Female Relations Research Articles

Cognitive communication competence within public relations practitioners: Examining gender differences between technicians and managers

This study examines gender differences within public relations practitioners. Of specific interest was the role that cognitive communication competence played within public relations managers and public relations technicians. Public relations practitioners completed a questionnaire that included the Duran and Spitzberg's [Duran, R. L., & Spitzberg, B. H. (1995). Toward the development and validation of a measure of cognitive communication competence. Communication Quarterly, 43(3), 259–275] Cognitive Communication Competence Scale. Participants self-identified whether they were a technician or a manager. Results showed that male public relations managers had significantly higher cognitive communication competence than male public relations technicians. However, the hypothesis that female public relations managers would have higher cognitive communication competence than female public relations technicians was not supported. Also, this study found no significant gender differences with levels of cognitive communication competence. However, female technicians have significantly higher cognitive communication competence than male technicians.

The “Ghosting” of Incest and Female Relations in Harriet Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci

Viewed within the context of mid-nineteenth-century attitudes toward gender and sexuality, Harriet Hosmer's sculpture Beatrice Cenci reveals that the artist recognized ways in which texts about Beatrice Cenci “ghosted” her status as a victim of incestual rape. The sculpture's subject, patricide in retaliation for incest, intersects with the artist's unconventional lifestyle and sexuality. These themes derive from society's containment and condemnation of sexuality, Hosmer's interest in unconventional behavior and ambivalences about normative sexuality, Cenci's radical striking back against patriarchal oppression, and the nineteenth-century women's movement.

BIOMETRY AND DEMOGRAPHY OF THE INVASIVE CRAYFISH ORCONECTES LIMOSUS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Biometry, population data and selected ecological parameters of populations of the spiny-cheek crayfish, Orconectes limosus, were measured to evaluate the differences between “marginal” (short-time, situated on margins of an area) and “residential” (longterm, well established inside an area) populations of this invasive crayfish. We selected three types of localities: 1. Large rivers – residential (Labe, Vltava); 2. Brooks (small and shallow running waters) – marginal; 3. Isolated standing waters – residential (old sandpits or flooded quarries). No significant differences in the total body length of crayfish were found between running and standing water localities as a whole, or between marginal and residential populations from running waters. There was, however, a low but distinct difference in the body weight between crayfish from brooks and other waters. Larger specimens (up to 116.5 mm in body length) were found only in isolated standing waters, whereas no crayfish longer than 100 mm were found in the rivers. The sex ratio of the crayfish was almost equal in rivers and isolated waters; males were more numerous in brooks. There was a significant difference between male and female body weight-length relations.

ADAM SMYTH, A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth-Century England. Pp. xxv + 214. Woodbridge and Rochester, New York: Boydell and Brewer, 2004 (ISBN 1 84384 009 X)

APPEARING in the series Studies in Renaissance Literature, this collection offers a valuable approach to socializing and sociability, and one that raises pertinent issues about male bonding and male–female relations. Some of the essays, such as Charles Ludington's ‘The Politics of Wine in England, 1660–1714’, can readily be located in the world of historical scholarship, but others are more obviously literary in their interests. Karen Britland considers ‘Wine and Women in Early Modern Drama’, with particular reference to John Marston's The Wonder of Women, or The Tragedie of Sophonisba, as well as with interesting discussions of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Troilus and Cressida. The central symbol is Circe's cup, and Britland suggests that, while woman is central to the good functioning of society through her roles as mother and housekeeper, yet she is a constant reminder of death and mutability, intoxicating and confounding the senses like wine. Susan Owen takes the story forward into Restoration Comedy, suggesting that drink provides a way to explore the themes of sex and power. She argues that in Aphra Behn's The Rover, the treatment of drink reveals Behn's ambiguity about libertinism, the drunken rake becoming a predator, while in William Wycherley's The Country Wife, drink becomes central in an altered balance of power between the sexes. Lady Fidget's drinking song reveals that drink is the agent of women's emancipation, with men becoming marginal, and simply instrumental to women's purposes. Charlotte McBride uses the characterization of the Englishman as a beer-drinker to discuss national stereotyping in early-modern culture, and indicates how the representation of the Englishman as a beer-swilling drunkard reveals public concerns and subversive placings.

Multiculturalism in the Public Relations Curriculum: Female African American Practitioners' Perceptions of Effects

This study investigated how a sample of female African American public relations practitioners view multiculturalism in the public relations curriculum and its effects on a feminized field that employs few women of color and where even fewer achieve senior-level management status. Focus groups were conducted in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. Respondents shared anecdotes about workplace experiences that suggest multiculturalism is not being attended to at the college level and offered specific suggestions for public relations curriculum improvements.

Islamic societies in practice

Originally written in the wake of the Gulf War, this book introduced the West to everyday Arab-Islamic cultures and societies, humanizing the region and its people. It venlured behind the handlines to offer a positive, constructive view of Islam and Muslims, showing how Islam is lived and practiced in daily life. Now revised and expanded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Islamic Societies in Practice embraces the breadth of global Islam with significant new material on Islam in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States, as well as the Middle East New maps and illustrations are included, detailing the diversity and reprosentation of Islam and Muslims throughout the world. Additional material includes discussions of male and female relations; folk Islam, popular expressions of faith, and the five pillars; Sufism, including the Turkish Dervishes; ethnic and racial differences in the Muslim world; Islamic law and the application of harsh punishments; political Islam and the future of the state in the Islamic world; and the many voices of progressive Muslims - feminists, human rights activists, and anti-extremist writers.

The wisdom of Semonides fr. 7

Semonides fr. 7, for a long time one of the poor relations of archaic literature, has recently been basking in the attentions of both literary critics and historians. A comic catalogue of the types of women created by Zeus, each of them derived from an animal, insect or inanimate material and nearly all of them vicious, it has been connected with Hesiod's myth of Pandora and other stories in which women are seen as dangerously and subversively different from men. Along with other invective iambic poetry, it has been sited in the symposium, where scholars have suggested that the exclusion and degradation of women helped to create and reinforce male solidarity. Since as individuals men often like women, and need wives, and their sympotic invective therefore cannot be taken too seriously, readers have highlighted the poem's use of irony and paradox.In what follows I hope to add something to our reading of both the poem and its context. I shall try to show that Semonides' picture of women and male–female relations is more complex than has been assumed, and that we can place it in a tradition of moralizing literature which is concerned not just to pillory aspects of its world, but to explore its problems and stimulate people to think about them.

Association between diet, lifestyle, metabolic cardiovascular risk factors, and plasma C-reactive protein levels

Increased C-reactive protein (CRP) levels have been associated with several of the components of the metabolic syndrome, but the direct influence of diet and lifestyle factors on CRP levels remains largely unknown. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the association between CRP and diet and lifestyle factors. Plasma CRP levels were determined by a highly sensitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in 760 participants in the β-Blocker Cholesterol-Lowering Asymptomatic Plaque Study (BCAPS). In accordance with previous findings, increased levels of CRP were associated with high body mass index (BMI) (P = .012), triglycerides (P = .001), systolic blood pressure (P = .019), cholesterol/high-density lipoprotein (HDL) ratio (P = .009), and low HDL cholesterol (P = .001). CRP was also increased in smokers (P = .023) and in subjects with a low vitamin C intake (P = .018). When men and women were analyzed together, there were no significant associations between CRP and dietary intake of total calories, total fat, saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, fiber, vitamin E, carotene, or selen, or in physical activity. However, in the female subgroup weak inverse relations were observed between CRP and the intake of total fat (r = −0.13, P = .011), saturated fat (r = −0.13, P = .011), monounsaturated fat (r = −0.13, P = .010), polyunsaturated fat (r = −0.14, P = .007), and n-3 PUFA (r = −0.14, P = .004). Stratified factor analyses in smoking subgroups, obese, and in under-reporters of energy, largely confirmed the results although in male never-smokers a combination of high fiber vitamin C/beta carotene intake was associated with low CRP levels. These observations suggest that CRP levels are only marginally associated with individual dietary and lifestyle factors. Surprisingly, a higher intake of fat tended to be associated with lower CRP values among women.

"Married Among Their Companions": Female Homoerotic Relations in Nineteenth-Century Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India

This essay examines the little-known representation of female-female romantic and sexual relations in early nineteenth-century Urdu Rekhti poetry in north India. Rekhti is poetry written mostly by men, in "women's language," and with female personae. Women's language was not spoken by women alone—it was the language of non-elites and was adopted by poets to represent an indigenous urbanity. Focusing on the terms used to represent and debate female-female sexual relationships, I contest the view that Rekhti is obscene verse written for male titillation alone. I argue that its virtual disappearance from the canon is due not only to its homoerotic content but also to its nonjudgmental adoption of literary conventions and social customs drawn from non-Persianate and Hindu sources. After the politics of nationalist social reform led to the identification of Hindi with Hindus and Urdu with Muslims, these sources were denigrated as anti-Islamic.

The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China

In early 20th-century China, age-old traditions of homosocial and homoerotic relationships between women suddenly became an issue of widespread public concern. Discussed formerly in terms of friendship and sisterhood, these relations came to be associated with feminism, on the one hand, and psychobiological perversion, on the other - a radical shift whose origins have long been unclear. In this first ever book-length study of Chinese lesbians, Tze-lan D. Sang convincingly ties the debate over female same-sex love in China to the emergence of Chinese modernity. As women's participation in social, economic and political affairs grew, Sang argues, so too did the social significance of their romantic and sexual relations. Focusing especially on literature by or about women-preferring women, Sang traces the history of female same-sex relations in China from the late imperial period (1600-1911) through the Republiican era (1912-1949). She ends by examining the reemergence of public debate on lesbians in China after Mao and in Taiwan after martial law, including the important roles played by globalization and identity politics.

An Analysis of the Relationships Among Structure, Influence, and Gender: Helping to Build a Feminist Theory of Public Relations

Feminist public relations scholars have suggested that the organizational context may be to blame for the powerlessness of some female public relations practitioners. This study assessed this claim by using feminist theory and a structural framework. This study tested whether the perceived organizational influence of men and women in corporate public relations was related to formal structural power, relationship power, or gender. Women had less formal structural power than men, but there were no gender differences in relationship power or influence. Consistent with feminist hypothesizing as well as the structural framework, practitioners' influence was related to both their formal structural power and relationship power-but not gender.

Eland and Therianthropes in Southern African Rock Art: When Is a Person an Animal?

The interpretation of part human part animal figures is critical to the understanding of southern African rock paintings, as is the meaning ascribed to the many depictions of eland. The conventional view is that these image patterns derive from the essentially shamanistic character of the art. Here I argue that the conflation of human and animal is a far more pervasive component of southern African hunter-gatherer expressive culture and relates to the central significance of hunting in organizing man–animal and male–female relations. The eland too plays a key role in these relations. In the western Cape rock paintings the influence of this extended hunting metaphor in informing image choice appears to be paramount.

Pre-marital relations: Entering adulthood

Investigation was carried out in north-east Serbia, in the region which is known for more freedom in male, female relations and marriages between minors. To prepare children for early marriage, the community takes care to introduce them to the world of adulthood through customs and to speed up their sexual maturity. Thus, on certain holidays, freedom in the behaviour of the young and the possibility of their getting to know each other more intimately was the accepted and publicly approved custom, although at the same time the strict rules of patriarchal morals, which prescribed the submissiveness in the behaviour of youth in daily life, were valid.

Supply Response in an Agrarian Economy with Non-Symmetric Gender Relations

There is a growing recognition that gender relations matter for supply response to devaluation and other structural adjustment policies in sub-Saharan Africa. But, most household models that introduce gender differentiation nevertheless preserve an essential symmetry between male and female household members, and do not capture elements of subordination or coercion in male–female relations. This paper seeks to contribute by developing a model based on Stackelberg-type equations, in which the husband occupies the position of “firstmover,” reflecting his power to set the parameters for women's choices. The model is contextualized with reference to Tanzania.

The invisibility of skilled female migrants and gender relations in studies of skilled migration in Europe

This paper examines the reasons for the invisibility of skilled female migrants in studies of skilled migration in Europe. The choice of research agendas has played a major part in rendering women invisible. The emphasis has generally been on transnational corporations, which, especially in their higher ranks, remain resolutely male-dominated. The presence of migrants in welfare sectors (i.e. education, health and social services), which are strongly feminised, has been ignored. Feminist research has also tended to obscure the role of skilled migrants in its emphasis on the unskilled. Theoretical and methodological developments in studies of migration have also made few inroads into our understanding of skilled migration. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

'More Intimate Than Violence': Sexual Violation in Sarah Dunant's Transgressions

Horeck looks at what happens when a feminist author attempts to rewrite one of culture's most powerful narratives: the story of female victimization and male sexual violence. Exploring the controversy surrounding Sarah Dunant's 1997 thriller Transgressions , a novel accused of being 'anti-feminist' for its alleged depiction of female sexual arousal in a rape scene, she asks after feminism's fictional investment in images of rape. What kind of cultural work are images of sexual violence being made to perform for feminist crime writers? Her contention is that Dunant's novel exemplifies the purchase that rape holds for feminism as a scenario for working through questions of female agency and male-female sexual relations. Through her represenation of the female translator's attempt to rewrite a dominant cultural narrative of male brutality and female victimization, Dunant is thematizing the difficult work of the feminist crime writer. But while the novel's fictional representation of sex and violence can be read as an attempt to unsettle governing gender codes, Horeck argues that it also inadvertently shows up the limitations of the female crime writer's attempt to fight 'fantasy with fantasy'.

When females should contest for food - testing hypotheses about resource density, distribution, size, and quality with Hanuman langurs ( Presbytis entellus )

Predictions of ecological models on female social relationships (van Schaik 1989) and their links with food distribution and the potential competitive regime are used to analyze the feeding and spatial behavior, and resource density, size, distribution, and quality in a forest population of Hanuman langurs (Presbytis entellus). In contrast to other populations, and assumptions on folivorous primates, the females of this population exhibit a linear dominance hierarchy. The langurs concentrated their feeding on three key resources with a low density and clumped distribution. Two out of the three key resources contained significantly higher levels of extractable protein and soluble sugar than other food plants, indicating high spatial variability of food quality. Even the mature leaves of the most preferred food plant were about twice as nutritious as those from other food plants. Group spread was small and only a single high-quality resource was used at a time. Finally, even rich resources could accommodate only a subset of a group. These findings fit predictions made for the prevalence of within-group contest competition. Given the observed food distribution and phytochemical heterogeneity of mature foliage, even females of folivorous species should contest for food. The effect of female dominance rank on size and composition of feeding parties also agrees with this prediction. A comparison with data from another forest population, where female dominance relations are weakly developed, revealed a clear-cut difference in the use and abundance of resources. It is argued that between-population differences in female social relationships within a species may be viewed as adaptive responses to local habitat conditions.

The Language of Leadership for Female Public Relations Professionals

This study used feminist scholarship to explore leadership in female public relations practitioners and educators. Interviews with 10 women helped illustrate their communication styles, motivations, and meanings for leadership. These women's voices deserve attention due to the concerns about the growing percentage of women entering the field. Results revealed that participants illustrated a mix of 2-way and I-way communication when hypothetically responding to staff. Educators tended to utilize 2-way communication more than I-way and incorporated compromise into conflict resolution. All the participants exhibited assertiveness. empathy for staff, and use of logical rather than emotional arguments.

Sex‐related differences of public relations managers in consumer goods companies in Greece and Italy

This paper discusses sex‐related differences in Greek and Italian public relations managers comparing individual characteristics, role, level of contact and perceived quality of relations with the various interfaces, allocation of their working time, difficulties encountered and solutions proposed. The results generally support the hypothesis that there is no difference between male and female Greek and Italian public relations managers, although the issues of environmental uncertainty and role ambiguity among women in public relations requires additional research.

Infanticide in Propithecus diadema edwardsi : An Evaluation of the Sexual Selection Hypothesis

Infanticide might be described as a reproductive strategy employed by anthropoid primate males when they immigrate into new groups. But infanticide has rarely been observed in wild prosimian primates. For the Malagasy lemurs this may reflect one or more of the following: strict breeding seasons; relative monomorphism in canine tooth and body size; small group sizes; male–female dominance relations; and male–female dyads within groups. We addressed the following questions: Do prosimian males commit infanticide in circumstances similar to those in which anthropoids do? and Is there any reproductive advantage for a highly seasonal breeder to commit infanticide? To help answer these questions, we describe the death of a 24-hr-old infant male Propithecus diadema edwardsi from wounds received during a fight between his mother, her adult daughter, and a newly immigrant male. Interbirth intervals between surviving offspring are 2 years for Propithecus diadema edwardsi; therefore, a male could dramatically shorten the time between reproductive windows by killing an infant. Whether this tactic would be favored by sexual selection cannot be addressed until more information has been collected on the length of interbirth interval due to infanticide relative to that of infant death by other causes; how social factors such as stability of breeding relationships affect long-term male reproductive success; how effective female counterstrategies are to prevent infanticide and/or whether they choose to mate with males that commit infanticide; and how often males that kill infants subsequently sire infants, particularly in groups that contain a resident male.