This study investigates the joint impact of menstrual cycle and poor access to water on women’s education and labour market outcomes. The research context is chosen to be rural China. Two parallel hypotheses that are tested in this study are as follows: (1) Girls have less probability of school enrolment and shorter schooling duration due to the joint impact of poor access to water and menarche presumably because that poor access to water may raise time/health/psychic costs of school enrolment for girls post-menarche. (2) Women have less probability of participating in work for wages due to the joint impact of poor access to water and menstrual cycle presumably because that poor access to water may generate lower productivity and raise time/health/psychic costs of wage work participation for women pre-menopause. For testing, the researcher uses the data from rural villages in the China Health and Nutrition Survey. This study conducts two sets of empirical tests on each of the above hypotheses using regression models and propensity score matching estimators. It is found that the joint impact of poor access to water and menstrual cycle is indeed largely adverse on women’s education and wage work participation. When the impacts of other confounding factors such as poverty and backward geographical location are controlled for, access to poor water is found to decrease the probability of school enrolment of post-menarche girls by 20 – 25 percentage points, and the probability of wage work participation of women premenopause by about 10 percentage points. This study concludes that a major benefit of policies to improve water supplies may not be the obvious household or industrial benefit, but rather an unseen benefit, the improvement in the position of women

The thesis consists of two volumes. Volume 1: This volume consists of three chapters. The first chapter is a literature review examining whether there is a link between psychopathy and self-harm. The second chapter is a quantitative study investigating whether scores on the HCR-20 and FAM risk assessment tools predict frequency of self-harm in females within a secure psychiatric hospital. The third chapter comprises a public domain briefing document which provides a plain language summary of the literature review and empirical paper. Volume 2: This volume consists of five Forensic Clinical Practice Reports (FCPRs). The first details the case of a 63-year-old man with depression and paranoid schizophrenia, formulated from both cognitive and psychodynamic perspectives. The second is a service evaluation examining whether scores on the HCR-20 and HoNOS decrease over time for patients detained within a secure psychiatric hospital, and whether individuals’ scores on these measures reflect the level of security in which they reside. The third FCPR documents the case of a 34-year-old man experiencing offence-related anxiety, shame and depression. The fourth FCPR is a single-case experimental design investigating the effectiveness of a trauma-focussed cognitive-behavioural intervention for offence-related PTSD. The fifth FCPR is an abstract of an oral case presentation of a 14-year-old girl experiencing school anxiety. Pseudonyms have been used throughout to ensure anonymity.

This thesis explores the experiences and meanings that are attributed to kinship care by caregivers, young people of African descent, and social workers. It examined the meanings each group attached to kinship care and the risk and resilience they saw within it. The research was framed within the culturally distinctive theoretical framework of the Afrocentric paradigm which encapsulates cultural values. A qualitative approach was adopted for data collection, using interviews, and aspects of Grounded Theory for data analysis. The findings show that kinship care is a survival strategy that has historical significance for people of African descent, because it is linked to a tradition of help and a broad base of support. The study found that while local authorities were formally placing children with their relatives, there was a distinct lack of policy development to support kinship care as a welfare service. The absence of clearly identified support structures, tools for assessment, training and monitoring increased the risk factors for children who were placed in kinship care. Resilience was transferred through the Afrocentric cultural values, a key factor that led to family preservation and placement stability. The study concluded that there is an urgent need to reframe policy and practice.

This thesis examines the establishment and work of local nursing associations in provincial England between 1860 and 1900. It challenges the conventional idea that nursing reform was a hospital based phenomenon. Reform was supported by urban elites, people with strong religious convictions and medical practitioners. In addition, associations helped to facilitate the entry of women into management in both voluntary and paid positions. This research indicates that nursing reform took place alongside other initiatives that aimed to train working-class women to be useful and obedient servants in private homes. Associations aimed, in part, to reform the lives of the working classes through the training of district nurses who were expected to give instruction regarding health, as well as caring for the sick. The establishment and subsequent form of associations was dependent upon local conditions and circumstances. An analysis of the success and failure of local associations in reforming hospital nursing, caring for the sick poor and competing in the medical market for private patients is undertaken. The influence of class relations, religion, gender, place and individual agency in the formation of associations, the employment of nurses and the practice of nursing are discussed.

Women’s perception of university education and professional life during the period 1900 to 1945 is the focus of this study. In order to examine these perceptions, the thesis undertakes a close textual analysis of autobiographical writings by two medical doctors, Rahel Straus (1880-1963) and Charlotte Wolff (1897-1986) and the aviator Elly Beinhorn (1907-2007). The images employed in these texts indicate the intricate ways that individual women in the professions define their sense of who they are in relation to their surroundings and how that sense may shift in different settings and at different times, or may ostensibly not shift at all. I have developed a differentiated language for the purposes of articulating the fluidity. This language allows me to take apart narrative levels and to examine the importance that is attached to gender in relation to religion, race, nationality, sexuality and professional identities. Through differentiating between narrative levels I am able to juxtapose life experiences that at first glance seem unconnected and to show this can be done without imposing binary classifications such as ‘emancipated’ or ‘un-emancipated’, as ‘political’ or ‘apolitical’ or ‘victim’ or ‘perpetrator’. The language that I have developed enables me to explore the articulation of self where it cannot be classified and where self should not be judged.

This research sought to examine the relationship between material and virtual space for Transnational Advocacy Network members in Manila, Bangkok and Jakarta. In the decade since the seminal work of Keck and Sikkink’s ‘Activists Beyond Borders’ there have been significant technological advancement and the ensuing literature has positively portrayed the possibilities for network members and other activists. Through extensive semi-structured interviews with members of Transnational Women’s Networks in Jakarta, Bangkok and Manila and thorough review of the literature it sought to establish the relationship between traditional, material spaces and emergent virtual spaces across four main themes; access to technology, relationships, freedom in virtual space and collective identity. These themes emerged from the fieldwork and presented themselves as trends within the literature which then led to their consideration within this research. This work argues that there is a continued relationship between material geography and virtual space and that an individual or groups physical location continues to have overriding implications on their online presence both in terms of their direct access, legislative obstacles and their perceptions of relationships and identity.

The primary aim, as set out in the Introduction, is to explore women’s specific difficulties regarding labour market outcomes in the first decade of the 21st century, related to their dual role as mothers and labour force participants. The overarching context of the thesis is a contemporary profile of the working woman in Great Britain who is struggling to balance motherhood and paid work successfully, with the consequences this might have for her mental health. This thesis contains three empirical chapters exploring women’s employment and health interactions, through the consequences of the 2008/9 economic crisis on the UK gender wage gap, the effects of postpartum depression on maternal employment after childbirth, and the potential long-term impacts of postpartum depression on children’s emotional health and cognitive developmental outcomes. Specifically, this thesis seeks to address the following research questions: Did the great recession affect the wage gender gap? Does postpartum depression affect employment? Does postpartum depression predict emotional and cognitive difficulties in 11 year olds? Recent estimates reveal that 1 in 10 children aged 5-16 years have a diagnosable mental health problem and 1 in 5 mothers suffer from perinatal mental disorders, which highlight how widespread mental health problems are and how important the promotion of good mental health and prevention is at crucial stages in development. The results of the three empirical chapters of the thesis point to the need for an innovative and comprehensive approach to the distinct problems faced by different groups and sub-categories within the population.

This thesis analyses the effect of affirmative action policies on targeted groups in India. A robust analysis of the impact of public sector employment quotas for lower caste groups and women is estimated. Chapter 1 focuses on the effect association with these quotas has on lower caste groups and results show not all targeted groups benefit from the policy. Chapter 2 analyses the effect of women’s reservation policy in public employment and results show that there is some movement by women into the labour force. The biggest effect is the movement from private to public sector, putting into question the effectiveness of the policy in increasing female labour force participation rates. The final chapter then extends Chapter 2 to look at the effect of having a female friendly state, by using reservation policy as proxy for this, and women’s working status on incidences of domestic violence. Results show that women’s working status reduces incidences of domestic violence and more female friendly states have a lower likelihood associated with violence. Further to this, it is found that domestic violence increases when women earn more than men. Overall, results are mixed and possible policy recommendations are also outlined in each chapter.

This doctoral thesis uses female entrepreneurship as a case study to highlight the flaws and limitations of using gender as a lens to view the social and economic opportunities available to women in nineteenth-century England. Through analysing trade directory data, and reconstructing the lives of a hundred businesswomen using sources including census returns,newspapers, photographs, probate records and advertisements, this thesis demonstrates that female entrepreneurs did not conform to a historiography that would see them solely employed in ‘feminine’ trade types or in ‘feminine’ ways of trading. Rather, women remained an integral part of the urban economy across England throughout the nineteenth-century with a consistent percentage of female owned firms engaged in making products. Analysis of the hundred case studies reveals that women were able to become business owners through a variety of means and they remained the senior partner in family firms until they chose to retire or died. This thesis also shows how women could use their position as business owners to acquire the luxury possessions and display the investment and asset distribution behaviours that men used to secure their middle class status, thus demonstrating that economically independent women could achieve and maintain middle-class status.

This thesis weaves together two central themes in the analysis of literary suicide: writing and gender. In particular, it looks at different interpretations of the suicides of Eleanor Marx, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Sarah Kane. Apart from being writers who committed suicide, these women share a common interest in suicide as a subject matter in their writings. Especially in the cases of Woolf and Plath, their iconic status as literary suicides has often blurred the distinction between fact and fiction in the studies of their life and work. Furthermore, they have become case studies in the fields of psychology/psychiatry which discuss creativity in relation to mental illness. In this thesis, I take into account the connotations of literary suicide in different fields of study and synthesize an interdisciplinary approach with a focus on gender. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and Katrina Jaworski’s adaptation of it to suicide, I explore suicide as a social and historical construct. The thesis traces the subject formation of suicide through textual analysis of primary sources (including fiction, biographies and print media) and considers suicide notes, newspaper reports, obituaries and letters as the first narrative constructions of suicidal identity. Initial reactions to these suicides show a highly gendered understanding. However, the multiple narratives that follow reflect changes in the discourse of suicide. The thesis analyses the narratives of suicide written by the authors in relation to dominant discourses of suicide, the self and gender. The examination of the writers’ own work demonstrates that Marx, Woolf, Plath and Kane were in most cases writing against the dominant discourses of suicide.