Popular Women Research Articles

A History of Japanese Follow-up Surveys of Children Conceived through Artificial Insemination by Donor: The Evidence of “Superior” Children and Positive Eugenics

Artificial insemination by donor (AID) began in 1948 in Japan at Keio University. Due to criticism of this procedure, perhaps for the first time in the world, the university’s obstetrics and gynecology researchers conducted follow-up surveys of children conceived through AID, showing the “superiority” of these children based on their mental development. This paper, by considering such surveys as evidence of children’s “superiority” and positive eugenics, aims to clarify how such evidence was created and used. The survey reports were published in the medical journals from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, and obstetrics and gynecology researchers at the university referred to the survey results when writing articles for various media, including popular women’s magazines, to promote AID. Eugenics started to lose its legitimacy from the 1970s due to the prevalence of movements for the disabled. After the 1990s, the “superiority” of the children was no longer claimed while the safety of assisted reproductive technology (ART) was being pursued to produce children who were “not inferior.” This study concludes that, in the context of ART, physicians are adhering to the safety of the technology and prolonging the values of eugenics while dissociating from the pursuit of “superior” children.

New Media and the Rise of the Popular Woman Writer, 1832–1860 by Alexis Easley

New Media and the Rise of the Popular Woman Writer, 1832–1860 by Alexis Easley

Making Space: Key Popular Women Writers Then and Now

Reclaiming lost or forgotten (Victorian) popular women writers and their works is still an important, ongoing aim of literary and gender studies. In this article, we take the Key Popular Women Writers series, published by Edward Everett Root Publishers and edited by Janine Hatter and Helena Ifill, as one example of a current series that continues and develops this feminist practice. By drawing upon the research, writing and publishing practice of current women academics, as well as related issues concerning literary value, canonicity and the popularity of the Victorian writers themselves, we showcase the methodological and pedagogical practice of finding motivation and inspiration beyond that which is established as the norm. Furthermore, through examining the current political, academic and publishing fields’ impact on researching and teaching (Victorian) popular fiction, we discuss breakthroughs, challenges and potential ways for the study of this area to move forward. Popular women’s writing continues to offer readers, students and academics, ways to challenge conventions, embrace the multi-faceted nature of our field and take our place on the landscape.

Mobilized Yet Contained: Popular Women, Feminisms, and Organizing around Venezuela’s 2012 Organic Labor Law

Venezuela’s state-led national-popular Bolivarian process opened up a new political field for feminism—an approach that was both institutional and popular, aiming to combine forces from above and from below and use state gender institutions to foment popular women’s organization. Yet this field was conflictual, containing contesting popular feminist projects with different implications for the gendered division of labor. Analysis of popular women’s organizing around Venezuela’s 2012 organic labor law shows that state adoption of feminism marked a gendered political opening for popularizing feminism while also presenting risks of state co-optation of popular women’s organizing. The state understood popular women’s organization and mobilization as central to the revolution, yet it generally attempted to limit their autonomy and organizing to challenge the gendered division of labor.El bolivarianismo nacional-popular liderado por el estado venezolano abrió un nuevo campo político para el feminismo: un enfoque que era tanto institucional como popular y cuyo objetivo era combinar fuerzas tanto de arriba como de abajo, así como utilizar las instituciones estatales de género para fomentar las organizaciones populares de mujeres. Sin embargo, este campo resultó conflictivo, y parte de su contenido impugnaba proyectos feministas populares con diferentes implicaciones para las divisiones de género en el trabajo. El análisis de la organización popular de las mujeres en torno a la ley orgánica del trabajo de Venezuela de 2012 muestra que la adopción estatal del feminismo marcó una apertura política de género con intenciones de popularizar el feminismo a la vez que presentaba el riesgo de que la organización popular de las mujeres fuera cooptada por el estado. El estado consideraba la organización y movilización popular de las mujeres como esenciales a la revolución. Sin embargo y hablando generalmente, se abocó a limitar su autonomía y organización cuando se trataba de desafiar las divisiones de género en el trabajo.

Perched on a Parched Hill: Popular Women, Popular Feminism, and the Struggle for Water in Medellín

Organized popular women in Medellín, Colombia, have exerted lasting influence on the city’s women’s movement by centering a gender-class approach to women’s issues and thus contributing to long-standing forms of popular feminism in Latin America. The work of the grassroots Red de Mujeres Populares and the nongovernmental organization Corporación Vamos Mujer in positioning the right to water as a key demand on the city’s feminist agenda draws upon a legacy of socialist feminisms. These organizations’ praxis demonstrates that the struggle for water is political and embodies a critique of care work within the capitalist structure articulated from a gender and class consciousness. Popular women reclaim their identity as political agents of their own making, underscoring their active role as women whose lives are defined by political acumen rather than scarcity. Las mujeres populares organizadas en Medellín, Colombia, han ejercido una influencia duradera en el movimiento de mujeres de la ciudad al centrar un enfoque de clase y género en el análisis de las problemáticas de las mujeres, contribuyendo así a la larga tradición del feminismo popular en Latinoamérica. El trabajo que la organización de base Red de Mujeres Populares y la organización no gubernamental Corporación Vamos Mujer desarrollan en torno a la lucha por establecer, el derecho al agua como una demanda clave en la agenda feminista de la ciudad, se basa en el legado de los feminismos socialistas. La praxis de estas organizaciones demuestra que la lucha por el agua es política a la vez que encarna una crítica al trabajo del cuidado dentro de la estructura capitalista, articulada a partir de la conciencia de clase y género. Las mujeres populares reclaman su identidad como agentes políticas de su propia creación, subrayando su papel activo como mujeres cuyas vidas se definen a partir de la perspicacia política en lugar de la escasez.

Evaluation of Movements Matter: A social media and hospital-based campaign aimed at raising awareness of decreased fetal movements.

The Movements Matter campaign aimed to raise awareness of decreased fetal movements (DFM) among pregnant women and inform clinicians of best practice management. To conduct a process evaluation of campaign implementation, and an impact evaluation of the campaign's effects on knowledge and experiences of pregnant women, and attitudes and practices of clinicians in relation to DFM. This study used a cross-sectional before-after design. Pregnant women and clinicians were sampled at five hospitals. Women were surveyed about their knowledge of DFM, and actions to take if they noticed DFM. Clinicians were asked about their current practices and attitudes about informing women about DFM. Logistic regression was used to calculate campaign effects on outcome measures. The Movements Matter campaign reached 653262 people on social media, as well as being covered on news media and popular women's websites. The evaluation surveyed 1142 pregnant women pre-campaign and 473 post-campaign, and 372 clinicians pre-campaign and 149 post-campaign. Following the campaign, women were more likely to be aware that babies should move the same amount in late pregnancy (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 1.81, 95% CI 1.43-2.27), and were more likely to contact their health service immediately if their baby was moving less (aOR 1.52, 95% CI 1.22-1.91). Clinicians were 2.84 times more likely to recommend women should come in for assessment if they experience DFM (95% CI 1.35-5.97). This evaluation has shown that a campaign using social media and in-hospital education materials led to some increases in knowledge about fetal movements among pregnant women.

Market Segmentation and Shirley Jackson’s Domestic Humor

Abstract Shirley Jackson’s essays in popular women’s magazines negotiate the gendered tensions and commercial contradictions of postwar print culture. This essay shows how the women in Jackson’s essays are figures of the fraught convergence of women’s public affiliation and the restrained politics of gender critique. These female figures are also representative of broader issues in US print culture after the Second World War. In particular, Jackson’s essays represent how a certain strain of feminist writing—sometimes known as “domestic humor”—was absorbed within the market forces of print capitalism. To explain this absorption, I draw on mid-century theories of market segmentation.

The Stereotypical Representation of Females in Women’s Health Magazine’s Cosmetic Advertisements

This research examines how the ideal white beauty is portrayed in the cosmetic advertisements in a popular women’s magazine named Women’s Health, which is mainly based on the topics of health, diet, fitness and fashion, and how this contemporary women’s magazine uses the stereotypical representations of women in the cosmetic advertisements. With this aim, this paper bases its argument on the cultivation theory, which points out that the media indeed constructs the world that others should live in, and it presents the gender stereotypes that they should embrace (Bögenhold & Naz, 2018: p. 60). Thus, it is the media, which shapes how people understand the gender representations in real life. In this research, the researcher has used social semiotics as a method in order to reveal that. It is seen that the magazine basically uses five different stereotypical representations of women, which are the sex kitten, the classic and feminine model, the cute model or lolita, the trendy model, and the casual model. The magazine creates a perception that wearing make-up is essential for good-looking and attracting the opposite sex and by using most of the models as a decorative object, the magazine uses benevolent sexism. Overall, the magazine shows to the average women how gender roles should be perceived through stereotypical representations so that they can apply them in real life. Nevertheless, the usage of an elderly woman creates a contrast in the stereotypical representation therefore it is seen as progressive. Thus, the magazine, which takes a broad-minded step, breaks the conventional representation of women in the cosmetic advertisements.

ЗМІНИ НА РИНКУ ПРАЦІ В УМОВАХ КАРАНТИННИХ ОБМЕЖЕНЬ: ГЕНДЕРНИЙ АСПЕКТ

The economic crisis caused by the current pandemic that has led to a sharp decline in demand in both the Ukrainian labor market and globally. Employment in the world in 2020 fell not only due to job loss, but also due to inaction: people left the labor market because they could not work due to lockdowns. Problems in the labor market affected more women than men. In all regions of the world, women are more likely to become economically inactive, in other words to drop out of the workforce during this crisis. One of the groups of women at particular risk are women in various occupations who have children of preschool or primary school age. As a result, more than a quarter of working women are considering slowing down their careers or giving up work altogether due to the forced stay of children at home. The most popular women's professions are related to education, training, care and intensive interpersonal communication. The most risky areas in terms of virus infection - medicine, education, household services, retail trade, etc. - are represented mainly by employed women. Considering the specifics of pandemic measures, it is obviously that the service sector has suffered the most from lockdowns and quarantine restrictions. Similar data are published in European and American statistical reports. More women than men are employed in personal care, cleaning and education. The solution of this problem can be considered in three ways simultaneously: at the level of households, enterprises and the state. For households, a more proportionate redistribution of a woman's responsibilities to other family members may be a possible outcome. Businesses may also take a number of measures to mitigate the impact and offset gender disparities in the labor market caused by quarantine restrictions. The state should consider and approve short-term support scenarios for families with children, examples of which can be seen in European countries. Public policy in the long-term should be aimed at forming and introducing into society the norm of the need for active engagement men in household chores and child care on par with women.

Nineteenth-Century American Women's Serial Novels by Dale M. Bauer

Reviewed by: Nineteenth-Century American Women's Serial Novels by Dale M. Bauer Rachel Ihara BAUER, DALE M. Nineteenth-Century American Women's Serial Novels. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 172 pp. $99.99 hardcover; $80.00 e-book. An ambitious study of four popular American women writers, Dale M. Bauer's Nineteenth-Century American Women's Serial Novels proceeds from the premise that understanding a serial author requires reading beyond a few texts in order to grasp "the entirety of an author's production" (2). This is no small task given the prodigious output of the authors under consideration: E.D.E.N. Southworth (approximately fiftytwo novels), Ann Stephens (twenty-six), Laura Jean Libbey (possibly seventy novels), and Mary Jane Holmes (thirty-nine). Such numbers boggle the mind, and the time and devotion involved in tackling all of these novels, with their convoluted plots and beset heroines, is impressive indeed. The study that results aims to make sense of this abundance of plots, in order to chart the particular themes and preoccupations of each author while also making an argument for their shared interest in narratives of female suffering (as a result of sham marriages, bad men, mistaken identities, and bouts of insanity), suffering that is provisionally resolved in abrupt conclusions (through sound marriages, restored senses, and transformed identities), before being taken up again in the next serial. Building on, yet diverging from, early studies of popular women's fiction, like Helen Papashvily's All the Happy Endings (1956), which dismissed serial plots as "simple" (xiv), and Nina Baym's Woman's Fiction (1978), which saw in these novels "'a single tale' with 'one overplot'" (xv), Bauer seeks to do justice to the rich and varied issues taken up by these authors. For instance, while critical attention to Southworth's best-known novel, The Hidden Hand (1859), might lead to an assumption that cross-dressing represents her primary challenge [End Page 308] to gender norms, Bauer sees mental breakdowns in Southworth's characters as more typical of Southworth's strategy for highlighting and confronting various societal ills. One challenge in adopting this all-encompassing approach is that it requires a command of a substantial number of novels, most of which will be unfamiliar to all but a few scholars of American literature. This means that Bauer's claims about texts and their significance rest, to a large degree, upon plot summaries. While these glosses are intended to illuminate the points being advanced, often they seem to exceed the critical purpose accorded to them, pointing to alternative interpretations and avenues of exploration. For example, Bauer frames a discussion of Southworth's novel The Fortune Seeker, or The Bridal Day (1866) as an instance of Southworth's return to the idea that "moral equilibrium between the sexes ends monomanias of all sorts, which caused the cultural and personal irresponsibility that she wanted her novels to redress" (22–23). Yet what follows, ostensibly to illustrate this point, is a summary of the adventures of the novel's heroine, Astrea, who is captured on her wedding night, is disguised as a "quadroon" and sold, is compelled to rebuff the sexual advances of her purchaser, and temporarily loses her reason, before regaining her senses when she is reunited with her husband. This plot outline, while it provides evidence of repeated themes in Southworth's oeuvre (villains preying on young women, racial disguise, mistaken identities, brain inflammation, and spouses separated and reunited), does not clearly support a reading of Southworth's fiction as primarily concerned with women's suffering and temporary insanity as social critique. This may be an issue of method as much as material. The sheer abundance of "data," along with the need to convey to the reader, in broad strokes, the outlines of the many novels under discussion, constantly threatens to overwhelm any unifying argument that seeks to bring these texts together. Bauer's aim, to do justice to the messiness and variability that characterizes these novels, individually and as a whole, is to be commended. However, in reading Nineteenth-Century American Women's Serial Novels, I couldn't help but wonder if there might be another way to capture the...

Compilation of stories “On Both Sides” by Dewi Lestari: belles-lettres as the foundation of literary unity

This article examines the modern Indonesian women's prose. The object of this research is novelistics of the prominent Indonesian writer Dewi Lestari and the compilation of stories “On Both Sides” (Rectoverso; 2013). The collection demonstrates the features common to popular women's literature, as well as to meaningful, socially biased women's prose of Indonesia of the XXI century, known as “sastra wangi”. The subject of this analysis is the correlation of characteristics inherent to the two aforementioned phenomena in the stories by Dewi Lestari; while the goal consist in finding the beginning that allows the writer to blend different literary codes. The research is based on descriptive and comparative methods. Neither in Indonesia nor outside it, the women's prose “sastra wangi” has not been considered as a holistic literary phenomenon due to diversity of the discourses applied therein. The scientific novelty and relevance of this study are defined by the attempt to analyze sastra wangi based in on the works of the prominent contemporary Indonesian writer. It is revealed that literary unity of the texts of stories of Dewi Lestari imparts belletristic character on her writing, which allows combining the fields of classic and popular literature. This fact is important for understanding the artistic peculiarities of contemporary Indonesian women's prose sastra wangi as a whole.

American Reprinting, American Nationalism and British Women Writers: Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine , 1850-1899

This essay investigates the construction of British female authorship within Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in the latter half of the nineteenth- century in relation to American reprinting and American nationalism. By transplanting British authors and their realist works into American literary context, Harper’s tried to “Americanize” British literature, especially through its editorial control and rearrangement of British texts. In its effort to become a major “family literary magazine” targeting middle-class readership, Harper’s mobilized the presences of major British women writers in a distinctive way. Thus, the magazine constantly touted the literary reputation of Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Barrett Browning as a way to support its nationalistic project. Their names assumed high visibility within the magazine, and their realist authorship participated in the elevation of an American literary taste by providing American readers with sound forms of writing. In other words, these British women writers played an important role in constructing healthy readership for the magazine. This essay aims to make visible the magazine’s close links with these British women writers, first, by exploring its signing policy for their works and, second, by analyzing its editorial reviews on these women writers. The magazine allowed several works by popular British women writers to be signed with their real names both at the volume index and in the main text, unlike other articles. It also made positive editorial commentaries on their works and personal characters.

Deprivation of Everyday Life and Coping Strategies During the Crisis of the 1980s in Poland: An Analysis of Women’s First-person Narratives

AbstractThis article seeks to show how the economic, political, and social crisis of the 1980s in Poland was experienced, understood, survived, and managed in the micro-scale of individual households. Keeping in mind the inner dynamic of the period, I focus on the first years of the economic collapse (1980–1982), when supply shortages were extremely painful. The text contributes to the current interest in every-day life practices under communism. It intends to take a closer look at the adaptive strategies undertaken by individuals, precisely by women. It is based on the critical analysis of the first-person women’s narratives: memoirs, personal diaries and letters to the editor published in popular women’s magazines

The Struggles for Women’s Suffrage in Lebanon

In 1953, Lebanon became the first Arab nation-state to grant women suffrage. The story of that monumental moment begins in the 1910s with the rise of the Lebanese women’s movement. The Lebanese women’s movement has a long history of transformation and metamorphosis that responded to the needs of the state in power at the time. It began under the Ottoman Empire (1516–1918), bloomed in the Nahda Arab Renaissance of the late 1800s and early 1900s, was sustained through French colonial occupation (1920–1943), flourished with independence in 1943, and continues today (Kaedbey and Naber 2019).The early Lebanese women’s movement of the 1910s and 1920s primarily focused on women’s access to education and their role in charity organizations (Stephan 2014). The writers and readers of popular women’s magazines, and the leaders of women’s organizations, came from the middle and upper classes. Their focus on education and charity work for the poor reflected their bourgeois class position, but many in the Lebanese women’s movement sought to provide benefits for all women (Armstrong, pers. comm., September 24, 2019). In the years between World War I and World War II, during the French Mandate, the women’s movement gained a nationalist character. Women’s public support of an independent Lebanon was spurred by the Syrian revolt of 1925, and subsequent struggles for independence, as well as the changing political pressure of French occupation during World War II (Weber 2003: 91). Women leaders promoted nationalist curricula in schools, and increasingly addressed the French colonial state on social issues such as health, education, labor, and the reform of religious personal status laws concerning marriage, divorce, and inheritance (Weber 2003: 91).The movement leaders carried this agenda with them as they attended a series of conferences throughout the Middle East beginning with a conference in Beirut in 1928. The conference in Beirut was followed by additional “Arab” and “Eastern” women’s conferences in Jerusalem, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and Tehran between 1929–1938 (Robinson 2015: 21). Lebanese independence in 1943 and the creation of an independent state ushered in a period of transformation for Lebanon. Women’s rights activists viewed independence as a perfect opportunity to shift their work away from education, charity, and a maternalist agenda, toward formal political participation, long considered a prerogative of men. Pioneers of the women’s movement, Najla Saab, Labibtha Thabit, and Labiba Saab and her daughter, Laure Moughaizel, spearheaded this transition. Najla and Labiba were members of the two premier women’s advocacy organizations of the time—the Lebanese Women Union, founded in 1920 to bring together Arab nationalists and leftists, and the Christian Women’s Solidarity Association, founded in 1947 and composed of elite women representatives from twenty Christian organizations throughout Lebanon (Stephan 2010: 536).In 1952, the two organizations came together to form a permanent organization known as the Lebanese Council of Women. A coalition of this kind may seem implausible today, but during this period Muslim, Druze, and Christian women came together across the political spectrum to champion women’s rights within Lebanon and in the region. This collaboration included humanitarian aid to Palestinian women in 1948, and vocal support for Palestinian liberation (Latif, pers. comm., September 30, 2019). Although Christian women from elite class backgrounds usually headed formal organizations like the Council of Women, significant work was simultaneously occurring among working-class women labor activists. The unity built among Muslim and Christian women is particularly important given the large Christian presence in Lebanon in comparison to its Muslim-majority neighbors. This presence, which thrived under the French Mandate, is an ongoing legacy of its colonialism (Traboulsi 2012: 91).The Lebanese Council of Women spearheaded the fight for women’s suffrage, and still exists today as a group of over 170 women’s organizations in consultation with the Lebanese Parliament (Stephan 2010: 536). In the 1950s, council members traveled throughout the country and region of West Asia and North Africa attending conferences and meeting with heads of state and community leaders to build solidarity among women. They used formal channels, the press, public education, and direct action to advocate for the rights of women. After a decade of sustained and united campaigning, on February 18, 1953, they succeeded in pressuring the government to grant all Lebanese women voting rights.The following In the Archives document, written by Najla Saab, outlines the political rights she, Labiba, Laure, and an entire generation of Lebanese women pursued. These women built on the work before them—the magazines of the 1910s, the charity work of the 1920s, the conferences, lobbying, and direct action of the 1930s and 1940s—to once again transform the struggle for women’s rights in Lebanon. All documents are from the Ruth Frances Woodsmall Papers, Sophia Smith NajlaCollection, Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts).

ЛИСТ РЕДАКТОРА У СУЧАСНИХ АНГЛОМОВНИХ ЖІНОЧИХ ТА ЧОЛОВІЧИХ ЖУРНАЛАХ: ГЕНДЕРНИЙ АСПЕКТ

This paper presents a gender approach to the study of the editor’s letter, the genre endemic in modern press. In particular, it focuses on popular women’s and men’s magazines which are considered to be powerful instruments in maintaining and promoting certain gender stereotypes in modern society. The paper gives a short insight into the definition of the term “gender” in modern linguistics. The study is theoretically framed by R. Lakoff’s findings – the differences of men’s and women’s speech. More specifically, applying functional approach to language, the paper examines the use of key words, emotional adjectives and words of feelings, intensifiers, words and constructions expressing probability, phrasal verbs, idioms, polite words and expressions, and slang. The results of the analysis demonstrate an emphasis on certainty and confidence, politeness and loyalty in the editor’s letters written by both women and men. Also, they indicate that apart from traditional topics a motif of family and relationship is important for the male editors. Finally, the findings show a tendency to neutral words and phrases which substitute sexist language in the analyzed male and female editor’s letters. The paper argues that although editor’s letters reflect the basic features of women’s and men’s speech, generic conventions play a crucial role in presenting information. The linguistic peculiarities of editor’s letters help to construct a certain image of modern man and woman promoted by these popular media nowadays.

Multiplicity of feminisms: discourse on women’s paid work in the popular Israeli women’s magazine La’isha during second-wave feminism

ABSTRACT Study of the cultural discourse around women’s paid work in Israel is limited, and until now research has ignored its early periods and dynamics. This paper focuses on Israel’s third decade, 1967–1977, when women, including mothers, were for the first time encouraged to work outside the home. Using feminist critical discourse analysis, I examine La’isha (For the woman), Israel’s veteran commercial women’s magazine, which has self-declared its nationalist role. Mainly dedicated to traditional feminine subjects directed at middle-class women, La’isha has followed the pattern of most popular women’s magazines. However, it critically problematized the issue of women’s employment in a wide social context, emphasizing gender and class inequality and expressing a complex of hegemonic liberal feminism and socialist feminism. In examining this radical discourse, the paper looks at the cultural and civic roles of popular women’s magazines and the characteristics of this journalistic genre, and considers historical macro and micro explanations. The study demonstrates the value of women’s magazines as a historical source and highlights the potential of popular women’s magazines to take on oppositional power and play a transformative role.

Access Paths: On Popular Women’s Literature and Criticism

Referring to critical statements that have appeared during the last few years, the author discusses ways of commenting on popular literature penned by female authors. One may distinguish five types of comments, 1) Appropriation (Aneksja), employed when a popular novel is included in the socially important literature referring to pressing and alarming problems (e.g. domestic violence). 2) Playing with convention (Gra z konwencją), based on pinpointing both grotesque and ironic elements and, above all, metaliterary signals in popular novels. 3) Adherence to tradition (Zgodnie z tradycją), best represented in the secondary literature, either through a poetologic approach (structural analyses) or approaches inspired by feminist criticism. 4) Exhortation to pay close attention (Dobrze się wschłuchać), focused on the approaches suggested by other fields, e.g. how popular women’s literature is read by sociologists. 5) Focus on emotions and excess (Emocje i zbytek), based on emotional and therapeutic research on the perception styles of popular literature. In this case, one focuses not on popular women’s fiction, but on the way it influences the readers’ emotions.

On the Margins of the Motherhood Discourse: Childlessness in Lithuanian Women’s Magazines during 1991–1996

Foreign scholars highlight that despite the modernization of social life, cultural attitudes towards thefamily are changing slowly, and women remain closely tied to the role of motherhood (McKennon Brody, Frey,2017). The media has the power to reflect on and change the attittudes prevailing in society, thereby reducing the stigmatizing ones. Researchers discover the domination of pronatal discourse by analyzing images of childlessness, which supports parenthood in many ways, and individuals, especially women, who do not raise children and are underestimated and often stigmatized (Gibb, 2019; Grill, 2019). In order to understand the current cultural attitudes towards childless women and to analyze changes in comparison to other countries, it is important to examine them from a historical perspective.The representation of childlessness in Lithuanian media during the last decades of the 20th century was not studied yet. The scholars (Marcinkevičienė, Praspaliauskienė, 1999; Maslauskaitė 2001; 2002) who had analyzed Lithuanian women’s magazines during the late Soviet period and after the Independence in 1990 focused mainly on the representations of familial and romantic relationships. This research, based on a qualitative content analysis of 224 articles from the most popular women’s magazines of 1991–1996, showed that sex education and abortion prevention were the prevailing topics covering the lack of public knowledge about reproductive and sexual health. The aim of the media was to consolidate motherhood as the main expression of femininity within the framewok of declining birth rates; therefore, infertility and voluntary childlessness were stigmatized.

THE DEGREE OF DESCRIPTION NOMINALITY IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN TEXTS

The article studies the degree of description nominality in fiction based on the usage of the two most frequent attributes: adjectival and nominal ones. The former are adnominals, expressed by adjectives or adjectival phrases (adjectives with dependent words), the latter are of-N constructions (in English texts) and genitive case of nouns (in Russian texts). The data-base includes extracts from highly popular English and Russian women authors: R. Galbraith, S. Kinsella, A. Marinina and T. Ustinova.The research is based on a quantitative analysis of data with the use of a number of statistical measures. The Busemann coefficient is used to study the relationship of adjectival and nominal attributes and the power function is necessary for fitting the distribution of distances of attributes counted within separate sentences.The analysis has demonstrated that the frequency of adjectival attributes as expected exceeds that of nominal attributes. However, the relationship of these types of attributes is highly different for the abovementioned authors. The results have proved that there is no difference in the proportion of these two attribute types between English and Russian texts whereas this feature distinguishes the styles of R.Galbraith and A. Marinina on the one hand, and S. Kinsella and T. Ustinova on the other hand.The research of the distance dynamics of the two given attributes from the beginning to the end of the works has shown big differences in the style of the authors, too. In a number of cases the tendency for compensation is observed while a drop in the frequency of one attribute type correlates with the rise in frequency of the other one.

Del barrio a la ciudad. Nuevos roles ocupacionales y formas de sociabilidad de las mujeres populares en Cartagena, 1890-1954

Este artículo analiza las transformaciones en los roles de las mujeres populares urbanas de Cartagena entre 1890 y 1954. El autor reconstruye algunas dinámicas que configuraron a la ciudad en una sociedad moderna, como son la construcción y la habitación de espacios públicos –nuevos barrios por fuera de las murallas–, dinámicas que hicieron evidente problemas de crecimiento poblacional desordenado, planificación urbana, desigualdad y pobreza. No obstante, para estas mujeres como actores sociales habitar la ciudad significaba una oportunidad para acceder a beneficios, la posibilidad de ocuparse en oficios varios y mejorar su calidad de vida, la de sus familias y vecinos. Desde una perspectiva de género, esta reflexión introduce la historia de las mujeres en plural y la noción de la diferencia. Para ello, se revisaron fuentes primarias de la prensa comercial localizadas en archivos de Cartagena.