Transitions : experiences of women with type 1 diabetes : Turning points and transitions as experienced by young women with type 1 diabetes in Australia

The relationship among psychosocial stress, coping and metabolic control has a key effect on diabetes clinical outcomes and mental health. Life transitions are peak times of major change within personal and social contexts, which add stress affecting on peoples? problem solving. The thesis describes young women with Type 1 diabetes? perspectives of the problems encountered and how they managed them when they faced turning points and made life transitions. The study identified the women?s health concerns and factors that enhanced or hindered their ability to manage turning points and transitions. A substantive theory that comprised a problem of ?being in the grip of blood glucose levels? (BGLs) and a process termed ?creating stability? to manage life transitions was developed. The state of being in the grip of BGLs was associated with the impact of fluctuating BGLs; responses of other people to the womens? diabetes and the impact of diabetes on other people?s lives. The women managed these problems by engaging in social and psychological strategies helping them to stabilised their lives and feel more in control during life transitions.

Turning points and transitions : experiences of young women with Type 1 diabetes

This research explores young women with Type 1 diabetes' perspectives of the problems and how they manage them when facing turning points and making life transitions. The study presents a substantive theory of how the women tried to minimise the grip of blood glucose levels felt during transitions by creating stability in their lives.

Physical activity correlates in young women with depressive symptoms : a qualitative study

Background
Young women are at high risk for developing depression and participation in physical activity may prevent or treat the disorder. However, the influences on physical activity behaviors of young women with depression are not well understood. The aim of this study was to gather in-depth information about the correlates of physical activity among young women with and without depressive symptoms.

Methods
A sample of 40 young women (aged 18-30 years), 20 with depressive symptoms (assessed using the CES-D 10) and 20 without depressive symptoms participated in one-on-one semi-structured interviews. A social-ecological framework was used, focusing on the individual, social and physical environmental influences on physical activity. Thematic analyses were performed on transcribed interview data.

Results
The results indicated several key themes that were unique to women with depressive symptoms. These women more often described negative physical activity experiences during their youth, more barriers to physical activity, participating in more spontaneous than planned activity, lower self-efficacy for physical activity and being influenced by their friends' and family's inactivity.

Conclusions
Interventions designed to promote physical activity in this important target group should consider strategies to reduce/overcome early life negative experiences, engage support from family and friends and plan for activity in advance.

The association between physical activity and depression among young women

Young women experiencing depressive symptoms were shown to have different constraints to being active compared to young women without depressive symptoms, such as lower motivation and lower confidence in their ability to be active. Physical activity promotion initiatives may benefit from individually-tailored, multi-component programs rather than a 'one-fits-all', single-arm approach

Exploring girl power : gender, literacy and the textual practices of young women attending an elite school

Popular discourses concerning the relationship between gender and academic literacies have suggested that boys are lacking in particular, school-based literacy competencies compared with girls. Such discourses construct “gender” according to a binary framework and they obscure the way in which literacy and textual practices operate as a site in which gendered identities are constituted and negotiated by young people in multiple sites including schooling, which academic inquiry has often emphasized. In this paper I consider the school-based textual practices of young women attending an elite school, in order to explore how these practices construct “femininities”. Feminist education researchers have shown how young women negotiate discourses of feminine passivity and heterosexuality through their reading and writing practices. Yet discourses of girlhood and femininity have undergone important transformations in times of ‘girl power’ in which young women are increasingly constructed as successful, autonomous and sexually agentic. Thus young women’s reading and writing practices may well operate as a space in which new discourses around girlhood and femininity are constituted. Throughout the paper, I utilize the notion of “performativity”, understood through the work of Judith Butler, to show how textual practices variously inscribe and negotiate discourses of gender. Thus the importance of textual work in inscribing and challenging notions of gender is asserted. I argue that critical literacy is just as important, but perhaps no more guaranteed, within elite girls’ education as it is within boys’ education.

Complicating hetero-femininities : young women, sexualities and girl power at school

This paper is concerned with expanding knowledge of how femininity/sexuality intersections are constituted in secondary schools. Existing studies have drawn upon Judith Butler’s notion of a ‘heterosexual matrix’ in order to understand how intersections of femininity/sexuality are produced in schools through normative discourses of heterosexuality and gender. Drawing on ‘after-queer’ theoretical resources from within cultural studies that focus on the deployment of notions of sexuality within constructions of intelligible citizenship, I explore how the femininity/sexuality intersection within secondary schools might be complicated, when the significance of discourses of ‘girl power’, linked with successful neoliberal citizenship, is considered. I analyse young women’s discussions of key ‘girl power’ icons in popular culture, generated through fieldwork in an elite girls’ school in Australia. Throughout the analysis I explore how understanding intersections of femininity/sexuality in secondary schools requires an analytical framework that can attend to both familiar notions of heterosexuality and gender – and their ongoing currency – as well as how notions of sexuality are mobilized in the production of successful neoliberal girl citizens. I propose that this analytical approach is useful in terms of avoiding the reinscription of sexuality identity categories in education research.

Raunch culture goes to school? : young women, normative femininities and elite education

Public concern about popular culture’s sexualisation of women and girls is regularly voiced in the Australian media. Young women grow up against a backdrop of ‘raunch culture’ (Levy, 2005), which for some scholars represents a ‘new’ femininity (Gill, 2007), in which ‘hyper-sexual’ forms of (hetero)sexual expression are now expected of young women and girls, despite ostensibly being about choice and personal empowerment. In this article, I explore the constructions of girlhood and femininity amongst young women attending an elite, single-sex, private school in Melbourne, Australia. Elite schooling for girls is often associated with highly classed notions of (hetero)sexual modesty and propriety, epitomised in the reality television program Ladette to Lady. Here I consider how hyper-sexualities are configured within students’ constructions of themselves and others, and I explore their relationship to classed expectations of identity for privileged girls. I examine the role that classed norms of identity play in mediating these girls’ negotiations of hyper-sexualities.

Assessment of first sexual intercourse in young women with a history of childhood sexual abuse

Women reporting childhood sexual abuse (CSA) that involved actual or attempted penetration may not identify this as their first sexual intercourse. Data were drawn from a population-based, prospective cohort study spanning adolescence to adulthood. CSA prior to age 16 and age of first sexual intercourse with a male were assessed retrospectively. More than half of women reporting CSA in the form of actual or penetrative abuse reported an age of first sexual intercourse at or beyond 16 years. Direct questioning about CSA is needed to accurately ascertain sexual history.

Individual, social, and physical environmental correlates of physical activity among young women at risk of depression

Background : A number of factors have been identified as important correlates of physical activity (PA) among young women. Young women at risk of depression have a greater likelihood of being physically inactive and it is unknown whether correlates differ for women at risk and not at risk of depression.

Methods : A sample of 451 women aged 18-35 years self-reported leisure-time PA, enjoyment of and self-efficacy for walking and vigorous PA, barriers, social support, access to sporting/leisure facilities and access to sporting equipment in the home. Depression risk was assessed using the General Health Questionnaire (cut point ≥5). Logistic regression analyses examined differences in PA correlates among women at risk and not at risk of depression.

Results : Self-efficacy for vigorous PA was statistically different between groups in predicting odds for meeting PA recommendations but odds ratios were similar across groups. No other significant interactions between correlates and depressive symptoms were identified.

Conclusions : The findings suggest few differences in the individual, social and physical environmental correlates of PA among young women who are and are not at risk of depression. Further research is needed to confirm the existence of any PA correlates specific to this high-risk target group.