This thesis explores the working realities of gay police officers and performers in relation to ‘gay-friendly’/‘gay-hostile’ worksites and embodied sexual identity, developing an understanding of the meanings gay workers attach to their working lives by mobilising conceptual resources primarily from sociology. Deep seated assumptions pervade current perceptions regarding gay male sexuality and certain occupations. The idea is that there are gay industries like fashion, nursing and the performing arts. In contrast, occupations such as the police and the armed forces are often seen as homophobic, yet a dearth of academic research investigates the lived experiences of gay men located within perceived ‘gay friendly’ or ‘gay hostile’ worksites. Acknowledging this as a missed opportunity for developing empirical insight, I bring to the fore the work realities of some of these overlooked people. Taking the performing arts as an example of a ‘gay-friendly’ occupation, the police as an example of a ‘gay-hostile’ occupation, and drawing on in-depth interview data with 20 gay performers/police officers, I show that the perspectives and experiences of these men allow us to nuance existing research on how LGB employees understand, value and experience ‘gay-friendly’ workplaces, an emerging construct in the organisation studies literature. Focusing on the significance of embodied, sexual identity for the performance of the occupational roles of interest allows this study to consider the relationship between gender and sexuality at work. Literature on the gendered nature of work along with the promising literature on (homo)sexuality in the workplace have proceeded relatively separately, with the exception of the literature on sexualized labour and the commodification of women's (assumed hetero)sexuality in sales-service work (Tyler, 1997). The effect is that the experience and performance of gender and/in/through sexuality at work has been neglected as a topic of empirical investigation. Although sociologists argue that sexuality cannot be understood without reference to gender, and vice versa, few organizational scholars explore the experiences of work with this in mind. This thesis addresses this gap in knowledge. It brings together the perspectives of gay performers and police officers and highlights the prevalence of a „gender imperative‟ throughout the day-to-day lives of these workers. In detailing the workplace experiences of my participants, this thesis also builds on existing studies that tend to focus solely on the general working lives of gay employees. Gay workers face important contextual issues relating to 'passing', 'coming out' and homophobia. Although these are key areas of interest to existing literature, studies so far fail to address these concepts in detail with reference to specific occupational settings. In other words, the research contributes to the area of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) disclosure and management at work. Stigma-based models (Goffman, 1963) are particularly useful here in framing some of the empirical insights of my research.

This thesis explores how mothers and children in the UK are affected by domestic violence, resist it, and actively support one another's recoveries. The focus extends beyond 'incidents' of physical violence, into the commonplace, the subtle and the everyday. This thesis shows that supportive mother-child relationships may enhance the well-being and recoveries of both mothers and children. It highlights the need to expand professional supports that repair and strengthen mother-child relationships. The study is located on different theoretical ground from most research in the domestic violence field. Usually, within the field, mothers' parenting is seen as promoting or not promoting resilience in their (passive) children. Often, children supporting mothers is seen as inappropriate and indicative of children taking on 'adult roles' or being 'parentified'. There has been little attention to the ways that children, along with mothers, may be active in producing the strong, supportive mother-child relationships that promote resilience and well-being. By contrast, this study conceptualises children, along with mothers, as active contributors to mother-child relationships. Mutual supports between mothers and children are viewed as potentially positive and productive. Thirty participants, 15 mothers and 15 children (aged 10-20) from the UK with experiences of domestic violence, were interviewed for this study. These interviews were conducted using a semi-structured, feminist-informed approach. Participants were recruited through organisations that support those with experiences of domestic violence, using a combination of purposive and snowball sampling. All participants were residing in the community, and the majority had never accessed refuge services. Ethical approval to conduct the study was granted by the University of Nottingham. This thesis presents findings that show how children supported mothers, while mothers continued to parent and support their children. The children and mothers interviewed described supporting each other in multiple ways. During the domestic violence, helpful supports could occur even as mothers and children struggled to communicate about what was happening and suffered negative behavioural and mental health impacts. Some mother-child relationships were more strained than others during this period. This study identifies five factors that influenced the extent of the damage caused to mother-child relationships during the domestic violence. These factors centred on the behaviours of perpetrators/fathers (their treatment of the children, the types of abuse they perpetrated, and the extent to which they undermined mother-child relationships) and the impacts of these behaviours on mothers and children. In the post-separation violence phase, children and mothers were on the 'frontlines' of each other's recoveries. Often, they acted as 'recovery-promoters' for one another, especially when they had received professional supports that repaired and strengthened their relationships. Recovery-promotion frequently occurred in subtle, everyday, age-appropriate ways not usually considered in previous research, including the giving of compliments and praise and 'having fun' together. However, mothers and children also described exchanging some supports that may have been more problematic, and not all mothers and children were able to support one another to the same extent. Based on these findings, this thesis proposes a framework for identifying the different levels and contexts of supports exchanged by mothers and children, and their complex, varied impacts. This framework has utility for future research, policy and practice with domestic violence survivors.

Project Thesis (D. Min.)--Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, 1982. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 173-179).

With its origins in sociological debates about individualisation, personalisation and the transformation of intimacy, this research explores the long-neglected subject of the surnames of married women. Drawing on in-depth biographical interviews with 30 married or once-married women, respondents are found to engage in complex negotiations with cultural assumptions about wifehood, motherhood and the family when called to change surnames upon marriage. Through their interviews, women account for their surname ‘choice’ via a range of, often-contradictory, discourses – thereby identifying marital naming as an issue of tension and struggle for wives, as well as for women considering marriage. Their ‘talk’ frequently calls upon debates of social stability and change, as well as ideas of autonomy and connectedness. Overall, their narratives speak of social control and a dominant institutional structure in life – and women either accepted the norms of naming or dealt with the consequences. This finding was underscored by the responses of 453 people to a street survey. For interviewees, the opposing role of surnames in marking out both individual identity and social connections led to conflicts. Relational identities were often placed in opposition to autonomy. Yet, women more frequently positioned themselves as interdependent negotiators rather than autonomous agents. For interviewees, surname ‘choices’ were imbued with social meanings and were not rated equally – their choice of surname either ‘displayed’ that they were ‘doing gender well’ or ‘doing gender poorly’. However, discussions of gender were largely absent or neutralised in the interviewees’ accounts, while women who kept their maiden names spoke about feeling the need to silence their naming decision. The research concludes that marital naming forms part of women’s exhaustive efforts at ‘relationship work’. Married women were accountable for their surnames as assumptions of marital naming were found to pervade notions about wifehood. Whatever surname an interviewee decided upon, she was responsible for conducting a gendered and classed performance, and her surname ‘choices’ involved both personal sacrifices and gains.

Gender inequality continues to exist in the labour market and this project contributes to discussions on why women are not equally represented in management hierarchies relative to their labour participation rates. Competition is the central lens used to evaluate current debates and add new perspectives to gendered processes in management. As an area of research, competition is largely neglected in the gender and management body of work. This study is important in exploring how as a concept and a practice, competition can operate in organisations and in the individual careers of men and women managers. Informing the thesis is a review of theories including gender performance, individualization, stereotypes and management styles which contribute to building a framework for understanding and engaging with competition and competitive relations. Adapted from Bradley’s (1999) model of gendered power, competition is defined as a series of dimensions which are investigated to research how and in what ways competition is gendered. Qualitative data was collected and analysed with the findings indicating a confused and often contradictory picture demonstrating how managers engage with competition and competitive relations. Within organisations and management hierarchies competition, some managers claim, remains distant from their experiences at work and is not widely discussed. For others external competition located within the marketplace is strongly identified with, whereas other managers cite personal competition and its role in their own self development as the base for their experience. Suggesting competition is a single concept or has a single location for practice has limitations. The model designed and used in this project builds competition as a multidimensional concept which can be explored across a range of activities and attitudes examining how increased visibility and understanding of competitive relations can inform those management practices and policies which sustain gender inequality.

This study aimed to contribute to the small evidence-base on the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) programme. SEAL is a school-based approach to developing children’s social and emotional skills. It was launched by the government in 2005 and has been adopted by schools across the UK. This study focused on the small group aspect of SEAL, which is aimed at children who are targeted for additional practice with their social and emotional skills. The researcher used a non-equivalent control group quasi-experimental design to evaluate the effectiveness of two of the small group SEAL interventions, New Beginnings and Getting On and Falling Out. Pupils, parents and teachers completed questionnaires before and after the interventions and, in the case of New Beginnings, around six weeks after the intervention ended. The level of fidelity to the government guidance was assessed through observations and interviews. No positive results were found for the New Beginnings intervention group in comparison with the control group, but there was some support for the Getting On and Falling Out intervention; with improvements in teacher-rated empathy, total emotional literacy and pro-social behaviour. In common with previous research, no effects were found for parent-ratings or for children who had been selected to take part in the interventions as role models. The results are discussed in terms of implications for practitioner educational psychologists and suggestions are made for further studies in this under-researched area.

This is a thesis about the relationship between gender policy and practice in South Africa, and its effects. Gender is a concept widely used in development policy, but little attention has been paid to precisely how development agents use gender policy in their practice. As a result, we know little about the significance or meanings practitioners attribute to gender policy, or how development actors adapt, transform or manipulate gender policy in their everyday work. Gaps in knowledge about how gender policy is put into practice in specific contexts have led to gaps in knowledge about what effects gender policy has on the politics of gender. This brings about two aims for this study: (1) to map the relationship between gender and development policy and practice in South Africa, and (2) to explore the effects of gender policy on gender politics. Following a multisite approach, this study looks at gender policy as a collection of ‘contested narratives’ (Shore & Wright 1997) about gender. The findings point to a conflict between three different policy frames being drawn on by policy actors as they try to assert their own understanding of gender, define the ‘problem’ that exists and the policies that are needed to solve it. This conflict may diminish the potential for a collective social movement for gender issues in South Africa. However, practitioners are not powerless implementers of policy, but rather use gender policy strategically in their practice by adopting, transforming and manipulating policy frames in a range of different tactical manoeuvres to suit their own objectives. Identifying the tactical manoeuvres being used by development practitioners in South Africa contributes new understandings of the fragmented ways that an alternative gender politics is currently being advanced by practitioners in this context.

This thesis aims to explain why there is a high level of unmet need for contraception in Cambodia - a country where effective methods of birth control are cheaply available and morally acceptable. The research design takes a mixed methods approach, initially using data from the Cambodian Demographic and Health Surveys of 2000 and 2005 to assess trends in contraceptive use. Multivariate logistic regression is used to analyse factors associated with, firstly, unmet need, and secondly, use of traditional contraceptive methods. The likelihood of having an unmet need for contraception increased as education and wealth levels decreased; urban or rural residence had no significant effect. However, the likelihood of using traditional methods, rather than modern methods, increased as education and wealth increased. Taking these findings and the questions they raise as a departure point, 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in one urban and one rural site in Northwest Cambodia between 2008 and 2010. The study looks at women’s and men’s reproductive decision making with a focus on their experiences of and meanings given to contraception, situating these understandings within the broader social context. Fear of side effects, stemming from both contraceptive experiences and notions of health and the body, was found to be the greatest obstacle to use of modern contraceptives. This related more broadly to the pluralistic medical systems operating simultaneously and the varying levels of medicalization and trust in both biomedicine and the Cambodian health system. Behaviour that seemed counter-intuitive at the outset - not wanting to become pregnant but not using contraception, and wealthy educated women choosing traditional over modern methods – becomes understandable in light of the context and meanings highlighted by the ethnographic data. This thesis provides a unique empirical study which contributes to the emerging field of anthropological demography. By bringing approaches and methods from medical anthropology to the typically demographic phenomenon of unmet need, the study provides a new insight for social policies regarding reproductive health as well as contributing to the body of ethnographic literature on Cambodia.

Taking as a starting point the assumption that justice is the first virtue of the family, my main aim in this dissertation is to offer an account of what justice requires of parents. Grappling with this issue, however, sheds some light on related questions that are wider in scope: How should we think about justice in general? What is the distinctive value of the family? What would a society of just families look like? In answering these questions, the following thesis is advanced: Demands of justice are best understood contextually. They arise from the characteristics of the specific relationship in the context within which they are meant to apply. An account of justice in the family should thus appeal to the parent–child relationship itself. This is an intimate fiduciary relationship that normally constitutes the primary site of upbringing. Yet what makes it distinctively valuable is its element of identity, i.e., a sense of interconnectedness and continuity generated through the transmission of beliefs, practices and more idiosyncratic attributes from parent to child. Corresponding to this understanding of the parent–child relationship, justice requires parents to provide their children with the conditions to achieve a set of functionings up to the level that allows them to lead a decent life in terms of the parents’ social and cultural context. As this account of justice in the family is not strictly political, it gives rise to a complex interplay along the axis of citizens–parents–children, displaying formulae of both integration and separation of family and state. A society of perfectly just families might not be perfectly just as a whole. Yet it may be interpreted as particularly liberal; characterized by multiplication and separation of authorities, reflecting rather than resolving the tensions between the individual and society and between different individuals and groups within society.

This thesis sets out to investigate the techniques and strategies used by members of the seduction community to perform masculinity, using as its primary sources material produced by the community ranging from published texts to online commentary. The research is interdisciplinary and incorporates theoretical frameworks drawn from performance studies, semiotics and cultural studies, sociology, literary theory and gender studies. The first chapter explains the origins and operations of the seduction community, positioning it as a force that regulates performances of masculinity and depends upon teamwork and co-operation in order to function. The second chapter discusses the community's dual understanding of masculinity as a construct open to adaptation and change, and also as an innate and natural category. This tension is addressed through an analysis of power relations evident through narcissism and self-display, and a reliance on the suppression of non-masculine elements through homosociality, and performances of leadership based upon embodied expertise. This leads me to conclude that the seduction community may be a heterosexual pretext for building fulfilling homosocial relations. The final chapter addresses how women and femininity are imagined in the community, specifically as inferior and in many ways incomplete without masculine intervention, an attitude which reflects broader social trends. Of particular importance here are the devaluation of female speech and sexuality and the imagining of sex as a commodity. The thesis argues that where women themselves appropriate the language and techniques of the seduction community, this is presented as complicity with conventional gender norms, but also a potential route to individual empowerment through learning to manage relationships more effectively.