The senior female international managerial career move: a qualitative study in a European context

Research investigating the position of women in management has, largely, been confined within national boundaries. Over the last fifteen years, empirical studies of women in international management have been undertaken, predominantly in North America. In this research field, many questions remain unanswered or have been only partially addressed. The particular focus of this study is on the senior female international managerial career move in Europe — a relatively unexplored area. Fifty senior female expatriate managers were interviewed, representing a wide range of industry and service sectors. The study, for the first time, assesses an exclusively senior sample of female managers who have made at least one international career move. This study of senior females in international management makes a theoretical contribution, not only to the analysis of gender and international human resource management, but also to wider debates within the contemporary women in management and career theory literatures. The aims of the study were to develop an understanding of the senior female international career move in a European context in order to more fully understand both the covert and overt barriers that may limit women’s international career opportunities. The results of the study show that the senior international career move has largely been developed along a linear male model of career progression, a development which, taken together with gender disparity both in organisations and family responsibilities, frequently prevents women employees from reaching senior managerial positions. The study proposes a model of the senior female international managerial career move, thereby contributing primarily to the international human resource management literature. The implications of the study for research literatures in women in management and career theory are also explored and a future research agenda developed.

Home, family and society: women of the Irish landed class, 1860-1914. A Munster case study

The thesis analyses the roles and experiences of female members of the Irish landed class (wives, sisters and daughters of gentry and aristocratic landlords with estates over 1,000 acres) using primary personal material generated by twelve sample families over an important period of decline for the class, and growing rights for women. Notably, it analyses the experiences of relatively unknown married and unmarried women, something previously untried in Irish historiography. It demonstrates that women’s roles were more significant than has been assumed in the existing literature, and leads to a more rounded understanding of the entire class. Four chapters focus on themes which emerge from the sources used and which deal with their roles both inside and outside the home. These chapters argue that: Married and unmarried women were more closely bound to the priorities of their class than their sex, and prioritised male-centred values of family and estate. Male and female duties on the property overlapped, as marriage relationships were more equal than the legislation of the time would suggest. London was the cultural centre for this class. Due to close familial links with Britain (60% of sample daughters married English men) their self-perception was British or English, as well as Irish. With the self-confidence of their class, these women enjoyed cultural and political activities and movements outside the home (sport, travel, fashion, art, writing, philanthropy, (anti-)suffrage, and politics). Far from being pawns in arranged marriages, women were deeply conscious of their marriage decisions and chose socially, financially and personally compatible husbands; they also looked for sexual satisfaction. Childbirth sometimes caused lasting health problems, but pregnancy did not confine wealthy women to an invalid state. In opposition to the stereotypical distant aristocratic mother, these women breastfed their children, and were involved mothers. However, motherhood was not permitted to impinge on the more pressing role of wife

Between the worlds: otherworld women as intermediaries in early Irish literature

This thesis examines the ways in which Otherworldly women acted as intermediaries between the Otherworld and mortal world in early Irish literature. First it establishes the position of women in early Ireland so that appropriate comparisons can be made between mortal and Otherworld women throughout the thesis. Also, it defines what is meant by the ‘Otherworld’ and its relevence to the early Irish. It then goes on to discuss the differing goals of various intermediaries in early Irish texts, and in what manner they interact with mortals. It briefly looks at how Otherworld male intermediaries are treated differently in the literature, and why early authors might have used women in these roles as often as they did.

The examination of the traditional femininity and women’s lives in ancient China

This thesis explores the evolution of the concept of traditional Chinese femininity in relation to women’s lives in ancient China (221 BCE – A.D.1840). It proposes that the traditional Chinese femininity had been trying to seek a balance between the permanent principles and contingency plans for the stability and development of the society, which caused women’s humiliation and freedom. In reality, politicians and thinkers in ancient China had been transforming the concept of femininity itself to make it more adaptable to the social conditions of that time. This may be discussed in terms of three aspects. Firstly, the traditional concept of Chinese human relationships, including the ethical order, always emphasised the influence of individual behaviour on others and the overall stability and linked development of family, society and nation. Thus, both men and women, must be placed within this interrelated, interacting and cooperating relationship. Secondly, the association of family and country created an overlap of family and public affairs, which, objectively, facilitated the movement of women from the inner to the public arena. Thirdly, the notions of political and ethical morality and of men’s virtues and women’s virtues were integrated because of the union of family and nation. Therefore, typically virtuous women could be a source of encouragement for men and, furthermore, men formulated their virtues in the public space by formulating women’s virtues in the private space. The shaping of the gender image and concept of women in ancient China reflected the country’s changing cultural and gender norms. Chinese femininity and lifestyles, like Chinese history, were a continuous presence in the society but were also constantly changing. Through this study, it could be noted that Chinese women were not hidden and that their subjectivity and the concepts motivating them were not merely devised by a male-dominated society and culture.

Literatur verstehen und inszenieren: Foreign language literature through drama, a research project

Based on the experience that today's students find it more difficult than students of previous decades to relate to literature and appreciate its high cultural value, this paper argues that too little is known about the actual teaching and learning processes which take place in literature courses and that, in order to ensure the survival of literary studies in German curricula, future research needs to elucidate for students, the wider public and, most importantly, educational policy makers, why the study of literature should continue to have an important place in modern language curricula. Contending that students' willingness to engage with literature will, in the future, depend to a great extent on the use of imaginative methodology on the part of the teacher, we give a detailed account of an action research project carried out at University College Cork from October to December 2002 which set out to explore the potential of a drama in education approach to the teaching and learning of foreign language literature. We give concrete examples of how this approach works in practice, situate our approach within the subject debate surrounding Drama and the Language Arts and evaluate in detail the learning processes which are typical of performance-based literature learning. Based on converging evidence from different data sources and overall very positive feedback from students, we conclude by recommending that modern language departments introduce courses which offer a hands-on experience of literature that is different from that encountered in lectures and teacher-directed seminars.

Medieval Irish vision literature: a genre study

This dissertation examines medieval literary accounts of visions of the afterlife with an origin or provenance in Ireland from the perspective of genre, analysing their structural and literary characteristics both synchronically and diachronically. To this end, I have developed a new typology of medieval vision literature. I address the question in what manner the internationally attested genre of vision literature is adapted and developed in an Irish literary milieu. I explore this central research question through an interrogation of the typological unity of the key texts, both in formal arrangement and in the eschatological themes they express. My analysis of the structure and rhetoric of these narratives reveals the primary role of identity strategies, question-and-answer patterns and exhortation for their narrative cohesion and didactic function. In addition, I was able to make a formal distinction at text-level between the adaptation of the genre as an autonomous unit and the adaptation of thematic motifs as topoi. This further enabled me to nuance the distribution of characteristic features in the genre. My analysis of the spatial and temporal aspects of the eschatological journey confirms a preoccupation with personal eschatology. It reveals a close connection between the development of the aspects of graded access and trial in the genre and a growing awareness of an interim state of the soul after death. Finally, my dissertation provides new editions, translations and analyses of primary sources. My research breaks new ground in the hitherto underexplored area of genre adaptation in Ireland. In addition, it contributes significantly to our understanding of the nature of vision literature both in an Irish and a European context, and to our knowledge of the transmission of eschatological thought in the Latin West. Discusses the visions of: Laisrén, Fursa, Adomnán, Lóchán, Tnugdal, Owein and Visio Sancti Pauli Redactions VI and XI.