Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Difficult women'
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Holler, Barbara Eva. "A difficult set of circumstances? : lone mothers and social exclusion in Woodland View." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2014. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/48642/.
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This thesis explores how poor, single mothers on benefits experienced discourses of welfare and social exclusion within the context of New Labour's policy measures. This research is based on thirty-six months ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2011 on a housing estate in the South of England among single mothers on benefits. The researcher studied how New Labour social policy initiatives had an impact on their lives. This study argues that while social exclusion and its flexibility constituted a tool to explore multi-dimensional aspects of poverty, the same term had come to entail a much more narrow focus under New Labour. The effects of such a shift in terms of providing services to mothers on benefits provided the framework through which the participants viewed dominant discourses on welfare and social exclusion. In doing so this thesis exposes the contestations and tensions that permeate much of these discourses. In interviews and discussions carried out during the fieldwork, many women located described the official political discourse as an external phenomenon with which they strategically engage, while also internalising it and accepting it as an accurate representation of social reality. On the other hand, most participants critically engaged with the dominant discourse and almost all traversed a tightrope of moral evaluation. This study argues that the importance of placing the experiences of single mothers on benefits in the context of welfare reform measures cannot be overestimated because it offers an understanding of how different social groups experience new social policies. It also suggests the possibility to evaluate the the deeper societal struggles and it constitutes an opportunity to reform existing economic, political and social structures. This thesis shows that the tendency to morally condemn poor and unemployed citizens has been part of social policy landscape in the United Kingdom for a very long time. These include ongoing changes to the welfare system, focusing on key elements such as penalising the unemployed and privatising public services.
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Warren, Ruth M. "Different personas and difficult diplomas : a qualitative study of employed mothers pursuing graduate degrees." Virtual Press, 2004. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1285414.
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The purpose of this study was to discover how employed mothers who were graduate students coped with their many societal personas and still achieved their academic goals. Eight employed mothers who were graduate students were interviewed. Narrative inquiry guided the structure of the study. Phenomenological interviewing was used to gather evidence. A preinterview, a life history interview, a contemporary experience interview, and a reflective interview were conducted with each participant. All interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. Profiles for each participant were created using thematic analysis and were member checked to ensure accuracy.Themes identified through the literature review were verified through thematic analysis of the transcripts. The themes identified were strength, persistence, time, self-improvement, and gender bias. The basis for the participants' strength and persistence were the life-altering events and achievements they had encountered. The participants self-identified as "survivors." To fulfill their responsibilities they were adept multitaskers and used extensive support networks. Participants pursued their graduate degrees for better employment as well as self-fulfillment. Internalized gender bias was a significant contributor to each woman's feelings of guilt. Guilt was attributed to the societal expectations imposed through being a mother, an employee, and a student. Significant tension in the form of guilt occurred between participants' perception of the role of mother as nurturing and the role of the student as empowering. Each participant managed her guilt by realizing the "self as able." The participants came to appreciate "I am good at what I do," and achieved merged identities.Global, institutional, and individual implications came from this study. In order for U. S. society to compete on a global level, more women must be educated to compete for leadership roles. Societal stereotypes made earning a graduate degree difficult for the women in this study. Institutions of higher education and those who make policies within those institutions must realize that the majority of graduate students at the master's degree level, and those in education at the doctoral level, do not fit the traditional graduate student stereotype. Women, especially, experience role conflict. The tensions participants experienced were real. Institutions of higher learning must address such issues as childcare, time to degree completion, and course accommodation if they wish to attract and retain high-level graduate women. Overall, this study found that employed mothers who are graduate students do experience significant tension and in spite of many barriers, do succeed.Department of Educational Studies
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Teter, Rebecca E. "Knowing God as Father case studies of women of faith who overcame difficult relationships with human fathers /." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2003. http://www.tren.com.
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Smith, Judith A. "The role and experience of women chief executives in the NHS in England: gendered stories of leadership in difficult times." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.645964.
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Bibars, Iman Mohamed Diaa El Din. "Women in difficult circumstances : an assessment of the impact of social policy and welfare programmes on female heads of households in low-income urban Egypt." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.287158.
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Karlsson, Linda. "”It was easy to write about whores, but to write about a good woman was much more difficult” : En queer läsning av Charles Bukowskis Women och Love is a Dog from hell." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kultur och lärande, 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-26248.
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A Queer Reading of Charles Bukowskiʼs Women and Love is a dog from hell This thesis aims to examine how the representation of gender is portrayed in relation to sex and power in Charles Bukowski’s novel Women and poetry collection Love is a dog from hell. The theoretical frame of the analysis is based on Judith Butlerʼs queer theory regarding the heterosexual matrix and gender performativity. The analysis consists of a textual comparison where a specific selection of poems is analysed parallel to the novel to see how they interact and how they oppose each other, through a queer reading. The analysis is divided in three parts where the first one discusses the construction of masculinity in Charles Bukowskiʼs protagonist Henry Chinaski and how this is presented differently in the two literary genres. The second part reveals how sex is presented in relation to power and how active and passive women are considered as sexually acceptable. The final part of the analysis discusses how women are portrayed in the novel and in the poetry. Further it demonstrates the consequences for women who do not act as expected in relation to their gender roles. In addition to this, the thesis investigates how the poetry functions as a tool to apply depth to the characters in the novel. It also points out how the sexual relationships work as a way of maintaining the masculine superiority over women. The repetitive way in which the protagonist fails to fulfil his sexual performance points towards an image of Chinaski as queer, something that previous scholarship has failed to notice. In conclusion, this essay shows how a queer reading can work as an instrument to read a text that is generally interpreted as heteronormative, macho and misogynistic. The queer reading in the thesis demonstrates a different interpretation of predetermined gender roles in two of Bukowski’s literary works.
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Ng, Hoi-nga. "The meaning of sexual intercourse : personal accounts of Hong Kong Chinese married women who have experienced difficulty in vaginal penetrative sex /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2010. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B44136389.
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Adams, Joanne. "Therapists' constructions of practice in relation to women experiencing orgasm difficulty : a Foucauldian discourse analysis." Thesis, University of East London, 2016. http://roar.uel.ac.uk/5393/.
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The aim of this thesis is to explore how clinicians construct their practice with women experiencing difficulty with orgasm, by adopting a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA). In the first part, a critical review of the literature is presented, which illustrates the socio-historical constructions of female orgasm in relation to three distinct temporal periods; classical, modern and contemporary. The discursive constructions of orgasm within these epochs are considered in relation to research and treatment development. The thesis then presents the analysis which used semi-structured interviews to explore how six clinical psychologists and two psychosexual therapists make sense of the work they do with women experiencing difficulty with orgasm. The transcripts were analysed using a FDA. A critical realist social constructionist epistemological position was adopted in this research to facilitate the exploration of the constructed nature of orgasm, both at the local level of the text and the wider institutional level, to explore contextual and social factors and their implications for subjectivity. The analysis identified that clinicians construct their understanding of therapy with women experiencing difficulty with orgasm in three main ways. They constructed their practice in terms of pursuing expert knowledge to secure professional power. They constructed the women with whom they work as ‘problematic’ yet ‘untreatable’ in the context of dominant biomedical discourses. Finally, they constructed the broader service context as regulating the ways in which they are able to conceptualise and ‘treat’ this presentation, thus perpetuating a pathologising construction. This thesis recommends that clinicians should focus on interventions that promote a strength-based and systemic approach, which adopt a preventative stance towards addressing this phenomenon, involving social action and community development. Finally, supervision and reflective practice is recommended to increase awareness of the impact of social discourses on the subjectivity of the women who present for ‘treatment’.
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Nielsen, Anneli. "Ett liv i olika världar : Unga kvinnors berättelser om svåra livshändelser." Doctoral thesis, Umeå universitet, Barn- och ungdomspedagogik, specialpedagogik och vägledning (BUSV), 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-100603.
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Drawing upon data from a qualitative interview study on the life stories of young women, the aim of this study is to analyze young womens experiences of difficult life events. Special interest is directed to how cultural frameworks are reflected in young women’s stories about themselves and the family and school worlds they have lived in. During a period of almost four years, I conducted deep interviews with ten young women on two to four occasions. They were between the ages of sixteen and twenty at the time of the first interview and of different classes and local origins. The young women were recruited to the study through leaders of a youth detention home and of a girl group activity. Methodologically, the thesis is based in the general field of narrative research and more specifically in the field of feminist life story research. I employed a holistic and thematic content analysis inspired by hermeneutic interpretation and the mainly focus has been on what was told in the stories. The thesis is written in a context of feminist epistemology and from a critical perspective (cf. Harding, 1986, 2004). It includes, among other things, an assumption that there is a social, cultural and historically created imbalance of power between different groups in society (cf. Anderson, 2003). The theoretical concepts that form the basis of this part of the theoretical framework are social worlds (cf. Shibutani, 1955), exclusion (cf. Goffman, 1963; Young, 1990, 2000), belonging (cf. Molin, 2010; Spånberger Weitz, 2011), agency (cf. McNay, 2003, 2004), space of agency (cf. Eduards, 2002) and social positions (cf. Anderson, 2003). The young women´s stories about family gathered around experiences of parents’ separation, family violence, parental substance abuse and the separation from parents. Their stories of school life gathered mainly around experiences of being different and othered, and these experiences of otherness and alienation were closely linked to bullying, school difficulties and to a general unhappiness at school (cf. Andersson, 1995). In contemplation of life as a series of life events, the young womens stories highlight the importance of difficult life events and the impact they have had on their ability to live their lives. The results portray the importance of considering life as a series of moving events, instant and recurring, and of understanding the consequences of social structures on how life and its conditions change and are linked across borders, between different worlds and different times. In a consideration of the life events as variable, instantaneous and sometimes recurring and changing, every life event has to be viewed as new and important to pay attention to, both as an event in itself and also how this event spreads to other moments and contexts than the time and world in which it occurred. In the assumption of life as moving and of life events as essential elements in a changeable life course, available positions and spaces of agency are made visible in the young womens stories. The cultural frameworks of the good family, the real schoolgirl and an authentic I represent structuring principles for how the events are possible to understand and talk about for the young women. They can be considered as ideal images that both increase and limit their opportunities to make difficult life events and their own actions in relation to the events understandable. In this thesis, it becomes visible that, in order to understand young women’s experiences of difficult life events, we need to place experiences in a context where the different circumstances, such as social positions and local structures, are made visible, analyzed and reflected upon.
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Fox-Young, Stephanie. "Uncertainty and difficulty in women's decision making at menopause." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 1999.
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Gambling with health and well-being is not usually recommended. However, in the context of menopause, women's decisions are often more related to roulette than reasoned strategies. Currently available literature for general and medical or allied health audiences does not provide clear and unambiguous information on which women can rely to make menopause-related decisions. Three paradigms of menopause can be identified, each competing with the others not only in terms of their definition of menopause but also in their research methodologies and consequent findings. This competition between sources of information about menopause therefore contributes to the uncertainty that women experience when making decisions about menopause related
problems and issues. The effects of this diversity of paradigms of menopause on women's knowledge of menopause and their decision making practices and experiences were examined in three studies conducted in two phases. In the first phase, interviews were held with a representative sample of 381 midlife women. Their knowledge of menopause was found to be reasonable when compared to information commonly available at the time. Forty women who were drawn
from the initial sample then participated in focus groups and reported experiencing uncertainty arising from the information they had accessed about menopause.
In the second phase of the thesis, a model of menopause-related decision making in uncertainty was developed for testing which drew upon the findings of these two studies, and literature of decision making in uncertainty. This
model hypothesised that characteristics of the decision maker, including decision making and information seeking styles; inadequacies of the information; the complexity and difficulty of the decision; and the seriousness, urgency and severity of the problem or issue about which a decision was being made contributed to the level of uncertainty that women experienced. This uncertainty in turn was hypothesised to affect the woman's choice of decision strategy, her satisfaction with the decision and the time it would take her to resolve the matter.
The model of women's decision making in uncertainty was tested in the context of a menopause-related issue or problem in a third study, a self-report questionnaire completed by 166 women. The menopause-related problems and issues about which women were making decisions were varied, but Hormone Replacement Therapy was a common factor in a majority of cases. Women used a range of sources of information, and found them adequate overall, but decision making was reported to be difficult where conflict existed between sources of information and between the woman's and her sources' paradigms of menopause, or where there were inaccuracies or ambiguities in the sources she used. The severity of the problem and, to a lesser extent, the complexity of the decision were also influential factors in decision difficulty, as was the level of uncertainty experienced by the woman. While women were able to manage their uncertainty, it contributed to a sense of the decision being difficult, which in turn reduced their satisfaction with their decision. Although many women used purposeful strategies that were designed to improve their situation or solve their problem, for some, the focus became a search for certainty. Nevertheless, women's satisfaction with their decision regarding appropriate action for menopause-related problems or issues was
dependent on the perceived difficulty of the decision rather than on uncertainty per se or on any characteristic of the problem, the decision maker, or the decision itself.
Past literature and research about the effects of uncertainty in decision making are challenged by the findings of this study. Rather than uncertainty being the core component in decision making in the context of inadequate or unreliable information, the self reported difficulty of the decision is a more critical factor for women engaged in making menopause-related decisions.
Moreover, decision making style, attitude to menopause, information source contact profile, and menopausal status are largely irrelevant in explaining women's behaviour in menopause-related decision making. Further research is necessary to clarify the interrelationships of knowledge, attitude, uncertainty, decision difficulty and satisfaction. In the meantime, however, health professionals should provide assistance with decision making for patients who are experiencing problems or considering options in any field where the evidence is controversial.
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Aaron, Charlene Sue. "The self-management of diabetes in older African American women caregivers of persons with dementia." Diss., University of Iowa, 2014. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1525.
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Henderson, Fiona A. L. "Difficult conversations on the frontline : managing the tensions between care and control : are communication skills enough?" Thesis, University of Essex, 2016. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/19066/.
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This professional doctorate in psychoanalytic psychotherapy considers the role of psychoanalytic thinking in contemporary child protection social work particularly in relation to communication with adult clients . The dual mandate of social workers to care and control creates conflict in the role which is well recognised. Less well understood is how such conflict affects communication between social workers and clients in subtle and often unconscious ways. This study uses psychoanalytically informed observations and interviews to investigate an area of defensiveness which may be evident in the ‘micro-process’ of conversations where difficult matters are being discussed. The study asks whether identifiable ‘moments of avoidance’ occur during these conversations at points of heightened tension between care and control. Results suggest that despite good communication skills, there is evidence of practitioner anxiety within the psychodynamic process of interviews; this can lead to transitory avoidance which can affect engagement and throw practitioners off course. These diversions are discussed with reference to Kleinian theories of enactment and projective identification with an emphasis on the internal pressures that initiate defensive manoeuvres of this kind. This is a timely and detailed study which illuminates the nuances of real practice and hopes to contribute to training initiatives for frontline, family social workers.
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Stewart, Beth. "Gender and the difficulty of decolonizing development in Africa in the late 1960s and early 1970s : a Canadian effort for partnership among women." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1555.
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In the 1960s, Irene Spry served as the Federated Women's Institutes of Canada (FWIC) representative to the Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW). In 1967 she accepted an offer to be the ACWW deputy president, a post that she held until the mid-1970s. During this time, the ACWW and its member societies engaged in international development efforts around the world. This was a critical moment in the history of international development. The Canadian movement for development was propelled by domestic and global politics, as well as a changing society that embraced a sense of global citizenship. Arising out of this context and armoured with her own socialist politics, Spry carefully navigated the development efforts of the ACWW. These efforts straddled grassroots ideals and mainstream pressures from the United Nations (UN). As a women's Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), the ACWW was part of the initial force behind the global shift in the approach to development referred to as Women in Development (WID).
Contemporary research, however, suggests that WID has not succeeded in addressing the concerns of women in "developing" countries. As a case study, this paper examines some of the historical roots of WID and identifies the historical continuities that persist in today's development discourse. Analyzing Spry's documents from the Library and Archives Canada through the lens of feminist postcolonial theory reveals the dominance of Eurocentric ideologies within the development practices of the ACWW. The impetus to reach out to help people in developing countries became socially and politically part of the Canadian identity and, as Spry's navigation through the discourses of the international agencies and ACWW members reveal, such sentiments of international benevolence were inherently neo-colonial. In much the same way that Himani Bannerji suggests that subjects are "invented," women involved in this movement intersected discourses of modernity and "race" with essentializing notions of gender, which contributed to a standardized practice of development. This case study ultimately demonstrates that good intentions were not enough to decolonize western women's efforts to "develop" parts of Africa in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
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Baker, Joanne Lesley. "The politics of choice : difficult freedoms for young women in late modernity /." 2005. http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/12.
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Baker, Joanne. "The politics of choice: difficult freedoms for young women in late modernity." Thesis, 2005. https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/12/1/01front.pdf.
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This thesis reports on a study of young women’s experiences, aspirations and relationship to
feminism in the contemporary socio-political context. It brings a feminist analysis to new
social theories about late modernity by exploring the particular relationship that young
women have to the social and psychological processes that are associated with this
reconfigured climate and the prevailing ideology of neo-liberalism.
A feminist theoretical framework informs all features of the research. It underpins the
justification and context for the area of inquiry, the choice of methodology, the use of
methods and the analytical lens for the interpretation of literature and data. The research
employs a qualitative methodology. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews
with fifty five young women aged between eighteen and twenty five. The participants all
resided in the Townsville/Thuringowa area and represented diversity in terms of race, class,
sexuality, parenting status and education.
The growing influence of neo-liberalism and its dovetailing with feminism has ushered in the
concept of a modernised, assertive and liberated femininity which celebrates the democratic
opening up of choices and unprecedented options for girls and women, particularly in the
areas of education and employment. The findings presented in this thesis identify that being
female in these conditions is not to experience a simple and unproblematic expansion of
choice or liberation from previous constraint, rather that they entail ‘difficult freedoms’.
Whilst the vast majority of participants report the benefits of these changes and a belief in
meritocracy, their experiences and opportunities are strongly mediated by race, class and
educational experience, and significantly complicated by primary responsibility for parenting
and domestic work. The research found the continuation of many material barriers and
circumscriptions in the areas of education, occupational preference, mothering and
domesticity and a high incidence of male violence in intimate relationships and family
backgrounds. Inequalities that are generated socially are overwhelmingly understood by
young women through a ‘politics of choice’. A punitive interpretive framework of
individualism is strongly endorsed and this is reflected in their assessment of feminism. This
study identifies subjective adjustments to this epistemological leaning which include
techniques of discounting or distancing themselves from negative interpretations of their own
disadvantage or adversity and the relational consequences of resentment and a chilling of
empathy towards others in hardship.
The thesis concludes that young women are located in a changed context of power. The
hegemonic operation of neo-liberalism allows subordination to occur covertly within a
framework of ostensible commitment to equality, the valorisation of choice and through
seductive incitements to individual responsibility and self-management. Liberating processes
which are supposed to be freeing for women are actually involved in re-inscribing their
subordinate status. The research contributes to contemporary feminist theory and activism
and to social policy and welfare practice by restating the relevance of structural perspectives
and signalling the necessity of incorporating knowledge of the epistemological and subjective
dispositions outlined in this research.
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Stanton, Barbara Kay. "Difficult decisions: Factors involved in the process of women leaving an abusive relationship." 2002. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI3068594.
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It is estimated that anywhere from 600,000 to 3 million women are abused by intimate partners and former partners in the United States every year. The emotional and physical effects of this violence can be devastating. While services to assist women are enhanced, the abuse has increased over the past twenty years. Approximately 50% to 68% will return to their abusive partners after attempting to leave. Several studies have examined the reasons women stay in abusive relationships, but relatively few have focused on the process women go through in an effort to leave their abusers permanently. This study obtained interview data from ten women who left their abusive relationships and nine women who remain with abusive partners. Using qualitative analysis, seven themes emerged from the research. Those themes included (1) all the women had hope the relationship would work; (2) there was no set pattern in how the abuse occurred or when the women recognized that they were being abused; (3) other people knew about the abuse; (4) some women took steps to end the abuse while others did not and women who utilized existing systems had varied results; (5) support from family, friends, and professionals is important for a permanent ending; (6) there is no commonality in the reason or event that caused or would cause a woman to leave; and (7) the women experienced negative effects whether they left or stayed in the relationship. This information can assist professionals who work in the field of domestic violence to enhance their understanding of what women are experiencing in an effort to achieve safety and provide further areas of research.
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Powell, Katherine Copsinis. "Developmental challenges and barriers: How senior executive women cope with difficult situations in their careers." 1998. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9909206.
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In large American corporations, even though women comprise almost 50% of the workforce and over 30% of management, less than 5% of senior managers are reported to be women. Successful senior executive women have developed strategies, skills and leadership styles to overcome challenges and barriers throughout different phases of their careers. Many complex factors contribute to executive women achieving senior positions. Several corporate barriers have been reported which may prevent senior executive women from being promoted to even higher positions. This study explained internal barriers, including self-confidence or personality traits, and external barriers, including gender biases or the 'old boys' network'. The purpose of this study was to explore how senior executive women cope with diffcult situations, perceive challenges and overcome barriers and to identify some of the factors that facilitated their advancement to senior executive positions. A related purpose was to examine developmental career patterns or stages that may have evolved during senior executive women's careers and compare these stages with other reported career stages. This qualitative descriptive inquiry consisted of interviews with twelve senior executive women located on the east coast of the United States. They described their perceived experiences, skills, coping styles and self-concepts. The key findings in this study included: (1) the complex way senior executive women developed and maintained self-confidence as well as educational and professional support systems; (2) their approaches to meeting challenges and overcoming barriers within the corporate culture; and (3) the way they developed their dynamic and eclectic leadership styles and skills needed to cope with difficult situations. The participants in this study were action-oriented and took charge of their careers, gathering the required resources and education to achieve senior level positions. They navigated within the corporate environment, avoiding obstacles and confronting challenges or overcoming barriers within the corporate culture to succeed. The results of this study were discussed in terms of five major themes that contributed to senior executive women's advancement: (1) navigating within changing corporate environments; (2) evolving into flexible leaders who make a corporate impact; (3) developing learning strategies and support systems vital for success; (4) reframing corporate barriers into challenges, and, (5) overcoming gender bias in the corporate culture.
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Sivak, Katya. "Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Pregnant Women with Previous Difficult Postpartum Mood: A Mixed Methods Exploratory Study." Thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/4540.
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Postpartum Depression (PPD) affects approximately 15% of Canadian mothers. PPD can have negative and enduring consequences for women and their relationships with their partners and children. Women who have suffered from PPD are 50% more likely to experience depression following delivery of another child. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) was developed to prevent relapse in recurrent depression. MBCT has been reported to be effective in the treatment of both depression and anxiety among at risk samples from the general and clinical populations. It is not clear whether the approach is a safe and acceptable preventive option to deliver to pregnant women who are at risk for developing PPD. Objectives: The aim of my study was to explore the safety, acceptability, and effectiveness of MBCT for pregnant women who experienced difficult mood after a previous childbirth. Method: I used a mixed methods design and recruited 5 participants from the Victoria community. Participants were at least 18 years of age, native English speakers, pregnant and had experienced difficult mood for at least two consecutive weeks within the first year following the previous delivery of a healthy infant. All participants completed the slightly modified 8-week MBCT program. I administered self-report, quantitative measures at baseline (T1), before and immediately after each group, and postintervention (T2). I collected qualitative data as weekly field notes, through a semi-structured focus group one week following completion of the program, and as comments participants provided on the self-report WC-DM measure. Findings: Quantitative findings suggest program safety; speak to the acceptability of the program; and suggest that MBCT was effective in significantly decreasing anxiety symptomology, decreasing self-reported worry about difficult mood, and increasing wellbeing for pregnant women with a history of difficult postpartum mood. Field notes, focus group data, and comments participants provided on the self-report WC-DM measure contribute to and explain quantitative findings and support MBCT as a safe, acceptable, and effective approach for this population.Graduate
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katya@uvic.ca
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Price, Theresa Anne. "Don't take it personally women hotel front desk agents learn to negotiate difficult guests in a patriarchal industry /." 2008. http://purl.galileo.usg.edu/uga%5Fetd/price%5Ftheresa%5Fa%5F200812%5Fphd.
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Suarez, Eliana. "Surviving the Sasachacuy Tiempu [Difficult Times]: The Resilience of Quechua Women in the Aftermath of the Peruvian Armed Conflict." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1807/31951.
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Resilience and post trauma responses often coexist, however, for the past decades, the trauma paradigm has served as the dominant explanatory framework for human suffering in post-conflict environments, while the resilience of individuals and communities affected by mass violence has not been given equal prominence. Consequently, mental health interventions in post-conflict zones often fail to respond to local realities and are ill equipped to foster local strengths. Drawing primarily from trauma, feminist and structural violence theories, this study strengthens understanding of adult resilience to traumatic exposure by examining the resilience of Quechua women in the aftermath of the political violence in Peru (1980-2000), and their endurance of racially and gender-targeted violence.
The study uses a cross sectional survey to examine the resilience and posttraumatic responses of 151 Quechua women. Participants were recruited from an urban setting and three rural villages in Ayacucho, Peru. The study examines the associations between resilience, past exposure to violence, current life stress and post-trauma related symptoms as well as the individual and community factors associated with the resilience of Quechua women. In doing so, this study makes a unique contribution by simultaneously examining posttraumatic responses and resilience in a post-conflict society, an area with a dearth of research. Results indicate that resilience was not associated with overall posttraumatic stress related symptoms, but instead higher resilience was associated with lower level of avoidance symptoms and therefore with lesser likelihood of chronic symptoms. Findings also demonstrate that enhanced resilience was associated with women’s participation in civic associations, as well as being a returnee of mass displacement. Lower resilience was instead associated with lower levels of education, absence of income generated from a formal employment and the experience of sexual violence during the conflict. These results were triangulated with qualitative findings, which show that work, family, religion, and social participation are enhancing factors of resilience. The study highlights the courage and resilience of Quechua women despite persistent experiences of everyday violence. The importance to situate trauma and resilience within historical processes of oppression and social transformation as well as other implications for social work practice and research are discussed.
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Jager, Michelle Caroline. "Irrelevant bodies." Thesis, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/113391.
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Vol. 1 Irrelevant bodies : Novel -- v. 2 Violent, antagonistic, morally ambiguous: anti-heroines and the female gothic : ExegesisThis creative writing thesis comprises a creative work, the novel ‘Irrelevant Bodies’, and its accompanying exegesis ‘Violent, Antagonistic, Morally Ambiguous: Anti-heroines and the Female Gothic.’ Both the novel and the exegesis are concerned with female protagonists that challenge the traditional image of the Gothic heroine as either a passive, virtuous woman or an heroic figure by interrogating their use of violence, their callousness and morally ambiguous motivations. ‘Irrelevant Bodies’ is a Female Gothic novel that explores the impact of a traumatic event and its repercussions on the identity and behaviour of the protagonist, Vera. It is concerned with examining and disrupting narrative expectations connected with gender, traumatic victimisation and self-harm. Vera’s disturbed and disturbing ‘coming of age’ narrative is interwoven with the core or linear narrative on which the novel hinges, that of Vera and her partner Oswald’s holiday at the farmhouse of her childhood vacations. The sections depicting the past reveal that her early life has been punctuated by a personally experienced trauma and the loss of a friend through tragic circumstances. The novel explores the protagonist’s progression from victim to villain over the course of the narrative. The exegesis analyses specific works of Female Gothic fiction that centre on a morally ambiguous female anti-heroine: Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962); Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin (2003); and my own creative work, ‘Irrelevant Bodies’, an original novel in the Female Gothic subgenre. As one of the key tenets of the mode, the Gothic heroine has shared a long and fraught relationship with the genre. Whether the text is male- or female-centred, the expectation in conventional texts is that the narrative will, in some sense, revolve around her suffering. The Female Gothic has been identified as a subgenre and critical area of study that devotes itself to the trials, torments and anxieties of the Gothic heroine. As such, one of the main critical points raised in relation to these narratives is that the subgenre promotes ‘victim feminism’ and vilifies men particularly when narratives revolve around a blameless, victimised heroine being threatened by a villainous male figure. Alternatively, works such as Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya; or The Moor (1806) and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012) have been accused of being ‘more “misogynist” than feminist’ due to their villainous femme fatales (Davison, ‘Knickers in a Twist’ 34). Following on from Carol Margaret Davison’s contestation that the Female Gothic should be determined by ‘the sex of the protagonist’ and her reading of Zofloya; or The Moor as a work of Female Gothic (‘Knickers in a Twist’ 34), the exegesis engages in close readings of each of the novels interrogating the choices made, motivations, feelings or actions exhibited by the ‘heroine’ of the narrative. It argues that the protagonists in these texts are corruptions of the traditional Gothic heroine and her female foil, the femme fatale, unsettling boundaries between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, victim and villain, ‘us’ and ‘them’. Through a close reading of the morally ambiguous figure of the anti-heroine the exegesis interrogates the fluidity and tenuous nature of such classifications as hero and heroine, victim and villain, within the contextualising and shifting nature of power.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2018
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Cholant, Gonçalo Piolti. "Since Why is Difficult: The Representation of Violence and Trauma in African-American and Afro-Caribbean Literature by Women: Autobiography, Fiction, and Subjectivity in the Bildungsroman." Doctoral thesis, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10316/87533.
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Tese de Doutoramento em Línguas Modernas: Culturas, Literaturas, Tradução, no ramo de Culturas e Literaturas, apresentada ao Departamento de Línguas, Literaturas e Culturas da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de CoimbraThe present work deals with the representation of trauma and violence in coming-of-age stories written by African-American and Afro-Caribbean women authors in the United States. The kinds of violence explored in this work are related to the post-colonial condition the women protagonists experience, in which racism, sexism, classism, among other kinds of discrimination, are co-created in an intersectional experience of oppression. The titles analyzed in this work are: Lucy (1990), written by Jamaica Kincaid; Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), written by Edwidge Danticat; Bone Black – Memories of Girlhood (1996), written by bell hooks; and God Help the Child (2015), written by Toni Morrison. The Bildungsroman genre serves as the form with which the authors are able to display the different forms of violence experienced during the the process of growing up female and black in the United States, and also in the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Haiti, in the cases of Kincaid and Danticat respectively. The coming-of-age stories written by women, and more specifically by African-American and Afro-Caribbean women, tend to showcase narratives in which the tensions between the protagonists’ self-determination and the influence of social and cultural factors in their development opportunities are negotiated. The genre is adapted and subverted by the authors, deviating from its canonical European origins, becoming a site in which the authors are able to represent different kinds of violence, and the subsequent traumatic consequences caused by it. Through the perspective of the Sociology of Absences (Santos), the analisys focuses on bringing to the fore types of violence that have previously been made invisible by colonialism, as creative work may more clearly see beyond the abysmal line, serving as a form of analysing realities that are often not perceived in their entirety. Literature turns out to be a space of resistance, in which the representation of violence and trauma, to some extent, becomes possible, serving as a tool for the denounciation of violence and trauma, in addition to becoming a tool for the overcoming of trauma.
O presente trabalho lida com a representação do trauma e da violência em narrativas de formação escritas por autoras Afro-Americanas e Afro-Caribenhas nos Estados Unidos. Os tipos de violência explorados pelas neste trabalho estão relacionados com a condição pós-colonial vividas pelas protagonistas, na qual racismo, sexismo, classismo, dentre outras formas de discriminação são co-formadas em uma experiência interserccional de opressão. Os títulos analizados neste trabalho são: Lucy (1990), escrito por Jamaica Kincaid; Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), escrito por Edwidge Danticat; Bone Black – Memories of Girlhood (1996), escrito por bell hooks; e God Help the Child (2015), escrito por Toni Morrison. O gênero literário Bildungsroman serve como a forma com a qual as autoras são capazes de demonstrar as differentes formas de violência vividas pelas protagonistas durante o processo de crescimento como mulheres e negras nos Estados Unidos, e também nas ilhas Caribenhas de Antígua e Haiti, nos casos de Kincaid e de Danticat respectivamente. As narrativas de fomação escritas por mulheres, e mais especificamente por mulheres afro-americanas e afro-caribenhas, tendem a demonstrar percursos em que as tensões entre a autodeterminação das protagonistas e as influências sociais e culturais que incidem sobre as suas oportunidades de desenvolvimento são negociadas. O gênero literário em questão é adaptado e subvertido pelas autoras, desviando-se de sua forma canônica europeia, tornando-se um espaço em que as autoras são capazes de representar diferentes formas de violência e as subsequentes consequências traumáticas causadas pela mesma. Através da perspectiva da Sociologia das Ausências (Santos), a análise concentra-se em trazer para o primeiro plano tipos de violência que foram previamente construídos como invisívies pelo colonialismo, já que a escrita de cariz criativo é capaz de mais claramente ver além da linha abissal, servindo como uma forma de análise de realidades que frequentemente não são inteiramente percebidas. A literatura acaba por ser uma espaço de resistência, no qual a representação da violência e do trauma, até algum ponto, torna-se possível, servindo como ferramenta para a denúncia da violência e do trauma, além de tornar-se uma ferramenta no processo de superação do trauma.
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Lo, Hsin-Yi, and 羅欣怡. "To explore the difficulty, health need and expectation of future of women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia." Thesis, 2008. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/69942569686002811148.
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碩士國立陽明大學
臨床暨社區護理研究所
96
Aims. The aims of the study were to explore the disease related difficulties, health needs and expectation of health professionals during developmental process perceived by females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (FCAH). Methods. A retrospective and explorative qualitative method was employed. A purposive sample of 5 informants who were older than 15 years old (junior high school) with diagnosis of CAH was recruited from a leading medical center in the northern Taiwan. Results. The informants aged from 17 to 31 (mean + SD = 24.4 + 5.73) years old. Four informants reported as traditional Confucianism believers. All of them were employees; two informants did not complete senior high school education yet. The average body height is 153.8 cm; average body weight is 64.8 kg; and average body mass index is 26.22. All of them were single; one had a stable sexual partner. Three informants reported taking regular medication for CAH and enjoyed regular menstruation cycle. Four informants ever experienced an external genital organs surgery before. The informants reported six types of disease related difficulties during developmental process: (a) enduring life-long therapy (n = 5) including feeling tired with numerous health-seeking requirements (n = 5), lacking confidence in effectively managing contemporary therapy dilemma (n = 2), and receiving protocols with uncertain outcomes (n = 1); (b) negative therapy experiences (n = 5) including unpleasant outcomes of medication (n = 5), long-waiting time in the ambulatory department (n = 4), and threats to privacy (n = 1); (c) irregular medication therapy (n = 4) including and worries about irregular menstruation cycle (n = 3) and unpleasant sense of trials-and-errors ( n = 1); (d) having sense of worry about for life-long (n = 4) about necessity of taking life-long medication (n = 2), irregular menstruation cycle (n = 1), and threats to inheritants (n = 1); (e) abnormal changes in body’s appearance and function (n = 3); and (f) envies to healthy people (n = 2). The health needs of the informants were (a) establishing better supportive systems (n = 4), (b) learning to coexist with disease and treatment (n = 4), and (c) having more comprehensive picture of disease and treatment (n = 2). Their expectations for the future include (a) holding positive expectations for academic and employment developmental plans (n = 4), (b) establishing a stable and close intimate relationship with males (n = 1), and (c) establishing a good marriage and new family with males (n = 1). Finally, all the informants reported muscular characteristics, and three of them were unclear about their sex-identity. A conceptual framework was further developed to depict this phenomenon. Conclusions. Some suggestions were made for nurse clinicians and researchers: (a) inviting patients, families, health professionals and public to establish a formal and closer social support networks for this particular population; (b) helping establishing friendly e-learning systems for the patients and their families across their student and employment career in addition to help protect their privacy; (c) developing health profile for each of the patients; (d) encouraging collaboration of medical centers and schools to share the limited evidence based findings revealed in this and other projects; and (e) comparing disease related difficulties, health needs and expectations for social support perceived by CAH patients with different sex-identity.
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Yeh, Chia-Hao, and 葉家豪. "Suan Zao Ren Tang as an original treatment for sleep difficulty in climacteric women: a prospective clinical observation." Thesis, 2011. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/72006020897249914337.
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碩士國立陽明大學
傳統醫藥研究所
99
Little scientific evidence supports the efficacy of herbal medicines in the treatment of women with sleep difficulty during the climacteric period. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of Suan Zao Ren Tang (SZRT) in reducing the impact of sleep disturbance on climacteric women, as measured by Pittsburg sleep quality index (PSQI) and the World Health Organization quality of life (WHOQOL). Sixty-seven climacteric women with sleep difficulty intending to treat received SZRT at a rate of 4.0 g, thrice daily for four weeks (MRS < 16 ,n =34; MRS >= 16, n=33). After taking into account potential confounding factors, the mean PSQI total scores had fallen from 13.0 (±2.9) to 9.0 (±3.2) (95% confidence interval −4.93, −3.10). Further analyses showed that SZRT produced superior benefit of daytime dysfunction in women with severe menopausal symptoms (MRS >= 16). There were three of the withdrawals involved treatment-related adverse events (stomachache, diarrhea, and dizziness). Excluding women with a past history of stomachache, diarrhea, or dizziness, four weeks of therapy with SZRT appears to be a relatively safe and effective short-term therapeutic option in improving daytime function of climacteric women with poor sleep quality.
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Марусенко, Марія Романівна. "Соціально-педагогічний супровід жінок, які опинилися в складних життєвих обставинах." Магістерська робота, 2020. https://dspace.znu.edu.ua/jspui/handle/12345/1931.
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Марусенко М. Р. Соціально-педагогічний супровід жінок, які опинилися в складних життєвих обставинах : кваліфікаційна робота магістра спеціальності 231 "Соціальна робота: соціальна педагогіка" / наук. керівник Ю. Є. Зубцова. Запоріжжя : ЗНУ, 2020. 77 с.UA : Кваліфікаційна робота: 77 с., 73 джерел, 1 додаток. Об’єктом дослідження є соціально-педагогічний супровід. Предмет дослідження – технології соціально-педагогічного супровіду жінок, які опинились у складних життєвих обставинах. Метою дослідження є теоретичне обґрунтування технологій супровіду жінок, які опинились у складних життєвих обставинах. Методи дослідження: теоретичні – аналіз і синтез, систематизація, порівняння, узагальнення для з’ясування змісту базових понять дослідження, соціально-педагогічна сутність поняття, розробки технології формування сутності супровіду жінок, які опинились в складних життєвих обставинах; емпіричні – анкетування, бесіди, фокус-групи, соціально-педагогічний експеримент; спостереження; статистичні – кількісний та якісний аналіз результатів дослідження з метою узагальнення даних експериментальної роботи, методи математичної статистики, для порівняння й підтвердження емпіричних результатів. Теоретичне значення роботи полягає у узагальненому розумінні соціально-педагогічного супровіду жінок, які опинились в складних життєвих обставинах. Практичне значення роботи полягає у розробці технології формування супровіду жінок, які опинились у складних життєвих обставинах. Галузь використання: працівники закладу – Центр соціальних служб для сім’ї, дітей та молоді.
EN : Qualification work consists of an introduction, two parts, conclusions, a list of literature (73 items) and one application per page. The total volume of the work is 92 pages, 77 of them are the main text, starting with the introduction to the literature – 85 pages. Nowdays, women are surviving in the changing conditions of Ukrainian society. Often, women in modern times can only count on their strength. Unfortunately, the current opinion of the society about the superiority of the male sex over the female has long been rooted in stereotypes of people, so a woman must look for ways to solve her problems. The subject of the study is social and pedagogical support. The subject of the study is technologies of social and pedagogical support for women who find themselves in difficult life circumstances. The purpose of the study is to theoretically substantiate the technologies of escorting women who find themselves in difficult life circumstances. According to the purpose we have the following tasks: - to analyze the state of scientific development of the problem of social and pedagogical support of women who find themselves in difficult life circumstances; - to distinguish technologies of social and pedagogical support of women who find themselves in difficult life circumstances; - to investigate the legal regulation of the social protection system for women in Ukraine who find themselves in difficult circumstances; - to carry out a comparative analysis of the activities of specialized social services for work with women in Ukraine, who find themselves in difficult life circumstances and in other countries of the world; - to develop ways of improving the social and pedagogical support of women who find themselves in difficult life circumstances.