Stories Of Women Research Articles

The Lynx in Time: Haudenosaunee Women's Traditions and History

Although the work of multiculturalism has begun in ethnohistory, I believe there is still a long way to go, especially once we turn to women's stories. I find that even those scholars who intellectually reject the confines of the Christian Eve story continue to be conditioned, however unconsciously, by its assessment of strong women as impediments to, not instruments of, progress. Nevertheless, reevaluations of women's social roles are undeniably underway, while oral history is acquiring greater status. Thus the timing seems propitious for revisiting one of the most powerful, if one of the most neglected, stories of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) history, that of the Jigonsaseh, or Head Clan Mothers of the League. In the pages that follow, I will examine some of the better-hidden skews that currently confuse the collections and, I hope, will offer another approach to Haudenosaunee history, one that will allow for a mixed oral-written reconstruction. My demonstration centers on the Jigonsaseh or, as I call her for reasons that will later become obvious, the Lynx in Time. In the process, I am careful to relate only stories already recorded in western sources out of sympathy for the position that no other sacred stories ought to be divulged beyond those that have been revealed to date.

A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story.

A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story.

Rewriting Women's Stories: "Ourika" and "The French Lieutenant's Woman"

Rewriting Women's Stories: "Ourika" and "The French Lieutenant's Woman"

Style from Paris, Reality from America: Fashion in Life Magazine, 1947–1963

Life created a frequent and important presence for fashion in its pages. In fact, fashion was arguably essential subject addressed with constancy to women in pages of Life, certainly for years from Dior Look of 1947 through 1963 with Jacqueline Kennedy as First Lady. In those years, in those influential pages, a new epoch of fashion was formed: post-War fashion ideas of leadership concepts and immense personal freedom and expression, fashion as a system, and women's lives as necessary condition for fashion. Distinctively, Life offered an acquaintance with authority, in this instance traditional hegemony of French couture, but also rallied support for American sportswear, beachwear, and casual styles. If this seems a contradiction in bringing high fashion in enthusiastic reports from Paris and a level of reality in showing modestly priced and autonomous American fashion, Life articulated a manner of addressing fashion that seems foresighted in many ways and perhaps even more perspicacious than most fashion magazines of its time or our time. Fashion and style were a frequent subject of Life in years in question. Perhaps most surprising to us is importance of fashion, independent of models and celebrities. For example, cover story of February 15, 1954, issue is Should She Change Her Italian Hairdo? Without identification of a model or actress, as we would expect in 1980s or 1990s on a popular magazine or on a fashion magazine, magazine is sufficiently resolved to represent its story in relative anonymity, suggesting that this image is rather more in tradition of magazines of illustrated story-telling covers, rather than portrait covers that characterize other magazines. Moreover, we probably could not imagine this cover on a contemporary magazine in part because of our sophisticated demographic approaches, insisting that a woman's story on cover will not sell issue and will not interest male readers. That a style storywithout celebrities of a Hollywood best-and worst-dressed list-would command cover of this issue and of others suggests considerable place that fashion held in visual, pictorial, and glamour conception of Life. Alternatively, one looks at a story from March 25, 1946, issue that chronicles life of a working model in New York City. With an air that seems almost an O'Henry hero more than Cindy Crawford, we see Lily Carlson walking to work with her hatbox, identified as the symbol of model's .trade. Smartly dressed, Carlson is clearly identified as a working woman and article finds that her life is not all glamour, but is demanding work. It is, in fact, this ethic that pervades coverage of fashion and style in Life disproving and demythologizing supposed glamour of fashion. Always, there is a pragmatic aspect whether laborious work that is shown in process in workrooms of Paris, bustling workaday world of Seventh Avenue, or even woman's work of modelling now taken to be a tough job, not just a privilege of beauty. In an important way, it abjured a fatuous fashion and sought a reasoned, lifestyle-driven functional style. The reason and reality that Life attributes to fashion can also be seen in a famous Nina Leen photograph published April 1, 1946. Paris designer Jacques Fath, who created some of frothiest images of 1940s and 1950s, is here seen in workmanly perfectionism. He makes adjustments on a dress being modelled by his wife Genevieve. The floor polisher whom we see as third person in room is our signal to arduousness of this task, acknowledgement that all of this is toil and not a mere voila of fashion exuberance. We can only imagine that this room was probably unheated, given deprivations of Paris into 1946. One may compare this image with famous photograph, not in Life though of its ethos, by Horst of Gertrude Stein in House of Pierre Balmain in 1946, with author and lecturer Rosamond Bernier and illustrator Eric. …

Good-bye Piccadilly: British war brides in America

As much of the world tried to return to normal living and working patterns after World War II, some 70,000 British women chose to be uprooted from the homeland they knew and loved. These were British war brides, a uniformly young group who by marrying American servicemen became part of the largest single group of female immigrants to the United States. Though the women came to the U.S. from all parts of the British Isles, they were an unusually homogeneous group, averaging 23 years of age, from working- or lower-middle-class families and having completed mandatory schooling to the age of fourteen. For the most part they emigrated alone and didn't move into an existing immigrant population. Jenel Virden draws on records in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the Public Record Office in London, as well as questionnaires and personal interviews, in relating the women's story. Virden finds that the marriages actually took place in spite of, rather than because of, the war. And, while the women benefited from special nonrestrictive immigration legislation - and found public welcomes and a good deal of favorable publicity when they arrived - they also had much in common with other immigrant groups, including a strong sense of ethnic identity.

Three mothers, three daughters: Palestinian women's stories

This book contains the oral histories of three mother-daughter pairs of Palestinian women. The highly diverse and personal experiences of the women conveyed through these oral histories reflect the social changes which have taken place in this region in the past 50 years which have led to 1) a striking increase in the amount of formal education attained by girls and women (none of the three mothers was literate but two of the daughters went to college and the third finished ninth grade) 2) a liberalization of attitudes and actions regarding the choice of a marriage partner and 3) increasing employment of women in the public domain. While two of the three pairs of women are not involved in the political upheaval which characterizes the area none questioned the right of women to such involvement. The womens comments also shed light on the controversy raging about the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in the region. Exhibiting the entire range of reaction to the possibility of living in a Muslim fundamentalist state one mother-daughter pair would support such a change and another of the women would leave the region if such an eventuality occurred. In addition to the three chapters on each mother-daughter pair this book also contains an introduction written by its male author a Jewish-American psychologist an epilogue by its female author a Palestinian special education teacher a map of Israel and a short chronology of the principal events in the recent history of the region.

Telling Tales: Legal Stories about Violence against Women

One of the most striking features of the latter part of the last century was the widespread feminist activism in the USA, Canada, Australia, and many other countries directed against violence against women. Feminist law reform campaigns targeted rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and child sexual abuse. Yet despite the broad attention to these issues, there is a continuing absence of attention in legal discourses to women's stories about the violence in their lives. In particular, outside the area of the criminal law, it is rare to find courts discussing violence, yet not uncommon to discover the centrality of violence to a legal problem, whether it be in equity, or tort, or family law. One theoretical response to this concern, and to other feminist concerns about the stories told by women in law, has been the developing field of legal storytelling. This article discusses legal storytelling and suggests that while it is an important response, it is of itself an inadequate response. I argue that while it is essential to hear alternative legal stories, in particular, those of the powerless, this approach is itself constrained by the legal categories within which we understand legal problems. Since legal categories shape legal problems, and, in the case of violence against women, help to obscure that reality of many women's lives, it is essential to pay attention to the role of legal categories in perpetuating the law's indifference to, or its occasional tacit complicity in, violence against women.

This century, this country: One survivor's story of posttraumatic stress syndrome

Abstract Posttraumatic stress syndrome, also called posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), affects people who have experienced extremely traumatic events. Individuals who live with posttraumatic stress syndrome must continually overcome many obstacles to live their daily lives. The following is one woman's story of abuse, its after effects, and survival. By telling her story, I hope to make her suffering that much more meaningful. In addition, I wish to call attention to what goes on behind closed doors and explain what we can do about it.

An occupational transmission of HIV: collision of ethical worlds in nursing practice.

This article proposes a new theoretical frame for ethical practice in nursing by locating ethical questions within the worlds of everyday nursing experience. The authors advocate a process of ethical thought and action that is not so much a weighing of dichotomized alternatives as a continual journey in which nurses delve deeper into their examination of clinical contexts, structural contingencies, and the meanings of experience for themselves and their clients. This theoretical vision is illustrated with a case study about a nurse who was infected with HIV on the job. The purposes in presenting the case study are to give testament to this brave woman's story, illustrate the dynamics of a contextualized ethics, and challenge nurses to make changes in practice, policy, and structure to foster truly ethical work and relations with others.

Typists' influences on transcription: aspects of feminist nursing epistemic rigour.

This paper describes the process by which female typists became participants of sorts while transcribing audiotaped interviews. The primary data included sensitive and sexual subject matter about women's Pap smear (PS) experiences. Besides overcoming minor technical difficulties, the major discovery was that the typists had a tendency to interpolate and even normalize the data. A feminist post-structuralist perspective was extended to examine these interpolations as secondary data. This revealed that the typists were becoming unexpected participants as commentators, validators, analysts and normalizers of the data. From the subjective positions of both medical typists and recipients of PS, the typists provided data validation that included contradictions and transgressions from the cancer screening scheme propaganda. Furthermore, both typists were exposed to other women's PS stories and experienced vicarious consciousness raising. For one typist this included embodiment of other women's distress, raising questions about the occupational hazards associated with transcribing distressing data. Thus the social and relational aspects of those involved in the transcription process proved influential to both the data (and analysis), and to the practical aspects of data management. I argue that details of such influences need to be submitted for scrutiny as additional aspects of rigour.

Fighting Spirit: The Story of Women in the Bristol Breast Cancer Survey

Ed Heather Goodare Scarlet Press, £8.99, pp 168 ISBN 1 85727 033 9 In June 1986, women being treated for breast cancer who were also attending the Bristol Cancer Help Centre for complementary therapies agreed to participate in a research project. The five-year study to compare their quality of life and survival with that of a control group of women receiving orthodox treatment only was funded by cancer research charities. In September 1990, when interim results from the first two years were published, there was incredulity and alarm—it appeared that those attending …

Book Reviews : Eight Bullets: One Woman's Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence. By Claudia Brenner with Hanna Ashley. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1995, 212 pp., $12.95 (paper

Book Reviews : Eight Bullets: One Woman's Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence. By Claudia Brenner with Hanna Ashley. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1995, 212 pp., $12.95 (paper

The new uprooted: single mothers in urban life

The New Uprooted: Single Mothers in Urban Life. Elizabeth Mulroy. Westport, CT: Auburn House. 1995. 206 pp. Softcover, ISBN 086569-039-1. $16.95. Half of all of children growing up today will spend part of their childhood in a single-parent family, most of them with a single mother, and nearly half of the children now living with single mothers are poor. Because the federal welfare entitlement for poor single mothers and their children are now ended, poverty among children living with a single parent is likely to increase over the next decade. Given these facts, the mandate for more books focused on the economic problems of single mothers is clear. In The New Uprooted: Single Mothers and Urban Life, Elizabeth Mulroy claims that the public understands little about who single mothers are, how they become single mothers, and the consequences this status has for them and their children. We agree. Because of the current political climate, we welcome Mulroy's matter-of-fact approach to this new family constellation and her advocacy stance. Emphasizing a holistic approach, Mulroy does not limit her focus to politically charged issues such as welfare dependence among single mothers (which she mentions only peripherally), but draws attention to the broad array of factors that limit and jeopardize the economic security of mother-only families. The book does not, however, satisfactorily answer the questions it raises. Solo mothering is so commonly associated with economic disadvantage. Why, then, is it a growing phenomenon? Mulroy argues that domestic violence (and women's increasing willingness and ability to end violent relationships) is part of the answer, and we agree. However, we suspect that this is only one of many factors. As qualitative researchers, we think that one of the best ways to identify those factors is to spend a lot of time talking with single mothers. Mulroy's study does include qualitative interviews with 73 single mothers in New England, as well as interviews with officials of local, state, and federal social services and housing services. She uses several women's stories to exemplify what she identifies as single mothers' three most basic needs (personal safety, affordable housing, and employment that pays a living wage). But anecdotes do not substitute for systematic analysis, and she offers little of the latter in presenting her qualitative data. Mulroy amply shows that single mothers are a diverse group, and she compellingly presents the factors associated with their economic and social vulnerability. …

Abused Women and Legal Discourse: The Exclusionary Power of Legal Method

AbstractTraditional legal method continues to be one of the most unexplored aspects of the gendered nature of legal discourse. In this paper, I outline a number of problems legal method creates in relation to women's experiences, more specifically the ways in which legal method works, as part of legal discourse, to exclude abused women's stories. Expanding the conceptualization of legal method as a process which includes the more mundane and insidious aspects of the daily practice of law, this paper examines aspects of legal method which are often overlooked in feminist legal theory and research. The paper is intended as a beginning point for future discussion and empirical research and as such suggests the possible depth of the exclusionary practices of legal method and the harm suffered by women as a result. I conclude with a discussion of how women can subvert traditional legal method through the formulation of local solutions based on their own experiences.

TellingTales: LegalStoriesAboutViolenceAgainstWomen

(1996). Telling Tales: Legal Stories About Violence Against Women. Australian Feminist Law Journal: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 79-93.

Borderline Crossings in Sharon Pollock's Out-Law Genres: Blood Relations and Doc

Sharon Pollock's well-known plays, Blood Relations and Doc, can be read as "out-law genres" by extending the criteria which Caren Kaplan has outlined to designate women's renegade texts to theatrical representations. Both plays mix conventionally unmixable theatrical elements and use collaborative discursive practices to expose the myth that texts are individually authored, creating alternative texts based on a discourse of situation or a "politics of location." After her split-subject representation of the notorious parent-killer, Lizzie Borden, Pollock crosses back into Canadian territory to create her own version of the excluded daughter's revenge in Doc where Catherine sets out to murder her father's reputation symbolically. Taken together, Pollock's plays, which rescue lost women's stories, point to a new dramatic future capable of expressing revolutionary transnational feminisms.

Book reviews

The quest for integrity, self‐definition, and pride among women with disabilities Disabled, Female, and Proud! By Harilyn Rousso. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1993, 136 pages. Paper, $12.95. The roller coaster ride through infertility In Search of Parenthood: Coping with Infertility and High‐Tech Conception. By Judith N. Lasker and Susan Borg. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995, 216 pages. Cloth, $44.95; Paper, $18.95. Two new HIV books fall short by today's standards People with HIV and Those Who Help Them: Challenges, Integration, Intervention. By R. Dennis Shelby. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 1995, 245 pages. Paper, $14.95. HIV Care: A Comprehensive Handbook for Providers. By Laurie J. Andrews, Laurie B. Novick, and Associates. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995, 220 pages. Paper, $19.95. Sex, violence, and disability Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People with Disabilities: The End of Silent Acceptance? By Dick Sobsey. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brooks, 1994, 480 pages. Paper, $27.00. Violence & Disability: An Annotated Bibliography. Edited by Dick Sobsey, Don Wells, Richard Lucardie, and Sheila Mansell. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brooks, 1995, 208 pages. Paper, $28.00. Euphemizing breast cancer Breast Cancer: Twenty Women's Stories. By Susan Diemert Moch with Allan Graubard. New York: NLN (National League for Nursing) Press, Publication No. 14–2694, 1995, 147 pp. Paper, $17.95. Sexuality and disability: Misstate of the arts? Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation State of the Arts Review: Sexuality and Disability. Edited by Trilok N. Monga. Philadelphia: Hanley and Belfus, Inc., 1995, 270 pages. Cloth, $34.00.

Death by Destruction of Will

This report describes an unexplained death following the collapse of will caused by resisted mechanical restraint in a 93-year-old woman with dementia. Clinical and experimental evidence is cited supporting resisted restraint as a significant noxious stimulus that can be linked to sudden death and immune dysfunction. This woman's story serves to remind us of the critical link between mind and body, and of the mortal consequences possible when we forget.

Women's Stories of Witchcraft in Early Modern England: The House, the Body, the Child

Gender & HistoryVolume 7, Issue 3 p. 408-432 Women's Stories of Witchcraft in Early Modern England: The House, the Body, the Child DIANE PURKISS, Search for more papers by this author DIANE PURKISS, Search for more papers by this author First published: November 1995 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0424.1995.tb00034.xCitations: 5AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume7, Issue3November 1995Pages 408-432 RelatedInformation

Why mothers fought obstetricians

It's old history now, but maybe sometime in the distant future medical historians will want to record how all these uppity ‘consumers’ started poking their nose in. A fragment of one woman's story might be useful.