Social Status Of Women Research Articles

Political and Social Status of Women in Pre and Post Independent India

Women’s involvement in socio-political life is a desideratum for the progress of not only the women folk but also the development of the nation as a whole. During ancient and medieval times, women from orthodox families actively participated in social activities, but their overall position and status gradually deteriorated. The Modern era meant for women ushered in during the dawn of the 19th century when social reformers paid special attention to enhance the social status of women. For instance, the promulgation of the Widow Remarriage Act, implementation of the Civil Marriage Act 1872 mentions a few of them. Ever since the formation of the Indian National Congress, several remarkable changes took place in the socio-political status.Moreover, women franchise induced their effective participation in the Freedom Movement of India. They were accorded equal political status on par with men only after independence, which has been enshrined and enumerated in the provisions of fundamental rights of the Indian constitution. In the new millennium, there has been constant demand to accord 33 percentages of reservations to enhance the status of women in the political arena as well as to increase their social statues. This paper attempts to indicate the socio-political status of women over the period in the Indian context during the Pre and Post Independent India.

The Constitutional Development of the Nineteenth Amendment in the Decade Following Ratification

This essay is based on my remarks at the Center for Constitutional Law’s symposium on the Centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment. It offers a brief summary of the thesis of my forthcoming book from Oxford University Press. In Constitutional Orphan: Gender Equality and the Nineteenth Amendment (forthcoming 2020), I argue that the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 represented a significant moment in American history, one which held the promise of change in the political, civil and social status of women in our republic. However, what emerged from a decade of contestation was a thin conception of the Nineteenth’s constitutional meaning, as a mere nondiscrimination in voting rule. The story of the Nineteenth presents a puzzle as to why this thin conception of the amendment prevailed over a thicker conception of the amendment, as a broader norm around women’s equal citizenship and gender equality. Drawing on original historical sources, legal scholarship and case analysis, the book illuminates a piece of that puzzle. The book offers an account of how that thin conception emerged and the role played by national suffrage organizations, as institutional actors, in that story. While Congress and the courts are significant sites of constitutional interpretation and enforcement, social movements within civil society play influential roles as well. Through their efforts to enfranchise American women, suffragists assumed that role. Yet, the suffragists made strategic choices post-ratification that took them away from the Nineteenth as a focus of energy and resources. That pivot meant that there was less consistent, unified pressure on state courts as they parsed the corollary constitutional questions around the extent of the Nineteenth’s impact on state law regulating poll taxes, jury service and holding public office. A close reading of the history around these cases illustrates how the Nineteenth implicated issues of federalism, the scope of woman’s citizenship and the constitutional meaning of equality, in ways shaped by race, gender and class. There was a similar absence of unified pressure on Congress to enact enforcement legislation pursuant to section two of the Nineteenth, as well as a deep split in the former suffrage movement over the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Exploring this history helps us understand the puzzle of why the Nineteenth did not develop a thicker, more robust constitutional meaning in the decade following its ratification. Given the current uncertainty about the status of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, revisiting the jurisprudential potential of the Nineteenth Amendment can shed light on how we may better secure women’s constitutional equality today.

Клінічні аспекти у жінок із порушеннями менструальної функції у пубертатний період

The reproductive system is exposed to various adverse factors and harmful effects at all stages of the functioning of the body. Against the background of a decrease in the level of reproductive female health in recent years, there is a clear tendency towards an increase in the number of patients with pathology of the puberty period. The low level of somatic and reproductive health before pregnancy causes a high frequency of complicated births, which leads to a deterioration in the development of subsequent generations. The objective: based on clinical and anamnestic data, laboratory and instrumental methods of research, analysis of risk factors, clinical presentation, treatment effectiveness and clinical observation, to give a clinical description of women who had menstrual dysfunction in the pubertal period. Materials and methods. According to the nature of the violations, the main group of women (n=210) who had a pathology of menstrual function in the puberty period was divided into 3 subgroups (n=70): the first – women with primary oligomenorrhea and timely average population menarche, the second – with a late age menarche, the third – with puberty bleeding. The control group included women (n=70) with the correct rhythm of menstruation in puberty. Results. During a clinical prospective study, the social status of women with impaired reproductive function in the puberty was analyzed, the frequency and structure of existing concomitant somatic diseases, the duration of the menstrual cycle, the nature of diseases of the female genital organs; an assessment of the complex treatment of the revealed violations was made, which allowed to obtain a favorable reproductive prognosis. Most of the women examined (53.3%) planned a pregnancy, which occurred in 75.9% of those planning. Conclusion. A study of the clinical and anamnestic analysis of the reproductive function of women with menstrual irregularities in the puberty period will increase the effectiveness of the treatment of identified disorders and develop algorithms for the management of such women during planning and during pregnancy. Keywords: puberty, menarche, oligomenorrhea, puberty bleeding, luteal phase insufficiency, pregnancy.

Imagens da mulher chinesa na obra A China Fica ao Lado de Maria Ondina Braga

Este artigo tenciona apresentar uma análise das figurações femininas chinesas, do estatuto familiar e social da mulher e da sua luta pela emancipação sobretudo em Macau. Maria Ondina Braga, que viveu neste território há anos, configurou na sua obra A China Fica ao Lado imagens de mulheres chinesas. A obra permite-nos olhar para uma evolução da importância da presença feminina das décadas 40 a 60 do século XX. Atendendo aos pressupostos teóricos de Jean-Marc Moura, Álvaro Manuel Machado e Daniel-Henri Pageaux, no âmbito da imagologia, analisaremos o modo como a obra assume enquanto plataforma de construção de imagens das mulheres chinesas em Macau. Discutiremos, no seio de determinado imaginário social, a imagem se pode ou não converter em estereótipo. Reflectiremos que auto-imagem se transmite nesta obra. Quanto à situação das mulheres, será também trabalhado de acordo com as perspectivas enunciadas por Simon de Beauvoir.

Intimate Partner Violence Victimization and Depressive Symptoms in Sichuan, China: Are There Gender Variations?

An emerging body of research has linked intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization with negative mental health outcomes among women in postreform China. However, limited scholarly attention has been given to the independent effects of multiple types of IPV victimization on depressive symptoms among men and women. Little is known if these independent effects will vary by gender in China where research on the association between IPV victimization and mental health did not emerge until fairly recently. Given this research paucity, this study aims to (a) examine the independent effects of different types of lifetime IPV victimization among married men and women in Sichuan province on their self-reported past 30-day depressive symptoms and (b) explore possible gender variations in these effects. The data utilized in this study came from a subsample of married men (N = 1,083) and women (N = 1,185) from the Third Survey of Chinese Women's Social Status 2010, a representative sample of adults aged 18 to 64 in Sichuan province. Statistical analyses indicate that all types of lifetime IPV victimization are significantly and positively associated with past 30-day depressive symptoms for women, whereas for men lifetime experiences of general controlling behavior and sexual IPV were not statistically associated with depressive symptoms. Moreover, the effects of multiple types of IPV victimization on depressive symptoms do not significantly vary by gender. Bearing this gender-neutral pattern in mind, health professionals, governmental officials, and researchers are strongly encouraged to focus on both married men and women in their IPV and mental health intervention, prevention, and treatment endeavors in postreform China.

RISE OF FEMALE EDUCATION IN THE PRINCELY STATE OF TRAVANCORE

The state of Kerala formed out of three princely states such as Travancore, Cochin and Malabar. This state has a long tradition of women’s education going back to the earliest times. In the matter of education Kerala stood forefront from ancient times. During the Sangam age literature shows that education was universal in Kerala. But the progress of aryanization and the consequent increase in the hold of caste system caused a decline of general education particularly female education. At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century witnessed tremendous change in the society of Travancore, of one the three princely states of Kerala. This period of educational history has laid the foundation of modern education. In Travancore direct intervention of the state in the field of education began in 1817, when the Rani Gouri Parvathi Bhai issued the Royal Rescript. The beginning of the modern education in Travancore was made by Christian missionaries. Their education system created a new direction to the women in Travancore. The aim of missionaries in setting up female school was to raise the social status of women and to liberate them from the existing social evils like untouchability and caste feelings.

Придворні танці в культурі західно-європейського високого середньовіччя

The purpose of the article is to analyze the historical context of the court dance formation as a cultural phenomenon of the High Middle Ages, to identify its characteristic features and to find out the role and significance in the establishment of a civilizational model of behaviour in the European cultural space. Methodology. The historical-chronological, cultural and analytical approaches are applied to highlight the historical context of the court dance formation. The scientific novelty. For the first time, the court dances of the West European High Middle Ages are analyzed in the context of the then worldview concepts. Conclusions. Court dances, as a characteristic feature of the knight courteous culture of the High Middle Ages, the playful phenomenon and at the same time the pious action, contain deep sacral meaning and with the help of gestures (gestus), the plasticity of hands and bodies represent the requirements of courteous theology – worship of the Lady of the Heart, which is actually identified with the attitude towards the Mother of God. In court dances, as a result of “feudalization of love”, the roles of participants in the dance action are distributed according to which the Beautiful Lady becomes an object of worship, and the knight in non-verbal form testifies to her his “love service”. This distribution lays the foundation for the development of pair dances as a new phenomenon in the history of choreography. The growth of the generalization of flexible movements and codified gestures (gestus), their abstractness, allowed us to present in more detail the models of behaviour in interpersonal communication. And therefore, court, courteous dances demonstrated the “correctness” of the aesthetic behaviour of knights as a statement of the ideals of beauty in relations between the sexes. A pious and respectful attitude to the Beautiful Lady, emphasizing the moral and spiritual component in the relationship between a woman and a man-knight contributed to the increase of the social status of women. And the chivalrous ethos, whose visible representation was court dances, became the basis of a civilizational model of behaviour that was gradually formed in the European space.

Workplace Discrimination against Working Women in Jordan

The purpose of this study is to explore the sources related to work place discrimination against working women in Jordan. The studied discrimination sources are: age discrimination, racial discrimination, religious discrimination, gender discrimination, women social status discrimination and sexual harassment. Data were collected via questionnaires from 154 working women in academic and managerial positions at Al-Balqa Applied University in Jordan. Crosstabs were used to describe sample characteristics related to discrimination and Chi square test was used to test the hypotheses. Crosstabs tabulations results found that educated and married women who are moving to a higher age category feel more discriminated at workplace. Chi Square findings indicated that Jordanian working women exposed to different sources of discrimination except religious discrimination at workplace.

Decision-making Power and Social Status of Women in Indian Society

‘Women’ the most beautiful creation on the earth. We can feel her divinity in form of a mother. We can feel her dedication in form of a wife. Women Empowerment refers to the creation of an environment for women where they can make decision of their own for their personal benefits as well as for the society. It also refers to increasing and improving the social, political, economic and legal strength of the women, to ensure equal right to women, and to make them confident enough to claim their rights, such as:

Aggression Type Influences Perceptions of a Woman's Body Size, Personality, and Behavior.

Although women engage in both physical and nonphysical aggression, little is known about how aggression type influences perceptions of their morphology, personality, and social behavior. Evolutionary theory predicts that women avoid physical aggression due to risk of injury, which could compromise reproductive success. Engaging in physical aggression might therefore decrease women's perceived mate value. However, physical aggression could be advantageous for some women, such as those who are larger in size and less vulnerable to injury. This presents the possibility that physically aggressive women might be perceived as larger and not necessarily lower in mate value. These hypotheses have not been tested. Across three studies, I used narratives to test the effect of aggression type (physical, verbal, indirect, nonaggressive) on perceptions of women's height, weight, masculinity, attractiveness, and social status. In Studies 1 and 2, participants perceived a physically aggressive woman to be both larger and more masculine than nonphysically aggressive women. In Study 3, participants perceived both a physically aggressive woman and a nonaggressive woman to be larger than an indirectly aggressive woman; the effect of aggression type on perceptions of a hypothetical man's height was not significant. I also found some evidence that aggression type influenced perceptions of attractiveness and social status, but these were small and inconsistent effects that warrant further study. Taken together, the results suggest that physical and indirect aggressive behavior may be associated with certain morphological and behavioral profiles in women.

Integration of the Maternal Death Prevention Program based on the Health Belief Model Framework

In 2015, the Health Office of Banyumas Regency records 7 cases of maternal deaths, 243 cases of infant deaths, and 41 cases of under-five deaths. Compared to 2015, maternal mortality increases in the first three months of 2016. This research aims to identify the causes of maternal deaths that occur in 2016 in Banyumas Regency using the Health Belief Model conceptual framework. The results show that the cause of maternal death in Banyumas Regency is the lack of antenatal services due to the lack of knowledge and awareness of mothers, social status of women in the community, availability of health facilities, vulnerabilities received, benefits of antenatal services, barriers to access to health services, and quality of health facilities and health workers. The problem solving plan is based on the HBM concept framework that can be prepared consisting of stakeholder advocacy, health promotion programs through counseling for pregnant women, programs to improve access to health facilities, and intervention programs for health workers.

Mother's social status is associated with child health in a horticulturalist population.

High social status is often associated with greater mating opportunities and fertility for men, but do women also obtain fitness benefits of high status? Greater resource access and child survivorship may be principal pathways through which social status increases women's fitness. Here, we examine whether peer-rankings of women's social status (indicated by political influence, project leadership, and respect) positively covaries with child nutritional status and health in a community of Amazonian horticulturalists. We find that maternal political influence is associated with improved child health outcomes in models adjusting for maternal age, parental height and weight, level of schooling, household income, family size, and number of kin in the community. Children of politically influential women have higher weight-for-age (B = 0.33; 95% CI = 0.12-0.54), height-for-age (B = 0.32; 95% CI = 0.10-0.54), and weight-for-height (B = 0.24; 95% CI = 0.04-0.44), and they are less likely to be diagnosed with common illnesses (OR = 0.48; 95% CI = 0.31-0.76). These results are consistent with women leveraging their social status to enhance reproductive success through improvements in child health. We discuss these results in light of parental investment theory and the implications for the evolution of female social status in humans.

A Foucauldian Reading: Power in Awakening by Kate Chopin

This paper traces Foucault’s notion of power in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. The writers bring into the light, different aspects of a woman’s position in the society of late nineteenth-century America. Paper looks at private and social conditions of women, using Foucault’s ideology of power, and discuss the reactions of Chopin’s protagonist in relation to her actions towards the workings of power in her life. With a close analysis of the novel based on Foucault’s ideology of power, researchers discuss the workings of power in the protagonist’s married and social life, including her efforts to set herself free from this power and her process of resistance analyzed according to Foucault’s theory. The research comes to the conclusion that the impossibility of acting outside power, the possibility of resisting power from within and Foucault’s “Care of the self” as the only way to traverse the power-defined failed of possible actions. Paper shows that, Chopin’s protagonist does not resist patriarchy based on Foucault’s methods and her actions towards power do not lead to any effective ending.

Предпосылки и суть изменений государственной политики в отношении социального статуса женщин в России на пути от монархии к Советам

Предпосылки и суть изменений государственной политики в отношении социального статуса женщин в России на пути от монархии к Советам

Some issues of the social status of women in Turkestan (based on materials from newspaper Publications of the late 19th - early 20th centuries)

Some issues of the social status of women in Turkestan (based on materials from newspaper Publications of the late 19th - early 20th centuries)

The Methods of Appropriation and Elaboration of Scarce Resources and Their Influence over the Social Status of Women: A Paleographic Investigation

The Methods of Appropriation and Elaboration of Scarce Resources and Their Influence over the Social Status of Women: A Paleographic Investigation

ЖЕНЩИНЫ В ИСТОРИИ БУДДИЙСКОЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ СРЕДНЕВЕКОВОЙ ЯПОНИИ

The article is devoted to the consideration of the role of women in the history of Buddhist culture in medieval Japan. The article examines the formation of the first female Buddhist monastic community in Japan. It is noted that the formation of the first Buddhist monastic community here was associated with women of Korean origin. A significant role in the institutionalization of Buddhism in Japan and its transformation into the dominant ideology was played by the Japanese empresses, who were impressed by the Buddhist approach to the religious status of women. The Japanese empresses actively supported the construction of Buddhist temples, donated land and significant funds to them. While pursuing a policy of strengthening the Buddhist church, they simultaneously contributed to its centralization and the establishment of strict control over the sangha by the state. The social and confessional status of women in the history of medieval Japan was constantly changing. If, until the end of the Nara period, nuns had the same social and confessional status as monks, then in the Heian era, nuns were removed from government positions and state ceremonies, and in religious treatises the opinion that women could not find salvation until will not be reborn as men. During the Kamakura and Muromachi eras, women again began to play an active role in society, including in religious institutions. During this period, new directions of Buddhism appeared (Amidaism, Soto-Zen, the Nichiren school), in whose doctrines the attitude towards women was more respectful. In the subsequent period, there was an increase in the influence of Confucianism and a weakening of the position of Buddhism in Japanese society, which negatively affected the social status of women and the state of the female monastic community.

Status does not predict stress: Women in an egalitarian hunter-gatherer society.

It is widely believed that there is strong association between physiological stress and an individual's social status in their social hierarchy. This has been claimed for all humans cross-culturally, as well as in non-human animals living in social groups. However, the relationship between stress and social status has not been explored in any egalitarian hunter-gatherer society; it is also under investigated in exclusively female social groups. Most of human evolutionary history was spent in small, mobile foraging bands of hunter-gatherers with little economic differentiation - egalitarian societies. We analysed women's hair cortisol concentration along with two domains of women's social status (foraging reputation and popularity) in an egalitarian hunter-gatherer society, the Hadza. We hypothesized that higher social status would be associated with lower physiological indicators of stress in these women. Surprisingly, we did not find any association between either foraging reputation or popularity and hair cortisol concentration. The results of our study suggest that social status is not a consistent or powerful predictor of physiological stress levels in women in an egalitarian social structure. This challenges the notion that social status has the same basic physiological implications across all demographics and in all human societies.

Male Perspective on Women in Contemporary Indonesian Islamic Literature

This paper aims at discussing the image of women in contemporary Indonesian Islamic literature after the ‘Indonesian Reformation’ in 1998. In contrast to the previous era, the images of women in this period are presented differently by male writers. Women are depicted more moderate and progressive. This paper applies the method of sociology of literature whereby literature is regarded as a reflection of its society. It employs content analysis of the text to see how Javanese Muslim women are depicted and how the depiction reflects the society. Two novels discussed in this paper are Cinta Suci Zahrana by Habiburrahman El Shirazy and Perempuan Badai by Mustofa W. Hasyim. The results show that these novels raise various issues of Muslim women in contemporary Indonesia. They show that there is a development in presenting the image of Muslim women in Indonesia. There is a development of thoughts, especially about the social status of women. The changes include the level of education, determination of spouse and freedom to participate in public spheres. The level of education obtained by the main characters is an essential milestone in changing women’s position in Indonesian Muslim society. Women are not just an object, but they should be the subject in the life of the Muslim community.

Peasant women in agricultural communes of Soviet Russia in 1917 - early 1930s

This article based on the large body of archival materials and considers the gender aspect in the activities of agricultural communes of the period of the early Soviet society. Created almost exclusively by men (as part of a team), they most often had about half or slightly less able-bodied members from among the women. This significantly influenced the psychological climate in the commune and its economic indicators. The absence of special works on this issue actualizes an appeal to the problem of the ratio of male / female in the agricultural team of the period under study and its significance for quantitative and qualitative indicators of production. It is also of interest that the agricultural labor commune was the site of a socialist social experiment to create a “new” Soviet person, a “new” Soviet woman. Traditionally, the woman determined the psychological and emotional readiness of the family to perceive the “new”, which the Soviet authorities actively used to strengthen their ideological influence in the village. Within the framework of the Bolshevik project “commune”, the tasks were set to raise the social status of women in society through wide access to education, occupying production, state and party leadership positions. New opportunities, in turn, expanded the space for women’s self-realization beyond their usual roles in the patriarchal structure. The study of the dynamics of the development of these processes in the early Soviet period makes it possible to identify natural boundaries in the implementation of the “new Soviet woman” concept, to establish the results of social planning in this area. The study proved that when joining the team, women pursued primarily pragmatic goals. The author of the article found that, despite the support by the state and the party in the process of raising the status of a peasant woman, society retained the traditional idea of its place and role in the family and social life. As a result, the involvement of women in managerial functions was carried out slowly, however, increased the possibility of their self-realization.