Self-awareness Of Women Research Articles

The Issue of Gender Equality in Modern Chinese Society: Taking the Legend of Chen Qianqian as an Example

In ancient Chinese feudal society, the status of women was very low, and women's behavior, language expression, and thought were all imprisoned. For example, the "three-inch golden lotus" is not only to meet the sexual psychology of male perversion but also to destroy the female body, so that women can not travel, thus imprison-women; "Three and four virtues", "good women do not marry two husbands", "women without talent is a virtue" are shackles on female thought. With the progress and development of society, the status of Chinese women has significantly improved, especially women's self-awareness has been greatly improved. At present, the more popular female literary works and dramas of female protagonists are the reflection of female independence and feminist thought. This article begins with the popular TV series “The Rumor of Chen Qianqian”, analyzes the story of the heroine who passes through the past and grows up in the city of Huayuan where women are respected and men are inferior and analyze the growth demands of women in modern society. At the same time as the current social progress, there is still a lot of discrimination and prejudice against women, such as the stereotype that housework is a task exclusively for women, and once women have children, they lose all their desires and needs. In particular, the article calls on society to strengthen publicity to avoid prejudice against women. At the same time, women should pay attention to their personal needs and grow into better themselves; Women are neither dependent on nor hostile to men, and they divide labor reasonably, give play to their respective strengths, and live in harmony.

Del's Growth: A Typical Example of Construction of Female Self-consciousness—A Postmodern Feminist Analysis of Lives of Girls and Women

Alice Munro is a famous contemporary Canadian women writer and the winner of 2013 Nobel Prize in literature. She is known as the ""master of contemporary short stories"". Munro is very concerned about the life experience of ordinary women. She always focuses on the daily trifles and details of ordinary women and describes their journey from a girl to a wife in detail, especially focusing on the psychological fluctuations and twists and turns of women. They seem fragile, but they are persistent. Munro's works are full of postmodern feminism, focusing on women's self-awareness and subjective conscious construction.
 From the perspective of postmodern feminism, the thesis focuses on the gradual formation and evolution of the heroine's self-consciousness in Alice Munro's only ""full-length"" novel Lives of Girls and Women in the process of growing up from a girl to a woman, and how female images to jump out of the hierarchy, logical structure and linear narrative surrounded by men's words and begin to express own world.
 The introduction gives an overview of Alice Munro and the novel Lives of Girls and Women, literary reviews at home and abroad, some key elements in postmodern feminism, and the significance of this thesis.
 The body section consists of three chapters: Chapter One focuses on ""Del observes the adult life"". Through Del's observation, the life of Uncle Benny's wife, two aunts, her mother and the teacher unfolded. Chapter Two analyzes ""Self-consciousness of Del begins to construct"". Del gradually began to grow up. The awakening of sexual consciousness, the doubt of belief and the excavation of herself have gradually become the theme of this adolescent girl's life. Chapter Three revolves around ""Establishment and Perfection of her self-consciousness"". Finally, she got rid of her fantasy and self-deception, her past mistakes and perplexity, and left home to start her real life.
 The conclusion part summarizes that from the perspective of postmodern feminism, the self-growth and consciousness awakening of Del is how women break away from the role of ""good women"" who meet the social expectations and find their own real nature. Munro challenges the forces we take for granted and shakes the foundations of our lives. Women perceive the world in a way different from men and resist the grandeur of history with daily trivialities. Munro constructs women's value expresses her voice and embodies her choice of will by transcending feminism and returning to women's ontological experience.

The Idea of Feminist in a Literary Way Through Chen Duansheng's Masterpiece Eternal Happiness

As developed rapidly in the modern world, more and more articles and books focused on women's self-awareness; however, there are some works that pay too much attention to struggling for dominance in the field of ideas and departed from the original intent of affirmative action. This will undoubtedly lead to a disconnect between works based on the female perspective and the cognitive level of the audience, to the detriment of the reader's empathy and understanding of the content of the text. In this way, many of these works are useless from a public interest point of view and can even be counterproductive to those who do not understand the relevant field of knowledge. This is something that those working for women's empowerment do not want to see. Therefore, the author of the thesis attempts to find a way to express the idea of Feminist In a literary way through Chen Duansheng's masterpiece Eternal Happiness. In the end, the author find that to make it sufficient to raise awareness of feminism among the crowd, authors have to understand the thoughts of target readers and make them not feeling to be an outcast.

Analysis of Gender Awareness Communication in Different Online Gender Autonomous Regions in China--Taking Hupu App and Red App as Examples

With the popularity of social media and video sites, internet users gather together based on shared hobbies or needs, forming different virtual communities to establish social bonds and develop a collective consciousness, thus forming Internet communities, where the way internet users participate in online social networking also play a reshaping role for the online platform they are on. This paper will focus on Red and Hupu, two gender-focused apps, to analyze the formation of gender-based group subcultures, KOLs-leaded emotion-oriented consciousness transmission, and sexist right contends in online gender autonomous regions in China's current community-based economy-oriented operating environment. In the era of social media, it is essential for the rise of feminism to fight for their discourse right and to speak up rationally. The awakening of women's self-awareness and the reduction of women being seen, fantasized, objectified, and consumed are not only essential parts of gender studies but also indispensable propositions of media studies, in which social media plays a crucial role. Also, the dilemma of cultural discrimination that feminism, as a non-traditional and imported culture, is currently encountering in China, as mentioned in this essay, is also worthy of attention and further exploration in future feminist studies in China.

기혼 남녀의 정서적 성숙 및 자기지각이 부부간 성적 자기결정권에 미치는 영향과 TV 불륜 드라마에 대한 비판의식의 매개효과 검증

This study is an empirical study to identify married men and women's perception of sexual self-determination and related factors, with the recognition that having a clear awareness of the right to sexual self-determination between husband and wife is an effective approach to preventing coercive sexual problems in extramarital relationships. This study aims to reveal the direct effect of emotional maturity and self-awareness on married men and women's perceptions of sexual self-determination between couples, as well as the mediating effect of criticism of TV dramas with the theme of infidelity. The research data are obtained by conducting an online survey of married men and women(614), and the data are analyzed based on the structural equation model. As a result, first, married people have a fairly good level of awareness of sexual self-determination, which shows higher levels of women than men. Second, it is found that married men and women's self-awareness does not directly affect their sexual self-determination rights, but can significantly affect their critical consciousness of adultery drama as mediators. Third, it is confirmed that married people's right to sexual self-determination is greatly affected by their emotional maturity. The positive effect of their emotional maturity on their sexual self-determination rights is further strengthened through the critical consciousness of married people against affair drama. It is verified that critical consciousness on infidelity drama can have a strong impact directly and indirectly on married couples' sexual self-determination rights. It shows that the use of media such as adultery dramas is effective in strengthening the right of sexual self-determination between married men and women. Emotional maturity and self-awareness directly or indirectly affect the right of sexual self-determination between couples. In addition, it has verified that it is a psychological characteristic that can significantly affect the consciousness of criticism of adultery dramas, which can have a significant impact on the right to sexual self-determination between them. The practical and policy implications of the research results are discussed to find ways to improve married men and women's awareness of the right to sexual self-determination between husband and wife.

Bride price and gender role in rural China

Based on a qualitative analysis conducted in four provinces of rural China, this article sheds light into the adverse effects of bride price practice on women. Research has shown that the negative effect of the bride price practice on women is produced continuously rather than in a single step. The practice of bride price is a dynamic process, which involves the formation of three practical spaces, namely the physical space for negotiation, the public space for discussion, and the family space for allocation and use of bride price. In these three spaces, the interactive content of actions and language surrounding the bride price constructs women as an insider and an outsider; the approver and the performer; and family caregivers. This process continually awakens women's self-awareness but not beyond the scope of bride price, leading to their limited growth. This article examines how the increasing bride price in rural China influences women in the flow process, thus verifying whether high bride price can improve women’s status.

Penerimaan remaja putri terhadap tablet tambah darah di Kota Yogyakarta

Acceptance of adolescent girls on iron tablets in Yogyakarta, IndonesiaBackground: Supplementation of iron tablets is one of the efforts to combat anemia in adolescent girls taken by the government. However, compliance with iron tablet consumption still tends to be low. Objective: This study aims to determine the acceptance of adolescent girls to iron tablets in Yogyakarta. Methods: This study is a sequential explanatory mixed method. The investigation was conducted from January to April 2018. The subjects of the study were girls in junior high and high school of Yogyakarta, as many as 211 people with criteria 12-18 years; FGD/in-depth interview respondents were 32 students, four teachers/UKS officer, two Puskesmas officers, and one health program holder. Results: Of 204 subjects who received iron tablets, only 133 subjects (65.20%) consumed iron tablets, and 71 subjects (34.80%) did not. The organoleptic perception of subjects consisting of flavor, aroma, and color indicates they like iron tablets, but some also do not want them because they smell fishy. Side effects of iron tablets, such as nausea, heartburn, constipation, and dizziness, are the reasons the subject does not consume or spend the iron tablets given. In addition to the encouragement or support of parents, teachers or officers of UKS, and health workers, it is a factor that affects the acceptance of subjects against iron tablets. Conclusion: Factors influencing the acceptance of adolescent girls to iron tablets are a factor in self and factors from outside (parents, teachers, and health workers). Therefore, increasing the consumption of iron tablets requires young women's self-awareness, motivation, and support from various parties to obtain information related to the iron tablet, such as socialization

For Peculiarities of Representation of Women's Roles and Their Changes in Women's Magazines: Case of the Magazine Moteris

For a long time, the patriarchal tradition of portraying a woman as stereotypical has been established, confining her to traditional roles in the family and society. Media publications often become the main source of constructing attitudes and beliefs in society. The peculiarities of portraying women in the media are an important means of constructing women's self-awareness. The purpose of this article – to introduce the research conducted to investigate the peculiarities of representation of the women‘s roles in the women's magazines and their transformation. For implementation this research it has been chosen the largest monthly magazine for the Lithuanian women „Woman“ and the issues have been chosen published in 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2018 to fulfill the qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The transition from the Soviet system to the capitalist society is characterized by transformation of values, the search for national identity, the establishmen the new models of relations in the society, the establishmen to the lifestyle characteristic to the capitalist society, etc. The images presented in the media draw the attention of individuals and shape the public's perception of what a woman should be and what responsibilities are assigned to her.

The role of the Ministry of Labor and Social Development initiatives in increasing the participation of Saudi women in the labor market - A field study in Onaiza - Al-Qassim Governorate -: دور مبادرات وزارة العمل والتنمية الاجتماعية في زيادة مشاركة المرأة السعودية في سوق العمل - دراسة ميدانية - محافظة عنيزة – القصيم -

This study aimed at identifying the extent of women's self-awareness in the region and their benefits from the initiatives of the Ministry of Labor and Social Development to increase women's participation in the Saudi labor market. The study included a sample of 96 women of different age groups. The study included ten initiatives, some of them are specific to women and some of them are general ones. The study concluded a number of results and the most important of which is that there is a decline in the knowledge of these initiatives among the sample individuals, as the percentage of knowledge decreased to less than 50% in more than half of these initiatives, whereas there is a very sharp decrease in the percentage of women who benefited from these initiatives as it did not exceed 20% for most of these initiatives, with the exception of the Doroob initiative, where the benefit from it reached 40%. The percentage of evaluating these initiatives as important and of medium importance is more than 90% for all the initiatives. Using the Chi-Square Tests, it was found that there is no statistically significant relationship between knowledge of the initiatives and the variables of age and educational level, with the exception of the initiative of developing productive projects for socially covered families and the initiative to encourage part-time work. As for benefits, there is no statistically significant relationship between benefiting from initiatives and age, with the exception of only two initiatives, and there is also no statistically significant relationship between benefiting from initiatives and the educational level. More than 60% of the sample individuals work in the government sector and 30.4% in the private sector. The percentage of investment in private businesses has decreased to 8%, and more than 60% of non-working women would prefer if they find a job opportunity to work in the government sector, while 37% of them prefer to have their own projects and do not prefer to work in the private sector. The study recommended that more efforts should be made in spreading awareness of initiatives and activating their benefits so as to contribute to their required role in increasing women's participation in the Saudi labor market.

The Effect of Married Women's Self-Awareness on the Acceptance of Extra-Marital Relationship: Focused on the Mediated Effect of Individuals' Criticism of TV drama regarding Infidelity

The Effect of Married Women's Self-Awareness on the Acceptance of Extra-Marital Relationship: Focused on the Mediated Effect of Individuals' Criticism of TV drama regarding Infidelity

Palpreast—A New Wearable Device for Breast Self-Examination

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women worldwide. Although targeted screening programs using mammography have facilitated earlier detection and improved treatment has resulted in a significant reduction in mortality, some negative aspects related to cost, the availability of trained staff, the duration of the procedure, and its non-generalizability to all women must be taken into consideration. Breast palpation is a simple non-invasive procedure that can be performed by lay individuals for detecting possible malignant nodules in the breast. It is a simple test, based on the haptic perception of different stiffness between healthy and abnormal tissues. According to a survey we carried out, despite being safe and simple, breast self-examination is not carried by women because they are not confident of their ability to detect a lump. In this study, a non-invasive wearable device designed to mimic the process of breast self-examination using pressure sensing textiles and thus increase the confidence and self-awareness of women is proposed. Combined with other screening methods, the device can increase the odds of early detection for better prognosis. Here, we present the physical implementation of the device and a finite element analysis of the mechanics underlying its working principle. Characterization of the device using models of large and medium breast phantoms with rigid inclusions demonstrates that it can detect nodules in much the same way as does the human hand during breast self-examination.

The Self-awareness of Women and the Performative Meaning of Writing in Jagirok

The Self-awareness of Women and the Performative Meaning of Writing in Jagirok

Effectiveness of Self-Awareness Based Individual Counseling on Self-Awareness of Women in Reproductive Age

Effectiveness of Self-Awareness Based Individual Counseling on Self-Awareness of Women in Reproductive Age

Environmental Tobacco Smoke: Relationship to Early Pregnancy Discomforts

We assessed environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and examined its association with pregnancy discomforts. We used structured questionnaires to interview a convenience sample of 139 pregnant women (8-20 weeks of gestation) recruited from 2 hospitals in central Taiwan. We found that 84% of the participants experienced ETS exposure in their households, workplaces, and/or public areas. Bivariate analyses showed the severity of pregnancy discomforts in the participants exposed to a high level of ETS was higher than that in those exposed to a low level of ETS. We found the discomfort symptoms of thirst, heartburn, lower abdominal pain, frequent urination, and depression to be significantly associated with ETS exposure. There also was a dose-response relationship between ETS exposure and discomfort. In addition, the presence of at least 4 out of those 5 symptoms served as a signal for raising women's self-awareness to avoid ETS hazards. Our study provides empirical evidence of an adverse relationship between ETS exposure and early pregnancy discomforts. The exposure to ETS in pregnant women remains high, and health education programs targeting this population should enhance their self-awareness to the discomforts related to ETS exposure and prompt them to adopt prevention strategies.

Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan by Julie Billaud

Julie Billaud, Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 256 pp.In the introduction to her ethnography, Julie Billaud writes that [the] book is an attempt to capture the nature of the 'reconstruction' project in Afghanistan, using the 'woman' as an entry point into broader questions around sovereignty, state building, and democratization (6). Indeed, Kabul Carnival explores a wide array of contexts and themes, and spans more than one unit of analysis (from a female member of Parliament to young university students, from the internal dynamics of a state ministry to local media production, and more). It builds on the previous literature that concentrated on the long line of Afghanistan's uninterrupted conflicts since 1978, yet claims to depart from them in its interpretation of the concept of culture. Billaud wants to eschew an Orientalist understanding of Afghan culture as a static and unavoidable hurdle, instead viewing it as a constantly contested and negotiated ground for social construction. She also looks to the traditions of postcolonial, peasant, and subaltern studies to show how the rural majority of the Afghan population was, in fact, historically (and is to this day) forced into embracing progressive ideologies springing from exogenous sources (namely, the Western capitalistic world). Kabul Carnival also engages contemporary transnational studies in reiterating the de facto colonial mindset that informs the countless institutional and non-governmental efforts at reconstruction and nation-building in Afghanistan. Billaud faults these efforts for propagating what she considers neoliberal values among the local population, irrespective of the social and cultural background of the targeted groups. The lens through which all these layers of analysis are looked upon is the category of woman, in its ethnographic instantiation.The broader symbolic context in which Billaud places her analysis is that of the carnivalesque, as theorized by Mikhail Bakhtin (1984). Bakhtin describes those ritual moments in medieval France when social roles and public personae were allowed (by the dominant classes) to be temporarily overturned and suspended. For Bakhtin, the context of subversion in which carnivalesque rituals took place represents a locus of spiritual and social expression and construction. Billaud views Afghanistan's current social and political reality as trapped in this liminal space of inversion and subversion. The foreign humanitarian intervention holds a theatrical dimension, as well as a farcical and less-than-honest aspect, in which Afghans themselves choose to participate hoping to reap any possible benefits. In the end though, just as in France's medieval rituals, the farce contributes to reinforcing the traditional power standings and overall status quo.The book opens with a historical excursus on a century of state policies regarding gender roles and women's conditions in Afghanistan. While the plight of women was a crucial trope in promoting narratives of progress and national identity, all such state policies not only failed, but generated popular revolt. In Billaud's opinion, this backlash shaped particularly oppressive and gendered cultural idioms in order to express the (male) population's resistance to a top-down imposition of power.After introducing the historical foundations on which her research rests, in Chapter 2 Billaud starts presenting her ethnographic material, collected in different environments in Kabul, during roughly nine months of fieldwork in the country in 2007. During this time, Billaud was also getting acquainted with Dari, the lingua franca of her fieldsite. The chapter chronicles the experience the ethnographer had in the Ministry of Women's Affairs, by which most projects for raising women's self-awareness and self-empowerment were implemented. Billaud argues that the international reconstruction machinery in Afghanistan works on the premises of a Western neoliberal ideological agenda, promoting concepts such as freedom, progress, rationality, individual empowerment, and gender equality. …

Gender: An Emotional Intelligence Perspective

Dear Editor: The rising importance of emotional intelligence gives a clear idea of the significant differences between men and women, since men and women are emotionally intelligent in different ways. Understanding and appreciating such differences leads to the improvement of the existing relationships and to the establishment of new relationships in a satisfying manner. One of the principal reasons for the above-mentioned differences is attributed to the different kinds of brain functions of men compared with woman. As emotional intelligence is acquisitive and of social origin, parents and children, thus, expose their emotions in an expressive way to one another, either consciously or unconsciously in their interactions. Another explanation of this difference would be a distinction in educational level of boys compared with the education received by girls. A suitable education ensures a high level of emotional intelligence, which contributes to the success in all life areas. Emotional intelligence is described as the capability to recognize one’s own emotions and to perceive those of others, applying this knowledge to direct one’s decision making and action in a skillful and intelligent manner. The four cornerstones of emotional intelligence are the concepts of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skills. The model by Dulewicz and Higgs (1999) has seven components (self-awareness, emotional resilience, motivation, interpersonal sensitivity, influence, intuitiveness, and conscientiousness and integrity). In contrast to cognitive intelligence, which stays relatively stable throughout an individual’s lifetime, emotional intelligence can be improved as a result of learning and engaging in new skills (Posten, 2009). Both biological and social explanations have received support from a diverse range of empirical studies on emotion which show greater emotional abilities in women. Some studies have reported gender differences fundamentally in experiential aspects of emotional intelligence, such as perception and emotional facilitation. Other set of studies have found gender differences in strategic aspects of emotional intelligence, such as understanding and emotional managing. Studies of perception, cognition, memory and neural functions have found apparent gender differences. These differences may be attributed to various genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors and do not reflect any overall superior advantage to either sex. Dr. John Grey explained that men and women communicate, think, feel, react, answer, love and appreciate in a different manner. The deep knowledge about these differences helps to eliminate the frustrations from humane relationships. The self-awareness of men is defined by their ability to obtain the results. The self-awareness of women is defined by their feelings and the quality of her relations. A woman’s brain is predominantly structured to feel empathy, while a man’s brain predominantly seeks to understand and construct system. Maybe that`s why in the medical and educational area more women work than men, while in the engineering and transporting area, for instance, men are more involved than women. A woman has the ability to see all the details and a man to see the whole situation. Male brain separates language in the left and emotions in the right, while the female`s emotions are in both hemispheres. Women are better than men in human relations, in language, emotional and artistic expressiveness, aesthetic appreciation, verbal language and pre-planned tasks. Men are better in performing activities that require spatial skills or in the ability to mentally rotate the image in order to solve a problem. The improvement of the emotional intelligence should start in the childhood by education given by the adults to the children. The emotional knowledge should be used as a guide in the social world for the children and the teenagers. It is known that parents talk to their daughters rather than sons about emotions. And many adults make the mistake to tell a little boy, for instance, “don’t cry, you are not a girl.” What message will the little boy get? He will assume that it is not allowed for a boy/man to show his emotions. And he will grow up with this misconception, he will try hard to hide his emotions in the future and this will further aggravate his way in life. The emotional intelligence can be developed successfully during childhood through good education given by the adults to children, as well as during life through self-education, for both genders. Keeping a balance between emotions and judgments ensures unbiased judgments and avoid errors and prejudice.

Concealing Labor Pain: The Evil Eye and the Psychoprophylactic Method of Painless Childbirth in Soviet Russia

Soviet physicians viewed biomedicine and ethnomedicine as binary opposites. This mutual exclusivity reflected physicians' perception of themselves as harbingers of modernity to a Soviet society steeped in superstition and religiosity. Using sources that privilege the voice of medical experts, historians have often reproduced this binary. (1) Soviet medical professionals were not completely divorced from the rural population, however, and neither were they free of superstitions and folkways. In analyzing Soviet science, the historian should not forget that the majority of the population lived in the countryside until the 1960s. Many medical practitioners came from peasant and working-class backgrounds and had benefited from Soviet affirmative action programs. (2) But one did not have to come from the village to be marked by traditional culture. As Irina Aleksandrovna Sedakova argues, traditional culture common knowledge, ingested since childhood through bylichki [narratives relating to personal experience]. (3) The coexistence of traditional culture and medical science is particularly apparent in practices associated with pregnancy and childbirth. However, direct connections between traditional culture and Soviet natal science are difficult to prove. In fact, since the late 18th century, many Russian doctors had been repulsed by folk practices and invested in a mission to eradicate them. (4) Yet the ways the Soviet medical model of childbirth paralleled folk beliefs suggest that, though scientists were most likely unconscious of the effect rural culture had on them, their worldviews were nonetheless shaped by it. This article uncovers the parallels between the highly modern psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth and traditional folk beliefs about childbirth to argue that traditional culture and modernity are not binary opposites. Rather they are best viewed as braided: the traditional is subsumed into the modern, which reconfigures traditional folkways to fit within its logic. Any attempt to transform Soviet birthing practices along scientific and rational principles had to take into account the deep structure of rural culture. The psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth was based on the idea that normal childbirth was not painful, and that women who did not expect pain would not experience it. Since the 1920s, II'ia Zakharevich Vel'vovskii (1899-1981), his mentor Konstantin Ivanovich Platonov (1877-1969), and others had been developing a psychotherapeutic drugless method for preventing birthing pains primarily by using suggestion and hypnosis on pregnant women. Finally, in 1947, Vel'vovskii put forward a method that combined a completely new perception of childbirth with the mobilization of the parturient. The goal was to prevent labor pain by heightening women's self-awareness and teaching them techniques of bodily control. In a six-session training course conducted at local maternity homes, pregnant women learned the physiology of pregnancy: how their bodies would change and prepare for birth. This information was designed to reassure them that pain was an unnecessary aspect of childbirth. In addition, pregnant women were taught a series of techniques to control their body during labor. These included controlled breathing, massaging the abdomen, rubbing pressure points, adopting correct lying positions, and identifying, recording, and monitoring birth pangs. Women could prevent labor pain by taking control of their bodies, their environment, and the overall birthing experience. (5) John Bell and Paula Michaels have studied the development and application of the Soviet psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth, In his groundbreaking article, Bell uncovered the evolution of the psychoprophylactic method from the early 1920s until the Soviet Ministry of Public Health endorsed it in February 1951 and decreed that it be used in all Soviet birthing facilities. …

Making the invisible body visible. Bone scans, osteoporosis and women's bodily experiences

The imaging technology of bone scans allows visualization of the bone structure, and determination of a numerical value. Both these are subjected to professional interpretation according to medical (epidemiological) evidence to estimate the individual's risk of fractures. But when bodily experience is challenged by a visual diagnosis, what effect does this have on an individual? The aim of this study was to explore women's bodily experiences after a bone scan and to analyse how the scan affects women's self-awareness, sense of bodily identity and integrity. We interviewed 16 Danish women (aged 61–63) who had had a bone scan for osteoporosis. The analysis was based on Merleau-Ponty's perspective of perception as an embodied experience in which bodily experience is understood to be the existential ground of culture and self. Women appeared to take the scan literally and planned their lives accordingly. They appeared to believe that the ‘pictures’ revealed some truth in themselves. The information supplied by the scan fostered a new body image. The women interpreted the scan result (a mark on a curve) to mean bodily fragility which they incorporated into their bodily perception. The embodiment of this new body image produced new symptom interpretations and preventive actions, including caution. The result of the bone scan and its cultural interpretation triggered a reconstruction of the body self as weak with reduced capacity. Women's interpretation of the bone scan reorganized their lived space and time, and their relations with others and themselves. Technological information about osteoporosis appeared to leave most affected women more uncertain and restricted rather than empowered. The findings raise some fundamental questions concerning the use of medical technology for the prevention of asymptomatic disorders.

The Sibiriachka Encounters Revolution

In sweeping away the Tsarist political empire, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 also challenged a way of life. It provided opportunities for women in Siberia, the Sibiriachki, and in the rest of Russia, to change their lives. The revolution's democratic and Marxian socialist policies, carried to these women by the zhenotdel, determined officials in the women's department of the Communist Party, created wide possibilities for change. This essay examines Siberian women's responses—both negative and positive—to the revolution's teachings about women's rights and their equality with men. Women's cultural backgrounds—ethnic, educational, urban and rural—influenced their responses to the revolutionary call to claim their rights, their successes and failures in efforts to defend themselves from violence, their efforts to achieve health care and education, and their progress toward greater political and economic equality. This essay also explores conditions on the eve of the revolution, illustrating the variety of strata existing in Siberia's vast lands. It discusses the significant advances in women's self-awareness and their changing activities in the early and mid-1920s. The Party's political mobilization of women expanded into a critique of the social status quo. Subsequently, in the late 1920s and 1930s, the context for their activities was radically altered: political and social criticism were no longer acceptable. For women the gains of the revolution were corrupted and women lost more than they had previously gained. While one can see the throttling of the women's revolution as an indication of its fundamental weakness, one can also see it as the Party's response to a movement that was gaining strength and raising questions about the Party's primacy.

Secresy; or, The Ruin on the Rock ed. by Isobel Grundy, and: Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus ed. by D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf, and: Love in Excess; or, the Fatal Enquiry ed. by David Oakleaf, and: The Victim of Prejudice ed. by Eleanor Ty

of an ideology. As a result, he wound up playing with his own ideas and then attempting to justify his writing career by playing with that too. There was probably something of the con-man in the Callaghan who wanted to be a big league player, but Boire gently sidesteps that side of the man and concentrates on the facts of his life. He does use words like “contrarian” and “gadflyish” to describe Callaghan (102), but in the context he provides, words such as those are tinged more with affection than judgment. What else can one do in such a short study? In the final analysis, both books do what they set out to do — provide some basic information for students while offering a glimpse of the personality behind the writings. More elaborate treatments will have to wait until the dust settles. Given more time, real myth-making will begin. j o h n o r a n g e / King’s College, University of Western Ontario Isobel Grundy, ed., Secresy; or, The Ruin on the Rock, by Eliza Fenwick (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1994). 359. $15.95 paper. D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf, eds., Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1994). 371. $11.95 paper. David Oakleaf, ed., Love in Excess; or, the Fatal Enquiry, by Eliza Haywood (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1994). 297. $14.95 paper. Eleanor Ty, ed., The Victim of Prejudice, by Mary Hays (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1994). 197. $29.95 paper. Considered together, these four well-conceived and well-executed editions comprise a useful cross-section of the radical stuff of women’s social, intel­ lectual, and psychological preoccupations over a century. Three are reprints that the editors introduce with scrupulous attention to biographical, histor­ ical, and theoretical issues; the fourth is a superlative presentation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 edition. All the editors situate the novels within a distinctively feminist tradition. Each fiction provokes abundant analysis of rhetorical and schematic representations that communicate a desire for agency. Haywood’s Love in Excess; or, the Fatal Enquiry (1719-1720) posits the blamelessness of female eroticism, whereas Fenwick’s Secresy; or, The Ruin on the Rock (1795) and Hays’s The Victim of Prejudice (1799) politicize women’s sexuality while implying its range and creative potential. Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus relegates women to the status 488 of domestic icons and displaces feminine struggle onto the monster. His creation, life, and death quarrel with the nineteenth-century suppression of female desire. This transference leads to speculation about the roads not taken — what might have been were it not for the closing down of emanci­ patory consciousness and the dwindling of feminist writers like Fenwick into drudgery and obscurity or Hays into ignominy. It would seem, however, that the tiresome necessity remains of defending the project of uncovering, contextualizing, and theorizing eighteenth-century women’s texts. Terry Castle, in her review of Secresy (“Sublimely Bad,” London Review of Books, 23 February 1995, 18-19), sees Grundy’s and, by implication, Broadview Press’s series, as a misguided exaltation of medi­ ocrity. Although Castle gestures toward the literary historical value of reading a literature of women’s own, she would relegate this pursuit to ultra-sophisticated hecklers and thorough specialists. Castle pathologizes eighteenth-century women writers as thwarted creatures, undone and de­ formed by their enslavement to the rule of the father. The drearily familiar diagnosis of the period’s literary woman as female impotent, writer manquée, what you will, leaves no room to examine women resisting and exploring, in whatever language available to them, material as well as psychological restraints on liberty. Castle’s cavilling typifies postmaterialist, postfeminist discourse, according to which the best books are those that seem freest of political struggles. Broadview Press’s four editions deserve more serious consideration of the complexity, plangency, and self-awareness of women’s radical consciousness. Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess; or, the Fatal Enquiry, which David Oakleaf elucidates as a composite of genres, dramatizes on one level the education of the sexually irresistible hero. Count D’elmont contends with, and learns to feel compassion for, the...