This thesis contributes a sociological perspective on the practice of feminist zine production and distribution in the UK. Feminist zines facilitate the development of ‘feminist zine subculture’, a trans-local subcultural space that centres on a relatively collectivised adherence to DIY feminist subjectivity. The main objective of the work is to show how this subculture is characterised by its own aesthetics, geographical organisation, internal politics and wider subcultural affiliations. Through the utilisation of an Integrated Textual Analysis (ITA) of 74 ‘feminist zines’, interviews with 29 zine creators, and on-site observations of zinefests, this work argues for a revised perspective on the study of subculture. Feminist zine creators’ recognition of the limited ways in which feminist history has been documented, and their investment in DIY lifestyles, motivates their involvement in the subculture. However, participants also embody ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ subjectivities within this space, meaning that many experience a form of ‘peripheral participation’, caused by their geographical location or the extent to which they subscribe to the dominant values of DIY subculture. This thesis situates the spatial negotiations, embodied subjectivities, and cultural production practices of the participants within a broader understanding of subculture as the product of multiple ‘fields of reference’. Utilising an adaptation of Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’, ‘habitus’ and ‘capital’, this work develops ‘subcultural cartography’; a method of data presentation that shows how feminist zine subculture is internally characterised, and how this characterisation is influenced by a variety of different cultural fields. Ultimately, this work argues for a more nuanced perspective on how structural inequalities and hierarchies manifest within subcultures themselves.

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Lack of empowerment and the resulting inability to negotiate safe sex is identified in this thesis as a major factor promoting the spread of HIV infection among heterosexual Yoruba women in Nigeria, and my research also explored what kinds of interventions might deal with these problems. Currently, behavioural approaches represent the dominant ideology in the field of HIV prevention, with the focus on tackling the problem of lack of knowledge and awareness, and lack of commitment to prevention. The research investigated was whether these strategies are adequately sensitive to the experiences of women in Nigeria or fails to take account of how socio-cultural and economic forces constrain or enable them to adopt recommended sexual health behaviours. To explore these issues, respondent groups included low and high socio-economic status women, low and high socio-economic status men, local HIV/AIDS agencies and people living with HIV/AIDS. Using qualitative methods to elicit rich and deep data about how the respondents define their health behaviour in relation to HIV, sex practices and women’s empowerment, I conducted 29 in-depth interviews and six focus group discussions, involving 91 participants. There are two key findings. First, behavioural approaches to HIV prevention are limited because women’s inability to negotiate safe sex in heterosexual relationships reflects structural problems rather than an individual lack of knowledge or awareness. Women are more constrained by the fears of relationships breakup, economic insecurity, violence and the difficulty in being able to justify why they feel the need to insist on safe sex, as this is perceived as antithetical to trust in sexual relationships. Second, although women’s access to life opportunities can help, this does not automatically empower them to negotiate safe sex because of the widespread culture of patriarchy. Thus, structural approaches to HIV prevention among women need to do more than promote economic redistribution and access to formal education. Thus the study argues that policy and strategy on HIV prevention should not be confined to narrow individual-level interventions, but be informed by wider perspectives of how traditional gender stereotypes promote women’s disempowerment and run counter to safe sex practices in heterosexual relationships.

Since 9/11 and 7/7 the focus on Muslims as a subject of political, media and academic debate has intensified. Muslim women, who are critical to these various debates, are often essentialised and typified as casualties of Islam, and their voices are effectively silenced. This study, which ‘gives voice’ to the experiences of Muslim women, examines the ways in which Muslim women negotiate their religious identities and commitments in twenty-first century Britain through their engagement with artistic projects. Through a combination of semistructured interviews with twenty-six women and participant observation in a Muslim women’s arts organisation and nasheed group, it addresses three research questions each of which tries to cast sociological light on the intersection between artistic practice and identification with Islam. Firstly, it asks to what extent Durkheim’s notion of religion as la vie sérieuse helps to describe the beliefs, identities and practices of Muslim women. Secondly, it considers the extent to which, and manner in which, Muslim women’s artistic participation expresses selfidentification with religion and culture. Finally, it examines the implications of artistic participation for other areas of Muslim women’s lives. In responding to these questions, I draw upon literature on religion and identity, religious commitment, Islam and gender, and Islam and the arts. My analysis focuses on how religion and everyday life are entwined in the experiences of Muslim women and how these experiences problematise the idea of strict boundaries between the ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’. It highlights variety in the commitment and practice of Muslim women and how individualisation and choice are very much part of the variation in their religious lives. I consider how my participants negotiate their gendered, religious and cultural identities through artistic participation and show that Muslim women engage in performances, not only in their roles as artists, but also as they navigate the expectations or (cultural) scripts handed to them by their families and religious communities. I also highlight how re-presenting and representing Muslim women and Islam can be an important act for those engaging in artistic practices and how this activity demonstrates active agency in a public sphere that often excludes them.

Land in Kenya has social, economic and political dimensions, which overlap and conflict. Land conflicts are one of the root causes of political crises which the country has experienced since the formation of the modern state through colonialism. Although the link between land and politics has been much studied, the gender dimension has been neglected. Where it has been addressed within the women‟s land rights discourse there has been a failure to appreciate the multi-dimensionality of land, addressing only the economic implications from a gender perspective. As a result there is little analysis of the way in which women experience inequalities arising out of political processes which shape and influence Kenya‟s land system. In 2008, the Commission of Inquiry into Post Election Violence (CIPEV) reported various types of inequalities which women faced with regard to land, and which arose as a result of distributional land problems in the country. It raised for the first time the way in which gender and ethnicity intersected to produce the inequalities and disadvantages women experienced during the period of election violence. This thesis addresses this intersectionality. It argues that the nature of women‟s inequality with regard to land in Kenya is much broader than questions of rights of access, control and ownership and consequently that gender inequality relating to land is Kenya is mis-framed. It analyses the nature of this mis-framing and drawing on the fieldwork conducted within three communities argues that what is needed is a contextualised understanding of intersectionality. Such an understanding of intersectionality requires analyses of the interplay between law and politics, and how this interplay produces experiences of inequality and disadvantage amongst women.

The adequacy of the theory underpinning current careers guidance practice is increasingly being questioned for particular client groups, including girls and women. Key criticisms relate to the philosophy of science that has dominated the research informing these theories, neglect of context, bias in sampling procedures and their failure to take account of changes in the labour market. The research reported in this thesis explores some of the factors that inhibit women's career development in the UK, as well as some that enhance it, in a way that takes account of these criticisms. The focus is on both the theory and practice. Grounded theory informed the data collection and analysis phases of the research. Two questionnaires, the first of which was completed by one hundred and two participants, provided a progressive focusing of the study. In-depth interviews with nine of the female participants who had experienced discrimination in employment comprised the final stage of data collection. The research highlights, simultaneously, the similarities of the experiences of girls and women compared with boys and men, and the different ways girls and women responded to these experiences. Findings relate both to the contextual and individual factors that have influenced the career development of participants. Discrimination and sexual harassment emerge as important, and the strategies developed by participants to cope are identified. Perhaps most importantly, the research examines the lived experiences of women participants conveyed in their own voices. Implications for careers guidance practice are discussed. An accurate understanding of the context in which women's career development in the UK occurs is emphasised together with strategies which could improve guidance practice.

This thesis presents a cross-national, comparative study of legal recognition for lesbian and gay couples, focusing on civil partnerships in the UK and marriage in Canada and the US State of California. The study investigates the impact of same-sex marriage and civil partnership from the perspectives of lesbian and gay couples and, in particular, addresses the social implications of couples’ new legal status. The thesis investigates the impact of marriage or civil partnership within couples’ family and friendship networks and in a range of less intimate social contexts, including the workplace, the neighbourhood and commercial settings. The thesis also analyses the impact of legal recognition on couples’ sense of citizenship and assesses the effects of the Proposition 8 referendum, which repealed existing same-sex marriage rights in California in 2008. Drawing on qualitative data gathered from in-depth interviews with married or civil partner same-sex couples in the UK, Canada and California, the study analyses couples’ narratives around legal recognition to identify the meanings they attach to their new legal status. In the context of the wider policy objectives of legal recognition with regard to tackling discrimination and acknowledging same-sex couples within family and other social networks, the thesis applies Erving Goffman’s analysis of stigma to this evolving policy context. The study concludes that couples broadly welcomed the legal entitlements that flowed from marriage or civil partnership, and often saw legal recognition as providing opportunities to seek social recognition from within their personal networks. However, legal recognition did not in itself guarantee social recognition, and sometimes revealed the continuing marginalisation of lesbian and gay couples within family networks and in other social settings. This highlights a distinction between legal and social recognition, and points towards a significant gap between the policy ambitions attached to marriage and civil partnership and their micro-social impact.

This study focuses in detail on instrumental chamber music produced by women in the early twentieth century, a particularly fertile and under-represented period with regard to this topic and it draws on aspects of women’s history, British music history and feminist musicology. It argues that the Cobbett competitions instigated by Walter Willson Cobbett in 1905 and the formation of the Society of Women Musicians in 1911 contributed to the explosion of instrumental music, including phantasies, written by women in this period. It highlights women’s place in British musical society leading up to and during the First World War and investigates the relationship between Cobbett, the Society of Women Musicians and women composers themselves. Chamber works for a variety of instrumental combinations by six composers, Adela Maddison (1866-1929), Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Morfydd Owen (1891-1918), Ethel Barns (1880-1948), Alice Verne-Bredt (1868-1958) and Susan Spain-Dunk (1880-1962) (all at different stages in their compositional careers at this time) are analysed. This is undertaken particularly with reference to their formal procedures, an issue much discussed by contemporary sources. The individual composers’ reactions (or lack of them) to the debate instigated by the Society of Women Musicians on the future of women’s music is considered in relation to their lives, careers and chamber music itself. As the composers in this study were not a cohesive group, creatively or ideologically, the dissertation draws on primary sources, especially the archives of the Society of Women Musicians and Marion Scott, as well as the writings of contemporary commentators, to assess the legacy of the chamber works produced.

In 1698 Christian Kilpatrick concluded a letter to her husband, John Clerk, with the words ‘I rest your loving obedient wife’. These words, or a variation on them, were a common subscript for wives during the seventeenth century. The combination of the words loving and obedient could be used through habit or consciously for effect, yet, in most cases, without any sense of incongruity. The relationship between these terms is at the heart of my thesis. This work explores the nature of the marital relationship during the period 1650 to 1850. It investigates how power was negotiated between couples during a period when marriage was expected to be patriarchal but also to provide happiness and fulfilment for both husband and wife. Throughout, it attempts to identify if and what change occurred over the period. Judith Bennett challenged historians in 1989, and reiterated her call in 2006, to place patriarchy at the centre of women’s history. The thesis takes up that challenge. Through an exploration of power within marital relationships, this thesis highlights how patriarchy operated to confine and restrict women’s social power. It demonstrates that patriarchy was a system that was lived in. Women and men’s understanding of the world and their own identities were shaped by cultural discourses that underpinned the patriarchal system. This thesis reveals that all the operations of married life from love to managing the household to violence were shaped by patriarchal discourses. These discourses were not static but constantly renegotiated through the actions and ideas of individuals, yet throughout the period, the patriarchal system was not fundamentally undermined, but reshaped to meet these challenges. The thesis investigates the operation of this process. It is important to recognise that, as patriarchy was a lived system, it allowed a wide range of behaviours and that people’s response to patriarchy should not only be seen in terms of compliance or resistance. Patriarchy was not only conceived of in terms of male control over women, but in every interaction between the sexes regardless of its motivations. It is through recognising the pervasive nature of patriarchy that historians will no longer contrast, for example, obedience and love, but realise that both obedience and love were part of the system. This interpretation does not undermine other historians’ work in this field, but provides greater explanatory power for patriarchy’s operation and survival. Scottish couples used changing patriarchal discourses in a myriad of ways to shape and explain their experiences. They cooperated, compromised and established power relationships that did not always conform to the ideal, but allowed their marriages to function well and brought them happiness. Not all couples could agree on the balance of power within their relationship leading to arguments and even violence. Yet, while marriages could take a variety of forms, the negotiation of power between couples used a patriarchal script, restricting the language couples used, their expectations and desires and the eventual compromise reached.

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