Independent Women Research Articles

Analysis of Factors Affecting Self-financing and Independence of Women's Groups : Toward Diversification of Economic Activities

Analysis of Factors Affecting Self-financing and Independence of Women's Groups : Toward Diversification of Economic Activities

Beverly Lyon Clark. The Afterlife of “Little Women”

Beverly Lyon Clark. <i>The Afterlife of “Little Women”</i>

All My Independent Women: An Art Network on Gender Issues

All My Independent Women: An Art Network on Gender Issues

An Impact of Financial Decision Making of Independent Women: Need for Financial Inclusive Growth of Society

Financial inclusiveness of the country is the need of any developing nation for becoming developed country. As India is one of the most promising developing countries as 2nd largest populated country with average 7% GDP. According to IMF World Economic Outlook (April-2015), GDP growth rate of India in 2014 is 7.168% and India is 15th fastest nation of the world. Total Female Population in India, 622, 365, 144 (622 million in 2015) which are the huge population with money as urban 20% female is working. The study was done for rural women to check the potential & scope of improvement to grow financially.

Gender context of sexual violence and HIV sexual risk behaviors among married women in Iringa Region, Tanzania

Background There is a dearth of empirical research illuminating possible connections between gender imbalances and sexual violence among married women in Tanzania. There is a need to generate in-depth information on the connectivity between gender imbalances (asymmetrical resource ownership, sexual decision making, roles, and norms) and sexual violence plus associated HIV risky sexual behavior among married women. Design This paper is based on a qualitative case study that involved use of focus group discussions (FGDs). A thematic analysis approach was used in analyzing the study findings. Results The study findings are presented under the three structures of gender and power theory. On sexual division of labor, our study found that economic powerlessness exposes women to sexual violence. On sexual division of power, our study found that perception of the man as a more powerful partner in marriage is enhanced by the biased marriage arrangement and alcohol consumption. On cathexis, this study has revealed that because of societal norms and expectations regarding women's sexual behavior characterized by their sexual and emotional attachments to men, women find it hard to leave sexually abusive marriages. That is, because of societal expectations of obedience and compelled tolerance many married women do suffer in silence. They find themselves trapped in marriages that increase their risk of acquiring HIV. Conclusions This study suggests that married women experience a sexual risk of acquiring HIV that results from non-consensual sex. That non-consensual sex is a function of gender imbalances – ranging from women's economic dependence on their husbands or partners to socioculturally rooted norms and expectations regarding women's sexual behavior. The HIV risk is especially heightened because masculine sexual norms encourage men [husbands/partners] to engage in unprotected intra- and extramarital sex. It is recommended that the Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS) should address the gender dimensions of sexual violence in marriage.

A qualitative descriptive study of the group prenatal care experience: perceptions of women with low-risk pregnancies and their midwives.

BackgroundGroup prenatal care (GPC) originated in 1994 as an innovative model of prenatal care delivery. In GPC, eight to twelve pregnant women of similar gestational age meet with a health care provider to receive their prenatal check-up and education in a group setting. GPC offers significant health benefits in comparison to traditional, one-on-one prenatal care. Women in GPC actively engage in their healthcare and experience a supportive network with one another. The purpose of this study was to better understand the GPC experience of women and care providers in a lower risk group of women than often has been previously studied.MethodsThis qualitative descriptive study collected data through three focus group interviews - two with women who had completed GPC at a midwifery clinic in Ontario, Canada and one with the midwives at the clinic. Data was analyzed through open coding to identify themes.ResultsNine women and five midwives participated in the focus groups, from which eight categories as well as further subcategories were identified: The women and midwives noted reasons for participating (connections, education, efficiency). Participants suggested both benefits (learning from the group, normalizing the pregnancy experience, preparedness for labour and delivery, and improved relationships as all contributing to positive health outcomes) and concerns with GPC (e.g. sufficient time with the midwife) which generally diminished with experience. Suggestions for change focused on content, environment, partners, and access to the midwives. Challenges to providing GPC included scheduling and systems-level issues such as funding and regulation. Flexibility and commitment to the model facilitated it. Comparison with other models of care identified less of a relationship with the midwife, but more information received. In promoting GPC, women would emphasize the philosophy of care to other women and the midwives would promote the reduction in workload and women’s independence to colleagues.ConclusionsOverall, women and midwives expressed a high level of satisfaction with their GPC experience. This study gained insight into previously unexplored areas of the GPC experience, perceptions of processes that contribute to positive health outcomes, strategies to promote GPC and elements that enhance the feasibility of GPC.

Barriers and facilitators to health behaviour change and economic activity among slum-dwelling adolescent girls and young women in Nairobi, Kenya: the role of social, health and economic assets

Adolescent girls and young women in urban slum areas in developing countries face a myriad of challenges regarding education, sexual health, livelihoods and gender-based violence. One way of understanding how these challenges interact with each other is through the Asset Building Framework, which posits that girls need a combination of social, health and economic assets in order to make a healthy transition from childhood to adulthood. This study sought to examine barriers and facilitators to health behaviour change and economic activity for girls within the context of this framework. It involved a combination of focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with 128 young women who were in the age range of 18–25 years, living in various slums in Nairobi, Kenya. We found that economic assets reduce young women's dependence on others (especially parents and relationships with men) so that they are able to make positive changes in health behaviour. Social networks, self-esteem and financial literacy all played important roles in positively positioning girls to make the transition to economic activity safely and successfully. We suggest that programmes that seek to improve girls’ and young women's health behaviour or economic activity include elements of asset building within all three categories of assets.

Saving virgins, saving the USA: heteronormative masculinities and the securitisation of trafficking discourse in mainstream narrative film

Sex trafficking has become a high-profile, celebrity endorsed issue, attracting much international attention. Accompanying this has been a proliferation of films, including full-length feature films, which address the topic and have done much to influence public perception of the issue. This paper analyses two of these films which were made for the mainstream US market: Trade and Taken. Both films present a conservative and heteronormative perspective revolving around middle-aged North American law enforcement officers rescuing innocent young girls. Hence, these films participate in the general securitisation of trafficking discourse in which the US has been a leader. In spite of their ostensible concern about the exploitation of women, these films present trafficking mostly as an occasion for the redemption and rehabilitation of the beleaguered white American male, appropriating the problem of trafficking in the service of a US-led neo-imperialism bolstered by masculinism and xenophobia, and implicitly problematising women's independence and justifying the control of their movements and sexuality.

Colonial Feminism and Australian Literary Culture in Ethel and Lilian Turner's the Parthenon (1889–92)

The Parthenon is a unique example of a colonial Australian magazine published for girl readers by two aspirant writers, Ethel and Lilian Turner. In addition to its domestic content, typical of women's magazines, it also sought to contribute to nascent Australian literary culture. This article locates the Parthenon within the history of colonial women's publishing and literary culture, and situates its content within the context of the Woman Movement of the period. It reads the Parthenon's telling picture of young women's perceptions of colonial literary culture and of the need to balance literary aspirations with domestic responsibilities through the lens of the “expediency feminism” advocated by the Dawn, a women's magazine published by Louisa Lawson from 1888. The article argues that the Parthenon's superficially conservative opinion of women's supreme calling being in the home rather than the newspaper office or university library was in alignment with the arguments made by the Woman Movement to advocate for women's greater participation in the public sphere. The comparison of these contemporaneous monthly publications written and produced by women enables an understanding of the ways in which late nineteenth-century attempts to encourage women's careers and independence were grounded in domesticity.

Lost in registration? Missing occupations of single women in the Bruges countryside, c.1814

The absence of occupational titles for women in historical censuses has stymied numerous scholars. Various authors have explained this phenomenon as carelessness or bias on the part of the census-takers. Women's work was of little interest to the authorities and census officials focused their efforts upon the activities of the head of household. While source triangulation can be a useful tool for uncovering ‘hidden’ employment of women, it is often a complex and time-consuming process. In this article we outline an alternative to deal with the issue of missing occupations of single women in censuses by exploring their living arrangements. We identify four aspects of co-residence that can highlight the roles played within the household by single women without registered employment: their relation to the head of the household, and that individual's occupation, property and marital status. Comparing data from the 1814 population census regarding two social agro-systems and the city of Bruges, we argue that occupational titles of single women were not randomly omitted by the census officials, but reflect the embeddedness of these women in the family economy and household. While we do not refute recent research that stresses single women's economic independence during the long eighteenth century, our findings suggest that for a subset of singles this was not the case. We claim that by studying registered labour only, the historical picture of single women's work is biased or at the very least incomplete.

GENDER MODEL OF "AMERICAN DREAM" IN THE PROSE OF THE USA WRITERS OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY.

The article deals with the uniqueness of embodiment of feminist concepts of power and desire in the work the U.S. writers; their attention to the issue of women's dependence on men's desires and studies the writers’ focusing on psychological problems and spiritual enslavement of women. It is noted that the writers actualize the idea of resistance to unfreedom, leading to finding herself, her own "I", her own identity.; that they emphasize the thought that the recognition of men’s superiority and women’s passivity in their relations determines the loss of a woman's own "I" and leads to her transformation from the subject into an object of desire.

Toward a Culturally Cliterate Family Law

Sexual desire and sexual activity long have played central roles in family law, rationalizing its rules, informing its policies, and animating any number of calls for reform. Since the 1970s, gender equality has also become a salient value in family law - purporting to correct legally imposed double standards of the past. Yet, despite the conceptual centrality of sexual desire and sexual activity, family law says nothing explicit about sexual pleasure. And despite the salience of gender equality in contemporary family law, the field remains preoccupied with performances that produce heterosexual men's orgasms while ignoring or rejecting women's interest in orgasmic pleasure. As a result, family law today is marked by fundamental omissions and inconsistencies.This paper attempts to begin to fill the gap and to explore the incongruities. It builds on Susan E. Stiritz's Cultural Cliteracy: Exposing the Contexts of Women's Not Coming (published as a companion piece) and examines the relevance of Stiritz's analysis for family law. According to Stiritz, '[c]ultural cliteracy' denotes what an adequately educated person should know about the clitoris, which is that it is a culturally despised body part because it is an obdurate reminder of women's independence and power and supports women's liberation. Stiritz tracks the role of the and women's sexual pleasure through history, compares past and contemporary anatomical understandings of the clitoris, and then demonstrates through empirical studies, based on courses she has taught, how cultural cliteracy can empower women and bring new insights to the reading of women's texts. She calls for the integration of adequate understandings of the clitoris into a variety of different discourses, including law.In response, this paper focuses on family law as a promising site for integrating cultural cliteracy into legal discourse. Part I introduces the project and its challenges. Part II explores the central role of sex in family law, with emphasis on how family law seeks to channel sexual desire into monogamous marriage and how this effort to manage sexual activity plays out, given the pervasive silence about women's sexual pleasure. This analysis, in turn, exposes significant inconsistencies, challenging the coherence of family law’s own stated policies, including its simultaneous preference for monogamous marriage, acceptance of no-fault divorce, and commitment to gender equality. Part III turns to contrasting ways to make family law more culturally cliterate, specifically, allowing individuals to learn what they can from popular culture versus undertaking affirmative government efforts to promote such knowledge, through educational programs. Part III next looks beyond educational programs to suggest how respect for women's sexual pleasure might prompt rethinking several specific aspects of family law, including divorce grounds; civil actions for sexual harm; and the legal treatment of various supports, interventions, and protections that facilitate sexual pleasure, from sex toys to reproductive autonomy. Part IV concludes with a deeper look at the prospect of a culturally cliterate family law, including the fundamental paradoxes that it might pose.

Victorian Women's Independence and their Body Images Shown through their Selecting costumes(2)

Victorian Women's Independence and their Body Images Shown through their Selecting costumes(2)

Victorian Women's Independence and their Body Images Shown through their Selecting Costumes(3)

Victorian Women's Independence and their Body Images Shown through their Selecting Costumes(3)

“Aunt Sophie Smashes a Triangle”: Stella Miles Franklin and the 1913 adultery narratives

Nineteen thirteen was an extraordinary year for Stella Miles Franklin. Alongside her hectic schedule with the National Women's Trade Union League in Chicago, Franklin worked on a variety of manuscripts, including the suffrage play “Aunt Sophie Smashes a Triangle”. I focus on this play about male adultery, contextualising it in her personal relationships and intellectual life, especially in the ways Franklin's interest in social purity, feminism, and the influence of Charlotte Perkins Gilman coincided with moral movements abounding in Chicago during 1913. Energised by the progressive literary endeavours of the period, Franklin makes three important points in this protest play about male adultery that include: the degeneracy of masculinity that leads to male susceptibility for adultery, the dangers of domesticity that help explain male infidelity, and the necessity of women's economic independence and solidarity to survive the realities of male adultery in society. In this latter claim, Franklin subverts the polarisation of wife and mistress and presents women as allies united in resisting male sexual transgressions.

Electric dreamland: amusement parks, movies, and American modernity

Amusement parks were the playgrounds of the working class in the early twentieth century, combining numerous, mechanically-based spectacles into one unique, modern cultural phenomenon. Lauren Rabinovitz describes the urban modernity engendered by these parks and their media, encouraging ordinary individuals to sense, interpret, and embody a burgeoning national identity. As industrialization, urbanization, and immigration upended society, amusement parks tempered the shocks of racial, ethnic, and cultural conflict while shrinking the distinctions between gender and class. Following the rise of American parks from 1896 to 1918, Rabinovitz seizes on a simultaneous increase in cinema and spectacle audiences and connects both to the success of leisure activities in stabilizing society. Critics of the time often condemned parks and movies for inciting moral decline, yet in fact they fostered women's independence, racial uplift, and assimilation. The rhythmic, mechanical movements of spectacle also conditioned audiences to process multiple stimuli. Featuring illustrations from private collections and accounts from unaccessed archives, Electric Dreamland joins film and historical analyses in a rare portrait of mass entertainment and the modern eye.

A Study on Fumiko Hayashi’s “Downtown” - The Life Phase and the Independence of Women in the Post-War Japan -

A Study on Fumiko Hayashi’s “Downtown” - The Life Phase and the Independence of Women in the Post-War Japan -

Family and Feminism in the French Revolution: The Case of Rosalie Ducrollay Jullien

The debate over whether women had a French Revolution is a spirited one. Limited sources, however, have frustrated our efforts to learn how women described their experience of the Revolutionary decade. This article introduces readers to a new female voice, the bourgeois Parisian, Rosalie Jullien. In her remarkable collection of over eight hundred private letters, we seek evidence of change in her descriptions of women and the family and her gendered self. We argue that the Revolution led gradually to a more republican understanding of family dynamics and a politicization of femininity. However, we also see that new ideas about women's independence mixed ambiguously with traditional notions of gender hierarchy. This insight into the private life and thoughts of an unknown citoyenne demonstrates how ordinary and obscure women could be profoundly influenced by Revolutionary discourse and experience, even if they rarely expressed those changes beyond private writings and interactions.

Use of Medicines Changing the Face of Abortion

Medication abortion (also commonly referred to as medical abortion) is arguably the most important advance in reproductive health technology since the discovery of oral contraceptives. This simple process, involving the use of pins rather than invasive surgical instruments, has been shown to be safe and up to 98% effective for early pregnancy termination. (1-3) In settings where abortion is legal, medication abortion has expanded the array of effective options available, thus improving the abortion experience for those who wish to avoid surgery. In settings where abortion is illegal or highly restricted, it has provided many women for the first time with a safe and discreet means for early termination of unwanted pregnancy. Further, in all settings where it is available, medication abortion has reduced women's dependence on medical systems, providing them with greater autonomy and control over their most important reproductive decisions. Administration of mifepristone, followed by a prostaglandin, is the gold standard for medication abortion. Mifepristone was initially approved in the late 1980s in China and France and has since been safely and effectively used by many millions of women worldwide. (4-7) Mifepristone diminishes the biological availability of progesterone, the hormone needed to sustain pregnancy. It is typically used in combination with misoprostol, which helps empty the uterus by inducing uterine contractions. (1) However, mifepristone is not available in many settings because of legal restrictions on the provision of abortion services. It is also unavailable in numerous settings where the population of reproductive-age women is small, since the high cost of drug registration makes entering the market unappealing to commercial entities. As a result, mifepristone is registered for pregnancy termination in only about 50 of the world's countries, the majority of which are in the developed regions of Europe. (8) Of the 20 developing countries where mifepristone is registered, two-thirds are in Asia. At present, mifepristone is registered in just five African countries (Mozambique, Zambia, Tunisia, South Africa and Ghana) and two Latin American countries (Mexico and Guyana). In many settings where mifepristone is unavailable, misoprostol is commonly used alone for early pregnancy termination. Misoprostol was originally developed in the mid-1980s for gastrointestinal indications and is licensed for such purposes in about 90 countries worldwide. (9), (10) The drug is inexpensive and stable at room temperature, making it ideal for inducing abortion in low-resource settings. The first reported widespread use of misoprostol for pregnancy termination was in Brazil in the late 1980s. (11),(12) Since then, knowledge and use of misoprostol by itself as a means of early pregnancy termination have grown throughout Latin America, as well as in other regions where abortion is legally restricted and mifepristone is unavailable. (13), (14) Although use of misoprostol alone is less effective than its use with mifepristone, misoprostol-only abortions are nevertheless a safe, acceptable and effective means of early pregnancy termination. (6), (15), (16) In still other settings, women lack access to both misoprostol and mifepristone. These include much of northern and western Africa; some parts of middle, eastern and southern Africa; and a number of countries in Asia and South America. (10) Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the world's most restrictive abortion laws and highest rates of abortion-related mortality are found in these same places. (17), (18) The acceptability of medication abortion among women seeking an abortion is high in developing countries, regardless of the setting or regimen used. (5), (6), (19) Furthermore, demand for the procedure appears to be increasing rapidly in many places. It is difficult to document specific trends in the use of medication abortion, because mifepristone is frequently unavailable and use of misoprostol is largely off-label or clandestine. …

The 2010 Football World Cup and the Regulation of Sex Work in South Africa

While the South African government expected the 2010 Football World Cup to stimulate economic growth and infrastructure development, and to foster a sense of national unity amongst its citizens, members of the public and the media anticipated an increased demand for commercial sex. The call, in 2007, by the National Commissioner of Police to legalise sex work for the duration of the tournament stimulated debates on the legal status of sex work. Media reports show how advocates for sex workers' rights used the publicity around the event to argue for the legalisation of sex work and the protection of sex workers' human rights. However, these calls were persistently overshadowed by claims that up to 40,000 foreign women would be trafficked into the country for sex work, and claims that many children would be abducted or trafficked for the same purposes. Similar claims have been made in the past in relation to other large sporting events, especially the 2006 Football World Cup held in Germany. However, these fears have not materialised elsewhere, nor did they do so in 2010. Fears of sex trafficking represent a form of moral panic which, while purporting to focus on the well-being of trafficked sex workers, often instead provide justification for the harassment and punishment of sex workers. This happened at the German World Cup and such fears were used to similar effect in the Cape Town Metro. The preoccupation with trafficking and child sexual abuse distract attention from more important issues in debates about sex work, such as the ways in which the state, global and local commercial interests, and beliefs about sexuality in the wider society, construct and uphold women's economic dependence on men and the routine exploitation of women's sexuality. These factors create and sustain the conditions which force women to resort to sex work, both in the formal sex work industry, and in ‘informal’ sex work transactions.