Female Relations Research Articles

Massive female schooling, matrimonial system, and gender relations in Maghreb

Des modifications inédites se déroulent sur les marchés matrimoniaux des pays maghrébins. Quel rôle a joué le système scolaire dans ces transformations ? La scolarisation massive des filles, la prolongation de la durée des études, la plus grande présence des femmes dans l’espace public et le développement de formes de mixité ont-ils contribué à ébranler les bases des stratégies matrimoniales et, plus largement, de l’organisation familiale traditionnelle ? Dans des pays où le statut des femmes est au cœur des problèmes de société, la scolarisation massive des filles est-elle un fait suffisant pour provoquer des changements sociaux qui ont pourtant résisté aux assauts de la modernisation coloniale ? Si elle a été sans conteste un facteur non négligeable du relèvement de l’âge moyen des femmes au mariage, peut-elle expliquer à elle seule l’ampleur de cette hausse ? Comment ces changements se sont-ils répercutés sur les relations au sein de la cellule familiale, notamment sur les pratiques du mariage et les rapports de genre ? Pour atteindre les objectifs assignés à ce travail et essayer de donner une réponse pertinente aux innombrables questions soulevées, les données publiées par les instituts nationaux de statistiques des trois pays sont mobilisées en priorité. Elles ont été obtenues par les recensements de période décennale et différentes enquêtes nationales menées parfois dans le cadre de campagnes internationales de constitution de bases de données (EADS, PAPCHILD, PAPFAM, etc.) Concernant la scolarisation et l’éducation nous utiliserons les données publiées dans les annuaires statistiques des trois pays et celles regroupées par l’UNESCO. Il en découle des changements profonds dans la position de la femme dans ces sociétés avec des inégalités importantes dans les rapports de genre.

What Is the Relationship between Inequity in Family Law and Violence against Women? Approaching the Issue of Legal Enclaves

“Family law” is the term applied to the legal regulation of marriage and parenthood within a society, and may serve to express a society's accepted ideals concerning male–female relations. Adopting a feminist evolutionary analytic (FEA) approach, we hypothesize that nation-states with higher degrees of inequity in family law favoring men, codifying an evolutionary legacy of male dominance and control over female reproduction, will experience higher rates of violence against women. This hypothesis is borne out in conventional statistical analysis, both bivariate and multivariate, suggesting that policy attention to family law so as to make it more concordant with norms of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) may have salutatory effects on women's physical security over time. These results may also have policy implications for societies with, or contemplating, enclaves of inequitable family law. Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home.—Eleanor Roosevelt

Jane Austen's (1775–1817) references to headache: fact and fiction

References to headache in Jane Austen's works, both fictional and non-fictional, and in biographical works undertaken by Austen family members have been collated. These multiple references suggest that Jane Austen used headache as a narrative device to reflect not only physiological bodily processes but also psychological states, possibly based on her own experience of headache and that of female relations and acquaintances.

Gender, Islam, and Democracy in Indonesia * By KATHRYN ROBINSON

This book, written by an anthropologist with several decades of research experience in Indonesia, has an ambitious aim: to offer the first interpretation of Indonesian politics, fully informed by modern gender theory, that examines gender relations as an aspect of the exercise of power in society. Robinson aims to chart the changes in gender relations in Indonesia through the twentieth century and the new challenges women are facing at the beginning of the twenty-first. She unfolds the diversity of gender orders in Indonesia through seven chapters. In ch. 1, she reviews the anthropological literature describing the range of gender orders that present differing opportunities and restrictions to women and men in the conduct of their everyday lives. With examples from the Indonesian Islamic populations of Bugis, Java and Aceh, she discusses the extent to which there is an Islamic dimension to the expression of gender difference, particularly looking at themes of kinship and marriage, property and inheritance, and ritual-religious practice. The main argument here is that the idealized male–female relations in the Suharto era did not adequately represent the variety of gender orders in the whole archipelago. According to the author, matrifocality in bilateral kinship is an important element with the potential to increase women’s sources of power in everyday life.

FRANCOIST POLITICS OF FEMALE IDENTITY: THE CURIOUS CASE OF LIDA VERONA

FRANCOIST POLITICS OF FEMALE IDENTITY: THE CURIOUS CASE OF LIDA VERONA

The Illusion of Equality: Machismo and Cuban Cinema of the Revolution

This article attempts to show how certain Cuban films both reflect and construct behaviour concerning male–female relations. In so doing, they illustrate how Cuban cinema provided a mainstream cultural forum for controversial and contradictory debates on gender relations. At times, films that attempt to produce images of gender equality, or at least the possibility of this, merely provide the illusion of equality while maintaining the status quo of patriarchy. That is, the images they present of male–female relations appear on the surface to represent an increasing desire to achieve absolute equality between men and women. However, close analysis of these films, using various tools of feminist and feminist film theory, reveals a continuation of certain patriarchal tendencies that the films themselves are attempting to criticise. The films to be discussed are: De cierta manera (Sara Gómez, 1974–1978), Retrato de Teresa (Pastor Vega, 1979) and Hasta cierto punto (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1983).

How female practitioners in Moscow view their profession: A pilot study

This pilot study investigated how female public relations practitioners in Moscow, Russia perceived their profession. The findings suggest that perceptions of public relations as a service-oriented profession are deeply rooted in the patriarchal tradition of the Russian society. In addition, results demonstrated that Moscow female practitioners articulated both advantages and disadvantages of viewing public relations as a service-oriented profession in Russia.

Women's contributions to American public relations, 1940‐1970

PurposeThis paper seeks to map the employment of female professionals to create a collective biography of women in US public relations from 1940‐1970. It aims to suggest that women were active leaders in many areas of public relations, despite the exclusion of women from most historical accounts.Design/methodology/approachThe author completed a content analysis of a women's professional directory published in 1970. This directory summarizes women's accomplishments during this critical time period in the development of the public relations profession. The sample of 520 entries was analyzed for demographics and career statistics in relation to social perceptions that prevailed during this timeframe.FindingsThe paper offers empirical insights into the work of female public relations practitioners. It quantifies employment in managerial and technical positions in a variety of industries, charts the trends in employment, and offers support for theoretical explanations for why women were essentially invisible in public relations publications and historical records.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings from this research are limited in that they are based on a directory full of self‐reported success stories. Therefore, additional research is needed before these results can be generalized to the population under study.Originality/valueThis paper creates a collective biography of women in public relations that complements the research that has been done on a few individual women. This research contributes to a more robust explanation of the development of US public relations.

Impacts of domestic water supply on gender and income: results from a participatory study in a drought-prone region in Gujarat, India

In this paper the value of an improved domestic water supply was investigated for economic development and gender relations in rural households in a drought-prone area. A comparative study executed with participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methods with groups of women from 11 micro-enterprises in ten villages and five control villages showed that,when an improved domestic water supply does not function, the entrepreneurs groups have a statistically higher loss of the economic use of water and time than the control groups. The extra income that women gain when the supply works and is used economically helps poor families to bridge the dry season. It could further be quantitatively proven that male–female gender relations were significantly better in the entrepreneurs group. This was not so for mother–daughter relationships, which gave new insights into the need to address gender equality issues with the women themselves and with SEWA, the supporting agency. These findings support the view that rural poverty and the status of women would receive a significant boost if policy makers focused on providing employment opportunities for women along with improved water supplies.

The Killing Joke of Sympathy: Chester Himes's End of a Primitive Sounds the Limits of Midcentury Racial Liberalism

“The Killing Joke of Sympathy” reconstructs the centrality of the “race novel” for the consolidation of racial liberalism as an official and limited state of antiracism in the United States after World War II. In particular, it considers the evidentiary and emotional values ascribed to literature by the Julius Rosenwald Fund, arguably the most influential philanthropy at mid-century dedicated to race relations. For the fund, literature was a privileged tool for antiracist social transformation because of its unique capability to arouse white sympathies. Jodi Melamed argues that such ideas shaped a dominant practice of reading that had a regulative effect, narrowing what counted as acceptable antiracism. Melamed reads Chester Himes's End of a Primitive as a novel where we see satire deliberately misfired in an attempt to dehegemonize racial liberal meanings secured through the discourse of “the race novel.” Featuring the murder of a white, female race relations professional by an African American author resembling Himes, End of a Primitive “predicts” (through metafictional address) that the force of racial liberal reading practices will cause the novel to be misread by white liberal readers as protest, rather than satire. At the same time, the novel constructs an imaginative exercise that dares readers to go against the grain of such reading practices, to experience the novel's humor, and to “get the handle to the joke” of their own confinement. For the reader who fails the imaginative exercise, End of a Primitive nonetheless debunks liberal ideas of sympathy as a guarantee of racial progress.

T03-O-07 Gender stereotypes in sexology and sexual dysfunction research

Major changes have occurred in male and female dysfunction research. Male erectile dysfunction has been re-conceptualized as an organic dysfunction, which marks a dramatic shift from previous conceptions of psychogenic impotence developed during the 60’ and the 70s. The release of sildenafil in 1998 was the corner stone of a new paradigm of treatments focusing on male penile activity, far remote from any psychological approaches. More recently, medical sexologists started to reconsider Female Sexual Dysfunction using the same organic biological model of sexual function. New pharmaceutical products are currently under trial for the treatment of this new category of female sexual disorder. But as opposed to the absence of public adverse reaction to the development of this approach of male function, many voices raised to oppose this new conception of female function. A major discussion took place in the British Medical Journal (2003) stating that female sexual function was not organically driven, but rather determined by the social, psychological and interpersonal context of female sexual activity and relations. One of the major dimension of this discussion opposed the so-called simplicity of male sexual function to the complexity of female sexual function. The presentation, which takes place in the field of scientific history will present evidence of the permanence of traditional social scripting of male and female sexuality and their influence in the most advanced scientific research in this field. Does sexology science also consider that men come from Mars and women from Venus?

Negotiating the public secrecy of sex in a transnational tourist town in Caribbean Costa Rica

My social positionality as an alleged sex tourist when I arrived as an `unaccompanied' woman traveling to a town in Caribbean Costa Rica to study women's adventure tourism, initiated a shift in ethnographic focus to female tourists' heterosexual sexual relations with locals. Using methodology that relies upon immersion I situated myself within the community and participated in everyday life in and beyond touristic events. I interacted with and interviewed female tourists predominantly, but also local men, local women and resident foreigners. This methodology was productive but presented a major dilemma for me: Where sex is both talked about and kept hidden, I had to negotiate the many layers and performances of the public secrecy about sex that pervade and play out in this transnational town, including how to transform `data' into representation. I conclude that the immersion of the anthropologist in the everyday lives of tourists in touristic settings reveals insights into the complexity of global sexual tourism, and presents problems too.

Structures and Subjectivities: Attending to Early Modern Women by Joan E. Hartman, Adele Seeff

MLR, 103.4, 2oo8 109I Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sagrario L6pez Poza provides a broader, historical overview of the Spanish emblem production, followed by some stimulating suggestions fornew research based on electronic editions. Ralph Deko ninck is less concerned with regional specificities thanwith the transnational practice of the Jesuits. Focusing on the relationship between symbols and meditation, Deko ninck emphasizes the pragmatic, rhetorical nature of Jesuit application of symbols. Daniel Russell concludes thevolume with a survey of new directions inFrench em blem studies, including thedevelopment of his own research from the analysis of for mal diversity tohis thesis of theemblem as a 'mode de communication' (p. I39),most fullydeveloped inhis Emblematic Structures inRenaissance French Culture (Toronto: Toronto University Press, I995). According toRussell, this new definition has ren dered the discussion about the relative value of text and image in the signification process redundant (p. 140). Even ifsome authors in this collection would probably disagree, thisprovocative perspective forms aworthy end to thisuseful volume. UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS ARNOUDVISSER Structures and Subjectivities: Attending toEarly Modern Women. Ed. by JOANE. HARTMAN and ADELE SEEFF. Newark: University of Delaware Press. 2007. viii+ 394 pp. $52.50. ISBN 978-o-874I3-94I-9. Structure and Subjectivities is an intriguing discussion of earlymodern women and gender, adopting a cross-disciplinary perspective which includes literature,history, art history, and musicology. It covers a broad geographical context encompassing the traditional focus on Europe and theWestern world, thus offering a worldwide perspective on the topic. The section 'Geographies and Policies' calls fora rethinking about binary divides. The idealized pictorial spaces of the Italian Renaissance city,and of femaleportraiture, are scrutinized inorder todiscuss theblurred boundaries between public and private, masculine and feminine (Adrian Randolph). Similarly, thepropelling force of female spirituality, inCatholic Europe, prompts a revision of the traditional distinction be tween religious and secular spaces, since sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious women operated within theconvent, aswell aswithin thehermitage, and thedomestic settingof theirhome (AlisonWeber and Craig A. Monson). This rethinkingofgender divides also concerns women's position in Italian economic life.Only by looking at areas such as reproduction, domestic and rural labour, and low-income work can we properly assess the full impact ofwomen's (and children's) work (JoanneM. Ferraro). 'Degree, Priority, and Place' challenges some of our main assumptions about oth erness, sex, and race. This is particularly important when we focus on areas of the world where Christianity was just 'amarginal curiosity' (p. 152). Chinese women's foot-binding changed between the fifteenthand seventeenth centuries, inconnection with market innovations, and with the co-operation of women who made and de corated their footwear, ultimately manipulating their bodies and the fascination for them (Dorothy Ko). In spite of the gender-unbalanced legal position of Ottoman women in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in law courts they enjoyed rights-regarding divorce and property issues-which fewof their Western counter parts possessed (Margaret R. Hunt). Back inEurope, printed discourses and images of same-sex female relations amounted not somuch to evidence of sexual desire as towomen's strategic claim to construct female political discourses in the emerging public sphere of the late seventeenth century (Susan S. Lanser). 'Built Environments' reconsiders relations between gender, space, and represen tations of the body. Thomas Jefferson'sMonticello house, and the hearth of his I092 Reviews Virginian plantation, serves as an example to discuss the ambivalent meaning of domestic space. Monticello was designed primarily to accommodate his own living and activities. Jefferson'sextended female familywho also lived in it-especially his well-educated daughter and granddaughters-understood this space as attractive and comfortable, as well as much too demanding and time-consuming tomanage, and therefore in conflictwith their intellectual hunger and desire for learning (Elizabeth V. Chew). In a different context, that of Renaissance Florence, female portraits of young women from prominent families, dressed with sumptuous clothing, bore an ambivalent meaning too.While calling for female visibility, they projected models of femininitywhich bore a distinctive meaning. They were signs of family status and wealth, which were fundamental for establishing useful family and marriage alliances. In the deeply patriarchal and highly mercantile Florentine system, elite women-their dowries and social capital-were constructed...

Experience of female public relations practitioners in Bahrain

The research addressed the gap in the literature about the experience of public relations practitioners in the non-Western society of Bahrain. The research aims to contribute to public relations scholarship by using a qualitative approach to study the experience of Bahraini women working in public relations. It used open interviews with Bahraini PR practitioners who offered rich insights on their “experiences” as women working in PR in Bahrain. The interviewees talked about various types of challenges when working in public relations such as cultural marginalization, relationship with colleagues, social domination, and marginalization of PR function. The research suggests combined liberal and radical feminist strategies to improve the role of Bahraini women in public relations. It recommends social and organizational reforms, in addition to empowering women to utilize their personality traits, communication behaviors and management styles.

An Analysis of Parent-Female Adolescent Relationships in Female Adolescent Suicides

This study analyzed Turkish female adolescent-family relations, which is believed to be one of the significant factors in female adolescents' suicide attempts, from a multidimensional perspective. The Parent-Adolescent Relationship Inventory, a multidimensional evaluation tool based on the behavioral family-system approach was used as a research tool. The inventory consists of the concepts and techniques of behavioral theory, family system theory, and cognitive theory in parent-adolescent' problems and conflicts. Based on these theories, the parent-adolescent relations inventory (PARQ), involves three main dimensions: problem solving and communication skills, cognitive/internalized beliefs, and functions and structures in family systems. There are two forms of the inventory, the adolescent form and the parent form. Only the adolescent form of PARQ, including 284 items, was used in this research. The inventory also consists of 16 subscales. It was adapted into Turkish by Eryüksel (1996). The subjects of the study were 52 female adolescents who had attempted suicide and were taken to the Emergency Department of The Faculty of Medicine in Cukurova University, and 52 normal female adolescents from two different secondary schools at the southern province in Turkey. The age range of the clinical and normal groups were 14-18 (x = 16). The results of the study revealed that the general stress level of female adolescents who attempted suicide is higher than those of normal groups. The examination of family structures of these female adolescents made it clear that mothers were the mediator between fathers and adolescents. It was also observed that both mothers and fathers shared many somatic concerns.

ESPAçO URBANO: DO ACESSO PELOS DIREITOS FORMAIS À COERçãO VELADA DA PARTICIPAÇÃO POLÍTICA FEMININA

Este artigo discute as relações sociais de gênero e a produçãode espaço, evidenciando a discussão sobre a participaçãopolítica feminina como forma de pressão ao direito de acessoà cidade. Dissertando sobre os diferentes papéis sociais dasmulheres, sua inserção e participação na política, o artigoestá dividido em quatro partes. Após uma breve introduçãoà temática, segue uma aproximação das sujeitas, ou seja,referencia-se a base metodológica da parte empírica que deuorigem a este artigo. As relações sociais femininas, seus potenciaise limites são ilustrados através de citações provindasda empiria sobre a participação de mulheres no OrçamentoParticipativo na cidade de Ponta Grossa/PR. A parte seguinteaborda a questão desse envolvimento político das mulheresdiante dos seus papéis de gênero assumidos e construídossocialmente. As considerações finais enfatizam essa interiorização,que influencia a atuação das mulheres tanto no espaçopúblico como no privado.

PR Bunnies Caught in the Agency Ghetto? Gender Stereotypes, Organizational Factors, and Women's Careers in PR Agencies

Against the background of the high feminization of the German agency sector, this article investigates 2 specific factors that help explain women's careers in public relations agencies: gender stereotypes and the organizational context. We present parts of a recent German explorative study: Long interviews were conducted with 13 female public relations experts to explain their view on women's situation in public relations in general and to describe their own careers. Findings reveal the evolution of a “PR bunny” stereotype that adds a negative touch to the female image as “natural born communicators.” Furthermore, our results support the argument that women seem to prefer (a) the organizational culture of public relations agencies, (b) agency-specific job tasks, and (c) agency-specific work processes. Possible consequences for practitioners and the profession are discussed.

Miles Franklin on American Manhood and White Slavery: The Case of ‘Red Cross Nurse’

On the eve of the First World War when Stella Miles Franklin was distressed by work, love, and a world gone mad, she wrote a 'curious story' (Coleman 165) titled 'Red Cross Nurse and Armored Chauffeur', amended in her handwriting with the subtitle 'Confessions of a Frustrated Grandmother' and known simply in discussions of Franklin's work as 'Red Cross Nurse'. Here the nameless protagonist tangles with the staples of the Franklin's feminist project: gender politics, sexuality and desire, the inadequacies of manhood, and the slavery of women in marriage and relationships. The heroine of 'Red Cross Nurse', however, is not the innocent Sybylla Melvyn of 'My Brilliant Career' (1901), narrating a story of gender and nationalist politics in late nineteenth-century Australia. She has grown into a modern heroine, the urban 'New Woman' who models female sexual autonomy and critiques gender relations in early twentieth-century America. Like her contemporaries Sybyl Penelo of 'On Dearborn Street' (1981) and Constance Roberts of 'The Net of' Circumstance' (1915), the heroine of 'Red Cross Nurse' is an independent working woman, faced with decisions about suitors and marriage. She chooses a different path from these heroines, a choice that provides strong critique of American manhood and sheds new insight on Franklin's personal and political passions during a decade of involvement with the National Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL). This essay focuses on cultural anxiety associated with gender and American manhood, with particular reference to fears of the white slave trade, as depicted in Franklin's 1914 unpublished short novel, 'Red Cross Nurse'.

Socio-demographic characteristics of female and male population of Central Serbia, at beginning of the first decade of 21st century

The existing state of gender inequalities has led demographers to give their contribution to the research of female and male population relations. Differentiation of demographic characteristics is an aspect of enlightening the social structure of population of both sexes and revealing gender differences as a consequence of demographic and social factors. Sociodemographic structures of population, according to data from the 2002 census were analyzed from the gender perspective. The accent was placed on the differences between male and female population in view of age, marriage state, education and economic activity. Gender inequalities were perceived not only on the level of Central Serbia but according to settlement type as demographically and socially different contexts.

The influence of social support on the duration of breast-feeding among antenatal patients in Ibadan

SummaryIn Nigeria, breast-feeding has been shown to be very closely related to infant survival. Prolonged and adequate breast-feeding is critical to most infants' nutritional health and growth. This study aims to determine the influence of family support on the duration of exclusive and total breast-feeding of infants of antenatal patients. This cross-sectional study was conducted between 1 September and 30 December 2005. The tool was a structured questionnaire. The main outcome variables were the duration of breast-feeding; both total and exclusive explanatory variables were mainly related to support obtained during breast-feeding from husband and older female relations. Husbands support significantly increased the total duration of breast-feeding by a mean of 1.69 months (95% CI 0.88, 2.51), however, exclusive breast-feeding was not significantly affected by the husband's support (OR 0.94; 95% CI 0.63, 1.39). Female support had a significant influence on both the total duration of breast-feeding which is increased by a mean of 1.08 months (95% CI 0.14, 2.02), and the adequate conduct of exclusive breast-feeding (OR 1.83; 95% CI 1.17, 2.86). The cultural practice of having additional female support in the postpartum period has been shown by this study to be beneficial. Therefore, this cultural practice should be encouraged and catalogued as a beneficial cultural practice. This practice is also cheap and sustainable.