Women's Pursuit Research Articles

Women in late life: critical perspectives on gender and age

Introduction The Women of Mayslake Part I. The Body and Beyond Chapter 1. What Do You See When You Look At Me?: Women, Aging, and Our Bodies Chapter 2. Ageism: You're Only as Old as You Feel and Other Fictions Chapter 3. The New Old Age: From Productive Aging to Anti-Aging and Everything in Between Chapter 4. Disruptions and Repair: Identity and Chronic Illness Part II. Aging Women in Contemporary Society Chapter 5: A Looming Dystopia: Feminism, Aging, and Community-Based Long-Term Care Chapter 6: Retirement: In Pursuit of Women's Economic Security Chapter 7. Beyond Rational Control: Reflections on End-of-Life Care Part III. I'm an Old Lady and Damn Proud of It (Maggie Kuhn) Chapter 8. Resistance and Change: Where to From Here?

Developing a Construct of Women’s Sexual Freedom in the Mexican Context

Protecting women’s sexual freedom has evolved as a modern value through a long process of social, economic, and institutional changes brought about by the ascend of human rights principles and societal engagements such as the feminist movement. We suggest that the concept of sexual freedom accommodates a more encompassing expression of the simultaneous demand for all aspects of personal, socioeconomic, and political resources related to the pursuit of women’s well-being. The purpose of this study is to develop a construct of women’s sexual freedom in the Mexican context. The data are from the National Survey on the Dynamics of Households Relationships, 2011. We use exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to model women’s sexual freedom and test for invariance between working and non-working women. Results indicate that women’s sexual freedom consists of four factors: reproductive rights, physical intimate partner violence, sexual intimate partner violence, and violence inflicted by others.

"Dr. Right": Elderly Women in Pursuit of Negotiated Health Care and Mutual Decision Making

This study explores a group of elderly women who were searching for physicians that were interested in providing negotiated health care options with particular interest in mutual decision making. The grounded theory approach was used to explore the health care interactions between the physicians and the elderly women (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Qualitative interviews were conducted with eleven women, 75 years and older. The categorical working title of "Looking for Dr. Right" helped to focus our discovery of the reasons for these women's search for a new physician. Grounded in the data, a proposed hypothesis was developed regarding the need for a two-way dialogue addressing specific health care concerns between an elderly woman and her physician.

Building Empowerment: Female Grameen Entrepreneurs in Rural Bangladesh

This paper examines how the poor female borrowers of Grameen Bank microcredit in rural Bangladesh sought to fight social marginalisation through the production of domestic space. Impoverished women used meagre housing loans from Bangladesh's micro-lending bank to replace their climatically vulnerable and poverty-stricken mud huts with ‘modern’ houses made of such durable materials as tin and reinforced concrete columns. But did these enterprising women's pursuit of a strong shelter lead to a higher quality of life and social empowerment? This paper contends that an analysis of a poor entrepreneur's use of microcredit to build a durable house as a pre-condition for social well-being calls into question development economics' conventional emphasis on economic growth as the key indicator of social advancement.

"Suffering twice": the gender politics of cesarean sections in Taiwan.

Women's pursuit of medical interventions in childbirth has been a challenging issue in feminist and medical anthropological research on the medicalization of reproduction. This article addresses the gender politics surrounding maternal requests for cesarean sections in Taiwan. Since the 1990s, Taiwanese cesarean rates have been reported as among the highest in the world. That is not the case now, yet they are still perceived as such, and the current rate of 37% is indeed high by any standards. The government and public discourses attribute the high cesarean rate to women's demand for this intervention. However, my ethnographic research indicates that the Taiwanese hospital birthing system leads to the prevalence of cesareans, and that women's requests for them constitute strategic responses to the system and its existing high cesarean rates. Using women's attempt to avoid "suffering twice" as an example, I argue that maternal requests for cesareans often lie at the intersection between their restricted control over childbirth and their agency within the medical system.

‘He reflected, and not for the first time, that it was a great pity he suffered from a middle-class male reluctance to thump his wife’: Backlash, misogyny, and the consequences of self-fulfilment in the fiction of Joanna Trollope

Joanna Trollope began her career writing historical novels in the early 1980s, but it is for her contribution to the Aga-saga genre that she is best known. Trollope is synonymous with this popular category of women's writing, selling approximately 500,000 copies per title. Despite Trollope's popularity (and that of the Aga-saga more broadly) little research has been done on these novels. As part of a renewed interest by feminist critics in ‘women's genres’, Janine Liladhar (2000) and Deborah Philips (2006 [2007]) have done something to remedy this absence of scholarship, discussing Trollope and the Aga-saga in relation to romance and melodrama respectively. They characterize Aga-sagas as ‘reassuring’ narratives that, whilst often depicting women's dissatisfaction and frustration, always offer a contented image of domesticity. This article, however, argues that these accounts of Trollope's work have overlooked the negative depictions of women that run beneath the novels' celebration of domestic femininity. I maintain that at the heart of these novels is the suggestion that the price of women's pursuit of self-fulfilment is damage to children, the emasculation of husbands, and the dissolution of relationships.

2014 Black Women and Health Politics Panel-Het Heru Healing Dance and Auset Aum Tam Qi Gong Healing: Holistic Approaches to Dance/Movement Therapy

After ten years of research on Black women and breast cancer, I have concluded that there are structural prohibitions against Black women being able to shape the national public health policy dialogue on breast cancer. Despite being the demographic most likely to die from this disease, stigma against Black women (Motsemme 2004, 2007, 2011; Jordan-Zachery 2008; Berger 2004; Cohen 1999) still shapes survival rates. In the struggle to survive in a context in which political institutions ignore their lives, Black women have taken their health into their own hands. Thus, in this paper, I have begun to examine the and collective alternative healing strategies and practices of Black women that constitute a wholly distinctive location for mobilization and collective action by Black women in pursuit of their health.According to the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA), dance/movement therapy is the psychotherapeutic use of movement to further the emotional, cognitive, physical and social integration of the individual (www.adta.org). Psychological and physical interventions including dance and movement creative art therapies have been studied for use with oncology, orthopedic and mental health patients, to name a few, measuring a variety of outcomes including those relating to quality of life. In this paper, I will examine the Het Heru Healing Dance (2010) and the and Auset Aum Tam Qi Gong for women, to further explore the potential contributions of dance and movement as creative arts therapies for women’s wellness and improvement in overall quality of life. The increasing desire for alternative treatment options and the increasing popularity of dance/movement therapy opens the way for the Het Heru Healing Dance and Auset Aum Tam Qi Gong to increase the quality of life for women by providing (1) an accessible and fundamentally unique method of dance and movement therapy, (2) an opportunity for group support, and (3) a space for women to reflect on how they holistically understand and perceive their health, to ask questions, and to expand discussions on innovative new ways to enhance wellness. Unlike the ADTA dance/movement therapy based on the limited mind/body binary intervention, I argue the Het Heru Healing Dance and Auset Aum Tam Qi Gong create new possibilities for optimizing health and healing because they are holistic dance and movement forms rooted in the Metu Neter Paut Neteru methodology based on the complimentary, interdependent and unifying 11 Laws of Maat (Amen 1990, 2003). The Paut Neteru method is the cosmologic basis of behavioral change in Kamitic spiritual science. African worldview theory, therefore, provides the theoretical framework for this study, and scholarship on dance/movement therapy in Psychology, African Studies, Africana Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies and and Cultural Studies provides the historical context and contributes to the overall thesis.

Trans-cult-ural fandom: Desire, technology and the transformation of fan subjectivities in the Japanese female fandom of Hong Kong stars

This essay examines the ways in which affective desire and new media technologies were mobilized by Japanese female fans of Hong Kong films and stars to produce a fan subjectivity that was at once cult and transcultural. The origins of this fandom, which flourished from around 1985 through the 1990s, lay in structural affinities of the Japanese and Hong Kong entertainment industries of the 1980s, as well as the ways in which popular stars of both places were expected to perform their stardom. In particular, a shared valuing of stars' relatability and approachability translated, for Japanese fans, into a seemingly paradoxical sense of intimacy with the stars of another culture, an intimacy that was fostered and heightened by women's pursuit of Hong Kong media outside the official distribution channels of the Japanese media industry. I examine the knowledges required by women to seek out favorite stars' films on VHS and VCD, as well as the sites of such consumption, which combined in the production of what I tentatively term a trans-cult-ural fan subjectivity that was at once cultish in its intensity and desire for ownership, as well as transcultural in its performance by fans.

Em busca do feto saudavel: ideias, marcas e coisas na reconstrucao do diagnostico da toxoplasmose

The article examines medical care for pregnant women in pursuit of a healthy fetus. Specifically, it explores operationalization of the diagnosis and decision-making processes associated with the infection/disease object toxoplasmosis. According to empirical philosophy and to Annemarie Mol, this object is 'manipulated,' at least, by both physician and patient. This manipulation corresponds to an ontological reconstruction based on the integration of ideas-signs-things in the time-space context, which foster the multiplicity of the object. The article seeks to contribute to theorization on ontological politics, taking into account that multiplicity of the object and several ensuing interventions imply different body modeling and life shifts.

Gender Inequalities in Academic Innovation and Enterprise: A Bourdieuian Analysis

This paper demonstrates that engagement in innovation and enterprise activity in SET departments within three UK universities is, in part, gendered. A Bourdieuian approach is adopted to identify underlying structures and practices that have causal powers to generate gender‐based inequalities. Drawing on empirical research with 52 participants, this study reveals gendered science enterprise experiences, characterized by a field that is considered strong in shaping the habitus and presenting stark options to women in pursuit of their careers. It demonstrates the multilayered nature of the fields that shape gendered experiences and resultant inequalities by taking into account individual dispositions of academics and their habitus, including their science enterprise experience and the wider commercial field beyond the university, and generates a number of implications for practice and policy.

Experiences Accompanying Postpartum Weight Loss: Benefits, Successes, and Well-Being

Obesity is a growing problem in the United States, and research has supported the theory that pregnancy contributes to long-term weight gain. This phenomenological study investigated the postpartum weight loss experiences of 24 women. Women ranged in age from 25 to 35 years, were mostly Caucasian with adequate resources, and about half worked either full or part time. Women described both positive and negative experiences associated with weight loss. Themes included issues related to exercise, weight struggles, pregnancy contributions to weight gain, eating, breastfeeding, motivation for weight loss, time issues, miscellaneous struggles, realizing benefits, social support, quick weight loss, personal well-being, and successes. The overarching theme that represents these women's experiences was the need to balance weight loss activity with other responsibilities, which resulted in challenges and triumphs in women's pursuit of returningto their prepregnancy weights. Realizing benefits, successes, and personal well-being are addressed in this article.

“An Africa of Religious Life”: Fredrika Bremer’s American Faith Journey, 1849–1851

Despite the considerable scholarship devoted to the exploration of the Christian faith, belief, and practice of women involved in movements for social reform and women’s rights in nineteenth-century Europe and America, inter-denominational and transnational explorations in the pursuit of women’s rights and personal spiritual fulfillment have received surprisingly little attention. This article focuses on Fredrika Bremer’s Homes of the New World (1853), the Swedish novelist’s sympathetic account of her journey to America in 1849–51, to explore her faith encounters with Unitarians and Quakers in the northeastern U.S. and with African American Christians in the southern states of Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana. The article discusses Bremer’s volumes as a work of theological engagement, profoundly connected to her concern for women’s legal and spiritual freedoms in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

Arab Women and Political Development

Abstract Although many measures have been taken by the majority of Arab countries enhance women's representation in decision-making positions, women's participation in public life and positions of power have not been achieved the desired level. The Arab region ranks the lowest in the world in terms of women's participation in parliaments. The objective of this paper is examine the Political participation of women in the Arab countries and identify different challenges that impede Arab women participation in politics and decision making. Challenges include: cultural factors, the stereotyped image of women, women's low self-confidence, lack of coordination among women's organizations, effectiveness/efficiency of women empowerment programs, shortcomings in the institutional and legal frameworks, practices of political parties and election process, skepticism about the Agenda for Women empowerment, the process of development of Women empowerment strategies. Thus, challenges facing women in politics are immense. They require the consolidation of all efforts with great belief in women's capabilities as human beings who are able lead and shoulder the responsibility in the building of their nations. Keywords: Arab women in politics, Arab women and equality, Arab women in development Setting the Scene at the Global Level: During the last decades, the world has witnessed special International attention women's issues, and devoted 1975 as the International Year for Women. The year of 1975 laid the groundwork for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) during the first International conference on women held in Mexico in 1979 (2). The Mexico conference was followed by other main significant international conferences on women held in Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985) (3). The pace of the attention women's issues has accelerated in the beginning of the nineties, with the growing international concern about the persistence of discrimination against women and the marginalization of their role, the consequent waste of energy, and the disruption of the fundamental forces in the overall development process. The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994 had the major impact on the emerging concern of gender issues. This was followed by the Beijing conference in 1995, which paved the way strengthen women's participation in decision-making process and higher positions and endorsed the cumulative effect of the previous efforts of all conferences emphasizing on the states' accountability and commitment adopt concrete plans of action that respond Beijing's Platform for Action (BPFA) (4). In further pursuit of women's rights, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) in 2000 clearly specified the importance of women development in its Goal 3; to promote gender equality and empowerment of women. Other MDG's have not explicitly stated gender as a target; however, women's issues are addressed implicitly in many areas of the MDG's such as poverty, education, and health (5). The Arab region was not in isolation from the global debate on women and human rights, where the political will has played a major role in enhancing Arab women development. Arab countries have witnessed major shifts over the past decade in political, economic, and social development. The Arab region, comprises 22 states that are members of the Arab League, is defined by a complex set of issues, including the Arab-Israeli conflict and its repercussions, unstable economic conditions and trends, population-resource imbalances and environmental stress. The Arab Islamic cultural heritage and common Arabic language have preserved a unique character for the region and its peoples. Democratization in the Arab region remains a slow process which faces various setbacks including regional instability and conflict, economic imbalances, and the lack of freedom engage in a meaningful democratic process. …

In Pursuit of Women’s Representation: A Pragmatic Approach to Improving Women’s Representation in Canadian Politics

This essay addresses the democratic deficit in women's representation in Canadian politics that hinders the access of all citizens in Canada to free, equal, and meaningful opportunities to engage in all levels of political affairs. In doing so, a number of socio-cultural and structural barriers to women's participation in federal politics are identified. In turn, strategies to overcome these barriers are presented while making effort to tackle the conditions underlying women’s misrepresentation, as opposed to promoting explicitly compulsory solutions such as affirmative action legislation. The purpose of my research is to guide Canadian policy structures and social standards toward a new paradigm in Canadian politics where women are liberated from having to face the tension between the implications of their status as the 'other' and their desire to meaningfully contribute to the political affairs of the Canadian state.

Flawed Remedies: EEOC, ATT, and Sears Outcomes Reconsidered

This article revisits two landmark EEOC cases, EEOC vs. AT&T and EEOC vs. Sears, Roebuck and Company (Sears). The EEOC vs. AT&T case, viewed as an enormous victory for women, had far-reaching implications not only for women who worked in the old Bell System but for women in other industries as well. On the other hand, the EEOC's legal failure in the Sears, Roebuck and Company case was devastating to the women who worked for Sears and a source of division and strife among women historians. This paper examines the actual complaints filed with the EEOC to uncover and analyze the dynamic between women's pursuit of justice from the state and the effects of public policies initiated in response to that pursuit. By comparing the redress sought by the EEOC with that sought by the complainants, this paper evaluates the extent to which the state actually addressed the issues presented by the women themselves. Simultaneously, it analyzes the "gender first" strategies and policy solutions offered by the National Organization of Women that erased blackness. The author concludes that, given the failure of the state to recognize the "intersectionality" of African American women's oppressions, even in the context of the opening of new opportunities, the remedies sought in these cases were flawed from their inception and, therefore, could not fully redress black women's grievances.

To Stand on Their Own Legs: Independence and Other Motivations for Women's Pursuit of Post-Graduate Studies, and Their Parents’ Influence on Them, in Vishakhapatnam India

In India, traditional views of gender are still very widespread, causing female education levels to be extremely low. Despite these rates, a minority of women in India are pursuing higher education. At a women’s college dorm for Andhra University, a high ranked post-graduate university, I interviewed female students from diverse majors and backgrounds to gain a greater understanding of what set these women apart, enabling them to continue their studies, when so many women could not. To do so, I studied the girls’ reasons for gaining such a high level of education and their parents’ influence on that pursuit. Among female students earning their post-graduate degrees at Andhra University in Vishakhapatnam, India, the desire for independence was the most common motivation for continuing education, an aspiration strengthened by the widespread dependence of young women on their parents.

Piety, music and gender transformation: reconfiguring women as culture bearing markers of modernity and nationalism in Bangladesh

The rise in an intense, textually‐based piety, which has become increasingly prevalent in many circles in Bangladesh in the past decade, sees music as taking away from an ideal pious disposition, and therefore considers its removal from everyday life as a requisite to becoming a good Muslim. The removal of music is critically looked upon by secular Bengali Muslims, where singing, especially songs of the Nobel Laureate Tagore, is equated with cultural pride and Bangladeshi nationalism in the secular‐liberal, especially the intellectual imaginary. The shunning of such music is thus tantamount to shunning ‘Bengaliness’ and a source of anxiety for the nationalist. In this article, through a deeper exploration of women's struggles of and sense of achievement in giving up music, I argue that for the women in pursuit of piety, what the act of giving up music speaks to is inner changes that enable them to critically reflect upon roles and relationships that have long been the defining features of a particular kind of middle class, Bengali, feminine self. The paper argues that shunning music is taken as a medium through which women critically rethink their positions at home, reconfigure old roles and expectations and come out of the process with a greater sense of control and ability to write their own identities as Muslim wives and women.

The Commonwealth of Nations today: historical anachronism or focus for universal values?

The creation of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) in July 2010, to report on future structures of the Commonwealth of Nations, focuses attention on the activities that the Commonwealth and its Secretariat perform well and those that require improvement. The author, now a member of the EPG, explains how the Commonwealth evolved out of the British Empire; the importance of the links of law, language and tradition that bind it together; and the activities that are well performed: professional links; education and publications; electoral observations; provision of good offices; and consensus over core values. He notes useful new initiatives, including periodic human rights reviews; outreach to youth; pursuit of women’s equality; and the use of new information technology. However, he also identifies a number of areas of weakness: publicity and communications; secretariat organisation; the focus of some activities; and effective attention to reported human rights abuses. Given the creation of the EPG, this is a timely survey of the challenges that lie before it and the Commonwealth.

Predictors of postpartum stress

To predict important factors in women's postpartum stress. The transition to motherhood is often accompanied by stress, but research on predictors of postpartum stress is scant. A cross-sectional survey was used in the study. Proportional stratified quota sampling based on births at 11 registered general hospitals and seven specialty clinics in the Kaohsiung area of southern Taiwan was used to obtain a high degree of representation. Eight hundred and fifty-nine women participated in the study within six weeks postpartum. The Hung postpartum stress scale, the social support scale and the 12-item Chinese Health Questionnaire were used in this study. Women with minor psychiatric morbidity, one or two children, junior college educational level, formula feeding for their infants, preference for an infant boy and a low level of social support were important predictors for women's postpartum stress. Our findings provide information and data for service planning and community care for the prevention and amelioration of postpartum stress. Postpartum women face a constellation of factors that could put them at risk for high levels of postpartum stress. Postpartum stress could significantly negatively impact women's health status. Nursing interventions should be tailored to decrease women's postpartum stress as a means of promoting postpartum women's pursuit of well-being.

Creating a Socialist Feminist Cultural Front:Women of China(1949–1966)

AbstractThis article is a study of socialist feminist cultural practices in the early PRC. It investigates stories behind the scenes and treats the All-China Women's Federation's official journalWomen of Chinaas a site of feminist contention to reveal gender conflicts within the Party, diverse visions of socialist transformation, and state feminist strategies in the pursuit of women's liberation. A close examination of discrepancies between the covers and contents of the magazine explicates multiple meanings in establishing a socialist feminist visual culture that attempted to disrupt gender and class hierarchies. Special attention to state feminists' identification with and divergence from the Party's agenda illuminates a unique historical process in which a gendered democracy was enacted in the creation of a feminist cultural front when the Party was consolidating its centralizing power. The article demonstrates a prominent “gender line” in the socialist state that has been neglected in much of the scholarship on the Mao era.