Generation Of Young Women Research Articles

Young Feminist Activists in Present-Day China: A New Feminist Generation?

This article studies post-2000 Chinese feminist activism from a generational perspective. It operationalises three notions of generation— generation as an age cohort, generation as a historical cohort, and “political generation”—to shed light on the question of generation and generational change in post-socialist Chinese feminism. The study shows how the younger generation of women have come to the forefront of feminist protest in China and how the historical conditions they live in have shaped their feminist outlook. In parallel, it examines how a “political generation” emerges when feminists of different ages are drawn together by a shared political awakening and collaborate across age.

May Wilson Preston and the Birth of Fitzgerald's Flapper: Illustrating Social Transformation in “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”

ABSTRACT Readers of F. Scott Fitzgerald's fiction in the Saturday Evening Post encountered his stories within a matrix of visual materials familiar both in format and in terms of the artists who produced them. “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” published in the Post on May 1, 1920, is routinely recognized by scholars for helping to solidify the young Fitzgerald's reputation as a social historian for the Jazz Age and its youth. Yet the extraction of the text alone from its original site of publication has caused scholars to overlook the role of the illustrator in this process. While Fitzgerald was still relatively unknown when the story appeared, May Wilson Preston was an established artist who had been depicting, debating, and reframing young womanhood for over a decade, though she is largely unknown today. Far from being incidental, Preston's popularity and status framed and lent credibility to Fitzgerald's story about the first generation of young women granted the rights for which she and many others fought. This article examines the works of both artists to explore how the textual and the pictorial functioned together for Fitzgerald's audiences, and considers the problematic implications of the work of female illustrators being written out of American literary and cultural history.

The changing pattern of contraceptive use and pregnancies in four generations of young women.

The aim of this study was to describe contraceptive use and pregnancies and their relationship to socio-economic status (SES) in four generations of young Swedish women. Questionnaires regarding contraceptive use and pregnancies were sent to random samples of 19-year-old women in 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011 (n=4732). Current contraceptive use was higher in 2001 (78%) (p<0.01) and 2011 (69%) (p<0.05) compared with 1981 (60%) and 1991 (62%). Combined hormonal contraception (CHC) was the most common form of contraception throughout (p<0.0001). The use of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC=implants, intrauterine contraception) and progestogen-only pills increased over time (p<0.01). Mental side effects as a reason for CHC cessation increased over time and was the most common reason for cessation of CHC in 2011 (p<0.001). Contraceptive use was lower in women from low SES areas (p<0.05) in 2011. The percentage of young women who had been pregnant at ≤19years of age was lower (p<0.05) in the assessment from 2001 (7%) than in that in 1991 (13%) and 2011 (12%). The proportion of teenage mothers decreased from 4.4% (1981) to 1.6% (2011) (p<0.01). More women had been pregnant at ≤19years of age in low SES areas than in middle and high SES areas (p<0.05). The lowest pregnancy rate was in the cohort with the highest contraceptive use. Term pregnancies declined over time. A greater number of pregnancies in low SES areas and a change towards lower contraceptive use in low SES areas was recorded in 2011.

Galvanizing girls for development? Critiquing the shift from ‘smart’ to ‘smarter economics’

This article traces the mounting interest in, and visibility of, girls and young women in development (WID) policy, especially since the turn of the twenty-first century when a ‘Smart Economics’ rationale for promoting gender equality and female empowerment has become ever more prominent and explicit. ‘Smart Economics’, which is strongly associated with an increased influence of corporate stakeholders, frequently through public–private partnerships (PPPs), stresses a ‘business case’ for investing in women for developmental (read economic) efficiency, with investment in younger generations of women being touted as more efficient still. The latter is encapsulated in the term ‘Smarter Economics’ with the Nike Foundation’s ‘Girl Effect’ being a showcase example. In this, and similar, initiatives linked with neoliberal development, ‘investing in girls’ appears to be driven not only by imperatives of ‘female empowerment’, but also to realize more general dividends for future economic growth and poverty alleviation. Yet, while it may well be that girls and young women have benefited from their rapid relocation from the sidelines towards the centre of development discourse and planning, major questions remain as to whose voices are prioritized, and whose agendas are primarily served by the current shift from ‘Smart’ to ‘Smarter Economics’.

Split Infinities: German Feminisms and the Generational Project

When, in the second half of the nineteenth-century, the German women's movement took off, female activists/writers expressed a desire for their political work to initiate a generational project. The achievement of equal democratic rights for men and women was perceived to be a process in which the ‘democratic spirit’ was instilled in future generations through education and the provision of exceptional role models. The First Wave of the women's movement laid the ground, through their writing, campaigning, and petitioning, for the eventual success of obtaining women's suffrage and sending female, elected representatives to the Reichstag in 1919. My part of this article, drawing on the essays by Hedwig Dohm (1831–1919) analyses how the idea of women's political and social emancipation is phrased in the rhetoric of a generational project which will, in the short term, bring only slow changes to the status quo but which will enable future generations to build on the foundations of the (heterogeneous, but mostly bourgeoisie-based) first organised German women's movement, and which was intended to function as a generational repository of women's intellectual history.When, in the mid-2000s, a number of pop-feminist essayistic volumes appeared in Germany, their authors expressed the desire to reinvigorate feminism for a new generation of young women. Their texts focus in part on the continuing need to ensure equal democratic rights for young women in terms of equal pay, reproductive capacities and child care. Yet they simultaneously register their dissatisfaction with the legacy of the New Feminism and, more specifically, with the role models it produced. Although in their written interventions these new German pop-feminists often draw on the generic and rhetorical strategies of their feminist forebears, they employ the generational metaphor as a means of producing a narrative of ‘progress’ (Hemmings, 2011) which signifies a departure from previous feminist discourses and firmly ‘others’ their exponents. This type of narrative resonates troublingly with wider social and political narratives which situate feminism firmly in the past. Strikingly, German pop-feminist volumes share the deployment of this progress narrative with similar publications in Britain and the US. Yet the German volumes generally — and uniquely in relation to those three contexts — avoid textual engagement with the writing and protagonists of the first women's movement in Germany. This section of the article examines the feminist historiographical narratives told in pop-feminist volumes across all three contexts, enquiring after the local specificities of generational thinking, its caesurae, emphases and omissions, and revealing the broader transnational commonalities — and political implications — of feminist stories.

Strange Bedfellows: The Destigmatization of Anti-Abortion Reform

INTRODUCTION As the United States abortion debate continues into its fifth decade since Roe v. Wade, (1) pro-life groups are increasingly aiming to align themselves and their messages with classically "feminist" or "liberal" interests. Pro-life groups now heavily focus on women's rights as a platform for advancing their ideological arguments and achieving legislative measures that ultimately restrict access to abortion. The use of such platforms allows antiabortion sentiment to appear more palatable to a broader swath of women while enabling the pro-life movement to soften its image and improve its appeal. This strategy, which I will refer to as pro-life "destigmatization," manifests itself most clearly in law and politics, wherein pro-life advocates frame their anti- abortion arguments in broadly appealing, women's rights-oriented terms. This ironic alignment is demonstrated through three examples that collectively represent an underlying effort to destigmatize antiabortion reform and portray it as a branch of women's rights: 1) advocacy for the expansion of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), particularly in the context of the recently decided Supreme Court case of Young v. United Parcel Service; (2) 2) political advocacy organizations' support for pro-life women candidates and the creative framing of antiabortion legislation in election campaigns; and 3) anti-abortion legislation that restricts abortions specifically performed for sex-selection purposes. In each of these examples, there is a deliberate appeal to ideals many women already value such that, in theory, there would not be much of a leap from supporting feminist concerns to supporting the pro-life movement writ large. This connection is so close because, as each of these example shows, the ultimate goal of chipping away at abortion rights is portrayed as secondary, if it is even acknowledged at all. Rather, the pro-life presence is positioned as advocating something different from abortion, be it pregnancy rights or tax reform. Casting anti-abortion arguments in "feminist" terms is not a new effort. (3) Scholars like Reva Siegel have long charted the development of the pro-life movement's "women protective antiabortion arguments]" and the ways in which the pro-life movement has "supplant[ed] the constitutional argument '[a]bortion kills a baby' with [the] new claim '[a]bortion hurts women.'" (4) Similarly, Mary Ziegler's 2013 article in the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice provides a detailed history of pro-life feminism, assessing the evolution of "pro-life, socially conservative, self-proclaimed feminists" and their growing role in the abortion debate. (5) Consider also the decades-old legislative history of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which, as discussed infra, shows the law's twin goals of female equality in the workforce and the preservation of a woman's right to bear and raise children. (6) Still, the pro-life movement's destigmatization strategy has gained traction in recent years as pro-life feminism targets "a new generation of young women who reject the illusion that to be pro-woman is to be pro-choice." (7) The examples discussed in this Note are contemporary ones that, when taken as a whole, coalesce into indications of a dominant trend. This Note adds to this area of scholarship by demonstrating how pro-life advocates, legislators, and courts are currently drawing on feminist and women's rights movements to advance abortion bans and destigmatize anti-abortion sentiment. I. Pregnancy Discrimination in the Workplace An early example of the pro-life movement's effort to insert itself into classically feminist causes is the movement's role in the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that "prohibits] sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy." (8) The amendment arose in part as a response to the Supreme Court's decision in General Electric Company v. …

Abstract 271: Knowledge of Heart Disease in Female and Male College Students

Background: Educational programs and campaigns aimed at raising awareness of heart disease (HD) in women have resulted in an improvement in women’s knowledge of HD and related risk factors (RF). Less is known regarding awareness of HD in the younger generation of women and men. Objective: We evaluated knowledge of HD and related RF, among a cohort of female and male college students. Methods: Students attending a private college were invited to complete an online anonymous survey consisting of 44 questions. Results: A total of 243 students completed the survey; (mean age 18.9 +/- 1 years; 66% female; 81% Caucasian, 7% Asian 1% black and 12% other). The responses to the survey are depicted in the table. Although the majority of college students correctly identified HD as the leading cause of death in men, less than half of all students, and only 30% of male students reported HD as the leading cause of death in women. Furthermore, knowledge of RF for heart disease was low in both female and male students. Conclusions: Future educational campaigns should aim to target the younger generation, focusing on RF and lifestyle modification.

Dressing Wounds: Considerations on Trauma Theory and Life Writing in Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth

This paper aims at analyzing how the trauma inflicted by the First World War is described by Vera Brittain in her autobiographical novel Testament of Youth (1933). The author, who shares many features in common with Virginia Woolf – regarding witnessing and writing about trauma – also lost her loved ones to the War: her fiancé, Roland Leighton, her brother, Edward Brittain, and her friend, Victor Richardson.For Vera Brittain and some of her contemporaries, nursing became a woman‟s experience of taking part in the male-dominated realm of the First War. From treating wounds to listening to injured soldiers‟ talks, First War nurses grasped the geographies of men‟s bodies and minds, something regarded as “improper” by most parents whose daughters were born between the late Victorian and early Edwardian ages. Nursing was the closest a woman could get to the battleground in those days; in Brittain‟s case, for instance, the only safe way to see Roland again. V.A.D. nursing also allowed many women to evolve from tactile experience to the subjective activity of writing about the War, and Brittain‟s Testament of Youth may be regarded as one of its best examples.What may account for the title Testament of Youth is the thought Brittain kept that writing about the distress she and her contemporaries felt due to war would probably have an impact on coming generations. She leaves a “testament” of a terrible incident that would more likely recede; yet, she acknowledges that, whatever may happen, it would never surpass the impact that the First War had on her generation of young women, who were deprived of the innocence of their youth.

Dressing Wounds: Considerations on Trauma Theory and Life Writing in Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth

This paper aims at analyzing how the trauma inflicted by the First World War is described by Vera Brittain in her autobiographical novel Testament of Youth (1933). The author, who shares many features in common with Virginia Woolf – regarding witnessing and writing about trauma – also lost her loved ones to the War: her fiance, Roland Leighton, her brother, Edward Brittain, and her friend, Victor Richardson. For Vera Brittain and some of her contemporaries, nursing became a woman‟s experience of taking part in the male-dominated realm of the First War. From treating wounds to listening to injured soldiers‟ talks, First War nurses grasped the geographies of men‟s bodies and minds, something regarded as “improper” by most parents whose daughters were born between the late Victorian and early Edwardian ages. Nursing was the closest a woman could get to the battleground in those days; in Brittain‟s case, for instance, the only safe way to see Roland again. V.A.D. nursing also allowed many women to evolve from tactile experience to the subjective activity of writing about the War, and Brittain‟s Testament of Youth may be regarded as one of its best examples. What may account for the title Testament of Youth is the thought Brittain kept that writing about the distress she and her contemporaries felt due to war would probably have an impact on coming generations. She leaves a “testament” of a terrible incident that would more likely recede; yet, she acknowledges that, whatever may happen, it would never surpass the impact that the First War had on her generation of young women, who were deprived of the innocence of their youth.

Romance Re-Scripted: Lost in Austen's comparative historical analysis of post-feminist culture

This paper argues that the British television drama serial Lost in Austen implicitly constructs a critical analysis of post-feminism. Firstly, it will argue that its complex narrative structure (travelling from contemporary London to the pages of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice) allows its female protagonist to ask important questions about the nature and relevance of feminism today. In particular, it enables it to rediscover feminist history in an attempt to reconnect it to a generation of young women who have arguably lost sight of its continuing significance. Secondly, it implicitly positions traditional romantic fiction as a cultural antidote to an overly sexualised post-feminist culture, one that continues to objectify the female subject while making young women complicit in their own oppression. In doing so, it arguably offers a critical evaluation of post-feminism while reinventing the emotional power of traditional romantic discourse for a contemporary age.

Evaluation of Fertility Levels and Adjustment of Fertility Policy: Based on the Current Situation of the Chinese Mainland’s Provincial Fertility Levels

During the 11th Five-year Plan (2006-2010), the total fertility rate of the mainland of China was 1.481 and was stable with a slight decline, exhibiting a spatial pattern of moderately low fertility in the central and western regions, very low fertility in the east and extremely low fertility in the northeast. Except for a rebound in a few provinces and regions with extremely low fertility rates, the ratio of actual fertility rates to policy fertility rates is still falling. The reduced fertility rate is mainly driven by development, notably the proportion of the total population represented by the exuberantly fertile women of child-bearing age and their greater urbanization, growing level of non-agricultural employment and outflow from rural areas, as well as the assimilative effect of urban production, lifestyles and cultural concepts upon the agricultural population. Development has catalyzed an irreversible trend of declining fertility; existing fertility policy has proven insufficient to keep fertility rates stable at reasonably low levels. Policy-based rebounds may emerge in urban areas and the east and northeast, where family planning policy has been better implemented; on the other hand, a non-policy-based rebound may have been released. In the central and western rural areas, multiple births occur on average among only 4.12 percent of the younger generation of women. As fertility policy is adjusted and improved, fertility rebounds in transitional fertility policy adjustment can be effectively regulated through a gradual strategy which will not provoke a sharp rebound. The time is ripe for China to conduct a nationally unified adjustment of the existing fertility policy.

Television’s “Crazy Lady” Trope: Female Psychopathic Traits, Teaching, and Influence of Popular Culture

This article describes notable illustrations of female psychopathy on modern television to review various characters that will have utility in teaching students about female psychopathy in distinction to male psychopathy and to encourage consideration of the potential effects that viewing these countless examples may have on a generation of young women. The authors use examples from soap operas, crime procedurals, reality television, fantasy, comedies, and young adult programs to illustrate gender differences in psychopathy and make specific teaching points. They also review the research literature related to popular culture's impact on behavior and gender roles. Gender differences in real-world psychopathy are mirrored in television portrayals. For example, female psychopaths, on TV and in reality, use sexual manipulation, demonstrate unstable emotions, and employ social aggression to achieve their ambitions. The examples of female psychopathic traits are prevalent on TV and easily accessible for teaching purposes. Research does give some support for a popular culture impact on behavior and gender roles. As compared to male psychopathy, female psychopathy is less recognized, and there are some notable differences in how the psychopathic traits manifest. Television provides myriad teaching examples that can highlight the gender distinctions such as use of sexual manipulation, emotional instability, and social aggression. Research suggests that the prevalence of "crazy ladies" on television may be negatively impacting gender stereotypes and normalizing bad behavior in young women.

The production of sexual mutilation among Muslim women in Cairo

Female circumcision has become a global political minefield, with ‘Western’ interventions affecting Egyptian politics and social development, not least in the area of democracy and human rights. As younger generation of women in Egypt informed by international human rights discourse begins to question norms still upheld by the previous generation, new dilemmas and tensions emerge. In this article, I discuss the risk that international interventions designed to modify local practices may fail when the local moral worlds in which such practices are embedded are inadequately understood. Rather than increasing women’s agency, such interventions may reduce it and instead produce a sense of sexual mutilation among women.

Was Bathsheba the Original Bridget Jones? A New Look at Bathsheba on Screen and in Biblical Scholarship

This article addresses the reception in text and cinema of the story told of the biblical character Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11; specifically, it addresses the scholarly interpretations of Bathsheba and the portrayals of her story in the films David and Bathsheba (1951) and King David (1985), and in the NBC mini-series Kings (2009). I shall examine the ways in which each medium fills the gaps left by 2 Samuel 11 and investigate how the rise of feminism and feminist biblical scholarship has changed the reception of Bathsheba’s story. Recognizing that people participate in a reading that speaks to them on a personal level, the article concludes with a post-feminist interpretation of 2 Samuel 11, one that represents Bathsheba as an “ancient” Bridget Jones. Such a reading is missing, as made clear by the review of scholarship and film. This new interpretation is important, because it has the potential to resonate with today’s generation of young women.

A Struggle for Identity

The success of the United States’ female athletes in the 1996 Olympics spawned immense public enthusiasm for women's sports in America. Along with nearly two decades of surging female athletic participation due to the effects of Title IX, a generation of young women had grown up as athletes — and a new magazine, Sports Illustrated Women (SIW), formed to compete in and capitalize on that new market. Although not the first women's sports magazine, SIW was the first women's sports title to be published by a major publishing company, Time Inc. By conducting interviews with some of the magazine's prominent editors, writers, and business managers and by analyzing the magazine's content, this study details the rise and fall of SIW and highlights reasons it and similar women's sports magazines have failed in recent years.

The changing impact of conjugal status and motherhood on employment across generations of Canadian women

We use event history analysis and retrospective data from the 2001 General Social Survey to study the changing relationships between conjugal life and motherhood and the employment behaviour of Canadian women who were born between 1937 and 1976. Our results show thedecreasing importance of marriage to explain the rhythm of entry and return into the labour market among younger generations of women. However, marriage still appears to increase the rate of work interruption for those who had started working. The effect of motherhood on the key stages of women’s working lives was also found to vary across generations.

In pursuit of female chemists

Chemistry needs new female role models and a less macho culture to appeal more to the next generation of young women, says Carol V. Robinson.

Influences of Marriage, Motherhood, and Other Life Events on Australian Women’s Employment Aspirations

The study contributes to the understandings of how women negotiate work and family over the life course by investigating what factors impact young women’s aspirations for full time, part-time, and other forms of work. Using data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH) with its nationally representative sample of Australian women, the authors examine how women moving from their 20s to early 30s change their aspirations for employment (at the age of 35) after significant life events and changes, including the birth of a child. Multinomial logistic regression analyses across two transition periods ( N = 7,505 and N = 7,584) showed that changes in employment aspirations co-occurred with movement into marriage or stable relationships and with changes in aspirations for family size. As young women become mothers, or move into situations in which motherhood is likely, many adjusted their employment aspirations away from full-time employment and toward part-time work. The findings suggest a growing awareness of the practical difficulties of balancing paid work and family roles within the current context of work and family policy and practice in Australia. Women’s choices are not free of constraints; rather, younger generations of women negotiate work and family life by adjusting and changing their own aspirations within the context and circumstances of their lives.

Differences in socioeconomic and gender inequalities in tobacco smoking in Denmark and Sweden; a cross sectional comparison of the equity effect of different public health policies

BackgroundDenmark and Sweden are considered to be countries of rather similar socio-political type, but public health policies and smoking habits differ considerably between the two neighbours. A study comparing mechanisms behind socioeconomic inequalities in tobacco smoking, could yield information regarding the impact of health policy and -promotion in the two countries.MethodsCross-sectional comparisons of socioeconomic and gender differences in smoking behaviour among 6 995 Danish and 13 604 Swedish persons aged 18-80 years.ResultsThe prevalence of smoking was higher in Denmark compared to Sweden. The total attributable fraction (TAF) of low education regarding daily smoking was 36% for Danish men and 35% for Danish women, and 32% and 46%, respectively, for Swedish men and women. TAF of low education regarding continued smoking were 16.2% and 15.8% for Danish men and women, and 11.0% and 18.8% for Swedish men and women, respectivelyThe main finding of the study was that the socioeconomic patterning of smoking, based on level of education and expressed as the relative contribution to the total burden of smoking exposure, was rather different in Sweden and Denmark. Moreover, these differences were modified by gender and age. As a general pattern, socioeconomic differences in Sweden tended to contribute more to the total burden of this habit among women, especially in the younger age groups. In men, the patterns were much more similar between the two countries. Regarding continued smoking/unsuccessful quitting, the patterns were similar for women, but somewhat different for men. Here we found that socioeconomic differences contributed more to overall continued smoking in Danish men, especially in the middle-age and older age strata.ConclusionThe results imply that Swedish anti-smoking policy and/or implemented measures have been less effective in a health equity perspective among the younger generation of women, but more effective among men, compared to Danish policy implementation. The results also raises the more general issue regarding the possible need for a trade-off principle between overall population efficacy versus equity efficacy of anti-tobacco, as well as general public health policies and intervention strategies.

Earlier stress exposure and subsequent major depression in aging women

Despite evidence that stress exposure earlier in the life course may have long-term consequences for psychopathology, most models of vulnerability for late life depression are limited to current stressors or to retrospective reports of stress history. This study estimates the influences of earlier stressors assessed longitudinally on subsequent major depressive disorder (MDD) in women at average age 60 (range 50-75). MDD, negative life events (NLE), and marital stress were assessed multiple times in a community-based sample of 565 women followed for three decades. Adverse events experienced in childhood also were assessed prior to outcome. Greater childhood adversity, earlier high levels of NLE and marital stress, and a more rapid increase in marital stress over time elevated the odds of MDD at average age 60 independent of all stressors and other salient risk factors. Childhood adversity was mediated in part by intervening risks. Prior depression, earlier poor health status, a more rapid deterioration in health with age, and current disability owing to physical problems also were related independently to later MDD. These findings support the enduring effects of earlier stress burden on MDD in women into old age and, in light of the increasing proportion of older women in the population, have important clinical implications for identification and treatment of those at risk for depression. Findings also underscore the need to develop resources to counteract or buffer similar stress exposure in younger generations of women.