Women's Emotional Experiences Research Articles

A Regional Study of Women's Emotional Attachments to the Consumption and Making of Ordinary Clothing, Drawing on Archives in Leeds, West Yorkshire, 1939–1979

This research takes an interdisciplinary approach, investigating dress through the lens of regional social history by exploring women's emotional experiences related to making and consuming ordinary clothing in the period 1939–1979. A case study encouraged Yorkshire-based participants to reveal diverse stories associated with ordinary clothing. This brought the technical knowledge of making clothes and material-based research methodologies into dialogue with regional social history and helped us understand how ordinary people shaped the way women dressed. The research was funded by a grant from Leeds Museums and Galleries and University of Leeds Cultural Institute. It aimed to build a relationship between the users of the dress and textiles collection at Leeds Museums and Galleries and the Yorkshire Fashion Archive, housed at University of Leeds, which is a regionally focused collection of (mainly) twentieth-century garments and accessories. The collaboration allowed the museum curators and academics to discover how ordinary clothes can be used to engage the community with dress collections to discover and document untold stories of material culture in practice.

Can the subaltern feel? An ethnography of migration, subalternity, and emotion

Drawing on biographical and migratory experiences gathered from Chinese marriage-migrants in Taiwan, this paper investigates the link between migration, subalternity and emotion. We examine how emotions are socially, temporarily and situationally constructed by migrant women, positioned in a condition of vulnerability during migration. Conceptually, we advance that emotions can be turned into resources, practices and competences that sustain migrants' social, economic and cultural positioning in the society of arrival. Through the identification of three empirically-rooted states of emotions – imaginative, implosive and mutual – we claim that, in a context of social contempt, familial exclusion and economic marginalisation, migrants' individual and collective performance of emotions contributes to ‘undo’ a condition of subalternity. Such states are purposely experimental and incomplete. Whilst they are as temporary and mutable as migrant women's emotional experiences and practices, this paper proposes that they could serve as a methodological and analytical tool for future research on migration and emotion.

Discursos médicos disciplinadores y experiencias emocionales de aborto farmacológico de mujeres en Cuyo, Argentina.

Objectives The aim of this article is to recognize and understand how certain discourses and practices carried out by health professionals and sonographers shape the emotional experiences of women who aborted with medication in two provinces of Cuyo, Argentina. Method The research was carried out with a qualitative design through a biographical method and thematic life-stories that emphasize the experience with medical abortion in conditions where abortion is legally and socially restricted. For this research, 18 in-depth interviews were conducted and analysed with women who underwent at least one voluntary pharmacological abortion made in a clandestine way between 2010 and 2019 and who registered interactions with professionals. The interviews were conducted between 2016 and 2019. Results Criminalizing, disciplinary and/or normativizing discourses implemented through direct and indirect actions affected the configuration of women's emotional experiences. The emotional effects of clandestinity were reinforced: they intensified the fear for their own lives and the fear of being denounced and imprisoned; promoted feelings of vulnerability, uncertainty, lack of control over one’s life, persecution and imposed certain silences. Conversely, moralizing and blaming discourses did not have said effects on the women interviewed. Conclusions These interventions are strategies of gender discipline that produce and reproduce criminalizing power practices and that have a central role in the experiences of women: said discourses affect negatively their emotional health; they push them to take avoidable risks and they violently limit their right to an integral health. Nonetheless, they do not take away women’s power to make decisions about their own body.

The Emotional Burden of Pelvic Organ Prolapse in Women Seeking Treatment

We aimed to qualitatively describe the emotional burden experienced by women seeking treatment for prolapse. We hypothesized that the condition of prolapse would have an impact on women's emotional well-being. Women with stage II or greater symptomatic prolapse participated in focus groups or individual phone interviews. A trained facilitator conducted semi-structured focus groups and interviews. These were audio-taped and transcribed. Two authors coded transcripts and identified themes using an "editing" approach. The codebook was amended until no new major themes emerged from the data. Forty-four women participated (25 in focus groups and 19 in phone interviews). Mean (SD) age of women was 60 (10) years and mean (SD) prolapse leading edge was 3 (2) cm. Analysis revealed the following 3 main themes: (1) emotions associated with the condition of prolapse (minimal emotions, annoyance, irritation, frustration, anger, sadness, anxiety, depression), (2) communicating emotions related to prolapse (to friends, family, healthcare providers), and (3) emotions relating to treatment (both positive and negative effects). Prolapse significantly impacts women's emotional health and subjective well-being. An improved understanding of women's emotional experiences of prolapse may help providers better meet patients' needs.

Massage, reflexology and other manual methods for pain management in labour

Many women would like to avoid pharmacological or invasive methods of pain management in labour, and this may contribute towards the popularity of complementary methods of pain management. This review examined currently available evidence supporting the use of manual healing methods including massage and reflexology for pain management in labour. To examine the effects of manual healing methods including massage and reflexology for pain management in labour on maternal and perinatal morbidity. We searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group's Trials Register (30 June 2011), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library 2011, Issue 2 of 4), MEDLINE (1966 to 30 June 2011), CINAHL (1980 to 30 June 2011), the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry (30 June 2011), Chinese Clinical Trial Register (30 June 2011), Current Controlled Trials (30 June 2011), ClinicalTrials.gov, (30 June 2011) ISRCTN Register (30 June 2011), National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) (30 June 2011) and the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (30 June 2011). Randomised controlled trials comparing manual healing methods with standard care, no treatment, other non-pharmacological forms of pain management in labour or placebo. Two authors independently assessed trial quality and extracted data. We attempted to contact study authors for additional information. We included six trials, with data reporting on five trials and 326 women in the meta-analysis. We found trials for massage only. Less pain during labour was reported from massage compared with usual care during the first stage of labour (standardised mean difference (SMD) -0.82, 95% confidence interval (CI) -1.17 to -0.47), four trials, 225 women), and labour pain was reduced in one trial of massage compared with music (risk ratio (RR) 0.40, 95% CI 0.18 to 0.89, 101 women). One trial of massage compared with usual care found reduced anxiety during the first stage of labour (MD -16.27, 95% CI -27.03 to -5.51, 60 women). No trial was assessed as being at a low risk of bias for all quality domains. Massage may have a role in reducing pain, and improving women's emotional experience of labour. However, there is a need for further research.

A need to expand our thinking about “repeat” abortions

BackgroundWomen who have more than one abortion are often the “targets” for social and clinical interventions geared at preventing “repeat abortions.” Such an approach ignores the unique circumstances that may surround each abortion. Study DesignWe qualitatively analyzed the history of 10 women who have had more than one abortion who were participating in a larger study of women's emotional experiences following abortion. Women were recruited following their initial contact with a postabortion support talk line and from a previously completed study. ResultsOverall, women in the sample reported that each abortion was different and some abortions were more emotionally difficult than others, suggesting that the phrase “repeat” can be a misnomer and discounts the unique circumstances surrounding each abortion. ConclusionRather than use the term “repeat abortions,” we advocate for the use of the less loaded term “multiple abortions,” in which each abortion is understood as a unique experience.

Childbirth Fear, Anxiety, Fatigue, and Sleep Deprivation in Pregnant Women

To explore women's levels of childbirth fear, sleep deprivation, anxiety, and fatigue and their relationships during the third trimester of pregnancy. A cross-sectional descriptive survey of a community sample. Six hundred and fifty English-speaking nulliparous and multiparous women, 17 to 46 years of age and between 35 and 39 weeks gestation, with uncomplicated pregnancies. Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire, Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory, Mindell's Sleep Questionnaire, and the Multidimensional Assessment of Fatigue Questionnaire. Twenty-five percent of women reported high levels of childbirth fear and 20.6% reported sleeping less than 6 hours per night. Childbirth fear, fatigue, sleep deprivation, and anxiety were positively correlated. Fewer women attending midwives reported severe fear of childbirth than those attending obstetricians. Women with high childbirth fear were more likely to have more daily stressors, anxiety, and fatigue, as well as less help. Higher levels of anxiety predicted higher levels of childbirth fear among women. One fourth of women reported high childbirth fear. Women's fear of childbirth was related to fatigue, available help, stressors, and anxiety. Fear of childbirth appears to be part of a complex picture of women's emotional experiences during pregnancy.

Commentary on Schultz PN, Klein MJ, Beck ML, Stava C & Sellin RV (2005) Breast cancer: relationship between menopausal symptoms, physiologic health effects of cancer treatment and physical constraints on quality of life in long‐term survivors. Journal of Clinical Nursing 14, 204–211

Commentary on Schultz PN, Klein MJ, Beck ML, Stava C &amp; Sellin RV (2005) Breast cancer: relationship between menopausal symptoms, physiologic health effects of cancer treatment and physical constraints on quality of life in long‐term survivors. <i>Journal of Clinical Nursing</i> 14, 204–211

PSYCHOPHARMACEUTICAL ADVERTISING STRATEGIES: EMPOWERMENT IN A PILL?

ABSTRACT Drug companies market psychopharmaceuticals as treatment for emotionally symptomatic “disorders” such as depression, social anxiety, obesity, premenstrual syndrome, and menopause. Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) television advertisements for psychopharmaceutical prescription drugs offer potential consumers—particularly women—empowerment through gendered messages that promise the sufferer increased control over her symptoms and thus her “disordered” life. By performing an in-depth, interpretive, ethnomethodological reading of 13 DTCs for psychopharmaceuticals, I identify four interrelated advertising strategies. These are (1) establishing medical legitimacy, (2) blaming and shaming, (3) use of feminist and 12-step movement rhetoric, and (4) offering validation and empowerment to women. Despite their overt empowerment messages, DTC advertisements actually reinforce the medicalization of women's emotional experiences and bodily processes, and remind the viewer of socially constructed beliefs that recovery from illness is the individual's responsibility and obligation. Rather than “empowering” women (as a class), these strategies tend to (re)construct disempowering notions of feminine fragility and biological restrictions, reinforcing patriarchal beliefs of female inferiority.

Inequalities of the heart: the performance of emotion work by lesbian and bisexual women in London, England

The institutionalization of heterosexuality in, for example, the law, religion and marriage, regulates the expression of emotions and feelings between men and women. Based on sex and gender, it provides guidelines about emotional behaviour in everyday interactions in everyday places. Adherence to these guidelines supports and maintains the dominance and ‘naturalness’ of heterosexuality. In this paper I utilize the concepts of socially constructed emotions, feeling rules, emotion work, performativity and space to argue that the institutionalization of heterosexuality and its regulation of emotional behaviour creates and perpetuates spatial inequalities between sexualized groups at an emotional level. My argument is illustrated by drawing on my doctoral research based on a sample of lesbian and bisexual women who lived, worked/studied and socialized in London, England, and on an examination of their emotional experiences of sexualized spaces. I argue that the ‘spatial supremacy of heterosexuality’ (Valentine 1993a) is supported by the performance of emotion work by sexual minority groups including lesbian and bisexual women in everyday places to the extent that this supremacy is naturalized. In other words, the performance of emotion work is a key feature of performing sexuality and crucial to the construction of sexualized spaces, but paradoxically contributes to the invisibility of minority sexualities in everyday places. By considering women's emotional experiences of places on London's lesbian, gay and bisexual social scene, I also highlight how emotion work is performed while asserting sexual diversity in alternatively sexualized spaces, and is central to the performance of racialized sexualities in racially sexualized spaces.

Emotional Experiences of Performing Prostitution

ABSTRACT Survey data obtained from 119 women who were prostituting in escort agencies and on the street in Phoenix, Arizona provide insight into women's emotional experiences of turning tricks. Results indicate that women experience a range of negative emotions while performing sex acts with customers including feelings of sadness, worth-lessness, anger, anxiety, and shame. Far less frequently, emotional experiences of turning tricks were described as involving feelings of excitement and desirability. In addition to experiencing acts of prostitution as overwhelmingly emotionally unpleasant, if not traumatic, women feel more negatively about themselves after entering prostitution and would strongly prefer to leave prostitution for a different occupation with similar earnings. Findings from this study suggest that while some women may enter prostitution to support a drug or alcohol habit, they also use these substances once in prostitution to detach emotionally and to cope with fears of being hurt in prosti...

Developmental themes in women's emotional experiences of motherhood.

In this study, women's levels of ego development and their psychological difficulties were examined in relation to feelings in the maternal role. The sample consisted of 91 mothers from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Ego development was assessed by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test, and psychological difficulties were operationalized by self-reported global symptomatology, maternal substance abuse, and expressed anger. Outcome variables included feelings of satisfaction, distress, and support in the maternal role, as well as the degree to which negative and positive emotions were integrated in response to hypothetical vignettes of challenging everyday child-rearing experiences. Hypotheses were that women at high levels of ego development would show greater deterioration in the presence versus absence of self-reported adjustment problems than would those at lower levels. A series of interaction effects each indicated trends consistent with the hypotheses. These results add to accumulating evidence that tendencies toward self-examination, characteristic of high developmental levels, do not inevitably serve protective functions but may be linked with heightened reactivity to negative intrapsychic forces.