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What are the relational dynamics between Taiwanese Christian daughters-in-law (D-Ls) and their non-Christian mothers-in-law (M-Ls)? How does Christian faith influence their intergenerational relations? How best can a caregiver offer appropriate pastoral support and assist Christian women in dealing with their non-Christian M-Ls? These issues and problems have been largely ignored in the relative literature and have arisen from of my pastoral work and personal experience. As a female pastor and D-L, set out this study seeking to integrate professional and academic knowledge in order to answer these questions. This study focuses on women’s experiences, attempting to reveal those relationship issues, and determine any problems underscoring the daily interactions of D-L—M-L in Taiwanese society. In order to meet these aims, the thesis engages with feminist pastoral theology, social science methodology, psychological analysis, and cultural studies. The first part of this study explores literature relevant to the topic, and the living context of Taiwanese D-Ls, as well as feminist pastoral theology. It is concerned with how traditional Chinese and Western cultures define roles and construct intergenerational relationships. Social transition, tension between tradition and modernity, and the struggles and challenges in relation to these intergenerational relationships are examined. The traditional male-centred theological paradigms, in which gender is interpreted and which must be reinterpreted and reconstructed for developing feminist theology, is also discussed. The second part of this study describes its feminist research methodology. It sets out a framework for collecting data to aid in developing an understanding of Taiwanese Christian women’s experience. Focus group discussions were used to explore the collective voice of the D-Ls. The last part of this study involves the presentation of research findings, discussions, and suggestions for further thought and action. It illustrates key findings from analysis of the focus group discussions, and describes the daily interaction and cultural ideology they present, along with the roles husbands, fathers-in-law (F-L), children, and other family members play in the web of relationships. The findings reveal that D-Ls face the challenges of an androcentric and hierarchical family culture, a close-knit family web, and unequal power relations. Different religious practices impact upon the D-L－M-L relationship and this can be a source of tension or conflict. Christian teachings also convey potentially androcentric messages for women that can affect their self-image and cause other harmful consequences. However, many participating women indicated that Christian beliefs provide them with a spiritual strength which has transformed their lives, and led to relational restoration. The Bible, teachings and church groups provide religious resources that support them in the face of relational challenges. I end with self-reflection, noting the need for further theological construction, and propose an alternative model of Triune love, based upon feminist interpretation, as a foundation for family renewal and women’s emancipation. This theological model has implications for new forms of pastoral care which can promote gender equality and non-hierarchical, intergenerational relationships.

Grounded in a multi-faceted theoretical framework that examines the dynamic interaction between the public and the private spheres of Elizabethan everyday life, this thesis aims to trace how the concept of privacy and its associated terms were developed, constructed, evoked, and configured both in Shakespearean drama and in other illustrative early modern texts. The author suggests that Shakespeare's configuration of space results from a combination of the conditions of representation - empty stages - metaphorical language, technical dramatic devices, and textual markers that create a sense of space in the texts and onstage. The research also explores the place and space of early modern women and of Shakespeare's female characters in terms of their relation to the private space; that is to say, their construction of 'self-in-relation-to-space', as well as their movements and activities within and outside the private's real or imagined boundaries, thus their ability to fashion the public sphere from within the private. Rather than analysing the role of women in the plays exclusively from the point of view of opposition between spheres - public man versus private woman - the study wants to question and pose, at the same time, the relevance of approaching Shakespearean texts from a spatial perspective, a choice that may have an impact on the very interpretation of them.

By using a poststructuralist feminist perspective, this thesis argues that representations of female agency in political violence are told as stories of heroines, monsters and victims through a Myth of Motherhood. I conceptualise the myth as a meta-discourse constituted by different discourses within each type of story. In all stories, a tension between identities of life-giving and life-taking is present which means that motherhood is ‘everywhere’ albeit not necessarily visible. Thus, these stories are versions, perversions and inversions of motherhood. In heroine stories, this takes place as the subject’s heroism is communicated through motherhood/lack of motherhood. In monster stories, the myth is communicated as ‘natural’ femininity is emphasised and defined as that which the monster is not. In victim stories, female subjects are denied agency which means that a life-taking identity is removed whereas a life-giving identity is promoted communicating the Myth of Motherhood. I argue that motherhood is not simply a discourse denying women agency in political violence, but also instrumental as to how agency in political violence is enabled. As such motherhood is ‘everywhere’ in representations of female agency in political violence and fundamental in order to understand how representations of female agency in political violence are gendered.

When women become perpetrators of suicide bombing, their agency – their ability to act upon and affect the world – is often denied. There are a number of reasons for this and one this thesis considers is that – as females – they are not expected to be violent. Accordingly, such women are judged to be coerced or incompetent, and so unable to rule themselves sufficiently as agents. Models of autonomy propose various frameworks for assessing whether acts or persons are self-governing, and the relational approach in particular has garnered much support recently. However, some aspects of the relational account remain under-theorised, including how autonomy might be measured. In this thesis, I aim to bring these two elements together by examining whether an extension of the relational model may offer a way in which to estimate the autonomy of the bombers in a more nuanced fashion. I make two claims. First, that the relational conception of the agent and autonomy ‘fits’ the bombers. Second, that my spectrum view, which is rooted in the relational approach, maps the bomber’s autonomy approximately but in detail. As such, my spectrum view is a befitting notion of autonomy and allows a graded and comparative representation of the bomber’s autonomy.

This thesis explores the role of empathy in family violence, specifically child maltreatment (CM) and intimate partner violence (IPV). Chapter 1 introduces the construct of empathy, its development and relevance to violence. Chapter 2 then explores the relationship between empathy and CM in a systematic literature review of 17 studies. Results found that maltreating parents demonstrate significantly lower empathic capacity and that this relationship is stronger for cognitive than affective empathy. Chapter 3 presents a critical analysis of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980) demonstrating that the measure has good reliability, validity and a range of normative data. Limitations of the measure include the validity of the Fantasy subscale and it being a questionnaire-based assessment. Chapter 4 presents a research report exploring the presence of empathy and emotional recognition skills in IPV (n=30), violent (n=20) and non-violent (n=20) offenders. Results found that IPV participants were more likely than NV offenders to interpret fearful faces as sad. Only the IRI personal distress scale (PD) showed a significant relationship with emotion recognition. The thesis conclusions are presented in Chapter 5 which identifies that empathy plays a role in family violence, although its influence in CM and IPV appears to be different.

This study aimed to assess the relationship between marital adjustment and the interpersonal nature of perfectionism. After controlling for depression and trait-anxiety, which were predicted to be linked with both marital adjustment and perfectionism, the relationship between marital adjustment / the dimensions of perfectionism (i.e. self-oriented perfectionism, other-oriented perfectionism, and socially prescribed perfectionism) / a specific aspect of perfectionism, perceived criticism (i.e. criticalness toward the spouse, and criticalness of the spouse) / and the related demographic variables (i.e., age, education level, length of marriage, and whether having child) were covered in a sample of 210 (105 female and 105 male) Turkish married individuals who are in their first marriage. The participants completed inventories on dyadic adjustment (Dyadic Adjustment Scale &ndash / DAS), perfectionism (Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale &ndash / MPS-H), perceived criticism (Perceived Criticism Measures &ndash / PCM), depression (Beck Depression Inventory &ndash / BDI), trait-anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory - Trait Anxiety Form &ndash / STAI-T), and also a demographic information form. In order to analyze the data, hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted for females and males separately. Altogether, the results for females revealed that higher levels of socially prescribed perfectionism, higher levels of depression and trait-anxiety, and having child were associated with lower levels of marital adjustment. Besides, if the woman thinks her husband is critical of she, then her marital adjustment score decreases. Moreover, the results for males showed that higher levels of socially prescribed perfectionism, and higher levels of depression were found to be associated with lower levels of marital adjustment. Furthermore, if the man thinks he is critical of his wife, then his marital adjustment decreases. The findings, and their implications with suggestions for future research and practice, were discussed in the light of relevant literature.

The study explored spousal accuracy and positive marital behavior (PMB) and negative marital behavior (NMB) areas&rsquo / three different evaluations which were frequency, emotional impact and attributed importance in distressed and nondistressed couples. Participants of the study were 81 married couples. All 162 spouses filled out Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), Communication Skills Inventory and Information Form. Additionally one spouse in each couple filled out Spouse Observation Checklist (SOC) Form A whereas the other spouse filled out SOC Form B. Spousal accuracy were assessed by partial pairwise intraclass correlation. R-to-z transformation was used to find on which PMB and NMB areas&rsquo / accuracy distressed and nondistressed couples differ. Six Repeated Measures MANOVAs were conducted to explore differences in distressed and nondistressed couples / wives and husbands / self-report and spouse-report in three evaluations of PMB and NMB. In order to find most important PMB and NMB areas&rsquo / frequencies in terms of their relationship with marital adjustment, two Roy-Bargmann Stepdown Analysis were conducted by controlling for positive affect, negative affect and communication skills. Principal component analysis was employed to the self and spouse reports of marital behavior areas&rsquo / frequencies and then two stepwise multiple regression analyses were used to identify which factors of marital behavior play a significant role in predicting marital adjustment. Results revealed that nondistressed spouses were more accurate in predicting their partners&rsquo / reports of emotional impact and attributed importance / more frequently engaging in PMB, less frequently engaging in NMB, feel more positive about and attribute more importance to PMB compared to distressed spouses. Spouse report of marital behavior explained more variance than self report of marital behavior / NMB and affectional marital behavior explained more variance than PMB in marital adjustment.

This study is about daily experiences of housewives. It aims to reveal to what extend middle and lower middle class women are different as well as similar to each other. This class comparative analysis is based on their attitudes and feelings about being a housewife, employment, housework, child care, daily routine, housekeeping, and division of labour at home. The study also discusses the factors affecting women&rsquo / s attitudes towards housework such as technology and use of paid domestic service. In order to shed light upon the experiences of housewives, qualitative method is used by in-depth interviews with 14 middle class and 14 lower middle class housewives living in Ankara. In this study class is determined by taking into consideration the place of residence, monthly income and occupation of the husband.

This study was designed to examine the relationships of multiple types of domestic victimization (i.e., physical, psychological, sexual, and economic violence) to women&rsquo / s marital adjustment and psychological well-being, together with their socio-demographic characteristics and attachment, marital coping, and social support aspects. Altogether 524 married women provided data on domestic violence (Revised Conflict Tactics Scale), economic violence (Economic Violence Index), attachment (couples version of Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised), marital coping (Marital Coping Inventory), social support (Social Support Index), dyadic adjustment (Dyadic Adjustment Scale), psychological well-being (Brief Symptom Inventory), as well as demographic information. Results appeared to indicate a general tendency that women who have arranged marriages, more children, low education, low educated husbands, no or low income, and/or women who have more income compared to their husbands report higher levels of multiple types of domestic violence. Furthermore, the findings indicated that multiple types of domestic violence account for significant variances in marital adjustment and psychological well-being of married women, even after controlling for their attachment dimensions, marital coping strategies, and social support from different support groups. The findings were discussed in accordance with the relevant literature, and their implications for clinical practices and future studies were suggested.