Feminist Poststructuralist Perspective Research Articles

Community home-based care – a cost-effective model of care: who benefits?

Statistics indicate that the HIV and AIDS pandemic is rampant in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). Increasingly, people with HIV and AIDS rely on voluntary community home-based caregivers for care and support. Drawing on original research conducted in 2005 and a subsequent study in 2009, this article presents the socio-economic context of care and women's perspectives on care giving. The study was conducted in three different communities in KZN. The feminist post-structuralist perspective provided the theoretical framework. Data collection methods included in-depth semi-structured interviews, observations and documentary review. The data were analysed using the grounded theory approach. The study revealed that it is poor, black, unemployed Zulu women who provide community home-based care (CHBC) in the province. The findings further suggested that the CHBC programme overlooks the realities of women, who operate in a context of poverty and unemployment. It is therefore argued that while the National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan 2007–2011 has made progressive strides, implementation of the set targets remains a formidable challenge. In practice, the Plan remains gender-blind to poor women's social, political and economic imperatives. The article proposes a model of care that takes into cognisance the interests of women caregivers.

A feminist post-structuralist analysis of an exemplar South African school History text

A feminist post-structuralist perspective offers an alternative paradigm for the study of gender bias in History texts. It focuses on multiple perspectives and open interpretation, opens up space for female voices of the past and present, and deconstructs realist historical narrative. Our aim in this article is to discuss feminist post-structuralism as an innovative approach to History as a school subject, and to demonstrate its implications for the analysis of school History texts. We seek to identify and expose biases that marginalise women in school History texts and contribute to correcting these. Additionally, we seek to develop new knowledge for understanding gender differences. An example of the empirical application of the feminist post-structuralist perspective is provided. The exemplar text analysed supports masculine historical narrative, using a neutral and naturalising style, and renders women and the feminine meaning invisible. It is suggested that non-traditional forms of writing will help to dislodge the inherent hegemony in History texts and challenge the masculine status quo in school History texts.

A feminist post-structuralist analysis of an exemplar South African school History text

A feminist post-structuralist perspective offers an alternative paradigm for the study of gender bias in History texts. It focuses on multiple perspectives and open interpretation, opens up space for female voices of the past and present, and deconstructs realist historical narrative. Our aim in this article is to discuss feminist post-structuralism as an innovative approach to History as a school subject, and to demonstrate its implications for the analysis of school History texts. We seek to identify and expose biases that marginalise women in school History texts and contribute to correcting these. Additionally, we seek to develop new knowledge for understanding gender differences. An example of the empirical application of the feminist post-structuralist perspective is provided. The exemplar text analysed supports masculine historical narrative, using a neutral and naturalising style, and renders women and the feminine meaning invisible. It is suggested that non-traditional forms of writing will help to dislodge the inherent hegemony in History texts and challenge the masculine status quo in school History texts.

Expressing yourself: A feminist analysis of talk around expressing breast milk

Recent feminist analyses, particularly from those working within a poststructuralist framework, have highlighted a number of historically located and contradictory socio-cultural constructions and practices which women are faced with when negotiating infant feeding, especially breastfeeding, within contemporary western contexts. However, there has been little explicit analysis of the practice of expressing breast milk. The aim of this article is to explore the embodied practice of expressing breast milk. This is done by analysing, from a feminist poststructuralist perspective, discourse surrounding expressing breast milk in sixteen first time mothers' accounts of early infant feeding. Participants were recruited from a hospital in the South Midlands of England. The data are drawn from the first phase of a larger longitudinal study, during which mothers kept an audio diary about their breastfeeding experiences for seven days following discharge from hospital, and then took part in a follow-up interview. Key themes identified are expressing breast milk as (i) a way of managing pain whilst still feeding breast milk; (ii) a solution to the inefficiencies of the maternal body; (iii) enhancing or disrupting the 'bonding process'; (iv) a way of managing feeding in public; and (v) a way to negotiate some independence and manage the demands of breastfeeding. Links between these and broader historical and socio-cultural constructions and practices are discussed. This analysis expands current feminist theorising around how women actively create the 'good maternal body'. As constructed by the participants, expressing breast milk appears to be largely a way of aligning subjectivity with cultural ideologies of motherhood. Moreover, breastfeeding discourses and practices available to mothers are not limitless and processes of power restrict the possibilities for women in relation to infant feeding.

Women deans: leadership becoming

The term ‘leadership’ metaphorically embodies a gendered hierarchy of labour. In this study women deans’ values were found to be incongruent with the masculine discourse creating inner conflicts and alternative discourses. Data collected from 10 women deans from both male‐dominated and female‐dominated colleges were used to deconstruct leadership using a feminist poststructuralist perspective. Unlike a critical perspective, poststructuralism questions hierarchical relationships between knowledge and power, thus enabling us to understand leadership in differently shaded terms. The data portrays the multidimensional qualities of power and how women use power consciously and unconsciously to move within academic discourses.

Manufacturing disability: HIV, women and the construction of difference

In 1998, the US Supreme Court first held that asymptomatic HIV infection constituted a disability when it ruled on the case of Bragdon v. Abbott. The use of yet another label (disabled) to identify women living with HIV has been rarely (if ever) questioned. While we do value the use of this label as an anti-discriminatory strategy, we believe that there is a need to examine how language and more specifically, the use of words such as disability, limitation, and impairment may create new forms of identities for women living with HIV. Using this legal case as a starting point, the goal of this paper is to critically examine the 'fabrication' of asymptomatic HIV infection as a disability. Grounded in a feminist poststructuralist perspective, this paper exposes the relationship between language, social institutions, subjectivity, and power in the construction of difference. By doing so, it addresses the identification of women living with HIV/AIDS as disabled and the self-differentiation process that they must go through in order to live as normally as possible.

Saints, sinners and standards of femininity: discursive constructions of anorexia nervosa and obesity in women's magazines

It has been suggested that women are encouraged, particularly by the popular media, to gain ‘feminine’ power through the pursuit of a ‘suitably’ petite figure. The current project investigated, from a feminist poststructuralist perspective, the construction of female obesity and female anorexia in 20 popular magazine articles (10 anorexia and 10 obesity articles). Of interest was the extent to which the two states, despite both being physically unhealthy, may differ with respect to the ways in which they are constructed as ‘feminine’ or aesthetically abhorrent. Whilst both being contextualized medically as deviant, dangerous, and overwhelmingly physical, anorexia nervosa was constructed as more desirable, powerful and feminine than obesity. We discuss the implications of these dichotomous representations in relation to issues surrounding the social construction of ‘the feminine’.

Strong, aware, and unequal

PurposeThe overall purpose of this paper is to study gender and equality‐related issues by exploring gender functions in the northernmost borderland of Sweden (the Tornedalen area). The study focuses on women's views of their own lives and how local culture may shape their identity.Design/methodology/approachBy analysing a large number of women's narratives through approaching feminist poststructuralism, the analysis focuses on gender relations and how women have adapted their lives according to the norms of the local society. The study involves a historical perspective from the middle to the late twentieth century. This includes transitions from an almost exclusively rural to a more urbanized life (within the countryside) and from a time when almost all women were full‐time housewives to a time when this has become a rarity.FindingsThe traditional culture in Tornedalen still existed in the late 1990s with pressure coming from the older generations to maintain traditional gender functions. From a feminist poststructuralist perspective, competing discourses affects the identity of the Tornedalen woman. Such competing discourses lead to, for example, women being impressed by masculine men who dominate the family whilst also, seemingly, expressing concern for equality issues. Many common gender identity characteristics also exist, such as (a feeling of) being strong (to be able to live in Tornedalen) and (a feeling of) being very much aware of (and claiming) local gender inequality. Originality/value – The paper provides new knowledge as to how inequality may persist in (a) local area(s) ruled by traditional norms. It also provides insights into women's lives and how identities evolve in (a) small local society(ies).

On the Limits of “Gaie” Spaces: Discursive Constructions of Women’s Sport in Quebec

Several studies on the experiences of nonheterosexual women in sport have highlighted the development of lesbian subcultures in sport, while others have emphasized the scarcity of athletic contexts embracing sexual diversity. This article explores the narratives of 14 young Francophone sportswomen positioning themselves as “gaie,” lesbian, bisexual, or refusing labels altogether. Using a feminist poststructuralist perspective, we examine their discursive constructions of sport and argue that the discourses articulated in sport allow for the creation of a space of resistance to heteronormativity. We suggest that the sport space is constructed as a “gaie” space within which a normalizing version of lesbian sexuality is proposed. We investigate how in/ex/clusion discourses are inscribed in space and how subjects are impacted by and, in turn, impact these discourses.

Colonizing Family: A Feminist Critique of Family Management Texts

There is a long tradition of applying managerial techniques and principles to more efficiently manage domestic and familial responsibilities. We argue that such appropriations of corporate practices, language, and thinking not only obscure distinctions between home and work but also integrate work values, patterns, and perspectives into everyday constructions of family life so thoroughly as to bring into question what a family is and what values, practices, and relationships make family life different from the corporate world. Using a feminist poststructuralist perspective, we analyze three texts illustrating the insinuation of managerialism into popular family management prescriptions. We conclude by critically examining four discursive strategies in these texts: (a) moral dichotomies; (b) managerial metaphors; (c) coopted concepts; and (d) emphasis on individualized choice. Our critique highlights the ironies that open these strategies to contestation and alternatives.

"…If I Had a Choice, I Would…." A Feminist Poststructuralist Perspective on Girls in Physical Education

"…If I Had a Choice, I Would…." A Feminist Poststructuralist Perspective on Girls in Physical Education

“...If I Had a Choice, I Would....” A Feminist Poststructuralist Perspective on Girls in Physical Education

A significant number of studies evidence girls' lack of participation in physical education. This study used feminist poststructuralism to examine the ways in which high school girls participated in or resisted physical education. Using qualitative research methods, researchers collected field notes, informal interviews, and formal interviews with the teacher and 15 female students. In contrast to previous studies, girls in this study enjoyed and valued physical activity. As active agents, they chose to participate in or resist specific physical activities through their negotiations of gender relations. Physical education classes emerged as a contested terrain in which girls supported the notion of equal opportunity in physical activity but perceived limits on their choices in physical education as compared to male peers.

A feminist poststructuralist study of children “doing” gender in an urban kindergarten classroom

This is a summary of a qualitative study of how gender was created and sustained in an urban kindergarten classroom. By investigating the phenomenon of compulsory heterosexuality and analyzing gender from a feminist poststructuralist perspective, this study explored how young children take an active part “doing” gender by socially constructing meanings about femininities and masculinities from the gender discourses available to them in their everyday worlds. In addition, it looks at how they used their understandings of heterosexuality to regulate the gendered social order of the classroom. Qualitative procedures of taking field notes, audiotaping and videotaping children's talk and actions in the classroom, and collecting of student artifacts were used over a 6-month period to gain in-depth descriptive information about how children socially constructed themselves as gendered beings through the heterosexual matrix. Critical discourse analysis found five gender discourses located in the classroom, including wearing femininity, body movements, make-up, beauty, and fashion talk. From this analysis, it was possible to uncover the heterosexual matrix within the kindergarten classroom and construct three case studies. Case studies show how two girls and one boy used their understandings of heterosexuality to “do” gender as they actively maintained and resisted gender norms and ideals.

Feminist Transformation in Higher Education: Discipline, Structure, and Institution

Using a feminist poststructuralist perspective, this study investigates academic feminism as a case of transformation in higher education. Narrative analysis was used to examine the transformative role of feminist scholarship in the contexts of disciplines, departments, and the university, illustrated by the life histories of nine diverse feminists and their perceptions of transformation in sociohistoric, generational, and multiple structural contexts. Assessments of progress must consider the relative nature of a values shift in institutional transformation.

Feminist poststructuralism: a methodological paradigm for examining clinical decision‐making

To present the philosophical framework of feminist poststructuralism, discuss its use as an innovative research approach and its implications for nursing knowledge development and practice. This perspective examines the construction of meaning, power relationships, and the importance of language as it affects contemporary healthcare decisions. It seeks to identify and expose biases that marginalize the healthcare needs of women and contribute to healthcare disparities for this population. Additionally, a feminist poststructuralist perspective seeks to develop new knowledge for understanding gender differences. A feminist poststructuralist perspective represents an alternative paradigm for studying the phenomenon of clinical decision-making. An empirical application example of a feminist poststructuralist perspective is provided. This exemplar investigated emergency department registered nurses' triage decisions for men and women with symptoms suggestive of coronary heart disease.

A View of Leisure and Patterns of Family Life in the Late 1990s

This study investigated the place of leisure and role responsibilities of working parents in the establishment period of the family life cycle in the late 1990s. One focus of this study was to see how much had changed in the patterns of family life and leisure as documented in the studies of the mid 1980s and early 1990s compared with today. Personal interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of sixteen working mothers and fathers. A constant comparison, grounded theory approach was used throughout the interviews and data analysis. Three themes related to leisure in the lives of working parents emerged from the data: (i) freedom of choice as a central condition of leisure; (ii) conflicts between work, leisure, and family; and (iii) resisting and negotiating the superwoman and typical male ideal. The themes were interpreted within a feminist post-structuralist perspective drawing upon a Foucauldian power analysis.

Femininity, Sexuality and Professionalism in the Children's Departments

The authors, who undertook this research together, all worked for parts of their careers in the children's departments, Pam Carter Hood and Angela Everitt just prior to their becoming part of the social services departments; Dorothy Runnicles since 1948. They all subsequently moved into social work education which included, for them all, uneasy experiences as women managers. They are now retired. Angela Everitt runs a women's studies bookshop 'ReadingLasses' in Wigtown, Scotland's booktown. Pamela Carter Hood sadly died soon after completing this paper. SUMMARY Noting the significance of women in management in the local authority children's departments (1948-72) and the preoccupation with women in management during the 1990s, the authors compare these two periods. In particular, they focus upon the discourses of femininity which shape the ways in which women as managers and as professionals are talked about, under stood and analysed. The argument, presented from a feminist post-structuralist perspective, is based on an analysis of data generated through interviews with women who were signifi cant in the children's departments (as children's officers or members of the children's committees) between 1948 and 1972. The paper shows that the ways in which femininity is constructed, socially and through women's subjectivities, act as powerful mechanisms through which women are controlled, but also present opportunities to women for resistance and change.

Typists' influences on transcription: aspects of feminist nursing epistemic rigour.

This paper describes the process by which female typists became participants of sorts while transcribing audiotaped interviews. The primary data included sensitive and sexual subject matter about women's Pap smear (PS) experiences. Besides overcoming minor technical difficulties, the major discovery was that the typists had a tendency to interpolate and even normalize the data. A feminist post-structuralist perspective was extended to examine these interpolations as secondary data. This revealed that the typists were becoming unexpected participants as commentators, validators, analysts and normalizers of the data. From the subjective positions of both medical typists and recipients of PS, the typists provided data validation that included contradictions and transgressions from the cancer screening scheme propaganda. Furthermore, both typists were exposed to other women's PS stories and experienced vicarious consciousness raising. For one typist this included embodiment of other women's distress, raising questions about the occupational hazards associated with transcribing distressing data. Thus the social and relational aspects of those involved in the transcription process proved influential to both the data (and analysis), and to the practical aspects of data management. I argue that details of such influences need to be submitted for scrutiny as additional aspects of rigour.

RADICALLY TRANSFORMING WORK FOR THE 21st CENTURY: A FEMINIST RECONSTRUCTION OF "REAL" WORK.

Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings includes abstracts of all papers and symposia presented at the annual conference, plus 6-page abridged versions of the “Best Papers” accepted for inclusion in the program (approximately 10%). Papers published in the Proceedings are abridged because presenting papers at their full length could preclude subsequent journal publication. Please contact the author(s) directly for the full papers. ArticlesRADICALLY TRANSFORMING WORK FOR THE 21st CENTURY: A FEMINIST RECONSTRUCTION OF "REAL" WORK.Joyce K. FletcherJoyce K. FletcherPublished Online:13 Dec 2017https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.1995.17536733AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail AbstractThis study uses a feminist poststructuralist perspective to reconceptualize the notion of "real" work to include a way of working that springs from a relational belief system: Relational Practice. Four themes of Relational Practice are identified. A poststructuralist analysis details the mechanisms -- and the organizational implications of the process--through which this practice "gets disappeared" in organizational discourse.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 1995, No. 1 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 13 December 2017 Published in print 1 August 1995 InformationCopyright of Academy of Management Journal is the property of Academy of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.KeywordsFEMINISMSOCIAL movementsASSOCIATIONS, institutions, etc. -- ManagementWOMEN'S rightsORGANIZATIONAL behaviorINDUSTRIAL organizationORGANIZATIONAL sociologyINDUSTRIAL relationsSOCIAL psychologyDownload PDF

Meetings and intersections Organizational Theory Encounters Feminist Theorising

Abstract The stimulus for the thoughts expressed in this article was an article published in 1992 by Marta Calas and Linda Smircich entitled “Re-writing Gender in Organizational Theorising: Directions From Feminist Perspectives” in which they use a feminist poststructuralist perspective to examine the way in which gender is “written” into organizational theory. This article, however, is not concerned with issues of deconstruction and the rewriting of organizational discourse, but with consideration of how organizational theory and feminist theory might meet, intersect, and enrich each other.