This research study primarily explored the experiences and views of people with personal experience of adoption who have used post-adoption services delivered by a user-led organisation, the West Midlands Post Adoption Service (WMPAS). It sought to answer a number of questions about the work of a post-adoption agency. The key theoretical perspectives that informed the study were feminist, indigenous, Black and critical anti-racist, lesbian, emancipatory (research that is designed to enhance the power of service users), child-centred and evaluative research. This led to making WMPAS users' perceptions and experiences central to the research, and a commitment to hearing a range of different voices, in particular those who have hitherto been silenced. The study used a multi-method approach comprising qualitative methods, in the main. A design stage of user involvement was followed by: an analysis of initial enquiries; collecting data on the use of the WMPAS Support Groups; a postal survey of support group users; in-depth interviews with 41 WMPAS users; and specially designed work with an adopted child who had used WMPAS services. In addition, two focus groups with actual and potential users belonging to two marginalised groups were held: lesbian, gay and bisexual users and Black birth relatives. Key findings include that most users described great difficulty in accessing appropriate post-adoption services. However, the majority evaluated WMPAS services positively, particularly valuing the quality of relationship with WMPAS workers. Many said that the service had helped significantly with their mental health and with feelings about self. They identified multiple ways in which receiving a service had made a difference to their lives. The study highlighted the perspectives of several silenced groups: adoptees abused within their adoptive families: disabled, lesbian, gay and bisexual users: transracially adopted adults and Black birth relatives. It suggested ways for refining and developing service provision.

Police officer responses to incidents of domestic violence have received widespread criticism in recent years, but the focus of most studies on this topic has been on the experiences of victims and the work of police units established specifically to deal with domestic violence. As a consequence, the responses of front-line officers have received less attention. In particular, the ways in which they perceive and respond to domestic violence as they develop their careers within the police service are almost entirely unresearched. With this in mind, the aim of this research was precisely to map the shifts and changes (if any) in police officers' reactions and responses to domestic violence incidents during their first three years in service. Where previous researchers have examined officers' response to domestic violence in one temporal dimension and others have considered issues of acculturation and socialisation, the uniqueness of this research is in the way in which it has synthesised both these elements in the production of a more complex longitudinal study. Thus the research is informed by the experiences and perceptions of seven officers from their first day as a member of a Constabulary, through to their completion of three years' service. Observation of their probationer training and of the officers on duty, the design and completion of semi-structured interviews and the use of hypothetical scenarios comprise the primary research tools, with additional insights being gained through semi-structured interviews with the officers' tutor constables. The rich and deep insights that emerged from the fieldwork were made possible because of the development and maintenance of a relationship with a small number of officers over the period of three years. My status as a full-time employee of the Constabulary benefited me enormously in this regard. Through the development of this work, I have drawn from a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches but have been mostly persuaded by theories focused on aspects of feminism and symbolic interactionism. Using theories of power and gender in the context of domestic violence and applying these to observations made of the masculine organisational sub-culture of the police service, enables a picture to emerge of officers' explicit and implicit absorption of sub-cultural values, how they learn from their own experiences, how they learn to deal with domestic violence incidents from peers and colleagues, and influences of the training orientation and content. More specifically, I argue that as an organisation, the police service (through its staff) does little to extend officers' understanding of domestic violence either theoretically or actually. There was (and continued to be) a clear lack of recognition by the study's participants of the gendered power relations inherent in most incidents of domestic violence. The study considered the content and form of probationer domestic violence training in this regard and concludes by drawing attention to the importance of officers' tacit knowledge, or in other words, their understanding of domestic violence as a result of their societal socialisation. Crucially, the primary manifestation of this 'lack' of understanding was in officers' confusion over their precise (police) role when confronted with what they perceived to be domestic 'disputes' as opposed to domestic 'violence', where the latter were more easily recognised as requiring a law-and-order response, but where the former were considered as much less straightforward to deal with. Consequently, in most circumstances, officers tended to rely on their personal experiences and understandings as human beings rather than police officers, to guide their response. A contributory factor to the lack of clarity were the many parallels between the gendered power dynamic to be found in situations of domestic violence and the form and content of banter and behaviour in the workplace. The research is not simply an end in itself in terms of answering a particular set of research questions relating to police responses to domestic violence, but could also act as a vehicle for change.

This thesis explores the intersection of age, gender and sexuality in representations of older lesbian characters in contemporary narrative film. Taking the 1990s as a benchmark of lesbian visibility, I explore the turn of the century representability by focusing on British and American film (1995 to 2009). I identify a hypervisibility paradox during this period of cinematic production where the presence of a multitude of young lesbian and bisexual characters can be seen to be in complete contrast with the invisibility of the older lesbian. Mainstream postfeminist culture censors the ageing female body, except in its ‘successfully aged’, youthful, heterosexualised form. Older lesbian characters are excluded from this frame of visibility and, instead, are represented through paradigms associated with the concept of ‘ageing as decline.’ There is little in existing age studies or lesbian film studies to articulate an understanding of the intersection of age, gender and sexuality in cinematic representation. I adopt an interdisciplinary cultural studies approach to make my contribution in what is an under-researched area and present a multifaceted approach to a complex cultural image. I investigate the continuity of the concept of the lesbian as ghostly (Castle, 1993) through narratives of illness, death and mourning. I argue that the narrative of ‘ageing as decline’ stands in for the process of ‘killing off’ lesbian characters (identified in 1960s and 1970s cinema). The intersection of the identity old with lesbian thus results in a double ghosting and ‘disappearance’ of the older lesbian character. Regarding Notes on a Scandal (Eyre, 2006), I pursue two particular readings. One emphasises the return of the lesbian as monstrous based on the construction of ageing and lesbian desire as abject (Kristeva, 1982). A second reading moves beyond the monstrous lesbian as a ‘negative’ stereotype and identifies the protagonist as a queer character who subverts heteronormativity. Finally, I turn to oppositional reading practices in order to optimise the possibilities of identifications across mainstream film texts. Based on Judi Dench’s various transgressive film roles, her role as M in the Bond franchise in particular, I explore this actress’ subversive potential to represent the older lesbian. I conclude that despite mainstream cinema’s hypervisibility paradox, characters who transgress age, gender and sexuality norms can provide opportunities for lesbian identification.

At a time of heightened awareness and public interest, post-9/11, with increased concerns surrounding the ‘other’ and pronouncements of the ‘death of multiculturalism,’ this thesis stresses the renewed relevance of cross-cultural feminist discussions. I examine a broad range of sources to show how the rhetoric of feminism is being co-opted to support the promotion of an ‘us’ and ‘them’ perspective, particularly in the media. By returning to well established feminist debates on difference, and the importance of adopting an intersectional position in order to avoid suggesting a singular experience of oppression based solely on gender, I argue for an intergenerational approach to current issues affecting feminism as we move into the fourth wave. Providing an original contribution, both by applying existing theory to highly contemporary debates, and by exploring the possibilities (and pitfalls) offered by online media to fourth wave feminism, I claim that the co-opting of a feminist position in an attempt to shore up national identity and discredit multiculturalism, has, in fact, created a resurgence of interest in feminism, but without a foundational understanding. Taking the opportunity provided by this resurgence of interest to critically examine Western feminism through current debates surrounding FGC, ‘honour’-based violence and veiling, offers a lens through which to explore assumptions of the ‘post-feminist’ West, and emphasize the renewed importance of engaging with the ‘other’ in feminist discussions. Globalization and multiculturalism, as well as the global communities forged on the internet, increasingly offer ‘insider voices’ whilst simultaneously questioning the myth of a pure ‘other,’ or a universal feminism. By looking back on previous debates and ‘waves,’ this thesis advocates the need to think across the boundaries of generations, as well as cultures, suggesting that an intergenerational and cross-cultural approach is key to moving discussions forward with the arrival of feminism’s fourth wave.

The primary aim of this study is to explore women offenders' experiences of, contact with, and delivery of, community-based health and social care services. Women offenders represent a particularly disadvantaged and silent group in society whose views have largely been disregarded in previous studies. More specifically, there has been a general lack of attention to their experiences of trying to meet their welfare needs before and after they encounter the Criminal Justice System (CJS). This research sought to provide a more informed understanding of what participants wanted to convey about their lived realities, the meaning of their experiences of help-seeking and their perceptions of appropriate responses to their welfare needs. The study was local, purposive and applied. It was underpinned by feminist epistemology and qualitative, heuristic and collaborative methodology. Reflexive dimensions were an integral part of the whole research process. It was also strengthened by a wish to change policy and practice as a direct consequence of hearing and taking account of service users' standpoints on experiencing those policies and practices. Of central importance was a desire to view women offenders not as research 'subjects' but as 'participants' in a process which would put their views and perspectives at the centre of the study. Therefore, before embarking on the study, I set up a research advisory group as a means of collaborating with women who had direct and personal experience of the CJS as 'expert advisers', to help guide and develop the research. I also sought ways of working collaboratively with research participants, for example, by utilising research methods such as participant observation and semi-structured interviews and asking participants to provide feedback on how I had written up my interactions with them. I also incorporated participant and gatekeeper evaluation methods to seek their views on their experiences of the research. The original contributions to the body of knowledge and understanding that this research makes are in the identification of characteristics of a service generic model of communitybased welfare provision. This relates particularly to the attitudes and behaviours of and delivery by service providers and individual practitioners. It is also framed in the context of participants' shared experience of domestic violence and its impact on their help-seeking from welfare services which was previously hidden and unknown. In addition, the study adds to feminist social research methodology through the development of a feminist and heuristic approach to collaborative research that seeks to involve the 'knowers' in an innovative way, that is, as 'expert advisers', throughout the research process. The profound and lasting impact is the clarity of its core findings: what emerge from women who participated in this work are appeals for service providers, individual practitioners (and researchers) to be in relationship with them. Hence, there is a call for the reduction of destructive boundaries in relationships and the integration of reflexive practice, in both the provision of community-based welfare services and approaches to conducting research of this kind.

This thesis takes a qualitative, auto-ethnographic approach to interrogating heterosexuality via a series of in-depth interviews with young women about their experiences of watching films. I have adopted a feminist approach to the research, locating myself within the project via a series of extracts from research diaries I have kept during the project, reflecting my own position as 'researched' as well as 'researcher'. This auto-ethnographic approach draws on the work of previous theorists researching women's lives from a feminist perspective (e.g. Skeggs: 1995, 1997; Stanley and Wise: 1990, 1993; Maynard and Purvis: 1994).

This thesis discusses the connections that bound together the late-nineteenth-century women’s temperance and suffrage movements in Scotland. The importance of women’s temperance reform in the women’s movement has been discussed in other Anglophone contexts, however there has been little scholarly analysis of these links in British historiography. This study aims to fill some of this gap. Moreover, by focusing on the Scottish case, this investigation adds a more ‘Britannic’ perspective to discussions of Victorian and Edwardian feminism, and thereby reveals regional variation and diversity. My exploration of the women’s suffrage movement focuses on constitutional societies, and offers a fresh perspective to balance the concentration on militancy in the only major monograph on Scottish suffragism – Leah Leneman’s A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland. This analysis takes a flexible approach to constitutionalism and argues that the women’s single-sex temperance society, the Scottish Christian Union (SCU) was an element of constitutional suffragism. Likewise, the Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation – peripheral to the historiography of British suffragism – is given a prominent place as a constitutionalist organisation. This study uses women’s roles in social reform and suffragism to examine the public lives of middle-class women. The ideology of ‘separate spheres’ is a leitmotif of much of women’s history, and discussions of the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres are often linked to social class. My discussion of a ‘feminine public sphere’ is designed to reveal the ways in which women negotiated Victorian gender roles in order to participate in the civic life that was intrinsic to an urban middle-class identity. Thus, this thesis seeks to place suffragism and temperature in the context of middle-class women’s public world.

This thesis is concerned with the debate on 'trafficking in persons' as a new form of slavery. It will explore the concept of slavery both historically and in its links with contemporary migration and connected issues of gender, sexuality, and labour exploitation. Within the contemporary debate on 'trafficking', attention has focused in fact predominantly on migrant women and girls involved in sex work and described as 'victims of trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation'. This thesis will explore the meaning of slavery in such debate. For this purpose, a research study will be carried out in three Italian cities, focusing on the ways in which such terms as 'slavery', 'trafficking in persons', and 'sexual slavery' are understood and applied within social protection programmes for victims of trafficking which, under Article 18 of the immigration law, grant a special residence permit and opportunities for such victims to work and stay permanently in Italy. The study is based on interviews with key actors working in social protection programmes such as judges, NGO workers, social workers, psychologists, lawyers, and police officers, on interviews with migrant women working in the sex industry and women using protection programmes, and on the analysis of parliamentary speeches and press articles. It will seek to critically assess the validity of 'new slavery' - as 'trafficking' is usually understood - as an expression to understand problems related to contemporary exploitative labour practices within the context of global poverty, dislocation of capital and labour, and restrictive immigration regimes. It will focus on the gender, 'racial', and sexuality aspects of anti-trafficking policies in Italy and how they get linked to citizenship within the socio-legal process enacted by Article 18 of the Italian immigration law. It will finally ask what kind of citizenship is granted to subjects who have been Otherised as 'slaves' on the basis of their gender and sexuality and who, through a postcolonial process of discipline and social control, are incorporated into the Italian society via their 'domestication' within 'proper' sexual, gender, and labour roles (i.e. as domestic workers in Italian families or as wives).

This research is interested in unpacking the injustice that dalit groups, men and women, identify as structuring their lives, as well as the strategies deployed to resist, disrupt and subvert the violence. It is also interested in elucidating the tensions in accounting for caste relations, as well as a gendered conception of dalit relations in Bangalore. The dalit women question has received increasing scholarly as well as political attention in the last couple of decades. However, there is very little literature that seeks to locate the conditions of dalit women’s lives in the context of urban spaces. Understanding gendered caste relations in the space of the city has been no easy process. This is not only because of the conceptual and historical disjunction between caste and class, but also because of the disjunction between caste and conceptions of the space of the city. The over-determination of the centrality of ‘the village’ in the literature on caste does not easily allow for a conception of caste relations in the city. Moreover, the space of the city as a space of freedom in the dalit imagination makes it difficult to locate a critical conception of urban spaces for a dalit politics. In relation to a gendered dalit politics, the need for an internal critique of the patriarchy of dalit politics whilst over-determined, has not produced a robust critique of intra-caste relations. This is also because in demarcating the specific conditions of dalit women’s lives, a gendered dalit politics tends to get caught up in a ‘politics of difference’. Based on primary research with three dalit groups in the city of Bangalore and secondary material, this thesis locates the politics around the naming of identity and the ways in which ‘dalit’ identity has been avowed, disavowed, contested and sometimes not confronted at all, by the groups, and what this means for a dalit politics as well as a dalit feminist politics in Bangalore. It also analyses the politics of naming the injustice of untouchability and the strategies deployed by the respondents to contend with the violence. It provides a gendered account of untouchability and an analysis of untouchability in relation to the city.

This study addresses the relationship between the veil and the constitution of what I have tenned the Muslim female subject in the field of visual and popular culture, with a special emphasis on film. My case-studies range from European historical texts to contemporary visual culture and social practices with reference to the Middle East. The study draws on postcolonial and feminist literature to explore the productions of the Muslim female subject within the discourses of (post)colonialism, nationalism and Islamic patriarchy. It examines the Muslim female subject in relation to the paradigms of veiling and unveiling in a cross-cultural yet context-specific differentiated analysis. The aim is to interrogate the mobility of the veil and the manner in which it can be evaded, substituted or transferred without transgressing the codes of Islamic female modesty. It identifies different manifestations of the veil's mobility, which I contend challenge Islamic hegemonic discourses whilst simultaneously transcending the colonialist paradigm of unveiling. The material I discuss ranges from (de-)colonial cinematic texts, Iranian cinema and advertising for Saudi Arabian Television. I look at canonical texts such as Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Abbas Kiarostami's 10 (2002) in view of their significance in scholarship relating to the Muslim female subject within film studies. I also examine manifestations of the veil in the field of fashion and make extensive reference to paradigmatic representations of the Muslim female subject in contemporary art and curatorial projects.