The geographical distance between home and workplace is present and increases within modern society. Along with changing economic structures and technological developments it has increased the spatial division of labour and changed the pressure on global, regional and local markets. Regional development strategies today emphasize on more mobile, flexible and larger geographical labour markets to improve matchmaking between jobs and labour force to reach and obtain development. Commuting has therefore increased and is often promoted as a positive solution for involved individuals and the regional society at large. Although, the notion and benefits of such regional development strategies have been questioned as commuting involves a consideration between economic and social circumstances and effects on all involved household members. The social and economic effects on commuting households in Umeå enlarged local labour market region have therefore been studied in and investigated in this thesis. Empirical data has been collected through qualitative interviews with four commuting households with different home-work locations and commuting situations. Results of this study goes in line with previous studies and pictures how commuting is a strategy to obtain or maintain desired living conditions within desired location when the local labour opportunities are limited. Commuting households therefore gain “quality of life” and labour opportunities. But, the economic benefits are reduced by transport costs and reduction of labour hours, and the social consequences of reduced time in the home environment effects relations between family members and the division of household responsibilities’. This study have also broaden the understanding of commuting effects and showed that shorter commuting distance also hold social and economic implications for commuting households.

This thesis examines how food advertisers contributed to the cultural identity of the "good mother" in the 1990s and 2000s. It expands on previous research that investigated traditional gender ideologies in food advertisements by narrowing in on the specific stories presented to African American women. It highlights a time when advertisers were responding to the demands of African American activists to recognize the African American consumer, and depict African American characters in a positive light. A narrative method of inquiry is utilized to deconstruct the stories in 117 food advertisements running in Essence magazine (an African American targeted women's magazine) in the 1990s and 2000s. Analyses suggest that the most frequent narrative in both decades was the story of the "good mother." Food advertisers primarily constructed this story with characters of mothers, fathers, and their children in the 1990s, and children alone in the 2000s. Other characters that recurred less frequently were the "good woman," "expert advisors," and "activists and innovators." Yet, these characters made minimal appearances compared to those in the "good mother" category. This study suggests that in the 1990s and 2000s food advertisers were portraying African American characters in a positive manner, but that these positive portrayals reinforced hegemonic ideologies about family life that ignored the experiences of mothers living outside of heteronormative nuclear families.

The proposed study will investigate how individuals of different acculturation types vary in their levels of acculturative stress and marianismo. First-generation Brazilian immigrant females will complete a demographic questionnaire, as well as measures of acculturation, marianismo, and acculturative stress. Two 1-way ANOVA analyses and one 1-way ANCOVA analysis will be conducted in order to explore the relationship between these variables. It is proposed that Brazilian immigrant women’s levels of acculturative stress and marianismo will vary by acculturation type. It is further proposed that measuring adherance to traditional gender roles as varying by acculturation type rather than level will yield a more nuanced understanding of this relationship by not confounding integrated and marginalized individuals. Implications and limitations of the study’s potential findings will be discussed. Lastly, a program evaluation perspective will be presented to further explicate the implications of the current study for mental health outcomes and the provision of mental health services to Brazilian immigrant women. / text

Syftet med uppsatsen Hur pedagogernas beröring av barn kan påverka barnens könsroller - en studie om beteendemönster på fritidshemmet är att undersöka om det finns en skillnad på hur de observerade pedagogerna i min undersökning rör vid flickor och pojkar. Resultatet av undersökningen är att de observerade pedagogerna gav flickorna dubbelt så mycket positiv beröring, samtidigt som de gav pojkarna tretton gånger så mycket negativ beröring. Sett till tidigare forskning i området betyder det att pedagogerna bemöter flickor och pojkar olika utefter kön och riskerar att vara medskapare till att befästa stereotypa könsroller. Jag har i uppsatsen använt mig av metoden observation och analyserar dessa observationer med ett socialkonstruktivistiskt och genusteoretiskt synsätt. / The purpose of the bachelor thesis How the pedagogues way of touching children may affect the childrens' gender roles - a study about behavioural patterns in the recreational center of school, is to examine if there is a difference in how the observed pedagogues in my study touch girls and boys. The result of the survey is that the observed pedagogues gave the girls twice as much positive touch, while giving the the boys thirteen times as much negative touch. Considering previous research in the area this means that the pedagogues meet girls and boys differently and run the risk of assisting in establishing gender role stereotypes. I have in my bachelor thesis used the method of observation and analyze these observations with a social constructivist and gender theoretical approach.

This dissertation focuses on the economics of household water access in developing countries. The first paper explores whether improvements in water technology enable changes in household time allocation and, thereby, productivity gains. To do so, it exploits differences in timing of shared water tap construction across Kyrgyz villages. Households in villages that received the drinking water infrastructure are more likely to have water close to their homes. This reduced the time intensity of home production activities impacted by water. Village-level incidence of acute intestinal infections fell amongst children. Although adults show no signs of health improvements, they do benefit from reductions in the time spent caring for sick children. Individuals reallocate time savings to additional leisure and market labor, primarily work on the household farm, and the returns to the additional farm labor approximately equal the hourly farm wage. Time intensive water collection can be a source of gender inequality in households lacking water infrastructure. The second paper uses a natural experiment to investigate culture as a source of gender inequality and its role in determining gender roles for activities, such as water collection. Using exogenous variation in district-level cultural composition due to events in Kyrgyzstan during Soviet rule, I estimate the persistence of differences in gender equality between traditional sedentary farming cultures and nomadic herding cultures. Results indicate that Soviet institutions increased educational attainment in both cultures. Other cultural differences - such as gender of household water collector and perceptions of domestic violence - persist. One impediment to the construction of water infrastructure is insecure land tenure or property rights. The third paper explores whether alleviating this impediment through a program providing land titles in rural Peru is associated with improvements in water access. Utilizing the phased in timing, I exploit the differences in project implementation timing between households that held property titles prior to the project and those that did not. Results indicate that land titling is associated with increases in water access. Supporting evidence suggests that either the government or a utility might be responsible for the improvements.

Abstract Is there a special discourse surrounding female politicians in Sweden? And if so, what is the current climate for female political leaders? The purpose of this article is to examine the portrayal in the public media of Anna Kinberg Batra, Ebba Busch Thor and Annie Lööf. The common denominator is that they are all heads of a political party, Anna Kinberg Batra being the chairwoman of the Moderate Party, Ebba Busch Thor being the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Party and Annie Lööf chairwoman of the Central Liberal Party. The article includes mainly printed news from the midst of 2014 to may 2015. The chosen and applied method for this article is a discourse analysis. The article portrays the fact that female political party leaders in Sweden face a different situation than their male counterparts. Media knowingly or unknowingly chooses to focus on many attributes regarding the female politicians that are not in any way relevant for their profession such as outfits, nails and daycare, to name a few. This article has resulted in the conclusion that inequalities regarding a fair portrayal in media between the two sexes, still persist and that women active in political societies still have different expectations to live up to than their male counterparts.

This study examines the mutually constitutive relationship between the print culture of the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the framework of social, cultural and political transformations in which that culture operated. This study crosses traditional disciplinary lines between literary studies and intellectual history by arguing for the modification of one of the central premises of modernization theory: the existence of an overtly masculine political public sphere standing in contrast to a supposedly nonpolitical feminine domestic and private sphere. By examining newspapers, magazines, journals, and novels, which reflected the emergence of communities of readers, I show that the print culture became central to the mediation and diffusion of themes in public discourse; and furthermore, I show that it diminished the separation between the public and private spheres as it penetrated into the domestic space and was used to insert issues from the private sphere into the public domain. Arguing that Ottoman intellectuals saw the novel as an instrument to disseminate their political, social, and cultural agendas, I examine Henüz On Yedi Yaşında (Only Seventeen Years Old; 1882) by Ahmet Mithat Efendi, focusing on how gender, ethnicity, and sexuality in early Turkish novels were imagined and represented. Based on my research in Ottoman and Turkish archives between 2004 and 2006, I show how women’s journals ensured the visibility of Ottoman women as writers in the public sphere. Women’s journals established a real intellectual community of women writers and readers who between them overtly introduced a feminist agenda into the public sphere. As part of my project of recovering the cultural work women's novels did within the political arena of nineteenth century Ottoman society, I also discuss the forgotten life and works Fatma Aliye Hanım, one of the first Ottoman woman novelists, analyzing two of her novels, Muhâdarât (1891-92) and Refet (1897). Finally, I explore the reasons why several Ottoman women writers were forgotten after the establishment of the Turkish Republic and why they are not included in the Turkish literary canon today. / text

This thesis examines how teachers in physical education work with gender and gender roles in two religious schools in Stockholm. My main research questions were how the teachers relate to gender roles, if they think of gender when planning the lessons and do the boys or the girls get more attention from the teacher, if so, how do they get it? This study is based on interviews and observations, which makes it a qualitative study. The P. E. teachers in my study work in two religious schools. Two of them work at a Muslim school where segregated education exists, which means that boys and girls don’t have physical education classes together. The third teacher works at a Christian school that has co-education. The main theory in my study is that gender is socially created by humans. Masculinity and femininity are created when people are in integration with each other. The conclusions in my study are that the teachers relate to gender roles in different ways. All teachers find it difficult to work with gender in an active way, which means that this is something that’s not given priority during the lesson. By my analysis, I have also found that teachers to some extent follow the curriculum requirements for overcoming gender roles, but the lack of awareness from the teachers can actually lead to the reinforcement of gender roles. All the teachers in my study would like to have some form of training or practical exercises that they can improve their skills in becoming more aware of working with gender. The teachers therefore share awareness that they could be better. I can also say from my empirical evidence that teachers in my study did not prioritize gender in their planning of the lesson. During my observations in the Muslim school I found it a bit difficult to see whether the girls or the boys got more attention from the teacher. I noticed, however, that girls more often received more praise from both teachers B and C, than boys did in teacher A and C’s lessons. I felt, however, in teacher C’s lessons in the Christian school, girls received more praise from the teacher and more attention by the way he spoke to them.

Failed Feminism?: Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel Tehanu The purpose of this essay is to show that Ursula K. LeGuin’s fantasy novel Tehanu instead of breaking away from traditional gender roles maintains them, despite the novel’s promises of change. I begin by showing the places where the possibilities of change are indicated, and then I use feminist criticism to show that there is no change in the gender roles. I have examined the gender roles in Tehanu, by taking a closer look at the characters and the roles they have in the plot. Numerous critics claim that this novel is Le Guin’s attempt to revise her earlier, more traditional fantasy novels in the Earthsea trilogy, and that Tehanu works as a feminist reaction to the Earthsea trilogy. However, even though Le Guin makes the traditional patriarchal gender roles apparent to the unaware reader, the protagonists have internalised the patriarchal values of their society when the novel closes, which may be fairly disappointing to the reader who brings feminist awareness to the reading of novel. The women are depicted as caregivers, and the men are portrayed as the decision-makers. The gender roles are as traditional as they can be with Ged as the man who is capable to read the wizard’s books, with Tehanu who stays with her family and does not leave with the dragons, and with Tenar as the woman who takes care of the household.

The picture book is the children's first contact with the world of literature. The aim of our study is to look at how children and adults are portrayed in the picture book, from a gender perspective. Our aim is to critically examine how girls and boys, men and women are presented when it comes to both characteristics and appearance. Our research also focuses on how the text and images complete each other and we conduct a qualitative text and image analysis. We use Nikolajevas (2000) analytical model for picture books and previous research that already exists within the subject. In our paper we have clarified the concepts related to gender: gender, gender roles, gender equality and the picture book. We have also emphasized and described which gender patterns are found in each book. In order to obtain our results, we have examined three picture books that were published during the 2000s. Based on the analysis, we discovered that there are still stereotypical roles in the books. This also counts for the environment, clothes and accessories of the characters in the books. In all three books, however, we could also see some gender awareness and the willingness to question clear gender patterns.