Author Phyllis Chesler speaks at Women and Health conference

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Tatyana Mamonova holding her underground unpublished book on Russian Women and feminism

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Maya Angelou and Coretta Scott King at International Women's Year conference in Houston

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Writer Susan Sontag speaks at conference on older women in NYC

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Disruptive Threads and Renegade Yarns: Domestic Textile Making in Selected Women's Writing 1811-1925

Images of domestic textiles (items made at home for consumption within the household) and textile making form an important subtext to women’s writing, both during and after industrialization. Through a close reading of five novels from the period 1811-1925, this thesis will assert that a detailed understanding of textile work and its place in women’s daily lives is critical to a deeper understanding of social, sexual and political issues from a woman’s perspective. The first chapter will explore the history of the relationship between women and domestic textile making, and the changes wrought to the latter by the Industrial Revolution. The second chapter will examine the role of embroidery in the construction of “appropriate” feminine gentility in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814). The third chapter, on Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1853), will explore how the older female body became a repository for anxieties about class mobility and female power at the beginning of the Victorian era. The fourth chapter will compare Sara Jeannette Duncan’s A Social Departure (1890) and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) to consider how later Victorian women both internalized and refuted public narratives of domestic textile making in a quest for “self-ownership.” The last chapter, on Martha Ostenso’s Wild Geese (1925), examines the corrosive, yet ultimately redemptive, relationships of a family of women trapped by abuse and degradation. For all five authors, images of textiles and textile making allow them to speak to issues that were usually only discussed within a community of women: sexuality, desire, aging, marriage, and motherhood. In all five works, textile making “talks back” to the power structures that marginalize women, and lends insight into the material and emotional circumstances of women’s lives.

A Space of One's Own: Women's Magazine Consumption Within Family Life

This is a study of women's magazine consumption in the home. It explores issues of time and space, and addresses the importance the women who took part in the study place on magazine consumption in their lives, given the 'juggling' lifestyles experiences by most of them. The study reveals family life to be a landscape within which these women carve out what they perceive as valuable and rare time and space for themselves. The authors argue that in contemporary life women's magazines play a key part in the quest for me-time and time away from others, in both a tangible and experiential sense.

Exploring the Shopping Imaginary: The Dreamworld of Women's Magazines

This paper focuses on the consumer imagination and, more specifically, on the imaginary shopping spaces which women's magazines create. It addresses the anticipatory, imaginary and experiential consumption which this medium invites. The paper explores how women's magazines function as ‘dreamworlds’ of shopping; and how contemporary readers consume these imaginary shopping spaces. In order to illustrate what the authors term the ‘shopping imaginary’, they draw on findings from a study of women's experiential consumption of magazines, which show the multifaceted ways around which imaginary consumption is explored and enjoyed by women. The study suggests that women's magazines, like department stores, are spaces that facilitate and celebrate just looking and browsing, and, above all, they are shopping spaces that address the power of the imagination within them. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Women, Drug use and Imprisonment. Intersectional Approach

Research on women prisoners and drug use is scarce in our context and needs theoretical tools to understand their life paths. In this article, I introduce an intersectional perspective on the experiences of women in prison, with particular focus on drug use. To illustrate this, I draw on the life story of one of the women interviewed in prison, in order to explore the axes of inequality in the lives of women in prison. These are usually presented as accumulated and articulated in complex and diverse ways. The theoretical tool of intersectionality allows us to gain an understanding of the phenomenon of women prisoners who have used drugs. This includes both the structural constraints in which they were embedded and the decisions they made, considering the circumstances of disadvantage in which they were immersed. This is a perspective which has already been intuitively present since the dawn of feminist criminology in the English-speaking world and can now be developed further due to new contributions in this field of gender studies.

Noble States Managed by Women. Doña Teresa de Saavedra y Zúñiga, Countess of Villalonso: an Aristocrat during Philip II and Philip III’s Reign

This work intends to analyze the letters exchanged between doña Teresa de Saavedra y Zúñiga, countess of Villalonso, and Bartolomé de Cartagena, a merchant who lived in Seville. Those letters are a very detailed account of their financial relationship during two decades; but they also give us important information about the countess’ life. In her letters the countess discussed her domestic familial life but also made reference to her social position at Court, so we can reconstruct the strategies used by doña Teresa in order to accomplish all her objectives and the ways she used to present these goals to the others.

Latina Super-heroines: Hot Tamales in Tights vs. Women Warriors, Wrestlers and Guerrilla Fighters of La Raza

The year 1977 saw the making of the first Latino superhero by a Latino artist. From the 1980s onwards it is also possible to find Latina super-heroines, whose number and complexity has kept increasing ever since. Yet, the representations of spandexed Latinas are still few. For that reason, the goal of this paper is, firstly, to gather a great number of Latina super-heroines and, secondly, to analyze the role that they have played in the history of American literature and art. More specifically, it aims at comparing the spandexed Latinas created by non-Latino/a artists and mainstream comic enterprises with the Latina super-heroines devised by Latino/a artists. The conclusion is that whereas the former tend to conceive heroines within the constraints of the logic of Girl Power, the latter choose to imbue their works with a more daring political content and to align their heroines with the ideologies of Feminism and Postcolonialism.

Experiences of women in secure care who have been prescribed clozapine for borderline personality disorder

Background: Clozapine is an atypical antipsychotic medicine which can cause significant side-effects. It is often prescribed off-license in severe cases of borderline personality disorder contrary to national treatment guidelines. Little is known about the experiences of those who take clozapine for borderline personality disorder. We explored the lived-experience of women in secure inpatient care who were prescribed clozapine for borderline personality disorder. Findings: Adult females (N=20) participated in audio-taped semi-structured interviews. Transcripts were subject to thematic analysis. The central themes related to evaluation, wellbeing, understanding and self-management; for many, their subjective wellbeing on clozapine was preferred to prior levels of functioning and symptomatology, sometimes profoundly so. The negative and potentially adverse effects of clozapine were explained as regrettable but relatively unimportant. Conclusions: When psychological interventions are, at least initially, ineffective then clozapine treatment is likely to be evaluated positively by a group of women with borderline personality disorder in secure care despite the potential disadvantages.

MEN WRITING WOMEN: “THE WOMAN QUESTION” AND MALE DISCOURSE OF IRANIAN MODERNITY"

In this dissertation I explore “The Woman Question” in the discourse of Iranian male authors. A pro-modernity group, they placed women’s issues at the heart of their discourse. This dissertation follows the trajectory of the representation of “The Woman Question” as it is reflected in the male discourse over the course of a century. It discusses the production of a literature that was anchored in the idea of reform and concerned itself with issues pertaining to women. These men challenged lifelong patriarchal notions such as veiling, polygamy, gender segregation, and arranged marriages, as well as traditional roles of women and gender relations. This study is defined under the rubrics of “The Woman Question” and “The New Woman,” which I have borrowed from the Victorian and Edwardian debates of similar issues as they provide clearer delineations. Drawing upon debates on sexuality, and gender, this dissertation illustrates the way these men championed women was both progressive and regressive. This study argues that the desire for women’s liberation was couched in male ideology of gender relations. It further illustrates that the advancement of “The Woman Question,” due to its continuous and yet gradual shifting concurrent with each author’s nuanced perception of women’s issues, went through discernible stages that I refer to as observation, causation, remedy, and confusion. The analytical framework for this project is anchored in the “why” and the “how” of the Iranian male authors’ writings on women in addition to “what” was written. This dissertation examines four narrative texts—two in prose and two in poetry—entitled: “Lankaran’s Vizier,” “The Black Shroud,” “‘Arefnameh,” and “Fetneh” written respectively by Akhundzadeh, ‘Eshqi, Iraj Mirza, and Dashti. Chapter one outlines the historical background, methodology, theoretical framework, and literature review. The following chapters examine, the advocacy for companionate marriage and romantic love, women and nationalistic cause, veiling and unveiling, and the emerging figure of the New Iranian Woman as morally depraved.

Exploring fertility decisions among pregnant HIVpositive women on antiretroviral therapy at a health centre in Balaka, Malawi: A descriptive qualitative

Background The proportions of women of reproductive age living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vary between different regions of the world, with significantly higher proportions in sub-Saharan Africa. Family planning is one of the major issues that couples and families affected with HIV must confront. We aimed to assess the cultural and social factors associated with childbearing and family planning knowledge, decisionmaking, and practices among HIV-positive pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at a health centre in Balaka, Malawi. Methods This was a qualitative descriptive study carried out at Kalembo Health Centre in Balaka. A purposive sampling technique was used to select pregnant women enroled in the antiretroviral therapy (ART) programme. A sample size of thirty-five women was decided upon after data saturation. Qualitative inquiry was used during data collection. Data were analysed using systematic text condensation, while numbers and percentages were generated using Microsoft Excel. Results Out of 35 participants, 20 were aged between 25 and 34 years, and 18 had been married at least three times. All 35 women wished to have their own biological child. Factors, reported by participants, that promote childbearing included: the desire to please their husbands, fear of losing their husbands to others if they did not bear children, the knowledge that ART would help prevent their children from acquiring the virus, the desire to prove to others that they can also bear children, and a lack of family planning leading to unplanned pregnancies. Conclusions The factors that lead to pregnancies among women on ART in Balaka ranged from assured safety of the child from HIV, lack of contraception, to other factors related to their partners. The authors recognize and support the freedom for women to become pregnant and bear children, and, in the context of HIV infection, fertility and reproductive services should include a comprehensive approach towards addressing issues of HIV and AIDS and childbearing among infected women.

Pelvic floor muscle training versus no treatment, or inactive control treatments, for urinary incontinence in women : a short version Cochrane systematic review with meta-analysis

Background Pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) is a commonly used physical therapy for women with urinary incontinence (UI). Objectives To determine the effects of PFMT for women with UI in comparison to no treatment, placebo or other inactive control treatments. Search Methods Cochrane Incontinence Group Specialized Register, (searched 15 April 2013). Selection Criteria Randomized or quasi-randomized trials in women with stress, urgency or mixed UI (based on symptoms, signs, or urodynamics). Data Collection and Analysis At least two independent review authors carried out trial screening, selection, risk of bias assessment and data abstraction. Trials were subgrouped by UI diagnosis. The quality of evidence was assessed by adopting the (GRADE) approach. Results Twenty-one trials (1281 women) were included; 18 trials (1051 women) contributed data to the meta-analysis. In women with stress UI, there was high quality evidence that PFMT is associated with cure (RR 8.38; 95% CI 3.68 to 19.07) and moderate quality evidence of cure or improvement (RR 17.33; 95% CI 4.31 to 69.64). In women with any type of UI, there was also moderate quality evidence that PFMT is associated with cure (RR 5.5; 95% CI 2.87–10.52), or cure and improvement (RR 2.39; 95% CI 1.64–3.47). Conclusions The addition of seven new trials did not change the essential findings of the earlier version of this review. In this iteration, using the GRADE quality criteria strengthened the recommendations for PFMT and a wider range of secondary outcomes (also generally in favor of PFMT) were reported.

Disruptive Threads and Renegade Yarns: Domestic Textile Making in Selected Women's Writing 1811-1925

Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2016-08-03 13:57:45.102