Characterization Of Women Research Articles

Failure of cervical ripening with prostaglandin-E2 can it be predicted?

Objective. To identify factors predicting failure of cervical ripening with prostaglandin E2 (PGE2).Study design. A retrospective, cohort study of all women admitted for preinduction cervical ripening and failed to respond to PGE2 in comparison with randomly selected control group of women who underwent successful preinduction cervical ripening with PGE2 in a 3:1 ratio.Results. Overall 488 women were included, of them, 122 in the study group and 366 in the control group. A comparison between the two groups has revealed that maternal age above 30 years (OR = 2.7, 95%-CI 1.3–5.6), nulliparity (OR = 4.1, 95%-CI 1.7–10.0), prepregnancy BMI above 25 kg/m2 (OR = 3.5, 95%-CI 1.7–7.1), cervical dilatation of 1 cm (OR = 9.1, 95%-CI 3.5–13.4), cervical effacement of 50% or less admission (OR = 5.0, 95%-CI 2.2–8.8), and gestational age of 37 weeks or less (OR = 2.9, 95%-CI 1.3–6.6), are independent and significant predictors of cervical ripening failure with PGE2, and account for almost 50% of the variation in ripening outcome (R2 = 0.47). No association was found between the risk of cervical ripening failure and the indication for ripening, rupture of membranes, weight gain during pregnancy, weight before labor, diabetes or preeclampsia during pregnancy, and the newborn weight.Conclusions. Characterization of women who have a high probability for cervical ripening failure with PGE2 will help to improve consultation and may help choosing the optimal method for labor induction in these cases.

Characterization of Women under Polygamous Marital Relationship

Characterization of Women under Polygamous Marital Relationship

Can She Say No to Zhang Ailing? Detail, idealism and woman in Wang Anyi's fiction

This article is a study of aesthetic idealism that characterizes the fictional works written by the contemporary Chinese writer Wang Anyi during the 1990s. I start with a comparison of Wang Anyi with Zhang Ailing, arguing that Wang's ambivalence towards Zhang's aesthetics of details is translated into a dilemma the former faces in her own writing. On the one hand, Wang Anyi appreciates Zhang's passion for life's details. Wang's own works show a high penchant for details. On the other hand, Wang is critical of Zhang's aesthetic leap from the sensuous (detail) to the nihilistic (meaning). Wang's anxiety over the ultimate value of detail can be attributed to her ideological allegiance to a May Fourth leftist tradition as well as to her awareness of the derogatory association of detail with women's writing in China. So in what way can Wang Anyi say no to Zhang Ailing? How does she try to steer clear of the danger of ‘materialistic’ trivialization that she sees lurking in details? I observe that in Wang's fiction there is neither a full embrace of idealism nor a total rejection of detailed realism à la Zhang Ailing. Instead, Wang Anyi treasures the use of details as a signifying practice to embrace her idealism. In her 1990s' fictional works, Wang Anyi's effort to circumvent the dichotomy between detail and idea is complicated by her attempt to use details to reconstruct pictures of the past. There are several aspects to this issue. First, although nostalgic details in Wang Anyi's ‘memory stories’ help to give expression to idealistic longings of the author, they also tend to conspire with the official ban on the discourse of the traumatic socialist past. Second, while details are regarded as important in sum total, they are actually relegated by the writer to a secondary place as mere constructing materials to serve the function of bringing out the larger idea. In terms of actual narration, the highly ‘authoritative’ voice often suppresses the depth of individual subjects in her fiction. Third, Wang's ambiguity with regards to details and ‘feminine materials’ affects her characterization of women. A reading of Wang's two fictional works, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (Changhen ge) and Fu Ping (Fu Ping), demonstrates that the writer's instrumental approach tends to render female characters stranded between allegorical figures and individual subjects.

Characterization of Women's Occupational Musculoskeletal Exposures

Although women are often characterized as having "safe" occupations, they are at risk of experiencing occupational musculoskeletal injuries. This cross-sectional study examined the health status, occupations, and job tasks of a random sample of working women (N = 123) to characterize their risk of occupational injury. The women had been employed, most full-time, in the 12 months prior to administration of the telephone survey. The women tended to cluster into two types of occupational exposures. Overall, the women rated their health as excellent. However, those with diagnosed musculoskeletal disorders had significantly worse scores on two scales of the Short Form Health Survey than those without musculoskeletal disorders. Women are exposed to occupational musculoskeletal stressors that increase their risk of experiencing musculoskeletal injuries.

Classification of Setswana short stories

The aim of this article is to reclassify Setswana short stories according to their treatment of female characters. Critics such as Ranamane have classified Setswana literary works according to year of publication, without giving any valid reasons for this type of classification. This article, focusing on the development of the characterisation of women in Setswana short stories, classifies stories based on three periods, namely the phase of womanism, the experimental phase and the phase of feminism. In the phase of womanism, the outstanding features of characterisation of females include oppression and illtreatment, discrimination and segregation, ignorance, physical violence against females and limitation of the role of women to caring for the extended family. In the experimental phase, features include liberation of a female character, freedom of the whole society, agreement on marriage and working together as a team to solve the problems of society. The phase of feminism is identified by features of characterisation of females such as eradication of oppression, the fight for equality between women and men, removal of segregation and discrimination and also change across the whole of society.

The Dissenting Reader: Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible (review)

Reviewed by: The Dissenting Reader: Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible Esther Fuchs The Dissenting Reader: Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible, by Eryl W. Davies. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2003. 143 pp. $29.95. The virtual explosion of scholarly feminist writing about the Bible, the publication of commentaries, companions, dictionaries, anthologies and monographs on specific biblical women and on various aspects of their representation, requires theoretical and methodological reflection, an attempt to review and evaluate this burgeoning body of literature and to summarize its contributions to the field of biblical scholarship in general. Eryl Davies, a self described "non-feminist," argues in his book that the contribution of feminist biblical scholarship has indeed been weighty, and that mainstream Bible scholars must [End Page 211] recognize this contribution and engage in a serious dialogue with its basic insights. Though, as will be seen, Davies emphasizes the position of the reader as a central theoretical paradigm, he does not reflect on his own position as a "non-feminist," male reader. In his introduction, Davies explains that though feminist critique questions biblical ideology and though it challenges biblical "authority" or its traditional perception as sacred text, it can be justified on "inner biblical grounds" that is by biblical texts that already challenge male power. He suggests, in other words, that oppositional critics do not necessarily pose a threat to traditional and religious conceptions of the Bible. Chapter One, "The Patriarchal Bible," offers an overview of feminist critical investigations of the legal corpus, the biblical narrative, the Prophets, and Wisdom literature. He traces the origins of feminist criticism to Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the 19th century, and to Christian feminists like Phyllis Trible, Rosemary Ruether, and Fewell and Gunn in the 1970s and 1980s. Chapter Two, "Feminist Models of Reading," distinguishes between an "evolutionary" approach—that perceives a progressive improvement in the treatment of women; "cultural relativism"—a theory that insists on reading biblical androcentrism within the ancient cultural context of the ancient Near East; the "rejectionist" approach—that sees the entire biblical tradition as irredeemably patriarchal; a "canon-within-a-canon" approach—that singles out specific biblical texts as supportive of women and their plight within the patriarchy; and a "holistic" approach which argues for a broader generalization about the biblical treatment of women. In Chapter Three, "Feminist Criticism and Reader-Response Criticism," Davies selects one particular approach, namely adversarial or oppositional criticism, as the focus of his discussion. This approach does not give up biblical literature, but rather opts to explore it through dissent, or resistance. What he refers to as the "dissenting reader" is the feminist reader who questions male God-talk in the Bible, the tendency to marginalize women characters in the biblical narrative, and the tendency of subsequent interpreters to impose a male-centered coherence on the biblical narrative. Among the main practitioners of this approach Davies mentions Judith Plaskow, Mieke Bal, and Cheryl Exum. Though Davies should have attended to the history of feminist criticism, noting when relevant who the originator of this resisting hermeneutics was and how it was elaborated subsequently, he nevertheless does mention some of the key names in the field. In Chapter Four, "Unmasking the Text's Ideology," Davies exemplifies how a resisting reading works. By way of exemplification, he adduces two stories of rape, the rapes of Dinah and Tamar. Though victims of rape, both Dinah and Tamar are marginalized characters, [End Page 212] who are objectified as they serve to explain male action, while their own voices are suppressed. Davies goes on to exemplify the strategy of marginalization in the stories of biblical mothers, where women are sidelined despite their procreative role and where men go on to be featured as the prominent players in a genealogical saga. The "real" or literary punishment meted out to "rebellious" women (e.g. Miriam, Michal, and Jezebel), the affirmation of obedient women, like Jephthah's daughter, the characterization of women as deceptive, blaming women for social and national disasters, praising women for their contributions to patriarchy are examples of literary strategies in the service of patriarchal ideology. In Chapter Five, "Ideological Critique," Davies considers the historical reconstructions of the Hebrew Bible and the New...

“One of the last vestiges of gender bias”: The characterization of women through the telling of dirty jokes in Ally McBeal

AbstractBased on an audience-centered model of television discourse, we show that verbal interaction is one of the principal means of characterization in film. One of the linguistic phenomena screenwriters exploit and manipulate to develop their characters is verbal humor. For instance, the ways in which interactants on screen produce and respond to jokes is critical in their characterization. We look at an episode of the US American sitcom Ally McBeal, in which two women tell dirty jokes. We show that although the structure of both jokes as well as their respective performance equally meet the demands of good (tellings of) jokes, the screenplay is constructed in such a way that one of them fails to elicit laughter. This is achieved through creating expectations in the viewer prior to the telling of the jokes and through having the women frame their jokes dierently. This research has implications for the study of both gender and humor in conversation, for even though we look at constructed dialogue, it yields insight into underlying knowledge about real conversation.

Alienated, Independent and Female: Lessons from the Japanese Electorate

Analyses of past national election studies have categorized male independents as alienated and strategic, while women independents are apolitical and apathetic.These same analyses led to a wide acceptance of the strong relationship between resource mobilization and changes in political attitudes and voting behaviour This paper revisits this early characterization of women voters to assess the extent to which increased access to education and economic resources since the late 1970s has narrowed the gap between men and women, producing equal rates of men and women independents who are alienated and strategic.This effort is of particular importance given the increasing pool of unaffiliated voters within the Japanese electorate, with the proportion of women who are unaffiliated exceeding that of men. My research reveals that resources do not explain as much of the variation in political attitudes in the late I990s as they did 20 years earlierThis finding demands that we re-evaluate widely accepted predictors of women's voting behaviour to offer explanations for why our observed outcome departs from what theory would lead us to expect. More immediately, attitudes held by this important segment of the electorate highlight important strategic choices for Japanese parties.

Writing Out of Place: Regionalism, Women, and American Literary Culture (review)

Reviewed by: Writing Out of Place: Regionalism, Women, and American Literary Culture Donna Campbell Writing Out of Place: Regionalism, Women, and American Literary Culture. By Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. 422 pp. $44.95. With the publication of their anthology American Women Regionalists 1850-1910 in 1992, Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse redefined regionalism as distinct from, and superior to, the late nineteenth-century tradition of local color, a theoretical position solidified in a host of critical essays over the past eleven years. In its elegantly argued theoretical framework and insightful, detailed close readings, Writing Out of Place: Regionalism, Women, and American Literary Culture stakes out an even more daring position: a radical restructuring of nineteenth-century American local color, realism, and regionalism, one that moves gender from the margins to the center of the debate over what constitutes literary value. Put rather too simply, Fetterley and Pryse's contention is that except for a certain sharing of subject matter, regionalism is fundamentally distinct from local color. It presents a critique of "aggressive masculinity" and "imperialist aggression" instead of the simple nostalgia for a vanished past offered by local color (30, 239); it tells "unconventional, noncanonical, and counterhegemonic stories of female (and male) development across the life cycle" (30); it abjures conventional plots and consciously embraces the sketch as its signature form; it is "inherently dialogic" and recognizes place, like gender, as being a "discursive location" rather than as an essential entity (37); and above all, it substitutes "looking with" and the cultural healing and empathic narration that that entails for the coercive and judgmental "looking at" of the local colorists (36). Like feminist discourse, which it resembles in being spoken through women's voices and subject positions, regionalism makes readers care about those considered "minor, deviant, queer, or crazy by the dominant culture" (144). Indeed, with the exception of Charles W. Chesnutt, the writers who meet the criteria for regionalist writing are all women, among them Sarah Orne Jewett, Zitkala-¨Sa, Mary Austin, Sui Sin Far, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Alice Cary, and Mary N. Murfree. In establishing the boundaries of regionalist writing, Fetterley and Pryse present a number of arguments provocative and illuminating in their own right, beginning with the history of the movement. They contend that regionalism has an entirely different genealogy from local color, one beginning with Alice Cary and Harriet Beecher Stowe rather than the cruel humor of the Old Southwest, and, further, that literary history has reconfigured the origins of regionalism and local color to feature male authors and to contain it as a minor genre so that it could not challenge the primacy of male-identified realism. For Fetterley and Pryse, regionalism resides in queer consciousness, which they suggest may be variously defined as anything from a "shifting [End Page 96] signifier" used to construct "the normal" to lesbian desire (320). Further, they find the theoretical underpinnings of regionalism to be located in the stylistic features of the literature itself. For example, Fetterley and Pryse weave the phrase "free to say" from Rose Terry Cooke's "Miss Beulah's Bonnet" into their discussion of the neglected issue of theme in American fiction; in the story, the exasperated title character declares that she is "free to say" she never did like boys, a sentiment that the authors use to characterize other, similarly liberatory statements and motifs in the works. The framing description in stories by Freeman and interrupted narration in stories by Jewett likewise teach readers the sophisticated conventions of reading regionalism. In short, regionalism is less a literature of place than a literature of mind, an "eccentric" or literally "out of the center" space from which emerges a subversive counternarrative to the history of American realism. Despite their excellent analysis, Fetterley and Pryse's definition of regionalism as an empathetic, woman-centered genre will continue to be controversial. For example, the characterization of women's regional fiction as a nurturing, empathetic genre has already experienced challenges ranging from Richard Brodhead's characterization of Jewett as catering to tourist culture to Elizabeth Ammons's assessment of the "protofascist implications" of the Bowden reunion in The Country...

Characterization of women with a history of recurrent vulvovaginal candidosis

To characterize history, signs, and symptoms in women with a history of recurrent vulvovaginal candidosis (RVVC) and who had consulted with symptoms generally associated with the condition. Eighty-three women with a history consistent with RVVC were interviewed regarding 32 parameters and 10 signs found at the clinical examination were noted. Candida cultures were made from the introitus and the posterior vaginal fornix. Only in a few of the 43 women with and the 40 without a positive yeast culture could any of the many etiological factors that have been associated with RVVC be traced. Only two factors differed between the groups, namely yogurt intake, which was reported by 28 (68%) and 38 (95%) women in these groups, respectively. Vaginal douching was performed by 10 (23%) women in the Candida-positive group and by 17 (42%) women in the Candida-negative group. Pruritus and burning occurred in 31 (72%) and 22 (51%) of culture-positive patients, which was less frequent than in the culture-negative group, i.e. reported by 19 (47%) and 9 (22%) patients, respectively (p = 0.022 and p = 0.007). Edema (p = 0.026) of the vulva as well as erythema (p = 0.019) and edema (p = 0.008) of the vaginal mucosa, caseous discharge (p = 0.016), were found more often in the Candida culture-positive cases. History and results of clinical examination of patients with RVVC are not enough to distinguish those who are culture-positive from those who are culture-negative for Candida from the genital tract.

Two Good Women, or Too Good to Be True?

The history of women scientists often reads like a chronology of hard-working heroines. This, in part, is thanks to the work of Victorian and Edwardian biographers, whose characterization of women as domesticated and dutiful family members has been passed on. This essay considers how such narratives have contributed to our recollections of Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville.

Characterization of women with a history of recurrent vulvovaginal candidosis

Characterization of women with a history of recurrent vulvovaginal candidosis

The Depiction and Characterization of Women in Sport Film

Female involvement and accomplishments within sport have reached unprecedented levels. This has been due, in part, to the passing and enforcement of Title IX. Yet, few films have embraced female achievement in sport as indicated through their depiction as heroines (ìsheroesî). The author analyzed the salient similarities and differences between the depiction of women in sport theme feature films (sport films) before and after Title IX. Emphasis was placed on the aggregate number of sport films, type and content, and perceived social and cultural significance of female depictions. Content analysis and archival research methodologies were employed. These included the systematic examination and coding of all identified American sport films highlighting heroines from 1930-1999 (N = 41), as well as the analysis of critical reviews of the sport films which were unavailable for viewing. Based upon results there has been a notable increase in the depiction of women as heroines in sport films after Title IX. However, like their predecessors, women’s athletic prowess was trivialized in many of the films by their comedic themes and attentions to heterosexual attractiveness. These findings, as well as others, raise intriguing questions regarding the messages communicated through sport films.

The "Dual"-ing Images of la Malinche and la Virgen de Guadalupe in Cisneros's The House on Mango Street

In Some More, a story from Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, two young girls discuss nature of snow: There ain't thirty different kinds of snow, Lucy said. There are two kinds. The kind and dirty kind, and dirty. Only two. There are a million zillion kinds, says Nenny. No two exactly alike. Only how do you remember which one is which? (35) At first glance, girls' conversation appears to be a bit of childish nonsense, and, on a surface level, is. Read in a broader context, however, Nenny and Lucy's debate highlights a conflict that is at heart of Cisneros's work: insistence on culturally defining world by a rigid set of black/white, good/bad, clean/dirty dualities, versus reality of individuality, uniqueness, and infinite differentiation. Cisneros comments on difficulties inherent in this clear-cut dichotomy, and she relates this binary specifically to Mexican influences in her life and writing: Certainly that black-white issue, good-bad, it's very prevalent in my work and in other Latinas. We're raised with a Mexican culture that has two role models: La Malinche y la Virgen de Guadalupe. And you know that's a hard route to go, one or other, there's no in-betweens. (Rodriguez-Aranda 65) According to Cisneros, then, females, like snow, are not seen in Latino culture as unique individuals but are labeled as either good women or bad women, as clean or dirty, as virgins or malinches. Cisneros is not first writer to acknowledge difficulties in dealing with this duality nor cultural archetypes upon which is based. As Luis Leal observes, the characterization of women throughout Mexican literature has been profoundly influenced by two archetypes present in Mexican psyche: that of woman who has kept her virginity and that of one who has lost it (227).(1) These archetypes, embodied in stories of la Malinche, violated woman, and la Virgen de Guadalupe, holy Mother, sharply define female roles in Mexican culture based on physical sexuality; however, as historical and mythical figures, these two archetypes take on both political and social significance that also influence perceptions of femininity in Latin American world. As Mexican manifestation of Virgin Mary, la Virgen de Guadalupe is religious icon around which Mexican Catholicism centers. Consequently, versions of her historic origin are prevalent throughout national literature. Although several variations of story of Virgin's initial apparitions exist, Stafford Poole identifies version published in 1649 by Vicar of Guadalupe, a priest named Luis Laso de la Vega, as definitive source (26). According to Poole's translation of de la Vega,(2) la Virgen de Guadalupe originally appeared to a converted Indian, Juan Diego, in 1531, on hill of Tepeyac, identifying herself as mother of great true deity God (27). The Virgin tells Juan Diego that she ardently wish[es] and greatly desire[s] that they build my temple for me here, where I will reveal ... all my love, my compassion, my aid, and my protection (27). Diego immediately proceeds to bishop in Mexico City, but he is greeted with disbelief. On his second visit, bishop asks Diego for proof of apparition. The Virgin sends Diego to top of hill, where he gathers every kind of precious Spanish flower, despite fact that these flowers are out of season and do not grow on that hill, and Virgin places them in his cloak (27). When Diego visits bishop, bishop's servants try to take some of blossoms, but they turn into painted flowers. Finally, when Diego sees bishop and opens his cloak, flowers fall out, and an imprint of Virgin is left on lining of cloak. The bishop becomes a believer, begs for forgiveness, and erects shrine to la Virgen de Guadalupe on hill of Tepeyac. …

Dress Reform and the Bloomer

In the mid-nineteenth century, the ideology of separate spheres for men and women dictated the nature of their activities and was both symbolized and reinforced by their clothing. If the saying clothes make the man is true, it was doubly so for the Victorian woman. A writer of the time noted, Fashion says that the chief use of woman is to exhibit dry goods fantastically arranged on her person (Russell 500). The accuracy of this statement was evident in the extensive wardrobes of middle- and upper-class women of the period. Composed of ornamental, cumbersome, impractical garments, the wearer was rendered largely incapable of participating in public life and relegated to the domestic sphere assigned to women. Several groups within society recognized the absurdity of women's fashions and shared commitment to reforming dress in spite of emphasizing different concerns. Orthodox or allopathic physicians were interested in dress reform due to the health effects of the corset and petticoat and their impact on childbearing, central responsibility within woman's sphere. Practitioners of alternative medicine, including hydropathy or the water-cure, emphasized good health as right of all individuals, including women, and believed that without dress reform, women's health would continue to be compromised along with their achievements. Feminists, too, acknowledged the health effects of the day's fashions but also called attention to dress as an impediment to women's full participation in society and their freedom to choose their own course in life. While each of these interested parties contributed to dress reform at various stages, it was the mainstream feminists, under the leadership of Amelia Bloomer and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who brought dress reform to the attention of society with the introduction of the Bloomer costume. Ironically, it was also these same feminists, including Bloomer and Stanton who, in their promotion of women's rights, were among the first to abandon wearing the new costume. In Beyond Her Sphere, Barbara Harris identifies four ideas that formed the cult of true womanhood in the nineteenth century. These included, a sharp dichotomy between the home and the economic world outside that paralleled sharp contrast between female and male natures, the designation of the home as the female's only proper sphere, the moral superiority of woman, and the idealization of her function as mother (33). Together, these interconnected ideas outline the dominant nineteenth-century view of women and provide the foundation upon which their assigned role was built. As the United States moved from rural, agrarian society to nation of industrial, urban centers, Americans felt the anxiety of such significant change and the weakening of traditional class distinctions (Berg 61). The nature of work altered as the location of employment shifted from the home to places of industry, and wealth, as source of security in changing world, was sought to provide identity and to obtain an elevated position in new hierarchy. Increasingly, the home, identified as women's sphere, was segregated from what was seen as the capitalistic, base world of the workplace, recognized as the domain of men. Having lost the tranquility of the rural countryside, men sought comfort in their homes, viewing them as havens in which the financial rewards of labor were enjoyed and displayed. Women oversaw as well as participated in this display of affluence. Just as the homes of the wealthy were decorated with satin and velvet draperies, rich Axminster carpets, marble and inlaid tables, and large lookingglasses, the style in general being Parisian, so were women adorned in the latest, most extravagant fashions from Paris (Berg 61-62). Both man's home and wife served to proclaim his financial success and to elevate his position in society. This relationship between men and women, in which men participated in the public realm for economic gains while women remained in the home, became entrenched within society, reinforced by men's characterization of women. …

Women in Xhosa drama: dramatic and cultural perspectives

The aim of this article is to explore the influence of culture in the characterisation of women in Xhosa drama. This will of necessity require a synthetic analysis of various dramas as regards common themes and the cultural properties they reflect. The approach to the discussions will lay more emphasis on the establishment of the full range of complexity of women in Xhosa drama in order to determine whether differences can be identified among various dramas, as regards the depiction of women characters and how such possible differences may reflect differences in the cultural role and status of women in society. Through such a comparison, hopefully, it can be determined whether the depiction of women in these works has kept pace with the strides women have taken in modern day society. An important aim will thus be to establish whether women in literature are always depicted as victims or whether there are indications in drama depictions of women that perceptions of their cultural role and status are undergoing changes.

Risk factors for infection in women undergoing testing for Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Manitoba, Canada.

Despite sharing common modes of transmission, characteristics of individuals infected with Chlamydia trachomatis differ in several respects from those with Neisseria gonorrhoeae infection. Further characterization of women at high risk for chlamydial infection is needed to deliver appropriate and effective preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic care to this population. The demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of women with laboratory confirmed chlamydia, gonorrhea, or coinfection were compared with those of control women who tested negative for both pathogens. A random sample of 400 women in Manitoba, Canada, who had undergone testing for sexually transmitted diseases at a public health laboratory in 1988 were studied. After linkage with medical insurance and census databases, logistic regression analysis was used to compare age, ethnicity, urban status, and mean income (using postal codes) of women with gonorrhea alone, chlamydia alone, and coinfection, with the same data for women who tested negative for both organisms. Young age, North American Indian status, urban residence, and low mean income according to postal code were significantly associated with gonococcal and chlamydial infection in the study population, compared with women who tested negative for both infections. Young age, Indian status, and urban residence also were associated with gonorrhea infection alone. Only young age and Indian status were associated with chlamydial infection. Mean incomes of women with chlamydial infection alone and control subjects were higher than those of women with gonorrhea and gonorrhea and chlamydia coinfection. Differences in the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of women with gonorrhea, chlamydia, and coinfection suggest the existence of multiple reservoirs of infection due to these agents in the study population. The preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic strategies of sexually transmitted disease control programs must be adapted to the individual needs of identified high-risk groups.

Complex statistical characterization of women's body measurements

670 young Estonian female students of the Tartu University (aged 18-22 years) were examined anthropometrically (37 body measurements and 10 skinfolds). By means of multidimensional statistical analysis we found that the woman's body as a whole is a linearly well-correlated system. The leading measurements are height and weight, which account for 50% of the variability of all the other measurements, while individual variability makes up 50%. There are no other body measurements besides weight and height that can give a reliable description of the general build of a woman's body. Variations in body height-weight sizes lead to systematic changes in the length, breadth and depth measurements, circumferences and body proportions. Comparative changes of body proportions in the general contingent and in the groups of purely pyknic and leptosomic women are based on the corresponding values of their body height and weight. These findings lead to the conclusion that the anthropological whole body primary model may be a classification of women's body height and weight.

Nietzsche's Case: Philosophy as/and Literature (review)

378Philosophy and Literature Nietzsche's Case: Philosophy as/and Literature, by Bernd Magnus, Stanley Stewart, and Jean-Pierre Mileur; 284 pp. NewYork: Routledge, 1993, $52.50 cloth, $16.95 paper. This book sets out to tackle the formidable corpus of Friedrich Nietzsche from the points ofview ofboth literature and philosophy, to "bring conventionally marked 'philosophic' and 'literary' texts into conversation with one another in a way never done before" (p. 2) . I am not sure the authors are as innovative as they claim—after all, poststructural literary critics are continually straying into the textual territory once clearly marked "philosophic"—but it certainly proves to be a most fruitful enterprise with regard to Nietzsche. The authors' collaboration (Magnus is a philosopher, Stewart and Mileur are teachers of English) offers numerous insights into the vexed relationship of these disciplines, and most substantially, a provocative re-viewing of Nietzsche's eclectic work as—in effect—a complex, even tortuous allegory of writing. With this view in mind, the authors work hard to represent Nietzsche's seminal constructs—Eternal Recurrence, Will to Power, the Übermensch et al.— as so many textual strategies, occasions for the reader, in Roland Barthes's terms, to write herself into the experience of reading. This argument is elaborated through a series of provocative, detailed readings of Towards the Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of tL· Idols, and—most exhaustively—Thus Spake Zarathustra. The authors consider a number of pressing Nietzschean issues, including the narrator/speaker's relationship with his readers—"Some are born posthumously," observes Nietzsche modestly in Ecce Homo—the rhetorical tropes and ploys of his writing (chiefly, say the authors, the device of hyperbole) and—in sum—the radical kind of narrative that Nietzsche is writing. For example: in Twilight of the Idols, assert the authors, Nietzsche frustrates our deep-seated desire for narrative closure, creating instead "an alternative definition of the protagonist's place in an unfinished story which no one is writing, about characters with no specifiable or necessary traits, whose destiny cannot be known" (p. 74). In particular, the relation of reader to writing is marked, the authors tell us, by Nietzsche's own implicated sense of the world-as-text: "For Nietzsche seems to look on the world, not securely from without (as if it were a sort of artwork) , but ... as if from within an unfolding text whose alienness we must find a way to make our own" (p. 134). Accordingly, the constructs which Nietzsche "embodies" rather than "expresses" (in the author's terms) are spurs to the imagination of the (attentive, perhaps unborn) reader: "Rhetorically, the questions propounded [in TL· Gay Science or Thus Spake Zarathustra] insinuate that a bland or neutral response ('So who cares?') is impossible. Both fictive representations exclude apathy as an option" (p. 114). One of the most interesting aspects of the book, from the point of view of both philosophic and literary readers, is the "conversation" initiated between Reviews379 Nietzsche and various seminal figures in the English literary tradition. This is not to say that Magnus, Stewart, and Mileur assert "influences" on Nietzsche: they demonstrate, most effectively in some cases, that great literature embodies the complex constructs that Nietzsche is after—that Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence," say, or Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," reveal Eternal Recurrence, or an authorial Will to Power, to be the complex writerly strategies they are. And yet, there are problems with this cheerfully postmodern mode of exegesis. Try and textualize as one might, there are awkward problems for conduct contained in Nietzsche's writings—for example, his characterization of women is more (ethically) disturbing than our authors' rather blithe rhetorical concerns allow—and these problems remain after reading this study. To represent epistemology as literary epiphany reduces Nietzsche's claims to being a philosopher, in the sense of one who engages in serious, sustained attention to the problems of living—outside the text. Magnus, Steward, and Mileur may have given us a Nietzsche who is a marvelous writer—the only begetter of, say, Foucault and Derrida—but they may just have lost us a powerful agent who ventures beyond writing. And that would be a pity. University...

Women Writers and Women Rulers: Rhetorical and Political Empowerment in the Fifteenth Century

The first prose novels in the German language have been attributed to two writers of the late Middle Ages, Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken (c. 1393-1456) and Eleonore von Österreich (1433-1480). These Early New High German texts have been typed by scholars as Trivialliteratur , a classification this essay questions. Eleonore and Elisabeth transform their source texts, chansons de geste , to increase the political role for women. I argue that the authors' own international political skill and marital experience affected their revisions. Rhetorically, women are depicted as speaking honestly, unlike the characterization of women's speech so prevalent in medieval misogynistic texts. Finally, this essay suggests future theoretical approaches for analyzing these works. (SSM)