Women In Ways Research Articles

Story Circles of Black Doulas, Cultural Brokers for Birthing People in Healthcare.

Doula care services (in-person, hybrid, and virtual) during the COVID-19 pandemic may vary. The purpose of this study was to explore doulas' experiences as birthing professionals and epistemological resources assisting Black birthing families during the pandemic. Virtual qualitative story circles were conducted with 11 Black doulas who attended births as doulas from January 2020 to December 2021. Participants were recruited in California. The story circles were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were analyzed using content analysis, with attention to the influence of epistemic injustice (types of injustices inflicted on marginalized groups) on service provision. Additionally, we employed Patricia Hill Collins' Black Feminist Theory which describes "Black women's ways of knowing" that disrupts and challenges existing epistemologies. Narrative data revealed (1) doulas are positioned as possessors of epistemic influence in birthing spaces with intersecting social identities, (2) a pervasive oppression of doulas' knowledge, (3) epistemological resilience and disruption, and (4) a commitment to Black indigenous practices. Despite these epistemic unfair structures, systems, and experiences, Black doulas reimagine and establish pathways for birthing families to navigate the healthcare system during intrapartum care.

Strategi Public Relations Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) untuk Meningkatkan Partisipasi Politik Perempuan: Studi Kasus Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) Kabupaten Semarang

Some groups, particularly those rooted in conservative Islamic interpretations, argue that Islam does not recognize gender equality in political practice. However, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), as an Islamic-oriented party, holds a different view. The issue in this research is the lack of awareness and knowledge about women's roles in politics. Many women may not fully understand the importance of their involvement in politics or know how to participate effectively. To address this, PKS needs to launch an educational campaign aimed at increasing understanding of women's political rights and ways to participate. This research aims to identify and outline the Public Relations strategies employed by the Prosperous Justice Party in Semarang Regency to enhance women's participation and create an inclusive society. The research uses a qualitative method. Data collection techniques in this study include interviews, observations, and documentation. Data analysis techniques consist of data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing. Data validity reflects how accurate and precise the data obtained from research subjects are compared to the data revealed by the researcher. The research findings show that the public relations strategies implemented by PKS in Semarang Regency—namely strategy of publicity, strategy of persuasion, strategy of argumentation, and strategy of image—are effective in increasing women's political participation. PKS has successfully carried out effective educational campaigns through seminars, workshops, and social media to raise awareness and knowledge among women about their political roles, positively impacting increased participation. PKS has addressed the issue of limited information reach by utilizing various communication channels, including local and digital media, and establishing partnerships with community leaders, thereby broadening the dissemination and accessibility of information regarding political opportunities for women. These strategies significantly enhanced women's political engagement in Semarang Regency.

Bodies-territories and intersectionalities: contributions to public health surveillance.

Multiple bodies and territories experience impacts, conflicts, and socioenvironmental injustices in different ways. The consequences of the neoextractivist accumulation patterns weigh differently on women, especially non-white women. This text brings narratives of a wide range of women who live in different territories and experience different impacts from major undertakings. Through their narratives, we seek to understand how they constitute their territorial bodies; how they are impacted; and how they resist colonialist domination, defend life, and restore health. These impacts affect women's means and ways of life, and restrict their ways of being, power, and knowledge in these territories, rendering them vulnerable, subject to the precariousness of life, immersed in systemic intoxication, reaching situations classified as genocide. Faced with such threats, they manage collective resistance; trigger what makes them active subjectivity; and decolonize themselves as beings, knowledge, and power. In this way they defend life and restore their health and that of their environments. These experiences indicate ways to strengthen public health surveillance perspectives and networks.

“We need to confirm at least from two or three”: Healthcare workers’ discretion as gatekeepers in the context of the Ethiopian abortion law

IntroductionWomen’s access to legal and safe abortion is a vital means to reduce unsafe abortion, which in turn is known to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality. In 2005, Ethiopia enacted a relatively permissive abortion legislation. However, there is evidence that access to abortion care services may be challenging and controversial even if progressive abortion laws are in place. This article examines women’s access to abortion services from the perspective of healthcare workers in a rural setting in Ethiopia. Drawing on Lipsky’s theory of street-level bureaucrats, the article discusses healthcare workers’ discretion and the substantial authority they hold as gatekeepers to safe abortion services.MethodsThe study draws upon a qualitative, interpretative methodological approach, with in-depth semi-structured interviews with healthcare workers as the key method of data generation. The data was analyzed and interpreted thematically. Healthcare workers’ perspectives were examined with reference to the national abortion legislation and guidelines.ResultsThe findings reveal that healthcare workers make decisions on behalf of the women who seek abortion, and they involve parents and partners in abortion-related decision-making processes. Moreover, they assess the social context of the pregnancy such as the marital and economic statuses of the abortion-seeking women in ways that restrict women’s access to legally-endorsed abortion services.ConclusionsHealthcare workers’ practices in this rural area were found to challenge the basic provisions laid out in Ethiopia’s abortion legislation. Their negative discretion of the legislation contributes to the substantial barriers Ethiopian abortion-seeking women face in gaining access to legal abortion services, despite the presence of a progressive legal framework and guidelines.

Mehir (Dower), Gifts of Gold, and Intimate Economies of Marriage in Istanbul

Abstract Islamic mehir practices (dower) and other financial arrangements during a marriage reveal how marriage, gender and religion are understood and reconfigured in Istanbul today. Drawing on religious women's narratives of mehir and gifts of gold, this article examines the complex interplay between economic transactions and intimate marital relationships in Istanbul, as well as the relation between my interlocutors’ practices of mehir and wedding gifts and their sense of propriety. It suggests that women's ways of understanding and practising economic marriage transactions are ambivalently shaped by intimate entanglements of religion, nuclear family, conjugal love, secular civil law, and reputation and honour. Women uneasily navigate the ambivalences of the intimate sphere as they make decisions and engage in practices related to economic marriage transactions.

A Deep Study of the Reasons for the Formation of Chang'e Image in The Flight to the Moon

"The Flight to the Moon" in Lu Xun's "Old Tales Retold" is a modern and secular adaptation of traditional fairy tales under the environment of the times. In his works, Chang'e, who was placed in the secular world, changed from the traditional image of a fairy to a complex image with the characteristics of women of the times. She is not only a sharp secular woman, but also a numb woman under feudal thought, and finally an advanced female image with ideological awakening. In-depth text exploration and analysis of the reasons for the formation and transformation of Chang'e's image from her life and living environment are of great significance to the study of the living environment of women in the times and Mr. Lu Xun's thinking on women's view and women's way out.

Trait inferences from the “big two” produce gendered expectations of facial features

Prescriptive stereotypes based on, respectively, agency and communality reflect how people expect men and women to behave. Deviating from such prescriptions limits opportunities for men and women in ways that reinforce traditional gender roles. In the current work, we examine whether people have expectations of gendered facial features based on agentic and communal descriptions of targets and if these expectations extend to who people think is best suited for workplace tasks. Across five experiments, people expected more facial masculinity for targets paired with agentic relative to communal traits (Experiments 1, 2a-b) and workplace behaviors (Experiments 3a-b). This expectation effect emerged when gendered facial features (e.g., more masculinized and feminized versions of face identities) were manipulated across (Experiment 1) and within (Experiments 2a-b, 3a-b) gender, regardless of whether traits were explicitly stated (Experiments 1, 2a-b, 3a) or inferred (Experiment 3b), and regardless of trait valence. When people made decisions about two same-gender faces, the gender of those faces accentuated trait effects. More masculine male (relative to female) faces were consistently expected more for agentic traits and workplace tasks, but consistently expected less for communal traits and workplace tasks (Experiments 2a, 3a-b). We then conceptually replicated expectation effects by showing that mental representations of agentic and communal faces appear correspondingly gendered (Experiment 4). Finally, we provide exploratory analyses showing that expectation effects may differentially vary by perceiver gender across contexts. These findings illustrate a non-verbal route by which people make decisions based on gender stereotypes that have wide-ranging implications for workplace behavior.

Food Is an African Feminist Issue

Abstract This essay argues that food—particularly the labor of preparing and producing food—should be seen as central to South African feminism, and to African feminisms more broadly. Salo explains how women provide the majority of the labor to produce food on the African continent, yet often are exposed to hunger because they do not own the means to food production. Moreover, as agribusiness encroaches on foodways and food production lands in Africa, this sector attempts to incorporate women in ways that continue to render them gendered subordinates in an unequal economic and political system. Centering food provides an important means for African feminists to continue recognizing the imbrication of gendered oppression with colonialism and neocolonialism, and to challenge these hierarchies while pursuing sustainability and social justice. Women’s agencies as food producers also offer alternatives to agribusiness and corporate food, including small-scale farming or gardening projects that intersect with political activism in urban and peri-urban areas. Salo discusses how such African women’s strategies align with concepts such as food sovereignty and ecofeminism, but also need to be recognized as occurring beyond the cultures of academic expertise often associated with such terms.

GENDER STEREOTYPES BY PRESENTING A FEMALE PROTAGONIST PORTRAYED IN THE "NEIL'S BURGER DIVERGENT (2014)" MOVIE

This study aims to show a positive representation of feminism in Divergent films and find the implied meaning behind the presentation of feminism. this study uses a critical approach, qualitative methodology, and social research methods, in particular Roland Barthes' model of semiotics. Roland Barthe's athletic session model uses the concept of denotation and connotation as key analysis. This search analysis is done by focusing only on the main elements of narrative in films, especially space and time, characters, conflicts, and goals. The results of this research show that the two rhymes of representation of feminism in Divergent films and the notion that women are sexy, weak, and tend to act out their emotions than logic, it is not true. Social values and women's way of life appear in this rumor which is done by the main character named Tris. In a conclusion, the representation of feminism can be displayed through the main narrative elements in the film, such as space and time, characters, conflict, and goals. And also, this research gives findings about pacifism (K). There is 3 denotation, 2 connotations, and 1 myth in divergent film.

Speak truth! The role of Black women's dialogue in the production of scholarship

In this article, we offer insights derived from an analysis of a structured dialogue on methodological decision making. Our analysis highlights the ways in which our dialogic process for revising a manuscript reflected key onto-epistemic qualities of Black women's ways of knowing. Drawing from an Afrocentric feminist epistemological standpoint, we tease apart how shared ways of knowing can facilitate heightened clarity about one's engagement in the research process. By positioning structured dialogues as a methodological tool, we offer several insights regarding their generative nature in facilitating researcher clarity on methodological decision making and in elucidating key shifts in the evolution of a researcher's methodological self. Indeed, as a form of facilitated reflexive praxis, engaging in structure dialogues about one's methodological choices is requisite for defining and understanding oneself as a researcher, scholar, and intellectual.

Transgressive women in punk: Politics, sexuality, and creative aggression in the 1970s

AbstractPrior analyses have examined various elements of punk rock as an aggressive anti‐establishment cultural and social movement that arose in post‐WWII America and flourished in the 1970s. The unique gender dynamic of punk, however, has been less of a focus of historical investigation. This essay examines the lives and music of three women involved in the early years of the emergence of punk, an era overwhelmingly dominated by men. By focusing on the creative expression and Penelope Houston of Avengers, Debbie Harry of Blondie, and Wendy O. Williams of Plasmatics, this paper seeks to analyze how certain women in the punk movement explicitly sought to challenge the conventional narratives of women's social, political, and sexual roles in the late 1970s and in so doing helped to carve out new paths for women's expression and ways of being in American society.

The Effect of Structured Antenatal Education on Childbirth Self-Efficacy.

Antenatal (prenatal) education is a vital role of midwives when giving antenatal care to pregnant women. Particularly in the late stages of pregnancy, antenatal education regarding the natural-labor process, the introduction of labor rooms, coping strategies, and labor-pain management may enhance maternal self-efficacy and perceptions of childbirth. However, educational programs that include birth plans, pain-relief measures, and birth preparation are not a structured part of the Saudi healthcare system. This is the first study to investigate the effect of antenatal education on maternal self-efficacy in Saudi Arabia. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of an antenatal education program on maternal self-efficacy in primiparous pregnant women and to determine the relationship between maternal self-efficacy and their sociodemographic characteristics in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A randomized control trial (pretest/posttest) design was conducted with 94 primiparous pregnant women. Two groups were compared: an intervention group, which received a structured antenatal educational program (n = 46), and a control group, which received routine antenatal care (n = 48). The childbirth self-efficacy inventory (CBSEI) was used to assess maternal self-efficacy. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 24 (Released 2016; IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States). The mean score on the CBSEI pretest was 238.5 ± 237.4 compared to 242.9 ± 276.2 in the posttest mean score, with significant differences (p < .05)in maternal self-efficacy between the pretest and posttest scores for both groups. The findings of this study suggest that an antenatal educational program could serve as an essential tool, providing access to high-quality information and skills during the antenatal period and significantly enhancing maternal self-efficacy. It is crucial to invest resources to empower and equip pregnant women in ways that promote positive perceptions andboost their confidence regarding childbirth.

Abstract P6-09-03: Examining recollections of Black women with breast cancer who participated in clinical trials: A grounded practical theory study of patient-provider communication

Abstract Introduction: The presence of strong barriers to research participation for Black and Brown women is indisputable. However, existing evidence clearly supports the possibility of equal levels of participation among members of minoritized populations in past breast cancer clinical trials, demonstrating that while these participation barriers do undoubtedly exist, they are not always insurmountable. A main implication of this current study is that researchers should take greater strides to remove the onus of recruitment responsibility from racialized population members, and instead leave it with the providers, investigators, and health care teams who hold enough power to make change. Purpose: This project takes a grounded practical theory (GPT) approach to engage with Black women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer and have participated in a breast cancer clinical trial and explores their recollections of conversations with their providers. GPT focuses on reconstructing particular communication practices, highlighting both the important procedural role of communication in practice and its ability to present intricate complications that echo society’s norms and values. The aim of this work is to investigate and analyze those patient-provider conversations to try to illuminate how providers can better engage these women in ways that will positively influence their perceptions of breast cancer clinical trial participation. Methods: The current study was part of a larger project examining the recruitment of Black women to breast cancer clinical trials. Fourteen women (N=14) from six different states in the U.S., all of whom self-identified as Black, Black American, or African American, agreed to be interviewed as part of a larger study. All participants had participated or were currently participating in a breast cancer clinical trial. The interviews yielded a wealth of interesting and potentially important additional data about Black female breast cancer patients and their communication experiences with their providers. Employing grounded practical theory as a framework helped increase insight into the patient-provider communication needs of Black women who have participated in a breast cancer clinical trial. Results: Findings were summarized into four categories: 1) the participants held differing perspectives and personal impressions toward their providers; 2) the women reflect on their individual breast cancer journeys through richly described incidences, describing searching for, and finding trials on their own, or being guided by healthcare providers who suggested a clinical trial for them; 3) each participant’s shared details of their unique communication relationship with medical and research providers; and 4) the cultural aspects of participants’ patient-provider communication, focusing primarily on their expressions of faith. These findings have important implications for health communication scholars, healthcare providers, and breast cancer clinical trial research principal investigators and team members. Conclusion: As opposed to the conclusion that one may draw from most published explanations of poor minority accrual to clinical trials, which appear to put the blame on the minoritized population members themselves, the current work outlines the actions and non-actions of many providers, and suggests that adjusting to approaches that demonstrate more encouragement and acceptance of their patients might result in better clinical trial participation outcomes from these group members. Citation Format: Precious Okoruwa, Katherine E. Ridley-Merriweather. Examining recollections of Black women with breast cancer who participated in clinical trials: A grounded practical theory study of patient-provider communication [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2022 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(5 Suppl):Abstract nr P6-09-03.

Gender, competition, and performance: Evidence from chess players

This paper studies gender differences in performance in a male‐dominated competitive environment chess tournaments. We find that the gender composition of chess games affects the behaviors of both men and women in ways that worsen the outcomes for women. Using a unique measure of within‐game quality of play, we show that women make more mistakes when playing against men. Men, however, play equally well against male and female opponents. We also find that men persist longer before losing to women. Our results shed some light on the behavioral changes that lead to differential outcomes when the gender composition of competitions varies.

Abstract B041: An examination of patient-provider communication through recollections of Black breast cancer clinical trial participants

Abstract Introduction: Despite the indisputable presence of strong barriers to research participation for Black and Brown women, evidence exists that clearly supports the possibility of nearly equal levels of participation among members of minoritized populations in past breast cancer clinical trials (BC CTs), demonstrating that while these participation barriers do undoubtedly exist, they are not always insurmountable. Purpose: The current project takes a grounded practical theory approach to engage with Black women who have been diagnosed with BC and have participated in a BC CT and explores their recollections of conversations with their providers. The aim of this work was to investigate and analyze those patient-provider conversations to try to illuminate how providers can better engage these women in ways that will positively influence their perceptions of BC CT participation. Methods: Fourteen women (N=14) from six different states in the U.S., all of whom self-identified as Black, Black American, or African American, agreed to be interviewed as part of a larger study. All participants had participated or were currently participating in a BC CT. Employing grounded practical theory as a framework helped increase insight into the patient-provider communication needs of Black women who have participated in a BC CT. Results: Findings were summarized into four categories. The first category focused on the differing perspectives and personal impressions the participants held toward their providers. In the second category, the women reflect on their individual BC journeys through richly described incidences, describing searching for and finding trials on their own, or being guided by healthcare providers who suggested a CT for them. The shared details of each participant’s unique communication relationship with medical and research providers are shared in the third category. Finally, category four highlights the cultural aspects of participants’ patient-provider communication, focusing primarily on their expressions of faith. Each of these findings has important implications for health communication scholars, healthcare providers, and BC CT research PIs and team members. Conclusions: This study amplified voices of Black women w/BC diagnoses enrolled in CTs through richly described incidences of patient/provider (P/P) communication experiences and individual BC CT paths &amp; journeys. The study highlighted the salience of promoting cultural P/P conversations. This work centers on the ineffective explanations for low racial/ethnic minority CT presence, which can be interpreted as placing blame on the members of underserved populations themselves. Implications: Researchers must take greater strides to remove the onus of recruitment responsibility from racialized population members, and instead leave it with the members of the healthcare industry, who hold enough power to make change. Citation Format: Katherine E. Ridley-Merriweather. An examination of patient-provider communication through recollections of Black breast cancer clinical trial participants [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 15th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2022 Sep 16-19; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2022;31(1 Suppl):Abstract nr B041.

Transamorous Misogyny: Masculinity, Heterosexuality, and Cis Men’s Sexist Desires for Trans Women

Little sociological research has examined how cis people might be accepting or not of trans people on an intimate level. To begin to fill this gap, the author analyzes over 200 online discussion board posts and threads on Reddit by cis heterosexual men who discuss their romantic and sexual desires for trans women. The author coins the concept of transamorous misogyny to capture the paradoxical process of how cis heterosexual men’s desires for trans women is in and through their contempt of all women. Specifically, the author shows how the cis heterosexual men expand ideas of sexual identity as attraction toward gender expression. However, the men expand the definition of heterosexuality in ways that construct trans women as hyper-feminine, hyper-submissive, and as not real women. The men also discursively work to reassert their cis heterosexual masculinity through discussing how trans women are better than cis women. Ultimately, transamorous misogyny works to devalue all women and allows cis heterosexual men to desire trans women in ways that help the men invest in their own cis heterosexual masculinity.

A long way to liberalization, or is it? Public perceptions of women empowerment in the Middle East and North Africa

This paper explores the question of what explains public opinion of women empowerment in the Middle East and North Africa. Muslim societies have often been accused of conservatism toward empowerment, stripping women of equal access to education and opportunities. However, many predominantly Muslim societies in the MENA region seem to be on the way to implement change to provide women with more rights. Prior research points to exposure to diversity as a contributor to the acceptance of a more egalitarian role of women in society. This article analyzes different mechanisms of the exposure hypothesis and whether they contribute to predicting positive public perceptions of women empowerment in the region. The empirical analyses rely on public opinion data collected by the Arab Barometer in 2018–19. The descriptive findings suggest attitudinal differences across countries, but also significant gender gaps and divergences across core explanatory factors found under the umbrella of the exposure hypothesis, such as diverse urban living, keeping religion a private matter, and connecting with the world via social media. These factors seem important to shift people's minds and to pave women's long way to liberalization.

Women's Ways of Making

Women's Ways of Making

A Reflection on Love Between Women and the Importance of Embodied Thinking in Research, the Academy, Politics, and Life

A Reflection on Love Between Women and The Importance of Embodied Thinking in Research, the Academy, Politics, and Life Mónica I. Rey (bio) So much has happened since Love Between Women was published in 1996. In some ways, the environment in which Love Between Women was published is an entirely different world. I was nine at the time.1 It is easy for me to take for granted how radical Love Between Women truly was in its focus solely on love and sex between women at a time when same-sex marriage was still illegal. Maybe not surprisingly, Love Between Women is important to my own research primarily because of its approach to historiography and method in a field where the historical record is extremely fraught. As a student reading Love Between Women, I was fascinated by its ability to cover questions that center issues related to gender, sexuality, and difference simultaneously. As a PhD candidate, I am now struck by the rich theory it demonstrates, a map that guides me down a path still less traveled in academic inquiry. In my own research I have found true Brooten's observation that "the lack of sources on women is part of the history of women."2 I will admit that at times I am bitter about both the difficulties this presents and the unwillingness of malestream scholarship to embrace or take seriously different methods to deal with this fact. Yet these difficulties create the opportunity to do something fruitful, creative, and innovative in the historiographical arena. What Love Between Women does so beautifully is to demonstrate how women's histories challenge the discipline of biblical studies and its deeply held beliefs about itself. Case in point, much of Brooten's groundbreaking work is really centered around letting the evidence and [End Page 155] texts speak for themselves, something that is (apparently) difficult for scholars to do. The subject matter the evidence presents led to what Sara Parks describes as "acrobatic antics performed in order for interpreters to maintain . . . assumptions in the face of clear evidence to the contrary."3 How is it that a discipline that claims to so deeply value objective analysis is actually so beset by phallocentric bias? This continues to be a mystery to me. Already in 1985 Brooten had concluded that "no amount of historical-critical work, no amount of taking the Tendenz into account will make woman emerge as a subject of history."4 Recognizing this, Brooten challenged the discipline's readiness to abandon half of humanity in the historical record by instead engaging a methodological insight she calls historical imagination.5 Similarly, one can appreciate how Brooten's critical comments actually also impact the historicizing of women loving women in ways that challenge even Michel Foucault.6 What Brooten accomplishes in Love Between Women is no easy task. Underappreciated in this field is the sort of labor of theorizing seen and produced in a work like Love Between Women. Hennie J. Marsman, who develops a feminist approach heavily influenced by Brooten, laments that "it is remarkable that those writing on biblical historiography generally give little attention to the theoretical requirements of writing women's history."7 On top of grappling with sparse or missing sources in the historical record, historians like Brooten who do this work also must contend with the fact that the available evidence is also fraught with distortions both in the telling of "history" and quite frankly in the source's own detestable views. Brooten is aware of this paradox, acknowledging that Love Between Women "contributes to the history of male ideas about lesbians far more than to women's history."8 In that history of male ideas, Love Between Women reminds me that we are not really very far from some of these ancient patriarchal views of female homoeroticism. In recovering the sexual lives and relationships of and between women, Brooten had to contend with ancient attitudes toward female homoeroticism, which (spoiler alert) are often extremely negative. In my mind, many of the parallels between ancient and modern views of female homoeroticism are striking. For example, Brooten notes that tribades, women who pursue women, were viewed as mentally ill...

Positioning of female marriage immigrants in South Korea: a multimodal textbook analysis

Abstract This study examines a series of government textbooks used to teach Korean language and culture to spouses of South Korean nationals living in Korea. A multimodal analysis of textbook images and narratives explores how strictly defined gender identity discourses are constructed and circulated through these government textbooks in ways that not only seek to reinforce gender conventions, but also advance a conservative, assimilationist curriculum for these immigrants. The analysis reveals ways in which female marriage immigrants are positioned primarily as housekeepers; how they are subordinately positioned vis-à-vis in-laws and their husbands; and finally, how intercultural miscommunications are presented as the fault only of the immigrants. In this, the burden for intercultural communication and learning is placed solely on the immigrants in the multimodal narratives presented in the textbooks, without reciprocal burden ever placed on the spouse or spouse’s family, or effective ways of negotiating intercultural miscommunications being shared. Images and text work together in multimodal ensembles to craft narratives that position immigrant women in ways that textual or visual analysis alone would not fully capture. Thus, the study argues the use of multimodal analytical approach in examining language textbooks as a way of deconstructing broader discourses and disrupting problematic discourses.