Women's Quest Research Articles

Negotiating ethical dilemmas in research: to act or not to act in the face of the normalisation of gender injustice encountered in the research process

This article focuses on research conducted in relation to the gendered dynamics of access to, and utilisation of, agricultural inputs in the quest for women’s empowerment. The article focuses on the ethical dilemmas that arose during the course of the research in relation to the claim that scientific research, particularly of the logical-positivist tradition, should not cause disruption to people’s lives and that researchers must remain detached and neutral. This contrasts with the requisite of critical, emancipatory social research, which calls for using research for transformational purposes. Our original research, upon which this article is based, reflects that while participants were aware of gender-discriminatory practices in accessing and utilising agricultural inputs, they were unwilling to challenge naturalised discriminatory and oppressive cultural norms. The ethical dilemma was whether to leave the participants’ views and gendered practices unchallenged, or to adopt strategies of consciousness raising in an attempt to engender change.

The "Women, Life, Freedom" Movement in Iran: The Anatomy of a Slogan

This article analyzes Iranians' struggle for democracy and women's quest for gender equality in connection with the 2022 uprising called the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement. It will explain why and how the central slogan "Women, Life, Freedom" epitomizes the many aspects and elements of this unprecedented movement, including its emphasis on women, nation, and unity against the ruling regime as an occupying force. In doing so, the article distinguishes Iranian quests for modernity, women's struggle for equality particularly expressed in their literary output, and Iranian youths' access to information as the roots and backgrounds of this new movement. Given women's literary discourse over the past decades and the profound changes in Iranian popular culture, the notion of such an uprising and the resulting paradigm shift should not have been unimaginable.

Why freebirth in a maternity system with free midwifery care? A qualitative study of Danish women’s motivations and preparations for freebirth

ObjectiveEven in maternity care systems with free midwifery care, some women intentionally choose to birth unattended by any health professional (freebirth). Women who choose freebirth represent an enigma for many, and a provocation to some. However, people who do not conform to dominant medical practices are a source of valuable insights that can reveal shortcomings in the mainstream health care system. Thus, the aim of this study was to explore and understand women's motivations and preparations for freebirth. MethodsThe study was informed by the theoretical lens of the 'undisciplined patient'. Qualitative, in-depth interviews were performed with ten Danish women, who for their most recent birth had planned to freebirth. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. ResultsFour themes were identified. “The standard system is not for me” describes negative experiences during previous births and the desire for more individualised support. “Re-establishing trust in myself” describes the women's quest for recognizing their own needs and re-building autonomy and inner strength. “I do my research” describes how the women sought new ways of knowing and prioritised experiential knowledge. And finally, “I create my safe space” describes the women's efforts to create the best possible physical and emotional space for themselves and their babies in order to have a safe and autonomous birth experience. ConclusionFreebirth is not undertaken lightly or without preparation by women. Improved continuity of care as well as greater flexibility in hospital guidelines could accommodate some of these women's demand for autonomy in birth.

Transcending Hegemonic Phallic-Culture and Imaginaries: Afropolitan Feminism and Relocation as an Emancipatory Metaphor

The representation of the struggles of contemporary African women from low-income/middle-class families, and their attempt at breaking free from the hold of such struggles have not gained much attention in the criticism of recent African novels. To bridge this research gap, this study interrogates Helon Habila‘s Travellers; NoViolet Bulawayo‘s We Need New Names; and Chimamanda Adichie‘s Americanah. It underscores the experiences of Darling, Ifemelu, and Mary, as existential struggles which allegorize real-life challenges of low-income/middle-class contemporary African women, and their attempt to break free from the bounds of such challenges aggravated by a hegemonic phallic culture and imaginaries. Adopting a qualitative content-based analytic method and a conceptual framework anchored on the conflated term Afropolitan-feminism; the study demonstrates how the characters’ dissatisfaction with patriarchal exertions and their local geography animated by limited existential opportunities spurred their desire to relocate outside Africa. Importantly, their relocation constitutes a signature of action which could be read as an emancipatory metaphor for transcending those hegemonic structures, norms, worldviews, and imaginaries which militate against twenty-first-century African women's quest for agency.

NAWAL EL SAADAWI AND GERMAINE GREER: LOST AND QUEST FOR IDENTITY

Every human being has to live within the framework of National identity, the two crusaders Nawal El Saadawi and Germaine Greer also have their respective identity, but their quest for identity is different. Their quest is a quest for women’s identity in their perspective societies.It has long been accepted that feminism was among the first mediums of expression when the civilizing instinct took root in history from Greek age. By extension, it could be argued that feminism offers a privileged view into subjectivities especially when produced in situations where identities are contested and categorized.El Saadawi and Greer the modern feminist writers, who introduced a new idiom in literature, which composed their autobiographies using historical and social problems to tackle contemporary issues of Muslim and western women, and arguably performed a foundational role, can be read as a paradigm of such privileging. Much has been written, and read about the feeling of loss and quest for identity and a consciousness in their autobiographies. It has variously been argued that El Saadawi and Greer's autobiographies perform a self-analysis of identity that helps the reader reach conclusions regarding life and existential experiences that revolve aroundidentity crisis. However, ina bid into bracket their works under these conceptual categoriesof ‘the identity’. A study of this kind, however, demands a study of the tradition of Muslim and western women who live in different respective societies to understand how El Saadawi and Greer was shaped by a peculiar and particular historicity society, even as they sought to distance themselves from it. El Saadawi and Greer’s claim were to be accepted, it implies that El Saadawi and Greer introduced a new utility and routiness to feminism that transformed it from a detached aesthetic experiment to an existential of an identity.

Afrocentric education’s foundations of Wangari Maathai’s philosophical (ethical) leadership

The year 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of the passin g of Wangari Maathai, an environmentalist, women’s rights’ activist, Pan-Africanist, African Renaissance advocate and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Throughout her life – as a girlchild in primary school, a professional in higher education, a married woman and a politician – Maathai was confronted by and, in turn, confronted patriarchal practices in Kenya. An examination of Maathai’s life can easily mislead an observer into thinking that since American education certainly gave her a break from a suffocating patriarchal Kenyan environment, the prevailing patriarchy in Kenya is inherently an African cultural practice. Yet, based on Maathai’s own reflections, ethical and justice- orientated Kikuyu culture was a driving factor in her quest for women’s liberation from patriarchy, and her commitment to environmentalism. Cognisant of the foregoing, I argue that prior to colonialism, traditional Kikuyu education in particular, and traditional African education in general, placed an emphasis on the veneration of women. Therefore, in pursuit of continuing struggles for women’s freedom from patriarchy in Africa, I propose that Afrocentric education, from foundation phase to higher education, should be advanced to reclaim women-affirming and venerating African cultures.

An Implication of Cultural, Racial and Ethnic Plurality in Margaret Laurence's -The Diviners

Margaret Laurence, one of the foremost women writers of Canada meticulously strives to reconstruct the lost identities of the cultural groups of Africa and Canada in the last decades of the twentieth century. Lawrence's Manawaka series for instance, is the deliberation of the cultural groups of indigenous, colonial and immigrants. These varied cultural groups constitute the ‘Canadian Multiculturalism’ as its unique cultural identity. Margaret Laurence rigorously endeavors to portray a naked and realistic picture of Canadian multiculturalism in an imaginary fictional work. The present novel reveals the fact of the multicultural groups have meticulously striving for getting social recognition by means of their rebellion against the atrocity of racial discrimination and experiences of the barbaric disturbances among the ethnic groups. It is all about the nineteenth-century Scottish settlers in the region of Red River and the indigenous Metis. It is also the representation of a woman's quest for having a comprehensive understanding of human community. The novel sheds the light on the lost historical impressions of the indigenous group such as the Metis, in the folktales and songs, and their confrontation with the Sutherlanders for survival.

GENDER POLICY AND LEGISLATION DURING THE FIRST 20 YEARS OF DEMOCRACY

1. Introduction South Africa's progressive legal framework, which provides for both the protection and promotion of the rights of and attempts to address their historically disadvantaged and subordinate position, has been hailed by both politicians and scholars as one of the country's success stories. Central to this is the South African Constitution (Act 108 of 1996), which gives unprecedented rights, particularly in its Bill of Rights (chapter 2). In addition, the Constitution makes provision for a Commission on Gender Equality (chapter 9) to promote the attainment of and respect for gender equality. (1) Numerous laws have also been promulgated to ensure that proactive measures are taken to protect women's constitutional rights. (2) Labour laws are specifically 'women-sensitive'. The Labour Relations Act of 1995 (section 203(2)) makes provision for Codes of Good Practice. Such a Code on the Handling of Sexual Harassment Cases was issued in 1998 by the National Economic Development and Labour Council. The Basic Conditions of Employment Act of 1997 (amended in 2002 to include the domestic worker sector) guarantees, among other things, maternity leave, job security during pregnancy, minimum wages, housing and health care for previously excluded groups, such as domestic workers, while the Employment Equity Act of 1998 includes as a 'designated group' to which affirmative action measures apply. In addition, the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act of 2003 (2) demonstrates its commitment to black in its aim to increase the ownership and management of existing and new enterprises and increasing their access to activities, infrastructure and skill straining. In the socio-personal realm, important legislation includes the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1996 (which recognises women's right to abortion without the consent of another person), the Maintenance Act of 1998, the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act of 1998, and the Domestic Violence Act of 1998 (which defines violence as encompassing various forms of abuses and gives broad power to courts to shape the conditions of a protection order). The introduction of gender machinery (structures in the state mandated with monitoring legislation and policy for gender equality in line with the Beijing Platform for Action, article 201), championed by the National Women's Coalition (NWC) in the early 1990s, has also been noted as a significant milestone in the quest for women's rights in South Africa's early years of democracy. Hailed as one of the most advanced and integrated structures in the world (Gouws 2006: 143), it consisted of a set of which the Office of the Status of Women (established in 1997 and located in the President's Office) formed the apex with Gender Focal Points (GFPs) in National and Provincial Departments at the operational level. The Commission for Gender Equality and the Parliamentary Joint Monitoring Committee on the Improvement of the Quality of Life and Status of Women (JMC) formed the other components of the 'gender machinery'. However, although placing equality on the statute book does serve a normative function, it does not inevitably lead to a change in lived experience. Thus, despite the above robust legal achievements, actual implementation of these measures has not readily occurred (Fester 2004). Notwithstanding women's empowerment on paper and the removal of de jure inequalities, economic and social injustices have to a large extent remained deeply entrenched within the broader societal framework (Hames 2006: 1317). In addition, it has been argued that despite the nuanced gender rights 'culture' on paper, still comprise the majority of the poorest and most marginalised in South Africa, and that patriarchal power underlies the marginalisation of women (Bentley 2004: 248). Several scholars have also pointed to the potential tension in the Constitution in which the Bill of Rights (chapter 2) on the one hand preserves gender equality, but simultaneously guarantees the protection of chieftainship and respect for traditional authority (chapter 12). …

Quest of Women's Rights in African Feminist Theory and Fiction

Quest of Women's Rights in African Feminist Theory and Fiction

Mounting the Voice of the African Woman on the Continental Stage: Interrogating J.P. Clark’s <i>The Wives</i> Revolt and Ben Binebai’s <i>Karena’s Cross</i>

In Africa, patriarchal dominance across cultures has placed women at disadvantaged positions. Women are seen as the voiceless gender, forced to occupy the silent margins, and in most cases declared invisible by laws and traditions promoted by men. This has resulted in a quest for recognition of the female voice. This quest for women’s voice and identity is a front burner subject in Gender Studies across generic boundaries but researchers have not focused on some of the postulations adduced in the feminist plays and theatre. It is against this backdrop that this paper examines the installation of the African woman’s voice and rights on the continent through drama and theatre. Appropriating both textual and performance investigative modes, this paper x-rays J. P. Clark’s The Wives Revolt and Ben Binebai’s Mono drama, Karena’s Cross to mount the voice of the African woman on the public space. The paper concludes that for women to enshrine their voice in the public space and have their humanity recognized and respected, more effort should be put in the quest to break away from their disadvantaged conditions.Key Words: mounting, voice, African woman, gender, identity

City Folk and Country Folk by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya

Reviewed by: City Folk and Country Folk by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya Svetlana Grenier CITY FOLK AND COUNTRY FOLK, by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya, translater from Russian by Nora Seligman Favorov. Russian Library. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. 272 pp. $30.00 cloth; $14.95 paper; $13.99 ebook. Nora Seligman Favorov, Hilde Hoogenboom, and Columbia University Press are to be commended for bringing us this delightful novel from 1860s Russia. Sofia Khvoshchinskaya's powers of observation, her light touch, ironic tone, and representations of down-to-earth human goodness are reminiscent of Jane Austen. Favorov's translation adroitly captures the sparkling humor and sophisticated irony of the original, and Hoogenboom's erudite introduction, providing biographical detail on the author and an extensive bibliography, firmly sets the novel in its historical and literary context. Sofia Khvoshchinskaya (1824-1865), who published under the masculine pen name Iv. Vesenev, was the middle sister in a trio that has [End Page 238] been considered a Russian counterpart to the Brontës. Her elder sister Nadezhda (1822-1889) was famous and sought-after in the second half of the nineteenth century as the author V. Krestovsky, and the less well-known Praskovia (1828-1916) printed her works also under a pseudonym, albeit as the feminine S. Zimarova. All three Khvoshchinskaya sisters contributed to the major journals of the time and were accomplished artists, who spent most of their life in the provincial capital of Ryazan. Before her death at the age of forty-one, Sofia instructed Nadezhda not to write about her or republish her work, which is why she has remained relatively unknown. Nadezhda's story of a young woman's quest for independence, The Boarding-School Girl (Pansīonerka, 1861), was published in an English translation by Karen Rosneck in 2000. The very different City Folk and Country Folk (Gorodskie i derevenskie, 1862) is a welcome addition to the still sparse list of translated works by nineteenth-century Russian women. It significantly adds to our idea of the diversity of their writing styles and world views, and it provides a new and refreshing perspective on the provincial Russia we know from Ivan Turgenev's novels such as Fathers and Sons (1867; Ottsy i deti, 1862), written almost simultaneously to City Folk and Country Folk. Khvoshchinskaya's novel radically breaks with several traditions prevalent in male-authored Russian literature and reinterprets a few others. First, the central character is not a man, nor even an exceptional young woman, but Nastasya Ivanovna Chulkova, a fifty-five-year-old widow and a small-time landowner. Second, although Nastasya has a seventeen-year-old daughter, Olenka, there is no romance plot to speak of in the novel. Third, Olenka, unlike a typical Russian heroine, is an average high-spirited girl—not a romantic dreamer and voracious reader, like Alexander Pushkin's Tatyana in Eugene Onegin (1936; Evgeniĭ Onegin, 1833), or an idealist looking for ways to make a difference in the world, in the mold of Turgenev's Elena Stakhova in On the Eve (1895; Nakanune, 1859). Olenka dislikes reading and studying; she is thoroughly average, intellectually speaking. At the same time, she is observant and quick to discover the ridiculous side of characters and situations. What is more, she does not let others order her and her mother around. One wonders if the author meant her as a polemical response to Pushkin's Olga, Tatyana's sister. The novel introduces Khvoshchinskaya's satirical take on the superfluous man, a perennial Russian literary archetype found in the novels of such authors as Alexander Herzen and Turgenev, who invariably considers himself far superior to all of the surrounding "undeveloped" Russians. In City Folk and Country Folk, Mr. Ovcharov, who graduated from Moscow University and regularly travels to Europe, thinks of himself as a progressive intellectual and is eager to share his ideas with supposedly backward provincials and readers in the capitals alike (he sends his stream-of-consciousness [End Page 239] notes to journals, and they sometimes get published). In a typical plot, the superfluous man arrives in the provinces where, in the process of spreading his novel ideas and enlightening the "natives," he manages to attract a young woman...

Active Citizenship: The Wartime "New Woman"

Active Citizenship:The Wartime "New Woman" Sarah Parry Myers (bio) Elizabeth Cobbs. The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. 370 pp. Notes and index. $29.95. Lynn Dumenil. The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 340 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $39.95. As wars inevitably disrupt cultures, landscapes, and societies, they leave gender roles in a state of fluidity and redefinition, leading scholars to debate the long-term consequences. Historians Lynn Dumenil and Elizabeth Cobbs have complicated the prior historiographical narrative of continuity versus change in women's wartime lives in different and intriguing ways. For Cobbs, women and African Americans who served during World War I "added momentum to the forward movement" of activism and change (p. 304), while Dumenil contends that the war did not change women's lives extensively or permanently. Building on works including Susan R. Grayzel's Women and the First World War (2016) and Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (1999), as well as Kimberly Jensen's Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (2008), Dumenil and Cobbs argue that women joined the military and war efforts to achieve personal goals and full citizenship. They fulfill historian Andrew J. Huebner's 2017 call for more studies of "how the war affected ideas about gender roles among ordinary people from different classes, regions, races, and ethnicities."1 Together, they explore themes of activism, reform, and citizenship, while unveiling the juxtaposition of women's roles as protectors and the media's image of them as the protected. In both studies, women actively exercise their own citizenship, although full equality is not achieved by the war's conclusion. Extensive in scope, Dumenil's The Second Line of Defense is a deeply researched and comprehensive examination of women's history during World War I, while Cobbs offers an in-depth case study of the female Signal Corps officers briefly mentioned in Dumenil's book. The Hello Girls reads almost like a novel, which is unsurprising given Cobbs's background as a prolific author [End Page 417] of both academic and popular press books. Her work is accessible to a broad audience—from undergraduate courses to general readers—and it immerses its audience in the atmosphere of the war and life for those in Pershing's Services of Supply overseas. By contrast, The Second Line of Defense is ideal for academic audiences and will engage historians of gender and war as well as serious scholars of the early decades of the twentieth century. Elizabeth Cobbs places the first women soldiers in the historical context of World War I, giving a sense of the experience of the Signal Corps operators overseas and as military women and veterans, as well as the technological advancements, wartime mobilization, women's suffrage movement, and the overall trajectory of the war from Pershing's perspective. While the U.S. Navy enlisted women as yeomenettes, this story of the Signal Corps is largely forgotten in the popular memory of the war. Her study of the Hello Girls (a title Stars and Stripes gave the operators) has ramifications for historians of military, diplomatic, and gender history. For example, she incorporates the ways the Hello Girls were instrumental in battles of the Marne and the Meuse-Argonne Offense. Cobbs contends that the experience of the female operators is "a microcosm of the ways that governments resisted sex-role change" in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (p. 4). Her work is also significant for its contribution to the emerging academic field of Veterans Studies in her analysis of the women's quest for veterans' status in the decades after the war. Dumenil disrupts previous traditional military and political history in its gendered approach to war. This has important implications for historians of war as Dumenil illuminates the First World War's impact on women, but also the effect American women had on the war. Asking why women support a war in response to traditional historians' research question of why soldiers fight, she argues that...

Women's Quest for Status in India after Independence

Women's Quest for Status in India after Independence

Muslim Women's Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India. By Mengia Hong-Tschalaer. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

<i>Muslim Women's Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India</i>. By Mengia Hong-Tschalaer. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Challenges of women in technical and vocational education: A case study of federal college of education (technical), Gusau

This study investigate challenges of women in technical and vocational education; a case study of Federal College of Education (Technical), Gusau. The concept of technical and vocational education was discussed and review of related literature was done. The use of questionnaire to get data for this study was employed. Tables and percentages were used to analyze the data and chi-square was used to test impact of the variables and it was found that women in technical and vocational education face the challenges of financial constraint, sexual harassment, child birth during course of study and inadequate educational facilities/unqualified lecturers. These challenges have a negative impact on the quest of women in technical and vocational education. The study concludes that government should provide stipends, good learning environment and necessary educational facilities to women who are into vocational and technical education. Key words: Technical, vocational, education, women, challenges.

African social appraisals of women’s liberal and radical feminism in selected contemporary West and Central African female and male novels

Women, particularly in Africa, need feminism so as to advocate for their rights in the patriarchal setting of African societies. But the fact that some women, under the umbrella of it abuse children, men, and even their fellow women are problematic in contemporary African novels. Liberal and radical feminisms are part and parcel of feminisms in championing women's rights. This article examines women's liberal and radical feminist stratagems with the lens of African social appraisals in giving an answer to the following question: what are the African social appraisals of women's liberal and radical feminist stratagems in their quests for women's rights? Or what do the stratagems applied by liberal and radical feminists lead women to in contemporary African societies?n Through liberal and radical feminist readings of selected contemporary African male and female writings such as Amma Darko's The Housemaid (1998), Daniel Mengara's Mema (2003), Asare Adei's A Beautiful Daughter (2012), and Lola Shoneyin's The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (2010), we have examined how women with liberal/radical feminism are treated and considered in African patriarchal setting. In short, the result shows that African women need a feminism that gives way for consistent dialogue and which goes in line with non-violent stratagems like the one of liberal feminism in their quest for women's rights. The contrary, as in radicalism via violence against children, men or women, leads to men's violence on women, isolation of women and humiliation of women in contemporary African societies. The position of the contemporary African female and male novels, we have worked on proves that violent stratagems adopted by African feminists in advocating for women's rights should be reconsidered so as to assure the respect for human rights and take into account the socio-cultural realities of African societies.

The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women's Quest for the American Presidency by Ellen Fitzpatrick

The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women's Quest for the American Presidency by Ellen Fitzpatrick

The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women's Quest for the American Presidency

Tuesday, July 28, 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first woman to be nominated by a major party for the U.S. presidency. Ellen Fitzpatrick has written a lively history of three women who ran for president: Victoria Claflin Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith, and Shirley Chisholm. I would add the book is really about four women, as Clinton's two presidential campaigns begin and conclude the book. Fitzpatrick chooses women who seized historical moments of great change that were pregnant with possibilities. Each presidential aspirant faced similar challenges based upon gender, class, and race. Even in defeat, all three imagined that someday a woman would be elected president. Woodhull is without a doubt the most colorful and fascinating of the three. Thrice married, spiritualist, freethinker, suffragist, translator of Karl Marx, she ran for the presidency in 1872. Her public and shocking espousal of free love led Woodhull to expose the scandalous love affair between the prominent Protestant minister Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton, which ultimately led to Woodhull's downfall. The first woman to run for the U.S. presidency spent Election Day in prison. Smith was the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress, from 1940 to 1973. A popular and principled Maine Republican, she rose to national prominence when she became the only Republican who challenged the virulent anticommunism of Senator Joseph McCarthy. She declared for the U.S. presidency in 1963 to a torrent of sexist ridicule from her own party and the national press. Chisholm, the daughter of working-class Caribbean immigrants, spent her formative years living in Barbados and then Brooklyn, New York. She was the first African American woman elected to Congress in 1968. When Chisholm announced her presidential run in 1972 she was supported by grassroots, women's liberation and black liberation activists, and she was opposed by much of the Democratic party and the entire Congressional Black Caucus. Chisholm had her name placed in nomination at the 1972 convention.

A Life of Their Own: Women’s Mid-life Quest in Contemporary Irish Women’s Short Stories

Introduction: The Lonely Voice There have been some notable, if gradual, changes in many aspects of Irish women's role and life in general since other emerged in Irish society in the post-Eamon De Valera period from the 1960s. It is evident, possibly inevitable, that these changes in Irish women's lives are echoed in contemporary Irish women's stories, some writers of which are self-declared feminists or have engaged actively with the Irish women's movement. (1) Consequently, their literary works tend to be gynocentric, concerned overtly with women's issues and seek explicitly to give voice to women's quest for justice within male-dominated Irish society. This essay evaluates a recurrent motif in stories by Clare Boylan, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, Stella Mahon, Mary Dorcey and Marilyn McLaughlin, the motif of quest. As opposed to the traditionally male genre of the monomyth or Bildungsroman, Irish women's quest motif is about a heroine who embarks on a different kind of adventure with the aim of achieving a different kind of goal. (2) This female quest involves subversion of the social norm, rebellion against a socially prescribed role and destiny, and reclamation of a lost place within Irish society. This essay argues that Irish women's stories serve both as a vibrant narrative genre within Irish literary tradition, and as a strategic device by Irish women writers who are seeking to engage with a collective, and evolving, Irish feminist awareness. Typically, such stories focus on women who start by accepting passively a socially imposed role and life as wife or mother, subsequently become bad by diverging from the traditional patriarchal view of women's role in Irish society, and undergo, ultimately, a transformative inner journey of self-discovery which leads them towards emotional independence and individuality. The short story genre as a strategic narrative device for Irish women has roots in Ireland's literary tradition and heritage. According to Frank O'Connor, the short story in an Irish literary context is a natural form deriving from the Irish storytelling tradition embedded in the Irish psyche (Casey 1990: 9), a genre associated closely with Irish history as well as with Irish women's writing. The short story is considered to be a natural progression of story-telling, letter-writing, diary-keeping, and even school essay-writing, forms of writing with which women were already familiar in their lives (Madden-Simpson 1984: 13, 18). The skills and techniques inherent in the short story medium are also relevant when seeking to reach a broad and diverse audience through printed, visual or social media. (3) Traditionally, the short story also plays an essential role in Irish culture and politics. (4) O'Connor argues also that the short story is a vital expressive tool for the population of a country, such as Ireland, in a post-colonial state (O'Connor 1963: 20). In the light of Frank O'Connor's view, Colm Toibin, echoed by Boada-Montagut, connects the prominence of the Irish short story to Ireland's status as a country with a broken and traumatic past. (5) Toibin's or Boada-Montagut's association of a political discourse with the short story genre may suggest a reason for the significant appeal of the short story genre within contemporary Irish women's writing. The short story serves Irish women's purpose of expression because, among the submerged population, Irish women as the Double Other have actually experienced the legacy of a double dispossession (Edge 1998: 215-6; Boada-Montagut 2003: 10). (6) Within the male-dominated Irish literary canon and tradition, women's writing has tended to be marginalised. (7) In this essay we suggest that Irish women may find the short story both an effective and also an instinctive way of expressing varied issues related to women as well as a medium which offers fresh scope for women to create a distinctive style of literature, a literature of their own (Boada-Montagut 2003: 38). …

An Older Transgender Woman's Quest for Identity

Despite sensationalized media attention, transgender individuals are the most marginalized and misunderstood group in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. The current article presents a case study of one woman's quest for identity. Narrative inquiry was used to analyze data from interview transcripts and four themes emerged during analysis: (a) naming the ambiguity, (b) revealing-concealing the authentic self, (c) discovering the transgender community, and (d) embracing the "T" identity. Lifespan and empowerment theories were used to harvest meanings from these themes. Implications for nursing practice and research were examined based on study findings. Participatory action research offers an approach for future studies in which researchers advocate for transgender individuals and remove obstacles to their health care access. [Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 54(2), 31-38.].