy access to the holistic benefits of pregnancy yoga; what they recommend - pregnancy yoga provided as mainstream maternity support and what should be provided – pregnancy yoga for all women, not only those who can afford to pay; Paying attention to what women identify as important, brings us closer to a woman-centred maternity service.

Women who have had a cesarean section (C-section) and become pregnant again may choose to have a planned repeat cesarean delivery (RCD) or vaginal birth after a cesarean (VBAC). This study aimed to characterize the pregnancy and birth experiences of African American (AA) women who had a successful VBAC, failed VBAC, or RCD. Eligible participants (N = 25) self-identified as AA, had a C-section and a subsequent birth(s) in the past 12years, and were educated past high school. Each participant was individually interviewed via phone call. The Sort and Sift, Think and Shift method was used to evaluate interview transcripts to minimize researcher bias and emphasize the voices of the participants. The resulting themes included the impact of providers on pregnancy and childbirth satisfaction, the value of autonomy in maternal health decision-making, and the role that racism plays in AA women's birth experiences. Although some participants recalled a positive experience, the presence of limited autonomy, lack of support, and negative experiences with providers indicate that birth after a prior C-section for AA women can be improved. Providers should address their own racial biases and utilize the shared decision-making approach when their patients decide between a VBAC and RCD to improve patient satisfaction.

A qualitative research methodology incorporating a case study approach was utilized in this exploratory study that investigated the impact of family of origin dynamics on African American women’s experiences in the workplace. Ten single, African-American women participated in the study and were interviewed about their current work and past family of origin experiences. This research builds upon a previous study of White women (Philpot, 2004) and examines the extent to which individuals replicate the interpersonal patterns learned in their family of origin at work. Specifically, this study asked individuals to discuss five topics regarding their family and work-related experiences: relationships, authority dynamics, methods for dealing with conflict, role dynamics and influence of race and gender. Interviews were conducted by the same gender, same race investigator of the study. Case analyses were then completed for each interview and overlapping themes were examined across family and work domains in a side by side table. Findings from the study revealed that the participants did replicate some of the interpersonal patterns learned in their family of origin at work. Additionally, six major themes from the interviews were identified: (1) religion was important in participants’ family of origin; (2) female authority figures were dominant in participants’ family of origin and at work; (3) participants held various roles in their family of origin and at work; (4) participants dealt with conflict directly at home and at work; (5) race influenced interactions with family members and colleagues; and (6) gender influenced interactions with family members more often than colleagues. Implications for organizational professionals and managers are discussed. Due to the exploratory nature of the study, generalizability of the findings is limited. Instead, the findings should be used to contribute to future research in this area by incorporating larger samples of African- American women and exploring these issues in studies with other ethnic groups and men.