Exposure to children and risk of active trachoma in Tanzanian women

The authors surveyed the trachoma status of 515 women aged 18-60 years and 527 children aged 1-7 years in the trachoma hyperendemic region of Kongwa, Tanzania, in 1989 to further describe the importance of exposure to young children as a risk factor for active trachoma in women. The women were identified as caretakers, who currently cared for children aged 1-7 years; noncaretakers, who lived with, but did not care for, children aged 1-7; or those without children aged 1-7 in the household. The age-adjusted odds ratios for active trachoma seemed to rise with greater exposure to young children, from 1.00 for women without such children, to 1.63 for noncaretakers and 2.43 for caretakers (trend test, p = 0.08). Among those who lived in households with young children, the prevalence of active trachoma in women increased with the total number of young children cared for and with the number of infected children cared for. The prevalence of active trachoma was 40% (6 of 15) for caretakers of three or more infected children, compared with 0 (0 of 88) for caretakers with no infected children (p < 0.0001). Caring for infected children also appeared to be associated with signs of chronic trachoma in caretakers. Noncaretakers who lived with infected children were not at a significantly increased risk for trachoma compared with noncaretakers who were not exposed to such children (5.4% (three of 56) vs. 5.6% (one of 18); p > 0.4). None of the facial signs observed in the children (flies on the face, nasal discharge, etc.) appeared to increase the odds ratio of active trachoma in caretakers beyond the increase associated with trachoma alone in the child. These data support the hypothesis that active disease in women is associated with direct caretaking of young children with active disease. Strategies that interrupt household transmission may affect the binding sequelae of trachoma in women.

Women in the English Language Dictionary

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2012

Sexual and relationship intimacy among women with provoked vestibulodynia and their partners : associations with sexual satisfaction, sexual function, and pain self-efficacy

Introduction Provoked vestibulodynia (PVD) is the most frequent subtype of vulvodynia. Women report negative consequences of PVD on their sexual and romantic relationships. Researchers have recently highlighted the importance of examining interpersonal factors such as intimacy, and of including both women and their partners in study designs. Aim The aim of this study was to investigate sexual and relationship intimacy as defined by the Interpersonal Process Model of Intimacy and their associations with sexual satisfaction, sexual function, pain self-efficacy, and pain intensity among women with PVD and their partners. Methods Ninety-one heterosexual women (M age = 27.38, SD = 6.04) diagnosed with PVD and their partners (M age = 29.37, SD = 7.79) completed measures of sexual and relationship intimacy, sexual satisfaction, sexual function, pain self-efficacy, and pain intensity. Main Outcome Measures Dependent measures were the (i) Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction Scale; (ii) Female Sexual Function Index; (iii) Painful Intercourse Self-Efficacy Scale; and (iv) visual analog scale of pain intensity during intercourse. Results After controlling for women's age, women's greater sexual intimacy (β = 0.49, P < 0.001) was associated with women's greater sexual satisfaction and higher pain self-efficacy (β = 0.39, P = 0.001), beyond the effects of partners’ sexual intimacy. Also, women's greater sexual intimacy (β = 0.24, P = 0.05) and women's greater relationship intimacy (β = 0.54, P = 0.003) were associated with greater women's sexual function, beyond the effects of partners’ sexual and relationship intimacy. Conclusions Women's self-reported sexual and relationship intimacy in the couple relationship may promote higher sexual satisfaction, sexual function, and pain self-efficacy, as well as possibly foster greater sexual well-being among women with PVD. The authors discuss implications for the inclusion of emotional and interpersonal aspects of the couple's dynamic in clinical interventions and future research in PVD.

What is Abstinence? Definitions and Examples of Abstinence, to Prevent the Sexual Transmission of the HIV Virus, According to Spanish University Students

Research carried out in several Anglo-Saxon countries shows that many undergraduates identify oral sex and anal sex as examples of abstinent behaviour, while many others consider kissing and masturbation as examples of having sex. The objective of this research was to investigate whether a sample of Spanish students gave similar replies. Seven hundred and fifty undergraduates (92% aged under 26, 67.6% women) produced examples or definitions of the term ‘abstinence’. Spanish students made similar errors to those observed in the Anglo-Saxon samples, in that behaviours that were abstinent from a preventive point of view (masturbating and sex without penetration) were not considered as such, while a number of students reported oral sex as abstinent behaviour. The results suggest that the information on risky and preventive sexual behaviour should cease to use ambiguous or euphemistic expressions and use vocabulary that is clear and comprehensible to everyone

Women and writing c1340-c1650; the domestication of print culture

The transition from medieval manuscript to early printed book is currently a mmajor topic of academic interest, but has received little attention in relation to women's involvement. The essays in this volume both add female names to the list of those authors who created English Literature, and examine women's responses to older texts. Taking its cue from the advances made by recent work on manuscript culture and book history, this volume also includes studies of material evidence. These reveal women's participation in the making of books, and also the traces they left behind when handling individual volumes. Finally, studies of women's roles in relation to apparently ephemeral texts, such as letters, pamphlets and almanacs, challenge traditional divisions between public and private spheres and between manuscript and print.

L1 transfer in the acquisition of manner and path in Spanish by native speakers of English

In this article the authors argue that L1 transfer from English is not only important in the early stages of L2 acquisition of Spanish, but remains influential in later stages if there is not enough positive evidence for the learners to progress in their development (Lefebvre, White, & Jourdan, 2006). The findings are based on analyses of path and manner of movement in stories told by British students of Spanish (N = 68) of three different proficiency levels. Verbs that conflate motion and path, on the one hand, are mastered early, possibly because the existence of Latinate path verbs, such as enter and ascend in English, facilitate their early acquisition by British learners of Spanish. Contrary to the findings of Cadierno (2004) and Cadierno and Ruiz (2006), the encoding of manner, in particular in boundary crossing contexts, seems to pose enormous difficulties, even among students who had been abroad on a placement in a Spanish-speaking country prior to the data collection. An analysis of the frequency of manner verbs in Spanish corpora shows that one of the key reasons why students struggle with manner is that manner verbs are so infrequent in Spanish. The authors claim that scarce positive evidence in the language exposed to and little or no negative evidence are responsible for the long-lasting effect of transfer on the expression of manner.

Women, other "fresh” workers, and the new manufacturing workforce of interwar Britain

Structural, organizational, and technological changes in British industry during the interwar years led to a decline in skilled and physically demanding work, while there was a dramatic expansion in unskilled and semiskilled employment. Previous authors have noted that the new un/semiskilled jobs were generally filled by “fresh” workers recruited from outside the core manufacturing workforce, though there is considerable disagreement regarding the composition of this new workforce. This paper examines labour recruitment patterns and strategies using national data and case studies of eight rapidly expanding industrial centres. The new industrial workforce is shown to have been recruited from a “reserve army” of workers with the common features of relative cheapness, flexibility, and weak unionization. These included women, juveniles, local workers in poorly paid nonindustrial sectors, such as agriculture, and (where these other categories were in short supply) relatively young long-distance internal migrants from declining industrial areas.

English-Spanish bilingual learners of Portuguese as a third language: non-redundant acquisition and its typological nature

This chapter has two goals: (a) to discuss the Spanish-Portuguese interface in current formal language acquisition research and (b) to highlight the contributions of this language pairing in the emerging field of formal third language acquisition. The authors discuss two L3 acquisition studies (Montrul, Dias, & Santos, 2011; Giancaspro, Halloran, & Iverson, in press) examining Differential Object Marking, a morphological case marker present in Spanish but not in Portuguese, arguing that the results show how data from Spanish-English bilinguals learning Brazilian Portuguese as an L3 illuminate the deterministic role of structural and typological similarity in linguistic transfer. The data provide supportive evidence for only one of three existing L3 transfer models: the Typological Proximity Model (Rothman, 2010, 2011, 2013).

Water, women, waste, wisdom and wealth: harvesting the confluences and opportunities

This special volume offers a collection of papers that examine challenges and solutions where water meets complex, intersections with women, waste, wisdom or wealth. This unique array of articles offer readers of the Journal of Cleaner Production multidisciplinary views of water issues involving physical and structural perspectives, as well as political, social, cultural and increasingly serious environmental challenges. By building upon extensive literature reviews along with data collected through empirical study and real world observations, the authors effectively present valuable insights into the depth and nature of many of the problems but also present a well-developed array of recommendations, based upon successful projects and programs, world-wide. Among the recommendations are proposals for policies, approaches and regulations that provide system enhancements to prevent pollution and contamination and ideas to monitor and regulate water consumption. This international collection includes studies from 15 countries, documented and written by an equal number of female and male authors.

Psychological correlates of perception of sexual intent in women

In a sample of 183 men and 186 women, the authors assessed (a) the relative contributions of gender and level of nonverbal social cues to the perception of a female actor's sexual intent during a videotaped social interaction with a man and (b) the association between those variables and personality traits implicated in faulty sexual-information processing. The authors assessed those variables while the participants viewed 1 of 3 film segments depicting a female-male interaction. The authors experimentally manipulated eye contact, touch, physical proximity, and female clothing. At all levels of those nonverbal cues, the men perceived more sexual intent in the female actor than did the women. The perception of the female actor's sexual intent increased as the nonverbal cues in the film segments were magnified: Both actors displayed more eye contact, touch, and physical proximity, and the female actor wore more revealing clothing. Relative to the women, the men demonstrated greater sexual preoccupation and reduced sociosexual effectiveness, variables associated with inferring greater sexual intent in the female actor.

Take four pioneering poly women : a review of three classical texts on polyamory

This article reviews three classics of polyamory, Anapol's Love Without Limits: The Quest for Sustainable Intimate Relationships; Easton and Liszt's The Ethical Slut; and Nearing's Loving More: The Polyfidelity Primer. The reviewer defines the authors as pioneering poly women who have mapped the territory for authentic alternatives to compulsory monogamy in realistic yet visionary ways.

Socio-economic inequalities in women`s fruit and vegetable intakes: a multilevel study of individual, social and environmental mediators

Objective: This study employed a multilevel design to test the contribution of individual, social and environmental factors to mediating socio-economic status (SES) inequalities in fruit and vegetable consumption among women. Design: A cross-sectional survey was linked with objective environmental data. Setting: A community sample involving 45 neighbourhoods. Subjects: In total, 1347 women from 45 neighbourhoods provided survey data on their SES (highest education level), nutrition knowledge, health considerations related to food purchasing, and social support for healthy eating. These data were linked with objective environmental data on the density of supermarkets and fruit and vegetable outlets in local neighbourhoods. Results: Multilevel modelling showed that individual and social factors partly mediated, but did not completely explain, SES variations in fruit and vegetable consumption. Store density did not mediate the relationship of SES with fruit or vegetable consumption. Conclusions: Nutrition promotion interventions should focus on enhancing nutrition knowledge and health considerations underlying food purchasing in order to promote healthy eating, particularly among those who are socio-economically disadvantaged. Further investigation is required to identify additional potential mediators of SES–diet relationships, particularly at the environmental level.

Quality of care for women presenting with benign breast conditions

The aim of the study was to investigate the management of women with benign breast problems. A consecutive sample of women (n = 194) was assessed who presented to public or private sector providers. The main reasons for referral were breast lumps (62%); 56% of women who attended the public sector did not receive any recommendation compared to 40% who attended the private sector and clinical/general practitioner reviews were recommended to more women in the private sector (54%). Reasons for the discrepancy between public and private patients require further investigation. (Intern Med J 2005; 35: 357–358)

Towards ending the silence: working women as carers of children with chronic illness/disability

This research presents stories from Australian women who work and care for a child with a significant chronic illness or disability. The paper considers the theory of Silencing the Self (Jack, 1991) in relation to the reported experiences and behaviours of these women. We report three themes of Caring and Working: "Otherness", "Doing it All" - but "Wanting to Live a Normal Life". As in Jack's study, these women engaged in silencing of the self. However, we also observed other people contributing to their silence and, unlike the respondents in Jack's study, many of these women fought the silence and did not accept that their unhappy situations should continue. They sought a life where silencing may not have been necessary.