Women's Attempts Research Articles

Women Empowerment and Good Urban Governance in Iran

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of women in urban management and possibility of a more inclusionary approach to their active participation. Here, first the underlying concepts and principles of good urban governance and special needs of women in urban settings are discussed; next capabilities of Iranian women for active participation in good urban governance are examined. The study shows that women are in utter need to be empowered and to take more active role in their urban lives. Also it shows that Iranian women have used the means available to them to improve their capabilities. It also shows that there are needs for further research to better understand the socio-cultural obstacles to higher participation rate of women in governance. The paper is an original investigation of Iranian women's attempt to improve their lives through the available means to them within a paternalistic society. It shows their success and failures and draws future directions of their latent movement.Keywords: Urban governance, Empowerment, Women, Iran

Policy and the Pregnant Body at Work: Strategies of Secrecy, Silence and Supra-performance

This article considers how women manage their pregnant bodies at work. Through netnographic research and drawing upon feminist discussions of the leaky pregnant body, I examine the experiences of US and UK women who correspond on interactive websites or chat rooms. Drawing upon ‘expert advice’ and the experiences of employed pregnant women in this study, I suggest that the bodily manifestations of pregnancy are taboo in some workplaces. I note how these women did not appear to draw upon policy as a resource for dealing with negative reactions to pregnancy from colleagues and employers. Instead, they tended to adopt strategies of secrecy, silence and supra-performance in order to try and blend in. In the context of these strategies, I demonstrate how women's attempts to manage and control their bodies are severely compromised during pregnancy, when the body may be leaky and unpredictable.

Do alcohol warning labels influence men's and women's attempts to deter others from driving when intoxicated?

Research on the federally mandated alcohol warning label has found mixed results, but some findings are consistent with a modest influence on precautionary behaviors to reduce drinkers' self-reported drunk driving. We hypothesized that warnings would also influence the likelihood of intervening to deter other's driving after drinking. Using data from 1376 adult drinkers in a US national survey, a conceptual model reflecting effects of exposure to the label's drunk driving message on taking actions to avert another's driving under the influence was tested in a structural equation modeling framework. For males and females, in structural models with drinking and handling of alcoholic beverages potentially affecting both message recall and intervening, the predicted relationships were found between message recall and actions to deter another's drinking driving. This finding suggests that an important preventive effect of the alcohol warning label may be to legitimate collateral's attempts to avert another's drunk driving.

The Home, the Veil and the World: Reading Ismat Chughtai towards a ‘Progressive’ History of the Indian Women's Movement

This paper discusses the work of Ismat Chughtai (1911–1991), a controversial writer whose long literary career extending over four decades roughly corresponds to the formative stages of the Indian women's movement. It interprets Chughtai's novella The Heart Breaks Free (1966) to forward an anti-teleological enquiry of the women's movement in India. This progressive teleology often suggested by a discussion of the ‘waves’, ‘stages’ or ‘phases’ of the Euro-American women's movement and adopted to postcolonial women's movements, such as those in India, Jamaica and South Africa, is belied by the piecemeal legislative gains won by activist efforts. Some of the questions governing my enquiry are: What lessons can a questioning of teleology teach us about the gains and losses of postcolonial women's movements? If the alternative to teleology is, as I suggest, a genealogy, then what constitutes a genealogical enquiry into the women's movement in India? In face of apparent and self-acknowledged losses and ineffectiveness in recent times, would the movement's apparent unity across religious differences be a way of initiating such an inquiry or is another mode of analysis required? The paper directs attention to the Indian women's movement's attempts at bringing together women of different religious persuasions, legislative, and religious edicts related to Muslim women's right to co-habitation and divorce, and ‘cases’ that serve as testing points of the movement's struggle against religious and state authority. It also points to the neglected factor of economic security for women as a way in which a genealogical inquiry can proceed so as to strengthen the legislation and the movement itself.

Smoking cessation during pregnancy: the influence of partners, family and friends on quitters and non-quitters

This research compared pregnant quitters' and non-quitters' accounts of how partners, family and friends influenced their smoking cessation attempts. Qualitative secondary data analysis was carried out on a purposive sample of motivational interview transcripts undertaken by research midwives with pregnant women as part of SmokeChange, a smoking cessation intervention. Interviews with all quitters in the intervention group (n = 12) were analysed comparatively with interviews from a matched sample of non-quitters (n = 12).The discourses of both revealed similarity in how their partners, family and friends influenced their cessation efforts: salient others were simultaneously perceived by both groups of women as providing drivers and barriers to quit attempts; close associates who smoked were often perceived to be as supportive as those who did not. However, women who quit smoking during pregnancy talked more about receiving active praise/encouragement than those who did not. While close associates play an important role in women's attempts to stop smoking during pregnancy, the support they provide varies; further research is needed to develop a better understanding of how key relationships help or hinder cessation during pregnancy.

Developing a smoke free household initiative: an Indonesian case study

Little research has focused on women's exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) in LMICs, local perceptions of SHS risk to women and children, and women's attempts to limit exposure to tobacco smoke in their households. This paper describes a community based survey in Indonesia that investigated these issues as one step in a movement to initiate community wide household smoking bans. The survey found high levels of exposure to SHS, high levels of awareness among both women and men that SHS placed women and children at risk for illness, a very low percentage of households having indoor smoking rules, great interest on the part of women to participate in a communitywide ban, and a promising level of male smoker agreement to comply with such a ban. Women expressed a low sense of self efficacy in individually getting their husbands to quit smoking in their homes, but a strong sense of collective efficacy that husbands might agree to a well-publicized and agreed-upon community household smoking ban. Men and women expressed concern about the social risk of asking guests not to smoke in their homes without a communitywide ban and visible displays communicating their participation in this movement. The smoke free initiative described requires the participation of doctors in community education programs, and is attempting to introduce household smoking bans as a way of turning tobacco control into a family health and not just a smokers' health issue.

Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson's Early American Women (review)

Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson's Early American Women. By Marion Rust. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Pp. 328. Cloth, $59.95; Paper, $24.95.)Reviewed by Charlene Boyer LewisThose of us who examine women or literature in early republic think we know Susanna Rowson and insufficiently distinguish novelist from her most popular fictional heroine, Charlotte Temple, who perfectly exemplified passivity and oppression. As Marion Rust persuasively shows, however, Rowson was not proponent of submission that many scholars have presented. Indeed, Rust argues, Rowson wanted women to move beyond their gender limitations, but cautiously. Through her myriad works and in her own life, Rowson sought to instruct women in ways in which they could find a successful balance between domestic constraints and intellectual expansiveness (7). Rust stresses that we need to understand not only popularity of Charlotte Temple and Rowson's other works but also Rowson's own life in context of changes of late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in lives of American women.Rowson enjoyed popularity not because women found message of submission attractive in an increasingly hostile public environment (as some scholars have argued), but, as Rust explains, because she made sense to literate, Anglo-American of new Republic for precisely reasons that she now strikes us as slightly distasteful - her profound relativism and corresponding facility at adaptation (15). No one, Rust argues, talked about effects of how new nation failed its inhabitants and the need to carry on nonetheless, as thoroughly as its best-loved author (22). In her novels, plays, and songs, and even at her academy, Rowson highlighted tensions between submission and autonomy for women and repeatedly demonstrated means in which female submission . . . could be manipulated to achieve social stature and wide public influence (25). This is why, Rust concludes, so many women read her works and extolled her as a teacher - and why Rowson is so valuable to understanding women's lives in early republic.Rowson lived a life far different from many of her characters, especially Charlotte Temple. Needing to provide for first her father and siblings and then her husband and adopted children, Rowson over course of her life performed as an actress; wrote plays, poems, novels, and songs; and founded a school for young women. She was an expert at improvising and crafting her own public identity, skills she would emphasize as crucial to success as a woman in new republic. While she may have presented characters who dutifully remained at home and listened to their husbands or fathers, Rowson herself rarely lived that life; Rust believes that her sense of independence also shaped fictional females she created, except Charlotte (the character we rarely go beyond).In chapters that explore and offer new analyses of Charlotte Temple, some of Rowson's lesser known works - such as novel Trials of Human Heart, play Slaves of Algiers, and Lucy Temple, sequel to Charlotte Temple - and some published verse, Rust shows how all of these public works reveal Rowson's sincere belief that women's attempt to influence, rather than merely emblematize processes of national self-determination was essential to the national well-being (197). Breaking with those who regard Rowson as first proponent of domesticity and passivity, Rust convincingly argues that Rowson preferred women to have a public, political voice over simply possessing moral authority. …

Self-induction of abortion among women in the United States

Recent media coverage and case reports have highlighted women's attempts to end their pregnancies by self-inducing abortions in the United States. This study explored women's motivations for attempting self-induction of abortion. We surveyed women in clinic waiting rooms in Boston, San Francisco, New York, and a city in Texas to identify women who had attempted self-induction. We conducted 30 in-depth interviews and inductively analyzed the data. Median age at time of self-induction attempt was 19 years. Between 1979 and 2008, the women used a variety of methods, including medications, malta beverage, herbs, physical manipulation and, increasingly, misoprostol. Reasons to self-induce included a desire to avoid abortion clinics, obstacles to accessing clinical services, especially due to young age and financial barriers, and a preference for self-induction. The methods used were generally readily accessible but mostly ineffective and occasionally unsafe. Of the 23 with confirmed pregnancies, three reported a successful abortion not requiring clinical care. Only one reported medical complications in the United States. Most would not self-induce again and recommended clinic-based services. Efforts should be made to inform women about and improve access to clinic-based abortion services, particularly for medical abortion, which may appeal to women who are drawn to self-induction because it is natural, non-invasive and private.

Global Feminisms: Theory and Ethics for Studying Gendered Injustice**

Global justice needs a form of feminism that holds in relation various strands of feminism. Others have selected from feminisms around the globe a version of feminism to name and criticize as “global.” In this essay we identify within feminist struggle for justice around the world global feminisms that take those ideas that others may hold in critical tension—tension which suggests dichotomous interpretations of injustice or opposites on the static scales of justice (such as concerns with recognition versus redistribution)—and hold them instead in dynamic relationship. Global feminists hold in relation the academic post-modern feminists' concern with “hegemonic meta-narratives” and the women's rights activists' attempts to get global recognition of the violations of women's rights. Global feminists are concerned about the ways in which research is done and the uses to which it is put. Global feminists hold in relation the idea that contexts matter and the idea that the most powerful forces of injustice are embedded in the normative structures of those contexts everyday. In sum, this article looks at global feminisms as a theoretical trend, an ethical approach to research, and an ontological perspective on the relationship between global and local, social, political, and economic values, practices, and norms. Global feminism is a paradoxical posture toward the world that eschews imperialist definitions. It is at once always aware of global connectedness as well as cognizant of the concern that global connectedness can create opportunities for neo-colonial globalism.

How does AIDS illness affect women's residential decisions? Findings from an ethnographic study in a Cape Town township

This paper explores the nature and consequences of residential decision-making for women on treatment for AIDS illness in a poor urban settlement in South Africa. Drawing on ethnographic data collected over a two-year period, it points to the subtle shifts in ‘householding’ practices and kinship relationships prompted by women's individual experiences and understanding of their HIV status, illness and treatment. Women's decisions to move or to arrange that other family members move can be explained by pre-existing threats to individual wellbeing or family residential security. But an HIV diagnosis can intensify a mother's thoughts and actions in relation to residential and emotional security, in particular on behalf of her children. In a context where extended periods of childcare by rural relatives is common, mothers with AIDS illness may gather all their children in their home to offer direct care, achieve intimacy and facilitate disclosure. They are likely to avoid making frequent contact with, and demands on, their elderly parents. Siblings are favoured as co-residents and confidants in disclosure, but their long-term support is contingent on reciprocity. Partners, where present, are valued for economic, social and emotional security. Women attempt to balance their children's nurturing, in the short and long term, with care of the self. Their efforts do not always succeed and can incur high costs to their wellbeing and relationships with their children.

Women, Poverty Policy, and the Production of Neoliberal Politics in Ontario, Canada

This article contributes to our understanding of the production of neoliberal policies and political culture by offering an anthropological analysis of women, poverty policy, and Third Way politics in Ontario, Canada. After tracing the history of neoliberal politics globally and in Ontario, I consider two examples of women's attempts to shape poverty policy drawn from ethnographic research in the legislature. The first centers on a social assistance recipient who was unexpectedly thrust into the media spotlight, thus given a chance to speak publicly about Ontario's welfare policies. The second focuses on a consciously planned challenge to policy by a coalition of feminist researchers and front‐line workers. These cases illuminate the challenges facing feminists who seek to shape Third Way government policy, as discussion of gender and socioeconomic inequality is actively avoided by politicians, and women's experiences of poverty and demands for action are ignored, obfuscated or re‐packaged.

Confronting Rhetorical Disability

Through its analysis of birth plans, documents some women create to guide their birth attendants' actions during hospital births, this article reveals the rhetorical complexity of childbirth and analyzes women's attempts to harness birth plans as tools of resistance and self-education. Asserting that technologies can both silence and give voice, the article examines women's use of technologies of writing to confront technologies of birth. The article draws on data from online childbirth narratives, a childbirth writing survey, and five women's birth plans to argue that women's silencing, or rhetorical disability, during childbirth both prompts and limits the birth plan as an effective communicative tool. The data suggest that the birth plan is not consistently effective in the ways its authors intend. Nonetheless, this analysis also demonstrates that the rhetorical failure of the birth plan can be read as, and thereby transformed into, rhetorical possibility.

Impact of Birth Trauma on Breast-feeding

Up to 34% of new mothers have reported experiencing a traumatic childbirth. Documented risk factors for delayed or failed lactogenesis include stressful labor and delivery, unscheduled cesarean births, and psychosocial stress and pain related to childbirth. To explore the impact of birth trauma on mothers' breast-feeding experiences. Phenomenology was the qualitative research design used to investigate mothers' breast-feeding experiences after birth trauma. Fifty-two women were recruited over the Internet through the assistance of Trauma and Birth Stress, a charitable trust located in New Zealand. Each mother sent her breast-feeding story to the researchers via the Internet. Colaizzi's (1978) method was used to analyze the data. Eight themes emerged about whether mothers' breast-feeding attempts were promoted or impeded. These themes included (a) proving oneself as a mother: sheer determination to succeed, (b) making up for an awful arrival: atonement to the baby, (c) helping to heal mentally: time-out from the pain in one's head, (d) just one more thing to be violated: mothers' breasts, (e) enduring the physical pain: seeming at times an insurmountable ordeal, (f) dangerous mix: birth trauma and insufficient milk supply, (g) intruding flashbacks: stealing anticipated joy, and (h) disturbing detachment: an empty affair. The impact of birth trauma on mothers' breast-feeding experiences can lead women down two strikingly different paths. One path can propel women into persevering in breast-feeding, whereas the other path can lead to distressing impediments that curtailed women's breast-feeding attempts.

Romantic Relationships and Eating Regulation

The current study examines eating regulation in the context of romantic relationships. One hundred and four heterosexual couples provided information about their weight, satisfaction with their partners' bodies, weight concerns, healthy dieting behaviors, and attempts to regulate their partners' eating behaviors. Results indicated that women were more likely to monitor their partners' eating behaviors than were men. Both men and women who attempted to regulate their partners' eating behaviors tended to have relatively heavy partners and tended to be dissatisfied with their partners' bodies. However, only women's attempts to regulate men's eating behaviors were associated with men's weight concerns and healthy dieting behaviors.

Is It Possible for Christian Women to Be Sexual?

A qualitative semi-structured interview was used to explore the interaction between Christian women's sexuality and spirituality and the impact of sex-negative messages on sexual and spiritual development of 10 Caucasian, middle-aged Christian women. A salient feature of this negative interaction was the women's attempts to reduce the dissonance between their sexuality and spirituality, which reflected a developmental process. Results are discussed in terms of the difficulty Christian women face in being able to integrate their sexuality and spirituality. The study revealed that integration is not an end but an ongoing process. Clinical implications and recommendations for future research are offered.

Give ‘Em Something to Talk about: The Influence of Female Candidates’ Campaign Issues on Political Proselytizing

Previous research has demonstrated that the presence of a woman on the ballot is linked to political proselytizing among women. Yet this type of political engagement is enhanced when certain contextual conditions are met. We hypothesize that women are more likely to proselytize when female candidates stress women's issues than when female candidates do not emphasize women's issues. Using American National Election Study (ANES) data, we find that the combined effect of candidate gender and candidate issues is positively related to proselytizing among women. However, economic issues, not women's issues, increase women's attempts to influence others' votes. Overall, the results demonstrate that female candidates and their issues provide important contextual cues to women that help in activating their political voice.

“Girl Power” and Participation in Macho Recreation: The Case of Female Harley Riders

This study examines females' participation in the male-dominated sport of motorcycling. Group interviews with female motorcyclists explore the meaning of this leisure activity in their lives and various factors that facilitate their participation. A grounded-theory approach reveals five sources of empowerment that women gain by participating in motorcycling. This study demonstrates the role facilitators play in creating and cultivating sources of empowerment. It also exposes how feelings of guilt, vulnerability, and concern about societal images can undermine women's feelings of empowerment. “Girl power” represents women's attempts to redefine femininity in a way that embraces the positive aspects of both femininity and masculinity and resists negative stereotypes that restrict women's choices of leisure pursuits.

Smoking Among Low-Income Pregnant Women: An Ethnographic Analysis

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of 53 low-income women who were smokers at the onset of pregnancy. Study participants were interviewed during pregnancy to document smoking trajectories and factors contributing to, or undermining, harm reduction and quit attempts. Thirty percent of women quit smoking completely, 43% engaged in sustained harm reduction, and 26% reduced their smoking levels intermittently. Case studies of women are presented to illustrate reasons for quitting, harm reduction practices, and factors influencing relapse and smoking continuation. Women's motivations to quit are highlighted. Moral identity as a mother was found to be a key motivating factor behind women's quit attempts. Future programs targeting this population would do well to acknowledge moral identity as an issue and recognize the challenges of quitting for women with limited social support and little control over their immediate environment.

Impact of Order and Load Knowledge on Trunk Kinematics During Repeated Lifting Tasks

To determine if lifting random unknown weights is more detrimental than lifting sequences of unknown weights and to investigate whether load knowledge impacts the effect of lifting random box weights. Much research has investigated lifting under known load conditions, but few studies have investigated unknown loads, especially when presented in random order. There has been some documentation of alteration in trunk mechanics when there is an overestimation of the unknown load. Ten men and 10 women performed three lifting tasks: random unknown, random known, and same weight. A lumbar motion monitor was used to collect kinematic data, and Borg's Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and a task risk rating were also assessed. Both presentation order and load knowledge impacted trunk kinematics during repeated lifting tasks. However, these differences were relatively low in magnitude. Furthermore, kinematic response and perceived risk and exertion for these conditions varied between genders. Lifting random unknown loads appears to alter kinematic responses, particularly for men. Women attempt to modify the effect of random unknown loads by changing the lifting style through alterations in upper limb motions (e.g., drag box toward them prior to lifting). However, a need remains for a more comprehensive biomechanical investigation (e.g., spine loading) into the effects of random unknown loads because many of the effect sizes were small. Small kinematic adaptations resulting from tasks involving unknown and random loads may be mediated by the use of visual cues, order of presentation, or a change in lifting style.

“If Sex Hurts, Am I Still a Woman?” The Subjective Experience of Vulvodynia in Hetero-Sexual Women

Vulvodynia has recently been recognized as a significant health problem among women, with a considerable proportion experiencing psychological distress and sexual dysfunction for many years. This study used a material-discursive framework and a qualitative methodology to investigate women's subjective experience of vulvodynia within the context of a hetero-sexual relationship, and their negotiation of coitus, commonly associated with vulvar pain. Seven women, who had experienced vulvodynia between 2 and 10 years, took part in in-depth interviews. Thematic decomposition drawing on a Foucauldian framework for interpretation identified that six of the seven women took up subject positions of "inadequate woman" and "inadequate partner," positioning themselves as failures for experiencing pain during coitus, which they interpreted as affecting their ability to satisfy their partners sexually, resulting in feelings of shame, guilt, and a decreased desire for sexual contact. This was interpreted in relation to dominant discourses of femininity and hetero-sexuality, which conflate a woman's sexuality with her need to be romantically attached to a man, position men as having a driven need for sex, and uphold coitus as the organizing feature of hetero-sex. Only one woman positioned herself as an "adequate woman/partner," associated with having renegotiated the coital imperative and the male sex drive discourse within her relationship. These positions, along with women's agentic attempts to resist them, were discussed in relation to their impact on hetero-sexual women's negotiation of vulvodynia. Implications for future research and vulvodynia treatment regimes are also raised.