Women Talk Research Articles

Women's Patterns of Talk in The Third Wife Movie Script (Application in Family Environment)

In this study, Deborah Tannen's theory is used to explain how women talk in The Third Wife. To examine the data, a qualitative descriptive method was adopted in this study. The Third Wife script serves as the main source of data for this study. From the analysis, the researchers notified there are three ways to demonstrate the women's speaking patterns in context, notably those related to mother dynamics, connection and control, and metamessage. These are present in polygamous homes, particularly in the context of this film. Nonetheless, there is an exchange of positions in which women fill the void since the absence of a husband figure influences how they interact with one another, as the first wife. This happens because there is a special relationship that is formed between the wives which makes the pattern of talk create itself between them. The lack of a husband figure impacts how they interact with each other, as the first wife (Ha), is in control and holds the most important rank in the family, followed by the second wife (Xuan), and the last one the third wife (May). The status of the family heavily impacts the wives’ talk to each other and the style of their speech. In the family setting of this movie, women with higher status may use more assertive language and dominate conversations.

Body as machine: Health vulnerability of women garment factory workers in India

Even though garment factory work has attracted women in large numbers in urban and peri-urban settings in low- and -middle income countries including India, there is relatively limited health system research on identifying and addressing the health vulnerability of this workforce. Drawing on data on life histories of women workers (n ​= ​16), semi-structured interviews with others including family members of deceased workers, health professionals, members of the labor union, factory management (n ​= ​15), focus group discussions with women garment workers (n ​= ​04) and observations (n ​= ​04) of workplaces including export as well as domestic factory units and women labor union activities, we discuss how women's talk on ‘health’ traverses through different layers and sites of silences. Women highlighted the narratives around menstruation (‘less’, ‘more’, ‘infrequent’, ‘irregular’ and related reproductive health consequences) as one of the important ways to talk about relationships between their body, work, and health. Predominantly for them, ‘bodily heat’ and ‘torture’ emerged as two important expressions that describe their everyday vulnerability to health. These narratives call for greater research and policy attention to the large women workforce in the garment factories who remain invisible to the health system. More importantly, it points towards the need for incorporating qualitative research methodologies in occupational health and safety discussions to foreground the perspectives and experiences of workers themselves.

Women and Power in the Developing World

What do we know about women's negotiation of power in the Global South? The prevailing view tells us that women's power in the Global North is greater than in the South. Yet across analytic levels, the developing world provides striking models of the assertion of women's power that challenge established concepts of political and economic development. At the macro level of state development, research identifies how the subordination of women has been central to the creation and modern infrastructure of liberal democratic states or political orders. Data analysis here provides complementary evidence that the most effective alternatives to patriarchal political orders are originating in the developing world. At the meso level of policy-making processes, developing-world states are more likely than developed-world states to recognize and co-opt women's power. Finally, at the micro level, intrafamily negotiations of patriarchal power are most dynamic in the developing world, with the greatest promise to improve our understanding of the broader systems of power that drive states, policies, and welfare.

Empowerment by Design

She Said (Maria Schrader, 2022), Women Talking (Sarah Polley, 2022), and Tár (Todd Field, 2022) all address the aftermath of sexual harassment and rape. Notably, these films share a refusal to depict assault, which differentiates them from the prevailing cinematic practice of titillating audiences with sexual violence, ostensibly in order to repudiate it. By eschewing assault scenes, these films turn their audiences’ attention from individual acts to ideological structures. Each film represents a different version of and backlash against rape culture; in so doing each asks the spectator to extend culpability beyond assailants and their immediate enablers to the institutional systems that empower them. By not depicting rape or sexual assault, these movies also suggest that film viewers are complicit in rape culture too. Their representational strategies insinuate that sitting back and watching simulated assault as entertainment carries with it an implicit acceptance of such assault—and thus that audiences should not just demand better but do better themselves.

In the uncharted water: Meaning-making capacity and identity negotiation of Chinese lesbian and bisexual women.

Chinese lesbian and bisexual women (LBW) often face difficulties and challenges on campus due to their multiple, socially-oppressed identities. These students have to navigate through uncharted environments to make meaning of their identities. In this qualitative study, by considering four environmental systems of student life, including the student club (microsystem), the university (mesosystem), families (exosystem), and society (macrosystem), we aim to explore what identity negotiation Chinese LBW students have in them and what their meaning-making capacity influence that identity negotiation. We find students experience identity security in the microsystem, identity differentiation-inclusion or inclusion in the mesosystem, and identity unpredictability-predictability or predictability in the exosystem and macrosystem. Moreover, they employ foundational, transitional (formulaic to foundational or symphonic), or symphonic meaning-making capacity to influence their identity negotiation. Suggestions are made for the university to create an inclusive climate accommodating students with different identities.

An Acute Crisis adds to Unresolved Chronic Crisis

Residents in a community in the South Peninsula of the Western Cape, South Africa live with the reality of unresolved challenges. The women and children of this community face a burden from the prevailing inequality and structural violence that plays out in their daily lives as high levels of unemployment, substance abuse, violence in many forms, food insecurity, high school dropout rates and teenage pregnancy. The complexities of living in this community were exacerbated by the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdown regulations that destabilised all previous notions of normality. The pre-existing social challenges can be viewed as the residents’ experiences of hazards and stressors that have been in place for years in the unequal social structures of South Africa (The World Bank 2022). In this environment, of what can be interpreted as a community in chronic crisis (Dekker et al., 2021), the addition of the acute crisis of the pandemic, posed further cumulative effects on households that impacted more seriously on those who are already the most vulnerable. This paper presents reflections on the stories of women talking about their experiences of the global pandemic to this coastal community. We aim to show the impact on their lives as members of families within their community. The analysis will utilise the phases of a crisis (Emergency Management, 2022) where the pre-crisis or prodromal phase was recognised as life in the chronic crisis of structural violence. The acute or crisis phase of the pandemic became a lens for the effects of an existing long-term crisis compounded by athe. The response or chronic phase of the acute crisis was again found to be exacerbated by the existence of a long drawn out response phase to the chronic crisis. This paper is a window into the innovative attempts by this community to cope with the immense challenges of Covid-19, followed now by the post-crisis (resolution) phase that reflects the ongoing efforts to rebuild the community in the face of the cumulative effects of the pandemic, as but a temporary diversion from the challenges of a continuous chronic crisis. The post-crisis phase remains incomplete, however, a deeper understanding of crisis upon crisis provides knowledge that can assist those implementing social interventions in this community to tackle challenges as a state of chronic crisis for residents.

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt and the Double Time of Motherhood

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt and the Double Time of Motherhood

Exploring the interplay between fat talk, social media use and body image among young women: New opportunities for health education?

Background: ‘Fat Talk’, or the act of negatively discussing one’s own or another person’s body, is linked to body image constructs, body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem and disordered eating. The spaces in which young women talk about the body are changing, as social media use escalates. Understanding the interplay between social media use, body image and fat talk, in different contexts, is needed. Method: Focus group interviews were used to explore how young women (aged 15–19) experience fat talk while using social media and the possible effect on body image constructs. Using purposive convenience sampling, young women who regularly used social media and were living in an inner city of England were recruited. Thematic analysis was used for analysis and six themes were identified, both a priori and inductively, to explore the interplay between them. Findings: Over 35 women were successfully recruited into the study, with 18 of these finally participating in focus group interviews. Among participants, social media use was linked to increased self-evaluation of the body, engagement in social comparative behaviour and negative self-talk about the body. Although fat talk was reportedly common and widespread, it was unacceptable in the online space. However, body talk, other than size or shape, was permissible. Conclusion: Fat talk can be divisive; however, if it becomes unacceptable in the online space, negative self-talk may increase. If fat talk is replaced by an all-encompassing ‘body talk’, then this too may exacerbate existing pressures on young people and their mental health and well-being. Understanding the relationship between social media, body dissatisfaction and body talk may provide new opportunities for health education to promote a more constructive prevention discourse of the body, including body talk, in or around the online space.

Effect of gender composition of committees

Does having more women on a committee matter? Interestingly, answers to this question are unknown, despite a significant push toward greater gender diversity on committees and boards. This article uncovers the mechanism of if and how committees’ gender diversity impacts its deliberations and decisions. We utilize a unique dataset that matches detailed meeting transcripts of the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) spanning over 30 years, with member characteristics and economy-wide conditions, allowing us to effectively compare committees with the same member resources and economy-wide conditions but different gender diversity. We find that deliberations are more thorough and engaged in more gender-balanced committees, wherein both men and women talk more about wider topics in depth. Unlike findings from other studies, women in the FOMC participate as active members, whereby they are more likely to voice formal disagreement and less likely to be dismissed by an interruption. Finally, we find that member resources and the economy-wide conditions explain the committee’s decision, where gender diversity exhibits no explanatory power by and in itself. With the high correlation between gender diversity and member resources, we demonstrate that gender composition affects committees via two channels; deliberation qualities and member resources.

Child Marriage: Taboo, Religion, and Women in Symbolic Violence

Child marriage is a phenomenon that still occurs in Indonesia. The occurrence of child marriage is inseparable from the role of parents and the weak position of girls in the family. The phenomenon of child marriage indirectly affects women's subordination. In this regard, religion and taboos have a role in perpetuating child marriage, reproducing subordination, and symbolic violence against women. This research is qualitative research with an anthropological sociology approach. The focus of the research is to analyze the influence of taboo and religion on the role and negotiation of women in the process of child marriage. The results of the study state that a disproportionate understanding of Islamic teachings reinforces taboos and supports the practice of child marriage, thereby reproducing symbolic violence and subordination against women.

The Divine Women in Women Talking: Restorative Imagination for a Divine Becoming

This paper will examine how Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel, Women Talking builds on its initial themes of women’s subjugation to men, their systematic oppression through religion, and their inability to reclaim their lives, to ultimately evolve into an account of women’s emancipation and divine becoming through the exercise of their restorative imagination. The novel spans two days during which eight women from the ultra-religious and patriarchal Mennonite community of Molotschna in Bolivia engage in several discussions pertaining to different aspects of their lives. These conversations very casually unfold the horror of unimaginable cruelty in the name of religion and unforgiving patriarchy as practiced within their closed community. Keeping this bleak setting in the background, Women Talking is also a tale of these women’s divine becoming, as propounded by Luce Irigaray in her essay, “Divine Women.” The resilience showed on part of these broken and abused women and the unprecedented bold decision to which they collectively arrive towards the end of the novel, is a demonstration of the courage and restorative imagination that they unknowingly harbored within themselves, the exercise of which results ultimately in their divine becoming

Putting a Human Face on It: Gender and Photographic Meaning in a Canadian Women's Coal Mine Campaign

AbstractIn January 1999, the Canadian government announced their withdrawal from the Cape Breton mining industry with a settlement package for redundant miners, which was considered inadequate by miners and their families. In response, a group of women organized a community-based campaign, United Families (UF), led by two women who traveled to Ottawa to meet national politicians presenting themselves explicitly as “miners’ wives.” While the UF located their campaign within the context of family and community, as expected of miners’ wives, their principal focus was the men disadvantaged by the settlement. Here they strayed onto the terrain of the men's union.To support their case the women took photographs of miners leaving the pit at the end of a shift and organized them into an album. This became a catalyst for the disjuncture between the gendered expectations associated with female roles, and the women's efforts to represent the interests of the men. Intended as objective evidence in support of their position, the photographs carried a range of complex emotions relating to the women's campaign: They expressed the subjective meanings of the women's relationship with mining and the men photographed, as well as providing material evidence of the condition of the miners. This subjectivity was overlaid onto gendered subtexts inscribed within the history of photography in the public and domestic spheres.In campaign negotiations the women struggled to control the meaning of the photographic images and their endeavors resulted in only very minor amendments to the original settlement. The UF women's creative use of photography ultimately undermined the legitimacy of the women's negotiations. However, the photographs remain a testament to the history of mining in Cape Breton and to the emotional commitment of women to a partnership with men forged through the sexual division of labor in coal mining.This article draws upon a range of evidence and theories of gender, activism, and photographic practice to analyze the ways in which the women were disadvantaged in their campaign.

Theorizing Beauty Regimes: Indonesian Women Performing their Gender Ideology and Resistance through Makeup

This article is about how Indonesian women talk about their beauty practices. They are aware how their beauty routines are often seen as banal and shallow but simultaneously essential to their gendered beings. However, this article argues that women are able to subvert the deprecating narratives of their beauty regimes into empowering ones while maintaining the same practices. Through their practices, they seem to conform to the beauty requirement in society. However, through their discourse, they present their beauty regimes with perspectives that put their free will and agency at the centre of their beauty regimes. The research used a sample of twenty-two Indonesian women aged from the mid-twenties to mid-sixties, to ask about beauty routines. Their answers are analyzed by using feminist discourse analysis to seek possibilities of subversion and empowerment. Another theoretical approach used in this research is the politics of everyday lives. The problematization of everyday practices allows for the deconstruction of ideology that perpetuates gendered norms of beauty. This research is significant because it provides a blueprint for further research on gender politics in the 21st century that focuses on everyday practices.

Sustaining relational subjectivity: The experience of women with dementia.

The experience of dementia can only be understood adequately if the influence of gender is fully recognised. Research accounts have, however, tended to portray dementia in gender-neutral terms. This qualitative research study aims to redress this imbalance by investigating the gendered experience of women with dementia. The research addressed women's negotiation of relationships with spousal partners, other family members, professionals, support groups and services. The study included 10 mixed-sex spousal couples in which the woman had been diagnosed with dementia. Women took part in semi-structured joint interviews alongside their partners. This research focuses on the responses provided by the women with dementia within these interviews. Four principal themes were identified within the data: upholding gendered subjectivities; the broader relational context; closer networks; and gendered care relationships. These themes elucidate the challenges women face in sustaining relational subjectivity via the spousal relationship and wider social associations while also dealing with the cognitive impacts of dementia. The article concludes by highlighting that a more nuanced social scientific perspective on dementia is required that acknowledges the complexity of gendered experience. This can assist policymakers and practitioners to tailor support to meet the requirements of women with dementia.

"It Doesn't Feel Like You Can Win": Young Women's Talk About Heterosexual Relationships.

Scholars have long explored the expectations of women to maintain intimate relationships and the gendered discourses governing those expectations. Despite the dating landscape changes, having intimate relationships remains important for young women. Amid these changes and the impacts of #MeToo/#TimesUp, investigating the discourses at play within women's talk about intimate relationships produces a current snapshot that contrasts with past literature. Young, heterosexual women of diverse racial, educational/work, and relationship backgrounds aged 18-24 years (N = 28) attended one of five online videoconferencing focus groups. Using an eclectic theoretical approach informed by feminist post-structuralism and discursive psychology, we analyzed women's talk about doing relationships. Mobilizing a discourse of intimate relationship necessity/importance, young women (a) were positioned as "the silenc(ed/ing) woman," demonstrating a shared understanding of the necessity of silence when doing intimate relationships; and/or (b) actively took up "the communicative woman," which they conceptualized as the hallmark of a healthy relationship. Tensions between these subject positions were evident (e.g., needing to be "cool"). Also, women described no-win situations in relationships despite attempts to contend with these contradictions and limitations. These findings may contribute to educational materials and youth programming delivered in high school or college.

:Writing Habits: Historicism, Philosophy, and English Benedictine Convents, 1600–1800

:<i>Writing Habits: Historicism, Philosophy, and English Benedictine Convents, 1600–1800</i>

Exploring the perception and socio-cultural barriers to safer sex negotiation among married women in Northwest Nigeria

BackgroundSafer sex negotiation refers to the means through which partners in sexual relationships agree to have intercourse that protects both partners from adverse sexual health outcomes. Evidence is sparse on the socio-cultural barriers to safer sex negotiation, especially in Northwest Nigeria where almost every aspect of women’s lives is influenced by religious and cultural norms. Understanding the socio-cultural barriers requires having knowledge of the perspectives of community stakeholders such as religious leaders, and community leaders. Thus, from the perspectives of community stakeholders, this study explored the perception and socio-cultural barriers to safer sex negotiation of married women in Northwest Nigeria.MethodA qualitative research design was adopted. Participants were purposively selected across six states, namely, Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Kebbi, Kaduna, and Zamfara. Data were collected through Key Informant Interview (KII). A total of 24 KIIs were conducted using the in-depth interview guide developed for the study. The selection of the participants was stratified between rural and urban areas. The interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, and translated from the Hausa language into the English language. Verbal and written informed consent were obtained from participants prior to the interviews. Data were analyzed using inductive thematic content analysis.ResultsSafer sex negotiation was well-understood by community stakeholders. Men dominate women in sexual relationships through the suppression of women’s agency to negotiate safer sex. Married women endured domination by males in sexual relationships to sustain conjugal harmony. The practice of complying with traditional, cultural, and religious norms in marital relationships deters women from negotiating safer sex. Other socio-cultural causes of the inability to negotiate safer sex are child marriage, poverty, poor education, and polygyny.ConclusionCommunity stakeholders have a clear understanding of safer sex negotiation in Northwest Nigeria but this has not translated into a widespread practice of safer sex negotiation by married women due to diverse socio-cultural barriers. Strategies that will empower women not only to gain more access to relevant sexual and reproductive health information and services but also to encourage women’s assertiveness in family reproductive health decisions are imperative in Northwest Nigeria.

Oriented sexual subjectivity: lesbian, bisexual and transgender women’s sexual subjectivity in Israeli rural space and periphery

How do lesbian and bisexual, cisgender and transgender (LBT) women talk about sex? This paper looks at constructions of sexual discourse and the production of sexual subjectivity from the perspective of LBT women in the Israeli periphery, asking how they construct their lives as sexual subjects. Applying Sara Ahmed’s ‘orientations’ concept, we argue that the periphery serves as an LGBTphobic context that impacts sexual discourses and constructs LBT sexual subjectivities. We conceptualize LBT women’s sexual subjectivity as distinct and anchored in spatiality, and frame it as oriented sexual subjectivity. This particular subjectivity reveals an intertwined movement between silence and discourse, urban and rural, oriented to the space inhabited by LBT women. Oriented sexual subjectivity is constructed particularly through an alignment of LBT women’s discourse on sex and sexual practices with the heteronormative spaces in which they live. Based on 61 interviews with LBT women in the Israeli periphery, we show how sex is discussed only in relation to violent experiences or while talking about urban experiences in Tel Aviv. This discursive framework reveals how in the periphery, like a palimpsest, sex is cartographically hidden in deep layers of meaning rather than discussed in the open, and how LBT sexual subjectivity is oriented.

Between Frustration and Invigoration: Women Talking about Digital Technology at Work

This study addresses the dearth of gender analysis within debates about technological innovation and workplace change. Qualitative analysis of 12 focus groups conducted with women in ‘frontline’ and ‘professional’ roles discussing their use and engagement with digital technologies at work reveals contrasting narratives of ‘digital frustration’ and ‘digital invigoration’. To explain these distinct narratives, we synthesise insights from science and technology studies with findings from scholarship on gendered work and labour market inequality to show that these differences are not driven solely by a technology’s form or the degree of automation it ostensibly represents. Instead, women’s narratives reflect an interplay between technological design, employment context and workers’ own voice and agency. These findings challenge assumptions about the totalising and transformative power of work-related technologies, redirecting attention to how social and political contestations over digital technologies inform worker experiences and shape the future of work.

The dramaturgy of Ola Rotimi

This study examines the evolutional phases of Ola Rotimi as a dramatist and his contribution to Nigerian, African and world drama. In this study, some of Ola Rotimi’s plays are analysed, to investigate and document how his Yoruba and Ijaw cultural background became an important tool in the craftsmanship of his plays, especially those that comment on social issues. In addition, the study discusses the influence of Western drama on the drama of Ola Rotimi. Rotimi studied at Yale School of Drama and Boston University, in the United States of America. Consequently, his exposure to western dramatic theories, dramatic concepts, epochs in world drama and theatre shows, clearly, in many of his works. Furthermore, this study asserts that Rotimi was also influenced by the cultures of Yoruba Traditional Travelling Theatre, storytelling, rituals and festivals among the Yoruba people. The study relied primarily on secondary literature; and related Rotimi’s drama and theatre to Cremona’s (2007) concept of ‘Theatre as Poly-System’ and Sauter’s (2007) theory of ‘Theatrical Events’. Rotimi, in his dramaturgy, embraced ‘socio commitment’ by dramatizing issues that concern the Nigerian populace, in connection to socio-political and economic mishap, in his plays, such as Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again (1977), If … (1983), Hopes of the Living Dead (1988), the three-act plays: Who is a Patriot? When Criminals Turn Judges, Man Talk, Woman Talk, and Tororo, Torororo-ro-ro (2006).