Feminine Way Research Articles

Growth in the Number of Female Medical Doctors in Oman : What are the Reasons ? = إزدياد عدد الأطباء الإناث في عمان : ماهي الأسباب ؟

Growth in the Number of Female Medical Doctors in Oman : What are the Reasons ? = إزدياد عدد الأطباء الإناث في عمان : ماهي الأسباب ؟

Gendered Performances in a Male-Dominated Subculture: ‘Girl Racers’, Car Modification and the Quest for Masculinity

This paper discusses female participation in the male-dominated ‘boy racer’ culture. Little is known about girls who join male-dominated subcultures while studies of car cultures have tended to describe girls as peripheral participants and emphasise the link between the car and masculinity. Hence this paper provides an analysis of ‘girl racers’; those drivers who are active participants in the ‘racer’ culture through their positioning in the ‘driver's seat’. Gender is understood as ‘performative’ and Connell's notions of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and ‘emphasized femininity’ frame the analysis. For the ‘girl racers’, ‘doing gender’ involved negotiating a complex set of norms while reconciling the competing discourses of the masculine ‘racer’ scene and femininity. In order to be viewed as authentic participants, females were required to act like ‘one of the boys’ through their style of dress, driving, language and attitudes. They internalised the gender norms of the culture rather than resisting them explicitly, for fear of being excluded from the group. However, the feminine ways in which they modified their cars allowed them to retain an element of femininity within the world of ‘boy racers’. Thus, ‘girl racers’ resourcefully negotiated their way through the culture by employing a combination of complex strategies involving compliance, resistance and cooperation with the masculine values of the group. Findings are presented from participant observation, semi-structured and ethnographic interviews with members of the ‘racer’ culture in Aberdeen, Scotland, and semi-structured interviews with members of ‘outside’ groups.

Is There a Masculine and Feminine Way of Encountering God?

Is There a Masculine and Feminine Way of Encountering God?

¿Existe un modo femenino de hacer política?

<p>La cultura occidental experimenta un acelerado proceso de deshumanización que queda evidenciado en los sistemáticos y crecientes ataques a la dignidad de la persona. Baste mencionar la violencia expresada de modos y en escalas muy variadas; los agravios constantes a la vida humana o la soledad desesperante generada por el individualismo nihilista. En este artículo se intenta poner de relieve que la mujer posee cualidades antropológicas específicas, enraizadas en su capacidad de ser madre, a través de las cuales está en condiciones de inaugurar un modo propio, femenino, de hacer política. Los rasgos propios de la feminidad, puestos al servicio del ser humano y de la sociedad pueden conducir a la recuperación de la centralidad de la persona humana en todos los ámbitos de la cultura y de la vida política.</p>

On Philosophical Style

Irigaray and Le Dœuff diagnose the problem of woman and philosophy in terms of love. The differing solutions to the problem can be found in their styles. Irigaray's style is loving and dialogic, transforming the inherent structure of love and reminding us of the traditional feminine position defined by men. Le Dœuff's style is critical and pluralistic and relates to her perception of the feminine way of philosophical writing. These styles take into account the undervaluation of the feminine in the apparently `neutral' practices of philosophizing and surpass the traditional or unreflected notions of the feminine style. Ultimately, the consciously `subjective' styles, with the inherent aims of self-reflectivity and openness for other persons and texts, prove necessary when striving for truth and objectivity. Thus, Le Dœuff and Irigaray question the standard notion of philosophical style as neutral `non-style'.

Un espace à construire pour le désir...

It is a matter of being woman or simply of being? Is there actually a feminine way to be? Here, women put psychoanalysis into question. This article suggests a return to the notion of castration and to the developments surrounding the significance of the phallus. The castration experience is presented as being closely likely to the process of sexualization and to the individual's self-realization. The authors advance the woman's point of view, which questions castration. They find that psychoanalysis does not provide an answer, but imposes a limit: that of a symbolic order in which the individual must fit. Within the limiting phenomenon of castration, there remains the need for every man and woman in contemporary Québec society to share a sense of desire.

A razão construtiva e o rendilhado poético de Maria Lúcia Dal Farra

O trabalho se detém na análise da produção da poetisa paulista Maria Lúcia Dal Farra, Livro de auras (1994) e Livro de possuídos(2002), tentando, principalmente, uma aproximação aos mecanismos construtivos que dinamizam seus universos poéticos. O foco da atenção centra-se no uso, por parte dessa poética, de uma ratio construtiva que se movimenta entre o canto e o decanto para simbolizar, como escrita feminina, a posse de um intelecto estético que a cultura androcêntrica só reservou ao uso masculino.

Men working differently: accessing their inner‐feminine

Purpose – To present an account of changes in the behaviour of male bank managers who were engaged in action learning groups whose focus was on improving service quality and leadership development.Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative study of the development of group process, and the changes in behaviours of the managers whose values and norms were dominated by discourses of traditional hegemonic masculinity. It is also an autobiographical account of the authors' experience of facilitating action learning groups.Findings – Analysis of the groups' processes revealed a connection between the development of the groups in relation to authority and the changes in the managers' behaviour over a period of 12 months during which they began to behave in ways typically characterised as feminine.Practical implications – Has implications for management development especially the development of male managers and their capacity to work in more feminine ways. Significant factors in developing men's management and l...

Jane Grey Swisshelm: An Unconventional Life, 1815-1884 (review)

Reviewed by: Jane Grey Swisshelm: An Unconventional Life, 1815-1884 Nancy Isenberg (bio) Jane Grey Swisshelm: An Unconventional Life, 1815-1884. By Sylvia D. Hoffert. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). Pp. 255. Illustrations. Cloth, $39.95.) Jane Swisshelm was one of the most important journalists of the nineteenth century. She wrote for the New York Tribune and the New York Times and edited several papers on her own: the Pittsburgh Saturday Visitor, the St. Cloud [Minnesota] Visitor, and The Reconstructionist, in Washington, DC. She is best known as an abolitionist and women's rights reformer, but her "unconventional life" included an unusual marriage, most of which she spent living apart from her husband while pursuing a career. Her Scottish Covenanter religious upbringing gave her a critical view of American society and politics, making her an uncompromising opponent of slavery and a vocal advocate for women's political and economic rights. Whether living in the nation's capital, or publishing a paper on the Minnesota frontier, she saw herself as a radical reformer and critic. Swisshelm remained deeply conscious of the need to preserve her respectability as she challenged social norms. She was not only a journalist, but a working woman as well. She charted new ground by entering a trade dominated by men: newspaper publishing. Sylvia D. Hoffert focuses on how Swisshelm developed a professional code of behavior for women that allowed them to work alongside men. As an editor, a Civil War nurse, and a government clerk, she had enough variety of experience to enable her to conceive of a way for women to succeed: they should be [End Page 513] careful to separate their professional identities from their feminine roles. For women to achieve recognition, they had to appear less like sexual beings. According to Swisshelm's understanding of the workplace, Hoffert writes, women had to leave their feminine ways at home and "separate their identities as workers from their identities as women" (88). Swisshelm was never afraid of entering the contentious world of partisan politics. She endorsed the Free Soil Party in 1848, advocating what she called "Free Democracy," and finally committed herself to the Republican Party. When she moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 1857, to start the St. Cloud Visitor, she left her husband behind. Unable to steer clear of politics, she battled the Democratic Party boss, contributing to his electoral defeat. During the Civil War, she moved to Washington, where she received a patronage position in the federal government. There, in 1865, she started The Reconstructionist, which openly attacked President Andrew Johnson's policies. Hoffert does not sugarcoat Swisshelm's political career. While she remained an ardent abolitionist, supported equal educational opportunities for blacks, and defended the nascent women's rights movement, Swisshelm always saw herself first and foremost as a public critic. So she did not shy even from criticizing the very reformers she endorsed. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton remarked, "she is forever saying something we wish unsaid" (148). Living on the Minnesota frontier as the Civil War opened, Swisshelm developed views of Native Americans that were drastically changed by the Dakota wars of 1862. Initially espousing a kind of romantic racism, idealizing the proud Indian, she quickly took up a virulent kind of fear-mongering, seeking revenge for the murders of white settlers. She supported vigilantism and even the extermination of certain tribes. She wrote that Minnesotans should make sure that "three red skins shall die" for "every white person killed" and that hunting parties should collect scalps to intimidate Indian leaders (153). Her language was harsh, hyperbolic, and racist. Yet Swisshelm never recognized any similarity between her brand of racism and that of the white supremacists whom she ridiculed in antislavery editorials. Swisshelm's life was riddled with contradictions. She claimed that she was defending the institution of marriage, and yet she spent most of her own marriage living apart from her husband. She defended the right of southerners to secede from the Union in terms comparable to the ending of a business partnership or marriage: a state could leave if it "wants to get out," and a contract should be easily "dissolved by mutual consent" [End Page...

Re-examining linguistic power: strategic uses of directives by professional Japanese women in positions of authority and leadership

Given that an increasing number of professional women are playing a traditionally male role of authority and leadership in Japanese society today, it has been suggested that Japanese women in leadership positions suffer from a ‘sociolinguistic dilemma’ in choosing between the culturally prescribed feminine ways of speaking and the communicative need to talk powerfully from their occupational statuses. While conflicting views are derived from either anecdotal evidence or small-scale pilot studies, no large-scale empirical investigation of natural workplace interactions has presented a comprehensive picture of the issue. This paper analyzes nine female executives’ uses of directive speech acts that were both tape-recorded and observed in a large number of workplace interactions. Moving beyond the traditional sentence-level analysis of the use of feminine (or masculine) morphosyntactic variants, the study accounts for the following as the linguistic solutions to the dilemma: (1) the strategies of contextualization, which empower the ‘gender-preferred’ polite, indirect framing of directives in the larger domain of discourse; (2) the uses of positive-polite rapport builders for symmetrical interpersonal relationships and voluntary collaboration; and (3) the activation of multiple identities through marked uses of polite language in the immediate context of use. The study concludes that co-constitutive relationships between language and context, rather than the powerful (or powerless) code structure per se, are the key to an understanding of linguistic power manipulated by Japanese female executives, and also suggests that strategic functions of positive politeness need to be explored more extensively in studies of Japanese interactions in general.

Masculinity(s), the agrarian frontier myth, and cooperative ways of organizing: contradictions and tensions in the experience and enactment of democracy

This study explores how members of the Nebraska Cooperative Council and its constituent producer‐owned cooperatives understand and enact democratic ideologies, drawing particular attention to how emergent contradictions and tensions are experienced and managed. The Council serves as a particularly rich context in which to explore traditionally feminine ways of organizing (i.e., cooperative enactment) in a historically male‐dominated arena (i.e., agriculture). The dialectic of independence and solidarity became a revealing prism through which to make sense of how members enact cooperative life. This dialectic manifests itself in the discourse of cooperative life as members struggle to manage tensions between efficiency and participation, equality and equity, and the paradox of agency. Communication theorizing about gendered organizing and the history of American agrarianism is used to explore intersections between the social construction of masculinity(s), the agrarian frontier myth, and tensions embedded in the discourse of cooperative organizing.

Redefining femininity: Call and response as gendered features in African-American discourse

In this paper I discuss the use of one of the most unique African-American communicative strategies of call and response as a marker of socially constructed gender among the members of a church committee. The data come from my fieldwork conducted in Ypsilanti, MI in 1999. Call and response, a minimal response, traditionally derives from the Black church. Nowadays, however, it constitutes a legitimate feature of the African-American communication system (Dandy 1991). The traditional sociolinguistic research draws a clear distinction in the use of minimal responses by white women and men and by African-American females and males. Cameron (2000) claims that it is rather a consistent research finding that men use minimal responses significantly less often than women. Stanback (1985), on the other hand, demonstrates that the most striking evidence of communicative asymmetry in African-American discourse is the black women's greater silence in their conversations with black men. One aspect of this silence is fewer minimal responses, including call and response. Most of the traditional sociolinguistic analyses, however, did not interpret the minimal responses in the framework of the goals they served, neglecting the interlocutors' roles in the interactions. This paper, adopting the social constructionist view on gender, aims to reveal how the minimal response of call and response may function as a diagnostic of power in a secular context. The assumption is that the use of call and/or response assigns different (asymmetrical, i. e., powerful or powerless) statuses to the interlocutors in an interaction. This analysis demonstrates how a call and a response take on gendered meanings, i. e., how they are symbolically associated with a masculine or feminine way of speaking in the setting analyzed.

The Principles of Care

Abstract In the context of the care vs. justice debate sparked by Carol Gilligan's work, theconcept of universal principles is firmly associated with justice orientation. One central goal of this paper is to break this association. I argue that universal principlesand rights can be incorporated into a care ethic without thereby creating a hybrid theory that introduces justice considerations. Toward this end, I present a multifaceted theoretical model that describes the two orientations in detail. Bolstered by the revelations of this model, I provide an analysis that establishes the legitimacy of the principles of care. The other central goal of this paper is to demonstrate how principles operate within an ethic of care to fortify it against a common objection: namely, that by embracing care as a comprehensive moral framework, feminists are hurting their own cause by promoting stereotypical feminine ways of acting that have long played into the patriarchal status quo.

Prophecy and Authority in the Trachiniai

Prophecy and Authority in the Trachiniai Laurel Bowman (Tr. 1278) When deianeira goes silently offstage to her death at line 812 of Trachiniai, she removes herself from her husband's story. Her mistake was in thinking it was hers. Despite her emotionally riveting presence at center stage for well over half the play, her focus (and thus that of her audience) is always on Herakles, absent or present. Her only concern, throughout the play, is Herakles' whereabouts, his welfare, and his relationship to her. But the prediction1 which Deianeira thinks she understands, and on which she acts so fatally, concerns his fate and not her own. Even though the prophecies concerning Herakles depend on Deianeira's actions for their resolution, none mention her; their focus is the end of Herakles' labors, and once she has performed her function in their fulfillment her further actions are irrelevant. Her death, like Klytemnestra's in Sophocles' Elektra, is not significant enough to warrant a prophecy of its own. The prophecies of Trachiniai concern only the fates of males.2 [End Page 335] My focus in this essay is the use of predictive speech in Trachiniai. I will show that the speech of Nessos to Deianeira functions as a parallel to the prophecies in the play. A prediction is authorized as a "prophecy" by the same social mechanism which defines a child as "legitimate." Relying on an unauthorized prediction is thus, in Trachiniai, represented as analogous to stepping outside authorized marital bonds. Deianeira's attempt at independent action, in that it relies on the speech of Nessos, is equivalent to infidelity and is therefore destructive, a definition which is strengthened by the description of her behavior as destructive in specifically feminine ways. The final prophecy of the play negates Deianeira's role in previous events. Prophecy in Trachiniai is thus used both to define independent action in women as destructive, and ultimately, to exclude them from it. There are two sources of predictive speech in the play, but only one, Zeus, is said to produce "prophecy" (, 77, 1165). The predictive speech of the other, Nessos, is simply called instructions, or laws (, 568–69; , 682). are a particular kind of predictive speech–act; the term is used in Sophocles and elsewhere to refer specifically to those predictions which come from a source with the appropriate authority for making . In Homer the term is used once (Od. 12.272), of a prophecy made by Tiresias, who is elsewhere (e.g., OT 410) described as inspired by Apollo. In Herodotus and Thucydides only responses from oracular shrines (usually Delphi) are termed (e.g., Hdt. 1.46–1.53, 1.91; Thuc. 1.25, 1.28, and elsewhere). In the tragedians are likewise either responses from oracular shrines (e.g., Aesch. Eum. 716, Eur. Hipp. 236, IT 1255), or, more rarely, speeches of seers inspired by Apollo (Aesch. Ag. 1215, of Kassandra). Sophocles outside the Trachiniai follows the same usage: are most frequently responses from an oracular shrine, usually Delphi (e.g., OT 21, 149, 407, 481, 857; OC 453), or, more rarely, are predictive speeches of an Apollo–inspired seer (OT 394, of Tiresias). To be [End Page 336] termed , in short, it is not enough that predictive speeches come true; they must also have a divine or explicitly divinely inspired source. Just as a child is defined as "legitimate" by reason of his relationship to a father who is authorized3 to produce legitimate children, and who acknowledges the children as his, so predictive speeches become through their relationship to an authorized and acknowledging source. are predictive speeches to which a constructed legitimacy has been attached. Zeus is constructed in the Trachiniai as an authorized source of legitimate predictions, . He occupies the position at the pinnacle of the hierarchical structure in the play, both as ruler of the gods and as Herakles' father. As ruler of the gods in general, and more specifically as the god most nearly concerned with the events represented in Trachiniai, he is called upon more often than any other divinity in the play.4 Zeus is called "father of all" (, 275). He is the god most often invoked in prayer...

Mellan takt och rytm

One could say that Swedish gymnastics has developed as the curve of a bow in the matter of bringing out a feminine way of moving. P. H. Ling founded school gymnastics in the beginning of the 1800's. In addition to a store of movements that were correcting and strict to form, he also wanted to teach rhythmical, aesthetic movements that were not only beautiful but also useful. Above all he thought it important that people learned, through their bodies, to send each other true signals about their feelings. During the second half of the 19th century his son Hjalmar, in conjunction with the demands of the time, set the tone for the development of gymnastics as artificial. Gymnastics was to be performed in big groups which required simultaneity and a beat, and the mimetic and aesthetic elements disappeared. Below the surface, however, the struggle to re-establish the training of those movements needed in everyday life continued. Gymnastics was a male affair, but at the turn of the century two strong women developed a feminine alternative. With the addition of a light rhythm, pleasure and individualization, they infused fresh life into the old aesthetic gymnastics. In time, psychological and pedagogical child-centered features became at least as important as physiological aspects of the movements. By the 1950's school gymnastics had become a dialogue between the internal and external of the gymnast and a way of expressing oneself bodily, but also a communication between gymnast and spectator. More and more the rhythmical way of working also started to interest men.

In a Feminine Way: The Aesthetic of Maria Irene Fornes

In a Feminine Way: The Aesthetic of Maria Irene Fornes

Seeking the Hidden in Female and Secret Images: Learning About Culture as Spiritual Experience

This paper describes a spiritual process of learning the most powerful sort of cultural knowledge. This learning is based on creative experience of hidden and feminized images. I describe two field research experiences which illustrate the feminine way of learning meanings, and the differences between hidden and secret, experiential and objective meanings. In the first of these accounts, I learned about the meaning of women's face tattoos by becoming tattooed myself. In the second, I learned what happens at one of the most powerful rituals among the Barok of New Ireland, PNG, by participating in, and ruining, an incestuous "night dance." In describing these rituals, I focus on three issues: the necessity to quietly and fully experience meanings through creating them; the cultural imperatives to do things in the way that women do; and the cultural imperative to do incest. The Barok show that these activities destroy social meaning and create "hidden" or "spiritual power" (lolos). Barok understand that this way of creating lolos is necessary for true learning and is essential to the human process of spiritual empowerment.

The male role and avoiding femininity

When confronted with males and females deviating from society's sex-based gender role prescriptions, people tend to respond more negatively to the males' transgressions. In order to develop an understanding of the reasoning behind this phenomenon, two theories were tested. The social status model predicts that males are punished because feminine behavior is lower in status than masculine behavior. The sexual orientation hypothesis predicts that, for males, there is a stronger perceived link between gender roles and sexuality and that a male acting in a feminine way is more likely to be considered a homosexual than a female acting in a masculine way. A group of mostly Caucasian participants were asked to rate a male or female target, performing in either a male- or female-valued manner, on variables assessing social status and perceived homosexuality. The results suggested that the basic assumption of the social status model (i.e., higher male role status) could not be upheld; hence this hypothesis could not adequately be tested. However, strong support emerged for the sexual orientation hypothesis. The functions of homophobic attitudes and the idea that these two models may not be mutually exclusive, especially from within a developmental framework, are discussed.

Masculinity and Femininity in the Self with an Intimate Partner: Men are Not Always Men in the Company of Women

Males and females from thirty intimate couples described their self in general, self with their partner, and their partner. With respect to masculinity and femininity, females' impressions of their male partners corresponded with males' perceptions of self-in-general, while males' impressions of their female partners corresponded more with females' perceptions of self-with-partner. Higher levels of femininity and lower levels of masculinity in the descriptions of self-with-partner were associated with more relationship satisfaction. Further, descriptions of self-with-partner reflected more feminine and less masculine attributes than descriptions of self-in-general. These findings suggest that people behave in a more feminine way toward their intimate partner than toward others, and that this is beneficial for an intimate relationship.

Tv Fights: Women and Men in Interpersonal Arguments on Prime-Time Television Dramas

(1985). Media gratifications research: Current perspectives. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Pearson, J., Turner, L., Todd-Mancillas, W. (1991). Gender and communication. Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown, Publishers. Reinisch, J. M. and Sanders, S. A. (1986). A test of sex differences in aggressive response to hypothetical conflict situations. Journal of personality and social psychology, 50 (5), 1045-1049. Interpersonal arguments are the subject of considerable research (e.g., Benoit, 1983; Buss, 1989; Canary et al., 1988; Trapp, 1989; Yelsma & Brown, 1985) focusing on various aspects of argument. The present study contributes to this research through a content analysis of interpersonal arguments in prime-time television dramas. The research question guiding this project asks how women and men, as members of dyads, were presented in interpersonal arguments. Two theoretical assumptions pilot the study. Media socialization theory posits media consumers learn certain behaviors by identifying with and modeling the attitudes and actions of television characters (Jeffres, 1986). Some feminist theorists similarly argue that gender-based behaviors are learned through the socialization process; hence, women and men are taught to behave in and masculine ways (Donovan, 1988; Garskof, 1971). Given these theoretical assumptions, this study addresses four key questions: What behaviors of interpersonal conflict are represented in prime-time television dramas? How do women and men characters argue? What do they argue about? How do they resolve their conflicts? This study focuses on television representations of interpersonal arguments. Section one provides a review of research in sex-role socialization, interpersonal arguments, conflict issues, strategies of conflict resolution, and media socialization theory. Section two explains the content analysis method. Section three provides the results, and section four discusses the implications of the results. LITERATURE REVIEW The following section reviews the research laying the foundation for this content analysis. Sex-role socialization, interpersonal conflicts, conflict issues, strategies for conflict resolution, and media socialization theory each will be addressed. Sex-role Socialization Women and men learn certain behaviors and attitudes are expected of them because they are women or men. Gender-role expectations are communicated in many different ways: through parents, organizations, peers, and the mass media. People are taught, generally speaking, that women should behave in a feminine way: passive, affectionate, gentle, kind, soft-hearted, dependent, nurturing, understanding, other-oriented. Conversely, men learn to behave in masculine ways: aggressive, confident, independent, rational, self-oriented. Studies indicate individuals accept these gender definitions and apply them in making personal judgments about others (Cowan & Stewart, 1977; Karabetian & Smith, 1977; Richardson, 1981). Indeed, a widely-used psychological instrument, the Bem Sex Role Inventory, assumes these sex-role differences to be recognizable (Bem, 1974). Gender-based socialization inherently affects every aspect of people's lives, including interpersonal arguments. Within these conflicts, one possible response is physical aggression. For the most part, interpersonal aggression is socially disallowed in the United States. This general attitude, however, is delineated for women and men. Women are taught their rage is inappropriate. It is not 'nice' to get angry or violent. It is not 'ladylike' (Schaef, 1981, p. 86). Given that women are discouraged from using aggression, they are unlikely to use it as a means to resolve interpersonal conflict. Men are taught a different lesson. Many studies reveal that are more likely to manifest aggressive behavior (Lott, 1981, p. 49). Moreover, such behavior is winked at and accepted according to the adage that boys will be boys. …