Women's Interpretations Research Articles

Maternal risk during pregnancy: a concept analysis.

To report an analysis of the concept of maternal risk and explore implications for practice using Walker and Avant's eight step method analysis. Although mortality during pregnancy is a relatively rare occurrence, serious maternal morbidities are increasingly present in today's pregnant population. Risk factors have been identified that increase the potential for morbidities and subsequent care modalities have been implemented to decrease this risk. However, despite the wide use of the term 'risk' in the medical and nursing literature, determining a common definition is difficult. Differences in the understanding of risk during pregnancy can hinder the ability to provide consistent and appropriate care. Concept analysis. A search of the English literature was completed using the databases CINAHL, PubMed, Medline, and Google Scholar for years 2000-2014 using the keywords 'risk', 'maternal' and 'pregnancy'. Three defining attributes of risk were identified: chance of injury/loss, cognitive recognition and the decision-making processes. The antecedent of risk is the ability to understand the situation and cognitive ability to think about the potential consequences and adverse outcomes. Consequences of risk include the actual action taken as a result of the decision-making process. This paper contributes to the understanding of risk allowing for the development of an individualised plan of care for each pregnant woman and empowering the nurse to advocate for appropriate care. Findings in this analysis assist nurses in bridging the gap in communication between the provider's and pregnant woman's interpretation of risk. The analysis of risk resulted in the identification of differences in perceptions of risk that can potentially result in miscommunication between provider and pregnant woman and increase the risk of inadequate or incomplete care.

Toward a Geography of Solidarity: Afro‐Nicaraguan Women's Land Activism and Autonomy in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region

This article explores efforts by Afro‐Nicaraguan women activists to enact their communal land rights in Bluefields during a 2009 land occupation. Creole women's interpretation of state power, underdevelopment, and the failure of the autonomy process suggest that a critical race understanding of regional politics not only reveals the persistence of structural anti‐black racism but also demonstrates how the state's disregard for the region as the nation's imagined site of racial Otherness harms all Costeños, including poor Mestizos. Creole women's articulation of a geography of solidarity rooted in racial justice rather than blame offers new strategies for confronting regional inequality and state neglect in the construction of regional autonomy.

Meanings of Sexuality among Heterosexual Women: A Metasynthesis

ABSTRACTThis metasynthesis presents the empirical evidence for heterosexual women's interpretation of sexuality using the Sandelowski-Barroso framework. Most women framed sexuality as the integration of patriarchal culture, gendered identity and religious understanding and placed intercourse at the centre of the sexual act. Some women acknowledged it from the negative point of view which may increase the risk for sexual difficulties. However, women who accepted male dominant partners and focused on self-gratification, found that this would lead to positive well-being; while those who internalized female centricity emphasized equality in achieving a quality sex life. Clinical implications of these findings are also discussed.

Understanding pathways to breast cancer diagnosis among women in the Western Cape Province, South Africa: a qualitative study

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to explore and understand women's pathways to breast cancer diagnosis and factors influencing this journey.Design and settingIndepth interviews were conducted with clients at a...

Postnatal gestational diabetes mellitus follow-up: Australian women's experiences.

Postnatal follow-up screening is recommended for all women diagnosed with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). However follow-up rates are poor and highly variable in Australia and internationally. The reasons that mothers are not completing recommended postnatal screening after GDM diagnosis are not well understood or studied. The quality of communication may be an important influence on the completion of postnatal GDM follow-up. To explore and assess women's communication experiences of postnatal GDM follow-up. Theoretical, purposeful sampling was used to identify women diagnosed with GDM. Convergent interviews explored participants' communication experiences with GDM and postnatal follow-up. Transcripts were provided to and updated by participants. Data was analysed with Leximancer(®) (V4, 2011) automated content analysis software. This research was conducted at a major tertiary referral hospital in Queensland, Australia, between December 2012 and July 2013. Women participating in maternity shared care and diagnosed with GDM were interviewed (n=13). Five themes, all concerned with obtaining information, were identified: diagnosis of GDM; seeking GDM information; accessing specialist services; need for postnatal GDM follow-up; and completing GDM follow-up. Results were interpreted using Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) to explore whether and how the information needs of women were accommodated. Women's interpretations of communication events influenced their knowledge, perceptions and motivation to complete recommended postnatal follow-up. Accommodation of the communication and information needs of women with GDM may be an effective strategy for clinicians to encourage completion of recommended postnatal GDM follow-up.

Women's interpretation of and responses to potential gynaecological cancer symptoms: a qualitative interview study

ObjectiveTo explore women's experiences of symptoms potentially indicative of gynaecological cancer in a community-based sample without imposing a cancer perspective.DesignA qualitative interview study with thematic analysis of transcripts.Participants26 women aged...

Men's and Women's Interpretation and Endorsement of Items Measuring Self-Reported Heterosexual Aggression

Early research on sexual aggression (e.g., sexual coercion, sexual assault, and rape) mainly focused on men as perpetrators and women as victims; more recently, researchers have begun to investigate women as perpetrators of sexual aggression as well. However, most measures of sexual aggression perpetration were designed for use with men and have not been well validated with women. This study sought to examine two different measures of sexual aggression perpetration in terms of their convergent validity for both men and women and to examine gender differences and similarities in item interpretation using open-ended inquiries. Participants were 590 individuals (395 women, 195 men) with a mean age of 25 years (SD = 8.1) recruited from an undergraduate psychology subject pool and an online convenience sample. The majority of the sample was White (65.4%) and Black (20.3%). All measures were completed online anonymously. Results suggested that convergent validity for the two measures was less than optimal, particularly for women. Further, item interpretation analyses revealed that, compared to men, more than twice the percentage of women provided a false-positive response to one of the measures, suggesting that women may be more likely than men to endorse self-report perpetration items incorrectly.

Women’s Interpretation of and Cognitive and Behavioral Responses to the Symptoms of Acute Ischemic Stroke

Delay seeking medical assistance for acute ischemic stroke remains a barrier to the provision of optimal care, including the administration of tissue plasminogen activator. Although women report greater knowledge of stroke symptoms and stroke risk factors than men, earlier hospital arrival in women has not been consistently reported. The purposes of this study were to examine women's interpretation of stroke symptoms and compare cognitive and behavioral responses between women who arrived at the hospital within 3 hours of symptom onset and women who arrived after 3 hours. More than half of the participants arrived at the hospital greater than 3 hours after first noticing symptoms. Most women did not recognize the cause of symptoms. Knowledge about a treatment of stroke was limited, and a minority of the women knew they were at risk for stroke despite having known risk factors. Maladaptive responses to symptoms were reported more frequently by women with hospital arrival greater than 3 hours after symptom onset than by women with earlier arrival. Efforts are needed to reduce maladaptive responses to stroke onset that may contribute to delay seeking medical assistance for the symptoms of acute ischemic stroke.

Domesticating Hermione

WIKTT, or “When I Kissed the Teacher,” is a listserv for the circulation and discussion of fan fiction featuring a romantic/erotic relationship between Harry Potter characters Hermione Granger and Severus Snape. WIKTT discussions reflect the discursive functioning of online fan fiction communities, as well as members' negotiations of the Harry Potter canon, conventions of the romance genre, and current gender norms. Tracing WIKTT's debates around the representation of rape in Hermione's fan fiction romances achieves two complementary goals by both showing the variety of modern women's interpretations of heterosexual exchange, and charting the complex process by which fan fiction communities and genres emerge from ideologically heterogeneous cycles of on-going discussion. Thus, while fan fiction communities can represent an alternative to editorial controls and the supply and demand model of professional publishing, the exact content of those visions will vary widely across and within various writing communities.

Women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion in Mexico City: citizenship, experience and clientelism

In April 2007, after a period of intense social debate, the Mexico City Legal Assembly legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which was an unprecedented development in women's rights in Mexico. Within the context of a proliferation of public discourses about women's citizenship rights changes in women's social status in Mexico, this article explores the extent to which the newly legalized character of abortion is interpreted by women as a right. Drawing on 24 interviews with women who had a legal termination of pregnancy between 2008 and 2009, this research shows that legalization opens up new and complex relationships between women as subjects of rights and the state. Such relationships are expressed as three discursive figures: legal abortion (1) as a concession from the government, (2) as ‘excessive’ tolerance by the state, and (3) as a right to be protected and guaranteed. The analysis shows that women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion are mediated by profound transformations, which Mexican society is currently undergoing. These include changes related to a shift from a clientist political culture to one more framed in terms of citizenship, the subjective effects of family planning policies, and their ambivalent relationships with Catholic notions of women and motherhood, and the effects of feminist discourses of women's citizenship, abortion, and reproductive rights.

Understanding Women's Interpretations of Infant Formula Advertising

Exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months and continued breastfeeding for at least 1 year is recommended by all major health organizations. Whereas 74.6 percent of mothers initiate breastfeeding at birth, exclusivity and duration remain significantly lower than national goals. Empirical evidence suggests that exposure to infant formula marketing contributes to supplementation and premature cessation. The objective of this study was to explore how women interpret infant formula advertising to aid in an understanding of this association. Four focus groups were structured to include women with similar childbearing experience divided according to reproductive status: preconceptional, pregnant, exclusive breastfeeders, and formula feeders. Facilitators used a prepared protocol to guide discussion of infant formula advertisements. Authors conducted a thematic content analysis with special attention to women's statements about what they believed the advertisements said about how the products related to human milk (superior, inferior, similar) and how they reported reacting to these interpretations. Participants reported that the advertisements conveyed an expectation of failure with breastfeeding, and that formula is a solution to fussiness, spitting up, and other normal infant behaviors. Participants reported that the advertisements were confusing in terms of how formula-feeding is superior, inferior or the same as breastfeeding. This confusion was exacerbated by an awareness of distribution by health care practitioners and institutions, suggesting provider endorsement of infant formula. Formula marketing appears to decrease mothers' confidence in their ability to breastfeed, especially when provided by health care practitioners and institutions. Therefore, to be supportive of breastfeeding, perinatal educators and practitioners could be more effective if they did not offer infant formula advertising to mothers.

American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism: More than a Prayer. By Juliane Hammer

In March 2005 in New York City, a Muslim woman scholar, Amina Wadud, led a mixed-gender group in the Friday congregational prayers. This event—diverging from the general practice of male prayer leadership—was promoted (albeit inaccurately) as the “first time” a woman had led such prayers since the age of Prophet Muhammad. Simultaneously provoking praise and condemnation, the event spurned impassioned discourse both within and beyond the American Muslim community. In American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism, Juliane Hammer revisits this event. Rather than contributing another evaluation of the merit of the event, however, she utilizes the prayer as a “lens” for examining the multifaceted ways that some American Muslim women engage questions of authority, tradition, community, leadership, and representation (206). In doing so, she argues that the 2005 prayer was not anomalous or insignificant. On the contrary, the symbolic enactment of woman-led prayer was part of a larger trajectory of ongoing debates, events, and developments. Moreover, she contends that the prayer significantly “focused and changed” existing discussions on broader issues, “ranging from women's interpretation of the Qur'an, leadership, mosque space, and religious authority to gender activism and media representations” (1).

Confirmatory factor analysis for assessment of the Menopausal Representation Questionnaire.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to develop the Menopausal Representation Questionnaire (MRQ) using confirmatory factor analysis. METHODS: We examined the MRQ using a descriptive cross-sectional design. We recruited 228 women aged between 45 and 64 years (mean [SD], 55.6 [5.2] y). Most of them were non-Hispanic white (63.4%), college educated (74.2%), and postmenopausal (76.8%). RESULTS: After 22 items were deleted, the fit indices of the confirmatory factor analysis of the MRQ model indicated an acceptable fit: χ = 425.5; df = 209; P < 0.0001; goodness of fit = 0.96; comparative fit index = 0.93; root mean square error of approximation = 0.07 (90% CI, 0.06-0.08); Akaike information criterion = 559.5. There were significant correlations among MRQ constructs. Correlations between MRQ subscales and the Greene Climacteric Scale were significant in the expected direction supporting construct validity. Intercorrelation between factors supported the discriminant validity of the constructs. CONCLUSIONS: The MRQ provides a comprehensive measure of menopausal experiences to more fully understand women's interpretation of their experiences.

Secular Women and Late-Medieval Marian Drama

This article examines secular women's relationship to late-medieval Marian drama, as participants, commissioners and spectators. Paying particular attention to the Marian pageants of N-Town, Chester, Towneley and York, and The Mary Play, a discrete Marian drama embedded in the N-Town compilation, the discussion proposes that female spectators might create their own dramatized ‘Life of the Virgin through watching the plays in which the Mother of God appeared. Dramatic representation of Mary, as young girl, wife, mother and matron, mapped Mary's lifecycle onto the key moments in many lay women's lives. The article contends that women's interpretation of episodes in the Virgin's life was dependent on the point that they had reached in their own lives, and that their ‘reading of Mary might be in ways other than those intended by the playwrights.

Examining the raunch culture thesis through young Australian women's interpretations of contradictory discourses

According to a series of recent accounts, the sex industry is now a key facet of youth culture and sexualised imagery has infiltrated both the public imagination and the most private of practices. Unsurprisingly, there is greater concern over the implications of this new ‘raunch culture’ for young women, than young men. Rather than resisting, it is argued that young women are conforming en mass to soft-porn imagery and practices and in doing so, have lost touch with their own desires. To highlight some of the problems with these accounts, in this paper I draw on interview data from research into young Australian men and women's interpretations of sex and sexual risk. However, to pursue my key argument I focus only on the young women's accounts. Findings show that rather than being saturated in raunch culture, young women are exposed to multiple, often contradictory cultural discourses relating to gender and sex, which they differently incorporate, transform and sometimes reject as they construct sexual narratives. I conclude that the raunch culture literature is couched in a series of damaging generalisations which ignore youth diversity and position women as agents of their own oppression but not of their own desire.

Perceived and Objective Breast Cancer Risk Assessment in Chilean Women Living in an Underserved Area

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed malignancy among Chilean women and an increasingly significant public health threat. This study assessed the accuracy of breast cancer risk perception among underserved, Chilean women. Women aged 50 to 70 years, with no mammogram during the last 2 years, were randomly selected from a community clinic registry in Santiago, Chile (n = 500). Perceived risk was measured using three methods: absolute risk, comparative risk, and numerical risk. Risk comprehension was measured by comparing women's perceived and objective risk estimates. Multivariate logistic regression was used to assess overestimation of perceived risk. Women at high risk of breast cancer were more likely than average risk women to perceive themselves at high or higher risk, using absolute and comparative risk approaches (P < 0.001). The majority of participants (67%) overestimated their breast cancer risk, on the basis of risk comprehension; although, participants achieved higher accuracy with comparative risk (40%) and absolute risk (31.6%) methods. [Age, breast cancer knowledge and Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool (BCRAT) 5-year risk were significantly associated (P < 0.01) with accuracy of perceived risk]. Chilean women residing in an underserved community may not accurately assess their breast cancer risk, although risk perception and level of accuracy differed between perceived risk measures. Comparative and absolute risk methods may better reflect women's interpretation and accuracy of risk perception. Improving our understanding of Chilean women's perceptions of developing breast cancer may lead to the development of culturally relevant efforts to reduce the breast cancer burden in this population.

Promoting Individualized Breastfeeding Experiences

Breastfeeding is beneficial for the baby and the mother, but is yet to be successfully practiced by newly delivered women as proposed in the Healthy People 2020 goal. Most breastfeeding education during the prenatal or postpartum period provides adequate information for interested women. However, mothers need individualized client-professional interactions and follow-up after hospital discharge. This article describes the breastfeeding experiences of two women and the implications for nurses and other healthcare professionals in relation to efforts to promote breastfeeding. Two anecdotal case studies are presented illustrating that even when mothers have resources and education, the breastfeeding education can be frustrating and misunderstood. Nurses can master the skill of closing the feedback loop in breastfeeding education by assessing and clarifying women's interpretation of breastfeeding information they received. This nursing skill can empower mothers to make informed decisions for effective and sustained breastfeeding.

Being a female pension trustee

PurposeWhile there has been much discussion about pension regulation and decision making in relation to pension trusteeship, there appears to be little research on women and men who take up opportunities to become pension trustees. Thus the focus of this research is to explore what it means to be a female or male pension trustee in “a man's world”.Design/methodology/approachAcker's influential model for the gendering of organisational processes and its subsequent development to acknowledge the intersection of multiple inequalities such as gender and class is used as a tool to provide a micro‐analysis of men's and women's interpretation of being a pension trustee.FindingsThe persistence of homosocial reproduction around managerial competences in pension board activity helps explain men's and women's differing experiences within male‐dominated pension boardrooms.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper focuses on a small but diverse sample of pension trustees and further research is needed to explore further why pension trustees take on this challenging and complex role.Originality/valueUK legislation about member representation on pension boards has the potential to bring new female candidates to the board. This paper gives an insight into what this means for a diverse group of pension trustees.

Story-telling, Women's Authority and the 'Old Wife's Tale': 'The Story of the Bottle of Medicine'

The focus of this article is a single personal narrative – a Shetland woman's telling of a story about two girls on a journey to fetch a cure for a sick relative from a wise woman. The story is treated as a cultural document which offers the historian a conduit to a past that is respectful of indigenous woman-centred interpretations of how that past was experienced and understood. The "story of the bottle of medicine" is more than a skilful telling of a local tale; it is a memory practice that provides a path to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of a culture. Applying perspectives from anthropology, oral history and narrative analysis, three sets of questions are addressed: the issue of authenticity; the significance of the narrative structure and storytelling strategies employed; and the nature of the female performance. Ultimately the article asks what this story can tell us about women's interpretation of their own history.

Could screening participation bias symptom interpretation? An interview study on women's interpretations of and responses to cancer symptoms between mammography screening rounds

ObjectivesTo explore how women with negative mammography screening results, but who were later diagnosed with interval breast cancer, reacted when they observed breast symptoms that could indicate malignancy in-between screening...