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This research explores reasons why congregations in Paarl community are not involved, as faith based organizations (FBO's), with the support of female adolescent victims of sexual abuse. The researcher conducts a literature review concerning the developmental phase of adolescence and issues regarding sexuality that emerge from this phase. The researcher discusses the nature and effects of sexual abuse and statistics regarding this abuse. Different church leaderships' statements regarding the prevalence of sexual abuse are also viewed. Based on the literature study, empirical research is conducted to explore why congregations in Paarl are not involved as FBO's with the support of adolescent female victims of sexual abuse. The researcher uses basic individual interviews with several leaders of congregations in Paarl to gather the data needed. Lastly, the data is analyzed and discussed. Based on this discussion, the researcher offers some guidelines for congregations to become more involved as FBO's with adolescent female victims of sexual abuse. / Social Work / M.Diac.(Direction: Youth Work)

During the late 1970s and 1980s, feminist critics like Janice Radway began to reconsider so-called women’s genres, like romance novels and soap operas and melodramas, in order to address the forms of subversion and expressions of agency they provided female audiences. However, in spite of greater willingness to consider the progressive potential in romance narratives, there has been little such consideration given to stories of romance for the fighting female character—defined as a protagonist who uses violence, via her body or weapons, to save herself and others. The fighting female has received a good deal of attention from critics like Yvonne Tasker, Sherrie Inness, Rikke Schubart, and Phillipa Gates because she enacts transgressive forms of femininity. However, the typical response has been to ignore the intimate or romantic relationships she has with men or to critique them based on the assumption that such hetero-relationships automatically limit her agency and attenuate her representation as a feminist-friendly heroine. This view presumes that female empowerment opposes or can only be imagined outside the dominant cultural narratives that generally organize women’s lives around their hetero-relationships—whether sexual or platonic, familial or vocational. As I argue, some fighting female relationship narratives merit our attention because they reveal a new cache of plausible empowered female identities that women negotiate through their intimacies and romances with men. These negotiations, in turn, enable innovative representations of male-female relationships that challenge long-standing cultural scripts about the nature of dominance and subordination in such relationships. Combining cultural analysis with close readings of key popular American film and television texts since the 1980s, my dissertation argues that certain fighting female relationship themes question regressive conventions in male-female intimacies and reveal potentially progressive ideologies regarding female agency in mass culture. In essence, certain fighting female relationship narratives project feminist-friendly love fantasies that reassure audiences of the desirability of empowered women while also imagining egalitarian intimacies that further empower women.

Thesis (MA (Modern Foreign Languages))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / The noticeable popularity of contemporary German novels set in Africa, as well as the many similarities between these novels, provided the cause for this investigation. Especially the large number of autobiographies, biographies, novels, television productions and films featuring a white female protagonist raised some questions regarding the cause of the popularity of this character. The aim of this thesis is to try and answer some of these questions based on a close analysis of two particular female characters in two contemporary German novels set in Africa. A short overview of the research done on popular fiction, colonial German literature and the history of the white woman in Africa in literature will be given. Theoretical points of departure involve a discussion of the aims and effects of popular fiction in general, as well as a look at how German colonial Fantasies, as found in colonial Literature, are being propagated by contemporary Literature set in Africa, specifically with regard to the representation of the white female Protagonist. Further theoretical background will be provided by a brief appraisal of Gender Studies and Postcolonial Studies. Furthermore, a considerable part of the research for this thesis involved the reading of several contemporary popular German novels. Ein Land, das Himmel heißt (2002) by Stefanie Gercke and Die weiße Jägerin (2005) by Rolf Ackermann were selected as prime examples for closer analysis. In this thesis the two female protagonists of the selected novels, Jill Court and Margarete Trappe, will be analysed in order to identify and interpret a pattern followed in the representation of the white female protagonist in Africa in general. A central aspect of the depiction of this protagonist is her ability to cross boundaries between stereotypical representations of both masculinity and femininity. Therefore, she is a versatile character, allowing a large number of readers to identify with her. However, her capacity to cross such boundaries is limited to a certain extent and she never oversteps the boundaries far enough in order to surpass her lover when it comes to strength, knowledge, and maturity. The conclusion of this study is that both the versatility and the limitations of this protagonist explain her immense popularity as a new literary stereotype.

The culture demonstrates itself in the shared values, attitudes, beliefs, norms and behaviours of people and it is distinguished from each other by differences in those shared meanings of people interacting. As culture is varied across countries, leadership styles are also varied across countries and are not exercised in the same way across different cultures. They are imported in accordance with the cultural environment in which they are perceived. Therefore, understanding the culture is significant in order to explain preferences of leaders concerning leadership styles. The main purpose of the present dissertation is to provide an overview of the relationship between Turkish culture and the way in which leadership is exercised by Turkish female leaders. The present study is completed in three steps in order to demonstrate that the existing relationship between the Turkish culture and leadership styles of female leaders in Turkey. In the first step, the study examined what culture is, what dimensions of the national culture are, what leadership is and how leadership styles are culturally-linked. In the second step, the paper investigated how female leaders perceive and exercise different leadership styles across different cultures. In the third step, the study researched what cornerstones of Turkish culture and how anticipated leadership styles of Turkish female leaders are shaped by Turkish culture.     The study followed a qualitative research approach based on the grounded theory. Ten female leaders coming from different backgrounds were interviewed in order to draw a holistic picture of the relationship between Turkish cultural values and leadership styles of Turkish female leaders. The findings of the study indicate that the Turkish culture has an influence on leadership styles of Turkish female leaders. According to the results, while Islamic values have no significant impact on leadership behaviours of female leaders, such cultural attributes as collectivism, high power distance, uncertainty avoidance and paternalism have a huge impact on leadership styles of Turkish female leaders.       The research examined only leadership styles of Turkish female leaders. Therefore, this study recommends a future research which will investigate leadership styles of Turkish males in order to understand whether gender has also an effect on leadership styles of Turkish leaders.

Clinical and subclinical eating pathology are common, especially among female undergraduates. Such problems are often chronic and associated with a range of negative medical and psychological outcomes. Thus, it is important to develop effective prevention programs to reduce eating disorder risk. Numerous studies suggest that dissonance-based prevention programs are the most successful in reducing eating disorder risk factors, however, such programs might not be convenient for students limited by scheduling restraints or geographic proximity. Further, some students may be reluctant to attend such groups due to lack of anonymity. One way to address these potential barriers is to adapt dissonance-based programs for online use. However, no extant studies have examined the feasibility of this mode of delivery for dissonance-based programs. The current study examined the effectiveness of an online dissonance-based program, and compared it with traditional face-to-face delivery and assessment-only control conditions. It was hypothesized that: 1) online and face-to-face dissonance programs would produce comparable results; and 2) both of these active treatments would yield improvements in eating disorder outcomes (e.g. reduced thin ideal internalization, body dissatisfaction, dieting, negative affect, and eating disorder symptoms) compared with an assessment-only control condition. Results partially supported the original hypotheses. Modified intent-to-treat analyses (MITT) indicated that participants in both the face-to-face and online intervention groups showed less body dissatisfaction at post-intervention assessment compared to assessment only participants. Further, when analyses were conducted using a non-intent-to-treat (non-ITT) approach (examining only the outcomes of participants who completed the intervention), significant post-intervention differences were observed for all outcome variables. Specifically, individuals in both intervention groups showed lower thin-ideal internalization, body dissatisfaction, restraint, negative affect, and fewer eating disorder symptoms compared to assessment only participants. This study indicates that there may be some promise in adapting dissonance-based eating disorder prevention programs for online use. Future studies should continue to refine online adaptations of such programs and examine the effects of such programs with different populations.

Em espécies que exibem cuidado paternal exclusivo, a qualidade esperada do comportamento paternal pode influenciar as decisões de acasalamento das fêmeas e determinar o sucesso de acasalamento dos machos. Nesta tese, investigamos a inter-relação entre o cuidado paternal e a seleção sexual utilizando o opilião Quindina limbata como organismo modelo. Os machos nesta espécie constroem ninhos na forma de taça que são visitados pelas fêmeas na busca de um sítio de oviposição. No primeiro capítulo, nós experimentalmente avaliamos a eficiência do atendimento aos ovos provido pelos machos e testamos se os ninhos desatendidos são adotamos por fêmeas e/ou por machos não relacionados com os ovos. As conclusões mais importantes deste capítulo são: (1) a proteção do macho é crucial para a sobrevivência dos ovos porque ninhos desatendidos são prontamente atacados por predadores; (2) a compensação do cuidado parental por fêmeas é rara, provavelmente porque elas estão associadas aos machos e não aos ninhos; (3) os machos adotam ovos não relacionados com eles e protegem eles tão eficientemente quanto os machos originais, provavelmente porque o cuidado dos ovos é um comportamento selecionada sexualmente. No segundo capítulo, nós testamos a existência de duas táticas alternativas de acasalamento nas fêmeas: residentes, na qual as fêmeas permanecem perto de um ninho, repelem fêmeas conespecíficas e copulam preferencialmente com um único macho dono de ninho, e visitantes, na qual as fêmeas não permanecem espacialmente associadas a ninhos, não repelem conespecíficas e copulam com vários machos donos de ninhos. Também investigamos se a monopolização de ninhos por fêmeas afeta o sucesso reprodutivo dos machos. As conclusões mais importantes deste capítulo são: (1) o comportamento das fêmeas parece ser uma tática reversível, na qual as fêmeas podem mudar de residentes a visitantes durante sua vida, provavelmente em resposta à condição corporal, e (2) a monogamia social imposta pelas fêmeas residentes pode afetar negativamente o grau da promiscuidade dos machos, mas não sua taça de acasalamento. Em conclusão, nós provemos evidência de que a preferência das fêmeas por machos que provem cuidado pode ter favorecido a manutenção do cuidado paternal. Além disso, demonstramos que a monopolização dos melhores machos ou ninhos pode ter favorecido a evolução das táticas alternativas de acasalamento nas fêmeas / In species exhibiting exclusive male care, the expected quality of paternal behavior can influence female mating decisions and thus determine male mating success. In this thesis, we investigated the interplay between paternal care and sexual selection using the harvestman Quindina limbata as model organism. Males of this species build cup-like mud nests that are visited by females in search of an oviposition site. In the first chapter, we experimentally evaluated the efficiency of egg-attendance provided by males and tested if unattended nests are adopted by females and/or unrelated males. The most important conclusions of this chapter are: (1) male protection is crucial for egg survival because unattended nests are promptly attacked by predators; (2) flexible compensation of parental care by females is rare, probably because they are associated to males and not to the nests; (3) males adopt unrelated eggs and protect them as efficiently as original owner males, probably because egg-attendance is a sexually-selected behavior. In the second chapter, we tested the existence of two reproductive tactics in females: resident, in which females remain close to a nest, repel conspecific females, and mate preferentially with a single nest-owner male, and wanderer, in which females are not spatially associated with nests, do not repel conspecific females, and mate with different nest-owner males. We also investigated whether nest monopolization by females may affect males\' reproductive success. The most important conclusions of this chapter are: (1) females\' behavior seems to be a reversible tactic, in which females can switch from resident to wanderer during their lifetime, probably in response to body condition, and (2) the social monogamy imposed by resident females may negatively affect the degree of male promiscuity, but not male\'s mating rate. In conclusion, we provide evidence that female preference for parental individuals may have favored the evolution and maintenance of paternal care. Moreover, we show that the monopolization of the best males or the best nests may have favored the evolution of alternative reproductive tactics in females