In the winter of 2009, Barbie celebrated her 50th birthday. The occasion was marked with all the pageantry befitting a debutante, starlet, or modern-day princess. Lavish parties were hosted in her honour, and fashion models impersonated the doll on the catwalk. Luxury brands created limited edition Barbie products—from cosmetics to cars—to commemorate the milestone. And, at the height of the revelry, the plastic doll even underwent ‘plastic surgery’ in order to squeeze into a couture pair of birthday stilettos. Taking this distinctive cultural moment as its starting point, this thesis examines how the Barbie doll’s complex and indefatigable cultural presence is understood in Western popular culture. A range of media and industries engage with representations of the doll: advertising, consumer, and celebrity cultures; the fashion, beauty, and cosmetic surgery industries; music; reality television; social networking; and pornography. This thesis interrogates how these media and industries, and the discursive practices therein, reproduce images and narratives of Barbie as a uniform and idealised representation of white, affluent femininity in the West. However, as her birthday celebrations suggest, Barbie is also written as a ‘real’ girl. This thesis also interrogates this narrative of ‘realness’ as it helps to explain why the doll has remained relevant for over 50 years, while complicating readings of her position as a uniform cultural object. Moreover, while Barbie is being portrayed as a ‘real’ girl, popular culture narratives also present ‘becoming Barbie’ as an achievable goal for young women and girls. Motivating this research throughout is the question of how such a referential relationship reinforces and destabilises constructions of the feminine subject in our postmodern and posthuman times.

The Indian legal system has been dealing with the problem of domestic violence in the recent years especially since the advent of the new legislation the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, which was brought into effect from the 26th of August, 2006. The original contribution that this thesis makes to knowledge is that it identifies a potential category of users of this law- Women in Unconventional Relationships (WUR), and tests the support systems and the ease of access available to this category of women within two different domestic violence frameworks in India. This thesis locates the constructions of transgressive WUR identities in history, society and theoretical discourse and investigates whether these constructions adversely affect their legal subjectivity under the domestic violence law in India. It locates WUR within the domestic violence framework in Delhi, named the Victim Model for the purposes of this research, and within the Survivor Model in Mumbai. It privileges the voices of ten WUR who articulate their experiences of survival, domestic violence and the law. The research uses a combination of inter-subjective reflexive research and a feminist analysis of the domestic violence framework. The constructions of identities and the levels of transgression that take place and its effects on survivor/victim legal agency are investigated. The thesis identifies the best domestic violence framework suited for WUR which encourages their rights-bearing capacity as full-fledged citizens of the Indian state.

This research is based on a comparative study between East and West Amman women in terms of economic activity. Amman is a patriarchal society and this research explains the prevalent patriarchal structures that influence women’s economic activities and experiences and how these patriarchal structures operate differently depending on class. This research adopts an intersectional approach to gender and class to provide us with a more comprehensive understanding of women’s experiences in relation to economic activity. The study sheds light on the fact that class in Jordan is very much related to place of residence, and the differences between East and West Amman are very influential in determining women’s experiences. It is meant to explore the views and attitudes towards women’s economic activities, and the different views between East and West Amman, and between men and women. Moreover, this research explores the factors that influence women’s economic activities and how these factors are different amongst women themselves. This research also identifies the strategies adopted by women to deal with patriarchy- resistance, negotiation and accommodation-and how those strategies differ depending on class. The data for this research was collected through interviews with 18 women, nine from East and nine from West Amman, economically active and inactive. The research also made use of 164 questionnaires completed by both men and women from East and West Amman. The questionnaire aimed to provide us with data showing class differences between East and West Amman, and was also used to provide us with the attitudes and views towards women’s and men’s economic activities.

This thesis investigates whether women's empowerment affects children's wellbeing in two developing countries: Mexico and India. The first chapter provides a background on women's empowerment. The second chapter evaluates a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, which provides poor women in Mexico with tools to be better mothers, in terms of its impact on birthweight. The third chapter analyses whether empowered women, referred as those who have progressive gender attitudes, are more likely to have a firstborn girl in Delhi, India. Specifically, the second chapter evaluates PROGRESA-Oportunidades, a program that pays mothers cash in exchange of their investment in their children's human capital: education, health, and nutrition. Using quantile regressions, the chapter finds a positive and significant program effect, but babies at the upper tail of the conditional birthweight distribution seem to have benefited the most. Moreover, maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with a 459-gram decrease on birthweights at the 20th percentile of the conditional distribution, completely wiping out any program benefits. This effect is not picked up by least squares regression estimates, which is the technique used by previous literature on the subject. The third chapter turns to India, a country that has lost millions of girls to sex-selective abortions. The chapter first constructs a women's empowerment (progressivity ) index using a latent factor model, and then assesses whether progressive women are more likely to have a firstborn girl in Delhi. The latter territory has, unlike the Indian average, 'missing' women even among first order births. The results show that a one-standard deviation increase in the progressivity index is associated with a 5.8-percentage point increase in the likelihood of a firstborn girl relative to women who have not yet given birth.

The welfare of women and children is essential to a country’s development. Children’s welfare represents an important determinant of a country’s future. Women often play a key role in the household and their agency can be essential for the well being of all family members. And yet, women and children are often the most vulnerable individuals in society. Policy makers have increasingly come to recognise this and consequently changes to the welfare of women and children have been laid at the very heart of the transformational promises enclosed in the Millennium Declaration of the United Nations and have been implemented in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – eight development targets agreed upon by all United Nation member states and all major international organisations. Children are critical for all eight aspects and four goals focus exclusively on women or children. These comprise primary education, gender equality, child survival and maternal health. Indeed, in the 2010 Review Summit the member states have expressed major new commitments to improving women’s and children’s health. The correlation between achieving an improvement in female and child welfare and fulfilling the MDGs never becomes clearer than when considering India. India’s progress is considered by many as pivotal to achieving the MDGs. A reason for this is the country’s size. With 1,171 million inhabitants it is the world second most populous country. Furthermore, in the recent past India has combined impressive economic growth and wealth creation with stagnation in key socio-economic indicators, particularly among disadvantaged groups of society. This thesis focuses on four aspects closely linked to the MDGs. The first is fertility. India takes an important place in the population growth debate. Its population is still second to China but estimates of the Population Reference Bureau suggest that it will have reached China’s population by 2025 and will have well overtaken it by 2050. Consequently, a thorough understanding of the determinants of high fertility in this country will be invaluable to policy makers. Female autonomy makes up the third MDG and constitutes the second point of interest. Societies throughout South Asia are characterised by a low status of women. According to the International Labour Office in India in particular discrimination against women is widespread. Evidence from Demographic Health Surveys suggests that women have little say on a number of household matters among which their own health care and two thirds of them work without pay. These matters in turn have devastating effects on the life of a woman’s children: The National Population Policy for example singled out the low status of women as a significant barrier to the achievements of population targets as well as of child health. Thus local and international policy makers have recognised the status of women as a policy priority. The third aspect is primary education, which is reflected in the second MDG. India has made impressive strides in improving its schooling record but there is still room for substantial improvement. Data from the UNICEF suggests that an estimated 42 million children aged 6 to 10 are not in school. Again, gender differences in schooling are still widespread throughout the country. Child survival is this thesis’ final factor of interest. India has the world’s largest under-five population of 127 million children and its under-five deaths account for 22% of the world’s mortality rates and figures from the United Nations suggest that India is off-track to achieving the target set in the MDGs by the year 2015. Reasons for these high rates of child mortality range from malnutrition to insufficient immunisation coverage. Yet some of the reasons may also lie in the proximity of India’s deep-rooted gender discrimination: survival rates are disproportionally skewed towards boys. The thesis has a strong empirical focus and all three chapters employ data from the third round of the National Family Health Survey for India (2005/2006), which is part of the Demographic and Health Survey Series conducted in about 70 low and middle income countries around the world.

This study analyses the discursive construction of part-time employment and the workers in it in the employmentand legal contexts in Britain and Japan, applying an analytical framework of the law developed from a post-structuralist feminist viewpoint. In doing this, this study contributes to knowledge in the field of legal studies by providing an account of the active role of the law in the area of employment,through the operation of discourse, in shaping and reshaping structural inequality which part-time women employees face in contemporary British and Japanese society. Evidence for this study is collected from statistical data, questionnaires and interviews with managers, interviews with a group of ex-part-time women workers pursuing a legal case and the close reading of legal materials in the two countries. From the examination of these data, two discourses are identified,which circulate in employment and legal institutions in both countries and which help to produce the differentiation between full-time and part-time employees. One discourse emphasises differencesin labour-related factors, such as working hours, job content and commitment, while the other emphasises differences in the gendered characteristics and domestic positions of men and women. I show that the two discourses operate within and across these institutions, constructing part-time employment as different from and inferior to full-time employment on both labour related and gender-related grounds, and legitimisingthe disadvantaged position of part-time employees. This discursive construction has brought about a gendered hierarchy within the law in which the inferior working pattern of part-time employment is gendered as women's, while the superior pattern of full-time employmentis gendered as men's. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that the law is one of the most influential discursive mechanisms which bring about and help to sustain the hierarchical gendering of society, contributing to the production and reproduction of unequal power relations between the sexes and between employers and part-time women employees.

This thesis explores the complexities of parenting in post-apartheid South Africa. It investigates the normative expectations surrounding motherhood and fatherhood and how employed mothers, as those who bear the main responsibility for childcare, reconcile family and paid work. It is a qualitative study which draws on 43 interviews with women and men managers in a Government Department and a Parastatal. Thirty seven interviews were with managers (21 mothers and 16 fathers), 3 with gender experts in these organisations, and 3 with Human Resources personnel. It also draws on an analysis of domestic divisions of labour in 3 households and an exploration of national legislation and workplace policies to examine how the workplace accommodates those with family/childcare responsibilities. The study demonstrates that South African parenting is complex: parental norms encapsulate the coexistence of modern and traditional values (Inglehart and Baker, 2003; Hotchfeld, 2008), rather than following a linear pattern of change from traditional to modern. Moreover, there are inconsistencies in values and normative expectations relating to gender-role attitudes and parenting expectations, as well as between gender-role attitudes and parenting practices. Incongruencies and contradictions in relation to parenting are also found between and within domains: the fast-changing workplace brought about by the new democratic government‟s commitment to equality and the subsequent transformation of the public sector contrasts with the „stalled revolution‟ in parenting practices, especially in relation domestic divisions of labour, within the domestic sphere. Using Squires‟s (2005) typology of inclusion, reversal and displacement to analyze South African approaches to workplace gender transformation, the study establishes that South Africa has adopted policies based on inclusion and reversal and has left out displacement, thus increasing women‟s representation at the workplace without challenging the status quo. To this effect the workplace has remained masculineoriented; it is characterized by a long-working hours regime and minimal work-life balance policies. As a result mothers are facing difficulties in reconciling family and paid work. However, women mobilize support outside the workplace to cope with the demands of family and paid work. The study shows that the support networks mobilized by women are influenced by socio-economic and geographical mobility associated with the rise of the new black middle-class families brought about by the political change from apartheid to democracy. The migration of families from working to middle-class areas demonstrates the fluidity of mothering and coping strategies; while fathers remain free from childcare and family responsibilities.

‘Mothers and daughters on the margins: gender, generation and education’ is a thesis that explores the inter-generational marginalisation of working-class mothers and their daughters both in terms of education, employment and family relationships. In this thesis class is explored through the visual data and interview accounts of nine mother and daughter dyads all residing in the same disadvantaged locality in urban South Wales. The thesis employs sociological and psychological lenses to examine social reproduction, and the ways in which gender, place and class act as barriers to educational progression for the participants, and the psychological, physical and practical costs of social mobility. The thesis argues that women and girls on the margins of contemporary Wales continue to struggle to be agents of their own destiny, against a tide of spatial, structural, social, cultural, economic, psychological and patriarchal processes.

Multi-agency working as an approach to tackling complex and inter-related problems has increasingly been advocated in recent years in a variety of policy contexts. The research in this thesis concerns the development and implementation process of one such policy, the Glasgow Women's Health Policy. This Policy was developed by the Glasgow Healthy City Project Women's Health Working Group and is based on a social/holistic model of health. The research analyses, as a case study of multi-agency working, the process through which the Women's Health Policy was implemented, and identifies the enablers and barriers to that process. The research consists of a retrospective analysis of the implementation of the Women's Health Policy within the statutory partner organisation of the Glasgow Healthy City Project. Using a qualitative approach, the research involved three primary methods of data collection: semi-structured interviews, documentary analysis and observation. Fifty-seven interviews were conducted with a range of key informants from the statutory sector organisations, which provided the main source of data. The analysis identifies a range of action associated with the development and implementation of the Women's Health Policy by the Women's Health Working Group and statutory sector organisations. The implementation process of the Women's Health Policy was enabled by: the collaborative development of the Policy; the agency of key individuals with access to power; and the establishment of women's fora within the organisations. Barriers to the process included the marginalisation of both 'women's issues' within gendered organisations, and the social/holistic model of health in relation to the dominant biomedical paradigm prevailing within organisations. In addition a range of other impediments relating to organisational structures and cultures were identified as being common to all policy implementation.

Informal carers provide the majority of care for older people living in the community. The provision of care can be very stressful and is said to have an adverse affect on caregivers’ health. Policy has recognised the need to support carers and a key objective has been to improve service provision for them. Research has shown that service intervention can prevent the breakdown of care and admission to long term care. However, relatively few carers and older people use formal services. While the low uptake of support services is documented, it is not fully understood. The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of informal carers of older people who received no support services. It focused particularly on the question: why when caregiving is portrayed as being stressful, do carers continue without support from formal service providers? Purposive sampling was used to obtain a sample of unsupported carers of older people, who were interviewed three times over a period of two years. For this longitudinal study a predominantly qualitative approach underpinned by the principles of grounded theory was chosen with a quantitative component included in the second stage. The study used a range of methods including focus groups, interviews and self-completion questionnaires. The main source of data was individual in-depth interviews, while self-completion questionnaires and literature provided secondary and tertiary sources of data. Data were analysed according to the principles of grounded theory. The study found that carers were motivated by a strong sense of duty and a desire to maintain their independence and control over their lives and the caregiving situation. They regarded formal services as authoritarian and intrusive. Acceptance of support was associated with feelings of failure and a potential loss of control.