Communication between politicians and the public is rarely direct and first-hand, but almost always mediated by journalist opinions and values. Consequently, the way in which the media reports on State matters has a profound impact on people’s understanding of political processes and their attitudes towards the governing figures. The aim of this research project is to investigate the role that the Polish Press assumes in mediating women’s involvement in contemporary politics. Stemming from the perspective of feminist critical linguistics, the thesis empirically examines a wide array of media publications derived from leading Polish socio-political magazines (‘Polityka’, ‘Wprost’, ‘Newsweek Polska’) and electronic press. By engaging with the journalist discourse, it focuses on the importance of language in generating epistemological claims about women and femininity. It demonstrates not only how female subjectivities are produced in the Polish public domain, but also how history and culture impinge on these constructions in a dialectical-relational manner. The intention is to draw up an ‘inventory’ of signifying practices through which female MPs emerge as gendered subjects in the hope that this will inspire closer scrutiny of media content, leading to its informed critique and transformation.

Volume 1, the research component, includes a literature review examining the efficacy of interventions for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in relation to parent outcomes; an empirical paper, which presents findings of a quantitative study exploring parental illness perceptions, coping, wellbeing, parenting stress and parent perceptions of the child-parent relationship in parents of a child with pathological demand avoidance syndrome (PDA) and a public dissemination document. Volume 2, the clinical component, includes: a report detailing two psychological formulations; one from a cognitive behavioural perspective and one from a systemic perspective, for a 20 year old gentleman who was experiencing anxiety and depression, following removal of part of his bowel; a service evaluation report detailing an investigation of the extent to which a local respiratory service was addressing the psychological needs of COPD patients; a single case experimental design presenting an evaluation of a behavioural intervention for a 25 year old woman with a moderate learning disability, who presented with skin picking behaviours; a case study of a fourteen year old girl, who was under investigation for Crohn's disease and experienced anxiety and an abstract, reflecting on providing consultation within a looked after and adopted child's psychology service.

New technology is increasingly part of children’s lives. While a growing body of literature has explored various aspects of nursery-aged children’s exposure to ICT, children are seldom asked about their experiences. With this in mind, this study sought to explore children’s perceptions of their experiences of ICT. This exploration was underpinned by current trends in the new sociology of childhood studies and the principles of United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child, both of which aim at giving a greater status to children’s voice. The thesis reports on a series of ethnographic case studies of three privately run nurseries in the West Midlands, England. It involved fieldwork observations, field notes, and discussions with 65 children aged three and four years old. In carrying out conversations with children, the study made use of some participatory techniques (e.g., photography and drawing). Adopting a friendly adult role, I participated with the children in their daily activities collecting information about their ideas and thoughts with regards to their experiences with new technology. Related ethical issues were discussed, and negotiated in the field. Using their own words, the study captured children’s own perspectives on their encounters with whatever technologies were available in the nurseries. The findings showed that the children tended to perceive their ICT-based activities as play under certain circumstances. Significantly, they were more likely to view these activities as play when they owned their play, felt it was fair, had fun, and felt it accorded with their gendered identities. Conversely, when the children did not have influence on the activity, they often perceived it as boring and unfair. In addition, there was a tension between a preference to conduct their play with a friend(s) and a desire for personal ownership of the experiences. Recommendations for pedagogical practice, policy and future research are suggested.

This thesis considers some of the different forms taken by the intersection of social inequalities and exploitation in Sri Lankan garment factories. It identifies the organisational policies and practices that reproduce different ‘inequality regimes’ (Acker, 2006) in three case study garment companies, including inequalities of gender, class, ethnicity, religion, age and sexuality. These ‘inequality regimes’ also operate as ‘factory regimes’ (Burawoy, 1983), through which companies seek to generate worker productivity. Further, the thesis analyses the relation between women’s domestic situations and their employment, showing how both are shaped by the wider Sri Lankan patriarchal social structure. In order to understand the inequalities experienced by women at work the thesis mainly seeks to answer two research questions. The first research question asks about the nature of intersecting inequalities in the three case study organisations. The second research question relates to how women going to work in garment factories changes women’s lives. This research question pays special attention to Elson and Pearson’s (1981) three possible tendencies in the relationship between the emergence of women’s factory employment and women’s subordination. Methodologically, the research was based on semi-structured interviews with 36 male and female participants, including owners, managers and workers across three case study organisations, and observations in headquarters offices and three factories over nine months in 2014-2015. The research found that although all three case study organisations are located in the Sri Lankan garment industry, each case study organisation is typified by a highly distinctive inequality regime characterised by different mechanisms for maintaining or modifying wider inequalities and generating workers’ consent: one a ‘despotic regime’, one a ‘maternalistic regime’ and one a ‘pragmatic regime’. Each of these is associated with a degree of individual worker agency, but little collective resistance. The research also found that women’s decisions to enter employment is influenced by the income level of their husbands or fathers. When household income is low women are more able to challenge familial patriarchal authority by taking up employment in garment factories. Women’s contributions to household finances are associated with their families gaining status, women being involved in family decision-making and men contributing to domestic work.

This thesis traces how feminist subjectivities are shaped, formed and lived through a focus on English schoolteachers from postwar (1945-1979) and neoliberal (1980-2015) generations. The data is located in British society at a time of resurgence in feminist activism which is also simultaneously a period of ‘postfeminist sensibilities’ combined with the pervasiveness of neoliberal rationalities. In this contradictory scenario, and using a feminist approach and qualitative methods, this research is based on fifteen life story interviews that include five further in depth thematic interviews which have been thematically analysed. The core arguments of this thesis are located in a feminist poststructuralist framework. This approach highlights the fluidity of selfhood shaped by experiences, relationality and language. Subjectivity within poststructuralism is understood as neither completely free nor absolutely determined and power relations are not only limiting but also become productive in forming the subjectivities. Accordingly, this thesis explores how feminist subjectivities are constructed and shaped in multiple ways. In particular, the feminist schoolteachers in this thesis narrated the emergence of early forms of ‘protofeminism’ located in an unarticulated sense of injustice. They spoke of the influence of ‘significant women’ and the bonds of ‘imagined sisterhood’ as enabling a more fully developed awareness of gender injustice. They also talked of their practices to support gender justice, mostly non oppositional in form or as micro resistances to patriarchal practices. All these, I argue, are experiential resources for these women to draw upon in order to enable them to form alternative and counter narratives to patriarchal discourses, and thus construct feminist subjectivities and live feminist lives to resist patriarchal regimes in neoliberal times.

With the increase in the number of women working in the formal economy, there has been a growing literature on women handling multiple roles arising from work and the home. Currently there is a gap in the literature about the activities of working mothers in emerging economies, with theories and most findings concentrated on studies in advanced economies. This study therefore intends to fill part of the gap in the literature by investigating the lives of working mothers in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria, with a view of understanding their challenges, pains and gains as they navigate between the home and work spheres. This research adopted a qualitative approach through the administration of semi-structured interviews to working mothers, supervisors and Human Resources practitioners. Using the Greenhaus and Beutell’s (1985) sources of conflict model, this study explored the work and family lives of working mothers in Nigeria, thereby giving a detailed view of the time, strain and behaviour-based conflict they experience, as well as appropriate coping strategies that have been put in place to mitigate the effects of such conflicts. Findings complement earlier studies on work and family in Africa focusing on the experience of strain by working mothers in Nigeria. However, analysis from this study suggests that some of these stress-related conflicts were caused by the prevalent work culture of presenteeism. In comparing evidence of a more equal sharing of domestic tasks between couples in advanced economies, the embrace of equal sharing of housework by men and a demand for such by women in Nigeria is rather limited and slow. A striking difference on the strategies employed by working mothers in the west and in Nigeria is that what working mothers in Nigeria lose by way of government support, they gain in the form of family support.

A diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a World Health Organisation (WHO) grade IV brain tumour, is devastating for patients and their families who bear the impetus of caregiving. GBM caregivers act as de facto health professionals when their loved ones are discharged prematurely from hospitals. Faced with complex healthcare needs, GBM caregivers report the highest psychological burden, and highest unmet needs of all cancer caregivers. Despite this, they rarely accessed rehabilitation services. Researchers hardly engaged with their stories. The current research on GBM caregiving is predominantly from a biomedical perspective, not only offering limited understandings of psychosocial experiences, but also, evidencing the need for caregiver stories in caregiving research. The researcher recruited 7 bereaved caregivers, who had previously narrated stories online about caring for their loved ones diagnosed with GBM and; consented to the use of their stories as research data. These stories covered a period of between 1-3+ years, throughout the illness trajectory and post-bereavement. The researcher further conducted email interviews focussed on the retrospective perspectives of sharing stories online. Participants provided feedback on the preliminary findings of the DNA. The findings consisted of multiple layers of interpretations drawn from social constructionism, narrative and feminist relational theories, beginning with subjective stories, collective story typologies and core narratives, thereby illuminating the relationships between GBM caregivers, the stories they narrated and the event of narrating stories online. An additional layer of interpretation served to shed light on the relational, dialogical, performative and hindsight perspectives of storytelling and the storytelling landscape. This research decentres the dominance of biomedicine in caregiving research to present a perspective from GBM caregivers using their own stories, in their own voices, so as to inform counselling psychology research and practice.

There are two million single parents in the UK, more than nine out of ten of whom are mothers. Despite greater family fluidity and diversity, lone mothers remain materially disadvantaged and subject to derogatory stereotyping. Media representations, public policy and existing research have tended to focus on young mothers or lone mothers in deprived areas. This study therefore responds to a gap in knowledge by taking a comparative approach in investigating subjective experiences of stigma among lone mothers in a more diverse range of circumstances. This thesis documents qualitative research involving 26 lone mothers in two locations in the North of England, which have contrasting socio-economic profiles. It considers the relative significance of agential and structural factors, particularly social class, in their subjective perceptions of, and responses to, stigma. Theoretically, this study draws on feminist critiques of normative family and citizenship models, a critical realist perspective on agency/structure interplay and a feminist Bourdieusian approach to class analysis. These theoretical influences are brought together in a bespoke conceptual framework that seeks to explore stigmatisation of lone motherhood in terms of women's subjective mediation of gendered and classed de-legitimation. This thesis thus introduces the notion of 'subjective social legitimacy' (SSL) as an analytical tool. Importantly, SSL aims to examine women's accounts in a holistic way that recognises degrees of stigma, rather than assuming or reinforcing stigma. Analysis of data from semi-structured interviews revealed the principal factors affecting women's SSL to be: their age; their personal relationship history; whether they were employed or on benefits; reproductive norms in their local area; their level of extended family support; and social connections with people in the 'same situation'. Some women were positioned more favourably than others to mitigate stigma through their access to cultural, economic and social capital. The women's accounts demonstrate agential behaviour in negotiating stigma as well as responding to practical challenges. Analysis of case dynamics identified 'modes' of SSL among participants which could be deemed 'negative', 'positive', 'defensive', 'performative' or 'transformative'. Women in what might be objectively considered the most stigmatised situations did not automatically display 'negative' SSL. The theme of 'judgement' emerged inductively from interviews and using SSL helped understand women's agential response to stigma in terms of 'what matters' to them personally. This thesis includes case studies which illustrate how a process of 'judgement of judgement' can be pivotal to participants' rejection, resistance or absorption of stigma. This research offers an empirical contribution to knowledge through its comparative approach involving mothers in a deprived and a more affluent location; a conceptual contribution through development of SSL; and a methodological contribution through exposition of evaluative judgement as a mechanism in agential mediation of stigma.

Twenty-five percent of working women now occupy the top levels of the labour market (ONS 2013c). This presents an opportunity to assess the extent to which adult daughters have been influenced in their aspirations for work and family life by growing up with a mother with a successful career –a significant research gap. Intergenerational narrative interviews with 30 mother and daughter pairs explored their observations about the effects on their ambitions, relationships, emotions and identities. The mothers were most often the prime influence on their daughters' embarking upon high status, satisfying careers. However, neither most mothers, nor their daughters aspired to ‘get to the top', which challenges both the idea of progress towards gender equality at the highest levels in organisations and traditional definitions of career success. The mothers managed work and motherhood thoughtfully and most did not experience disjuncture between their identities (Bailey 1999). Key original contributions are that almost all the daughters thought that having a mother who worked mainly full--‐time out of the home in a career she found satisfying benefited them or, at least, did them no damage. Despite this, most daughters did not think that emulating their mothers would be fine for the children the daughters anticipated having. The main explanations for this are the pervasive idea that working part--‐time would give them the ‘best of both worlds' as mothers and workers, the motherhood culture of ‘intensification of responsibility' (Thomson et al. 2011, p.277), and the perceived lack of examples of satisfying flexible career paths within organisational careers for women and men. Many of the mothers took a pragmatic approach to their ‘emotion management' (Hochschild 1983, p.44) of work--‐life trade--‐offs but did not transmit their experience of managing their feelings about working motherhood. I argue that doing so could benefit their working daughters.

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.