Women's Responses Research Articles

Factors that hinder or enable maternal health strategies to reduce delays in rural and pastoralist areas in Ethiopia.

To document factors that hinder or enable strategies to reduce the first and second delays of the Three Delays in rural and pastoralist areas in Ethiopia. A key informant study was conducted with 44 Health Extension Workers in Afar Region, Kafa Zone (Southern Nation, Nationalities and Peoples' Region), and Adwa Woreda (Tigray Region). Health Extension Workers were trained to interview women and ask for stories about their recent experiences of birth. We interviewed the Health Extension Workers about their experiences referring women for Skilled Birth Attendance and Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Themes related to reducing the first delay, such as the tradition of home birth, decision-making, distance and unavailability of transport, did not differ between the three locations. Themes related to reducing the second delay differed substantially. Health Extension Workers in Adwa Woreda were more likely to call ambulances due to support from the Health Development Army and a functioning referral system. In Kafa Zone, some Health Extension Workers were discouraged from calling ambulances as they were used for other purposes. In Afar Region, few Health Extension Workers were called to assist women as most women give birth at home with Traditional Birth Attendants unless they need to travel to health facilities for Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care. Initiatives to reduce delays can improve access to maternal health services, especially when Health Extension Workers are supported by the Health Development Army and a functioning referral system, but district (woreda) health offices should ensure that ambulances are used as intended.

Structural Violence, Intersectionality, andJustpeace: Evaluating Women's Peacebuilding Agency in Manipur, India

The general scholarship on armed conflict in Manipur, India, ignores the experiences of women as agents. Feminist scholarship counters this tendency, revealing women's everyday responses to the violence that constrains them. However, this scholarship often fails to be intersectional, and it lauds every instance of women's agency without evaluating it in terms of its ability to build peace. Employing Kimberlé Crenshaw's underused distinction between structural and political intersectionality and Saba Mahmood's concept of agency, I analyze my field research conducted with women's peacebuilding groups in Manipur in 2014 and 2015. Using structural intersectionality, I first describe the qualitatively different experiences of women peacebuilders living at different social locations. Using political intersectionality as a normative tool, I then show that ethnic and religious hierarchies often disrupt women's attempts to build peace. Interethnic peacebuilding groups that rely on gender‐based solidarity tend to privilege the experiences of the women coming from the majority ethnic group. Other peacebuilding groups, bound by ethnicity, often distrust and resent women who come from different ethnic enclaves. I argue that women's peacebuilding agency must aim at an inclusive justpeace if it is to succeed. We should evaluate agency, rather than glorifying all instances of women's responses to violence.

Beauty for Asian American Women in Advertising: Negotiating Exoticization and Americanization to Construct a Bicultural Identity

Abstract: This study investigates Asian American women's responses to beauty representations in mainstream advertising. Through in-depth interviews, this article explores how Asian American women construct and negotiate a bicultural identity in their interpretations of advertisements' mediations of beauty for Asian women. Study findings revealed the cultural significance of the model minority stereotype in influencing Asian American women's relationships with fashion media. Additionally, participants' narratives on Asian American women's beauty ideals reflected their identity construction process of achieving social assimilation and negotiating ethnic distinctiveness, which illuminates the often-ignored sociopolitical tensions in minority consumers' relationship with advertising representations of in-group members.

Women and the Holocaust: New Perspectives and Challenges ed. by Andrea Pető, Louise Hecht, and Karolina Krasuska

WOMEN AND THE HOLOCAUST: NEW PERSPECTIVES AND CHALLENGES Edited by Andrea Pető, Louise Hecht, and Karolina Krasuska. Warsaw: Instytut Badan Literackich PAN, 2015. 268 pp.Women and Holocaust: New Perspectives and Challenges is result of an interdisciplinary conference carried out in Warsaw in November 2011. As organizers of conference stated, it was their intention that the 'return' to Europe of former communist countries shall neither be effected by highlighting differences nor by glossing them over, but by providing a carefully crafted corpus of studies that allows parallels between 'East' and 'West' without dismissing (national) dissimilarities. This is very important. Research on role played by gender, age, or social background in experience of camps and ghettos (as opposed to universal experience of men as quintessential experience of Holocaust) is now an autonomous, well-established field in Western Europe, Israel, and America, but as volume demonstrates, while little known to an English-language audience, advances in scholarship are also taking place in Central and East Central Europe.The volume opens with an article by Leonore J. Weitzman and Dalia Ofer, which, by discussing authors' sequential theory of women's responses to Holocaust, provides a convincing theoretical framework for collection. By demonstrating multiplicity of femininities appearing in their readings of personal documents, Weitzman and Ofer call for research into details of individual experiences. This call finds its embodiment in following study by Bozena Karwowska, in which she uses case of what prisoners considered to be luxury objects to discuss an intersection of gender, class, and race in concentration camps personal documents.Other papers follow this lead. Among them, in a section on Filling Blanks, Eleonore Lappin-Eppel discusses intersection of age and gender in previously understudied testimonies of female survivors of Strasshof transports, which took Hungarian Jews from Hungary to Austria. In further studies, discussing impact of communist historiography on forming memory of Holocaust and gender and simultaneously introducing new sources of research, Monika Vrzgulova discusses women's testimonies from Slovak Oral History Archive, while Hedvig Turai looks at intersection of erasure of gender issues and Holocaust memories in postwar Hungary. …

Predicting Women's Responses to Contraceptive Campaign Messages

Predicting Women's Responses to Contraceptive Campaign Messages

Controlling the unruly maternal body: Losing and gaining control over the body during pregnancy and the postpartum period

This paper examines the feeling of lost control of the body that so many women experience through pregnancy and the postpartum period – why they feel it and how they interpret that feeling – and women's responses to the sense of lost control. For the 63 Canadian women we interviewed, the sense of lost control was related to the degree they felt their bodies changed and the number of physical problems they experienced while pregnant. Many women's references to “luck” as the cause of body changes and problems experienced underscored how little control they felt they had when they were pregnant. At the same time, women felt responsible for the well-being of their babies, and thus experienced guilt about their unruly bodies. Careful attention to diet helped some women, but not others, regain some sense of control; women with past experience of pregnancy who “gave in” to body change were more sanguine. In the postpartum period, body work (especially exercise) functioned to increase women's sense of control, but a variety of motives led them to do this work.

Abortion Stigma Among Low-Income Women Obtaining Abortions in Western Pennsylvania: A Qualitative Assessment.

Abortion stigma may cause psychological distress in women who are considering having an abortion or have had one. This phenomenon has been relatively underexplored in low-income women, who may already be at an increased risk for poor abortion-related outcomes because of difficulties accessing timely and safe abortion services. A qualitative study conducted between 2010 and 2013 used semistructured interviews to explore pregnancy intentions among low-income women recruited from six reproductive health clinics in Western Pennsylvania. Transcripts from interviews with 19 participants who were planning to terminate a pregnancy or had had an abortion in the last two weeks were examined through content analysis to identify the range of attitudes they encountered that could contribute to or reflect abortion stigma, the sources of these attitudes and women's responses to them. Women commonly reported that partners, family members and they themselves held antiabortion attitudes. Such attitudes communicated that abortion is morally reprehensible, a rejection of motherhood, rare and thus potentially deviant, detrimental to future fertility and an irresponsible choice. Women reacted to external and internal negative attitudes by distinguishing themselves from other women who obtain abortions, experiencing negative emotions, and concealing or delaying their abortions. Women's reactions to antiabortion attitudes may perpetuate abortion stigma. Further research is needed to inform interventions to address abortion stigma and improve women's abortion experiences.

Women in Iraq: Past Meets Present

Women in Iraq: Past Meets Present

The Correlation of Basal Serum FSH, Antral Follicle Count with Ovarian Response in Women with Advanced Reproductive Age

Objective (s): The aim of this study was to find out the correlation between basal serum Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) level, antral follicle count and number of oocytes retrieved during IVF cycle in women with advanced reproductive age.Method: It was a cross sectional observational study which was done between January 2015 and December 2015 in Infertility Management Center, a tertiary center in Dhaka where assisted reproductive technologies are being offered. Eighty nine (89) infertile patients who were between 35 to 45 years of age and have come for IVF treatment for the first time were included in this study. The selected patients had undergone estimation of basal serum FSH by automated immuno assay analyzer and counting of the antral follicles by transvaginal sonography on day two or three. In total sixty nine (69) patients started IVF treatment according to GnRH long agonist protocol. Controlled ovarian stimulation started with 225 IU rFSH. Follicle monitoring was done on day 5 and day 9 and the dosage was kept same or changed according to the patient’s response. After day nine of stimulation, ten women were excluded as they had no mature follicle of 18 mm or more and cycle was cancelled. So in fifty nine (59) cases ovulation was triggered with hCG 5000 IU on the day when at least one mature follicle measuring 18mm was observed. The ovum pickup was done 32 hours after the trigger and the number of collected oocytes was counted under microscope. Outcome measures of this study was to compare basal FSH and antral follicle count as predictors of ovarian reserve by correlating with the number of oocytes retrieved and to correlate the age of the female partner with the number of oocytes retrieved.Results: Most couples in this study (68.33%) have been suffering from primary infertility and majority of them had six to ten years of infertility. Higher proportion of the female partners (75%) was between 35 to 37 years. The majority of infertile couples have male factor infertility (32%). The second commonest cause found was tubal factor in female partner (20%).Stepwise multiple regression analysis was done. Significant positive correlation was noticed between AFC and number of oocytes (b = 0.2413).There was negative correlation between the basal FSH level and the number of oocytes (b= -0.5083). Age of female partner had weak correlation with ovarian reserve.Conclusion: Measurement of antral follicle number in the follicular phase is a better predictor of ovarian reserve in comparison to basal FSH and age of the women.Bangladesh J Obstet Gynaecol, 2015; Vol. 30(1) : 20-24

Assessing the Relationship Between Sexual Concordance, Sexual Attractions, and Sexual Identity in Women.

On average, there is a gender difference in sexual concordance, with men exhibiting greater agreement between genital and self-reported sexual arousal, relative to women. Much less is known about the substantial variation in women's sexual concordance; women's genital and self-reported sexual responses may correlate strongly and positively, not at all, or even strongly negatively. The within-gender variation in sexual concordance suggests that individual differences may be related to sexual concordance. We examined whether sexual concordance varies as a function of sexual orientation (based on self-reported sexual attractions and sexual identity labels) in a sample (N=76) that included exclusively androphilic, predominantly androphilic, ambiphilic, and predominantly/exclusively gynephilic women. Participants viewed sexual and nonsexual stimuli that varied by actor gender while their vaginal vasocongestion and subjective sexual responses were measured. Women's sexual concordance varied as a function of their sexual attractions; women with any degree of gynephilia exhibited higher sexual concordance than exclusively androphilic women across a variety of sexual concordance measures, and these effects were demonstrated using correlation and multi-level modeling analyses. Only sexual concordance based on overall feelings of arousal varied by sexual identity, with heterosexual women exhibiting the lowest sexual concordance. Stimulus gender significantly influenced sexual concordance for most groups of women: Ambiphilic and predominantly/exclusively gynephilic women exhibited greater sexual concordance to female stimuli and exclusively androphilic women exhibited greater sexual concordance to male stimuli. These findings suggest that sexual orientation (particularly one's degree of gynephilia) may explain some of the within-gender variation seen in women's sexual concordance.

Infertility-related stress, anxiety and ovarian stimulation: can couples be reassured about the effects of psychological factors on biological responses to assisted reproductive technology?

The aim of this prospective, longitudinal study was to examine the association between couples’ pre-treatment psychological characteristics (state anxiety and infertility-related stress levels of both partners) and ovarian response during assisted reproductive technology treatment in a well-controlled sample. A total of 217 heterosexual couples (434 patients), suffering from primary infertility and undergoing their first assisted reproductive technology treatment at the Reproductive Medicine Unit of ANDROS Day Surgery Clinic in Palermo (Italy), were recruited. Psychological variables were assessed using the State Scale of State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S) and the Fertility Problem Inventory (FPI). The number of follicles ≥ 16 mm in diameter, evaluated by transvaginal ultrasound scan on the eleventh day of the workup, was chosen as the outcome measure. No association between women’s level of anxiety and infertility-related stress, and the number of follicles ≥ 16 mm in diameter was found. Moreover, the male partner’s infertility stress and anxiety did not influence the relationship between the woman’s infertility-related stress, anxiety level and ovarian response. Fertility staff should reassure couples that the woman’s biological response to ovarian stimulation is not influenced by either partner’s level of psychological distress.

“Doing the Impossible”

In 1915, the California Commission of Immigration and Housing (CCIH) unveiled a bold new experiment: the Home Teacher Program. In Los Angeles, this program sent volunteers into Mexican communities to teach immigrant women new, more “American” ways of homemaking and childrearing. The lesson plans, sample dialogues, teacher testimonies, and photographs featured in CCIH publications provide a fascinating window on to the tense interactions between home teachers and immigrant women. Scholars have long explored different ways of mining institutional records and other forms of writing by Americanization advocates for insights into the experiences of those who participated in the programs. This essay contributes to the discussion of California's Americanization curricula in two ways: First, I provide a close reading of CCIH texts in order to uncover and analyze three layers of recorded experience: (1) teacher biases confronted by immigrant women; (2) immigrant women's difficult material realities; and (3) immigrant women's complex responses to Americanization. Second, I provide further evidence for the view that Mexican immigrant women responded to Americanization efforts in a variety of ways, from outright resistance to milder forms of pushback and, at times, conditional acceptance of the “American” customs presented to them. In light of the evidence, I argue that Mexican immigrant women were “doing the impossible” by laying claim to a piece of California through the complex relationship they negotiated with the home teachers. Although Americanization programs intended to flatten Mexican women's ethnic affiliations, the immigrant women found subtle ways to assert their agency, survive hardship and prejudice, and forge a new Mexican American ethnic community in the process.

Attitudes and perceived barriers to women participating in a proposed community-based conservation programme in Belize

AbstractMany global efforts to decrease deforestation have focused on community-based conservation programmes to reach their goals. However, many such programmes are lacking a potentially helpful population, women. We employed key-informant interviews to examine attitudes towards, and barriers to, women's participation in a community-based conservation programme prior to implementation. We conducted 47 semi-structured interviews in January 2015 in communities adjacent to the Vaca Forest Reserve in the Cayo District of Belize. Results indicated that the benefits of involving women in community-based conservation activities included them learning more about the forest and conservation, transferring this knowledge to their family and community, and helping the environment. Some possible barriers to participation included lack of time and motivation to participate. However, there were notable differences between men's and women's responses relating to women's available time and their willingness to participate, with men not mentioning time as a barrier and stating that women would need more motivation to participate. The results will be used to work with local women to collaboratively develop and implement a community-based conservation programme around the Vaca Forest Reserve.

Perceiving and Confronting Sexism: The Causal Role of Gender Identity Salience.

Although many researchers have explored the relations among gender identification, discriminatory attributions, and intentions to challenge discrimination, few have examined the causal impact of gender identity salience on women's actual responses to a sexist encounter. In the current study, we addressed this question by experimentally manipulating the salience of gender identity and assessing its impact on women's decision to confront a sexist comment in a simulated online interaction. Female participants (N = 114) were randomly assigned to complete a short measure of either personal or collective self-esteem, which was designed to increase the salience of personal versus gender identity. They were then given the opportunity to confront a male interaction partner who expressed sexist views. Compared to those who were primed to focus on their personal identity, participants who were primed to focus on their gender identity perceived the interaction partner's remarks as more sexist and were more likely to engage in confrontation. By highlighting the powerful role of subtle contextual cues in shaping women's perceptions of, and responses to, sexism, our findings have important implications for the understanding of gender identity salience as an antecedent of prejudice confrontation. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index.

Role of Body Esteem in the Sexual Excitation and Inhibition Responses of Women With and Without a History of Childhood Sexual Abuse

IntroductionWomen's sexuality is influenced by their perceptions of their bodies. Negative body appraisals have been implicated in the development and maintenance of sexual concerns in women with a history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). The sexuality of these women is often expressed in extremes of approach and avoidant sexual tendencies, which have been related to the sexual inhibition and sexual excitation pathways of the dual control model. AimTo test the influence of body esteem on the sexual excitation and inhibition responses of women with and without a history of CSA. MethodsOne hundred thirty-nine women with CSA and 83 non-abused women reported on their abuse history, depressive symptomology, sexual response, and affective appraisals of their body. Main Outcome MeasuresValidated self-report measurements of sexual excitation and inhibition responses (Sexual Excitation/Sexual Inhibition Inventory for Women) and body esteem (Body Esteem Scale) were administered. ResultsBody esteem was significantly associated with sexual inhibition responses of women regardless of CSA history status but was significantly related only to the sexual excitation responses of women with a CSA history. Perceived sexual attractiveness was a unique predictor of sexual excitation in women with a history of CSA. ConclusionWomen with a history of CSA have lower body esteem than non-abused women, particularly in self-perceived sexual attractiveness, and these perceptions appear to influence their sexual responses by acting on the sexual excitation and inhibition response pathways.

Sexual Response Models: Toward a More Flexible Pattern of Women's Sexuality

IntroductionRecent research suggests that none of the current theoretical models can sufficiently describe women's sexual response, because several factors and situations can influence this. AimTo explore individual variations of a sexual model that describes women's sexual responses and to assess the association of endorsement of that model with sexual dysfunctions and reasons to engage in sexual activity. MethodsA sample of 157 randomly selected hospital employees completed self-administered questionnaires. Main Outcome MeasuresTwo models were developed: one merged the Master and Johnson model with the Kaplan model (linear) and the other was the Basson model (circular). Sexual function was evaluated by the Female Sexual Function Index and the Brief Sexual Symptom Checklist for Women. The Reasons for Having Sex Questionnaire was administered to investigate the reasons for which women have sex. ResultsWomen reported that their current sexual experiences were at times consistent with the linear and circular models (66.9%), only the linear model (27%), only the circular model (5.4%), and neither model (0.7%). When the groups were reconfigured to the group that endorsed more than 5 of 10 sexual experiences, 64.3% of women endorsed the linear model, 20.4% chose the linear and circular models, 14.6% chose the circular model, and 0.7% selected neither. The Female Sexual Function Index, demographic factors, having sex for insecurity reasons, and sexual satisfaction correlated with the endorsement of a sexual response model. When these factors were entered in a stepwise logistic regression analysis, only the Female Sexual Function Index and having sex for insecurity reasons maintained a significant association with the sexual response model. ConclusionThe present study emphasizes the heterogeneity of female sexuality, with most of the sample reporting alternating between the linear and circular models. Sexual dysfunctions and having sex for insecurity reasons were associated with the Basson model.

Prediction of Ovarian Response in Women with Premature Ovarian Insufficiency Stimulated By Gonadotrophins Using Day-3 Serum Estradiol: A Retrospective Study

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential predictive value of day-3 serum estradiol for follicle growth, ovulation, and pregnancy rate in women with premature ovarian insufficiency.

Ugandan Women's View of the IUD: Generally Favorable but Many Have Misperceptions About Health Risks.

Between 2001 and 2006, IUD use in Uganda stagnated at 0.2% among women of reproductive age (WRA) ages 15-49. By 2011, IUD use had increased slightly to 0.4%. Recent studies report a significant increase in IUD use to 3.8%, but it is still low. Because the IUD is a little-used method in Uganda, we assessed the acceptability of the IUD by surveying women about their perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs. In August and September 2014, we conducted a cross-sectional survey among 1,505 WRA exiting public and private health facilities in Uganda. We collected information on women's attitudes, knowledge, and beliefs about the IUD, as well as their perceptions about its availability. We classified women's responses according to a behavior change framework with 3 summary constructs: opportunity (structural factors that influence behavior), ability (skills to perform the behavior), and motivation (self-interest in adopting the behavior). As these 3 types of factors are more favorable to the desired behavior (in this case, use of the IUD), individuals are more likely to perform the behavior. Cross-tabulations compared the percentage results of perceptions and knowledge by key background characteristics. Most (87.8%) of the surveyed women had heard of the IUD, and nearly two-thirds had a positive attitude toward the method. But a lower percentage (38.6%) had accurate information about the IUD and more than half (51.6%) did not think the method was available in a nearby facility. More than half of the women believed incorrectly that the IUD can damage the womb (57%), that it reduces sexual pleasure (54%), and that it can cause cancer (58%). Current use of family planning or of a modern method specifically was positively associated with awareness and accurate knowledge and beliefs about the IUD. Married women had significantly higher awareness of the IUD than single women, and they had better knowledge and belief scores. The type of facility used for health care services (public, private franchise, or private non-franchise) may also influence acceptance of the IUD. Interventions to increase the use of IUDs in Uganda should address low availability of the method in facilities, as well as misperceptions and misinformation, especially about the safety of the IUD. Demand promotion should address provider misperceptions in addition to client misperceptions and should include interpersonal communication and the mass media.

Faulty threat appraisal reduces concordance in women's subjective and physiological responses to acute stress

Faulty threat appraisal reduces concordance in women's subjective and physiological responses to acute stress

Sexual arousal and masculinity-femininity of women.

Studies with volunteers in sexual arousal experiments suggest that women are, on average, physiologically sexually aroused to both male and female sexual stimuli. Lesbians are the exception because they tend to be more aroused to their preferred sex than the other sex, a pattern typically seen in men. A separate research line suggests that lesbians are, on average, more masculine than straight women in their nonsexual behaviors and characteristics. Hence, a common influence could affect the expression of male-typical sexual and nonsexual traits in some women. By integrating these research programs, we tested the hypothesis that male-typical sexual arousal of lesbians relates to their nonsexual masculinity. Moreover, the most masculine-behaving lesbians, in particular, could show the most male-typical sexual responses. Across combined data, Study 1 examined these patterns in women's genital arousal and self-reports of masculine and feminine behaviors. Study 2 examined these patterns with another measure of sexual arousal, pupil dilation to sexual stimuli, and with observer-rated masculinity-femininity in addition to self-reported masculinity-femininity. Although both studies confirmed that lesbians were more male-typical in their sexual arousal and nonsexual characteristics, on average, there were no indications that these 2 patterns were in any way connected. Thus, women's sexual responses and nonsexual traits might be masculinized by independent factors. (PsycINFO Database Record