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Contestations around religion and secularism in the UK continue to unfold. These debates converge most polemically around women’s religiosity, as evidenced by proposed bans on the hijab, and the criminalisation of female circumcision. Research on religious women creates a binary juxtaposition between religion as an oppressive force, on the one hand, and religion as a means of emancipation for women, on the other. These accounts fail to address how religious women experience their religious communities as oppressive and choose to stay. In this doctoral thesis, I introduce a new analytic approach to the study of religious women by investigating how women stay in a restrictive religious context and the strategies they employ, in order to theoretically expand understandings of agency. This research examines how British evangelical Christian women negotiate their religious and gendered identities in London. My findings are based on a 12-month ethnography and 33 semi-structured interviews with unmarried evangelical women (aged 22 – 40) living in London. Recognising the unique challenges that single religious women face, including dating and sexual abstinence, I focussed on unmarried women. My research asks: How is the female evangelical subject formed through religious practices such as observing sexual purity, attending Bible study groups and fellowship with like-minded believers? Taking a lived religion approach leads me to theoretically analyse how women practice their religion in everyday, ordinary ways. I then examine how these practices shape women’s identities. Evangelical women are assumed to be either empowered by submission, or frustrated and leaving the church, but an exploration of the everyday, ordinary ways that women live their religion reveals the nuanced and important identity negotiations that women make. My key finding is that evangelical women confront a double bind in their identity formation; the attachment to a Christian identity liberates and supports women, but also ensnares them in a constraining network of norms. Through this discovery, I emphasise the salience of gender in the study of religious practice. By analysing how identities require exclusion for consolidation, I also explore women’s responses to marginality, and re-conceptualise agency. Despite important theoretical contributions to understanding religious women’s agency, scholars continue to ground their approach to agency solely in piety and submission, obscuring alternative modalities. By refusing to align with one side of the emancipation/oppression binary, my research brings a renewed attention to the benefits and the costs of religious belonging.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the differences among college students¡¦ personality traits, gender identities and types of expected occupations. One hundred ninety-one participants were selected by convenient sampling for completing Gender Role Identity Scale, Expected Occupational Type Scale, Big Five Inventory Chinese version, Sexist Attitudes toward Women Scale Chinese version and personal information questions in 2010 to 2011. Frequency distribution, descriptive analyses, independent t-test and analysis of variance were conducted for answering research questions. The initial findings were as follows: 1. The highest percentages of females college students¡¦ gender role identity types was androgynous¡]30.77%¡^; The highest percentages of male college students¡¦ gender role identity was masculine¡]31.63%¡^. 2. Students¡¦ background (i.e. sex, college, parenting style and birth order) presented non-significant relationship to gender role identity types. 3. Female college students expected to engage in female-related occupations while males preferred in male-related occupations. 4. Feminine college students presented non-significant difference in take male-related jobs. 5. Female and male college students presented non-significant differences on big five traits. 6. Masculine college students tended to have higher scores on extraversion and be more emotional stability than Feminine college students. 7. Androgynous college students have the highest scores on openness than these feminine and undifferentiated college students. 8. Females tended to have better gender equality perceptions. 9. There were non-significant differences on sexist attitudes toward gender scores between different gender role identity college students.

This thesis explores how constructs of gender and sexual identity in both psychoanalytic and fictional writing between the wars affect the fonn and structure of a text. The keen interest Bowen, Lehmann and Townsend Warner show in mental processes and patterns of sexual development, allows us to read across psychoanalytic and fictional discourses and rigid genres. While the psychoanalytic texts utilise elements of the Bildungsroman, the fictional narrative often enacts the pathologies of the story in an erotics of fonn. The intersection of scientific and narrative discourses coincides with a modernist debate about the limitations of conventional modes of representation in Edwardian and realist texts. The shifts between earlier modernist gestures of moving away from realist modes and structures and a later return to a more conciliatory approach of utilising them for modernist agendas, can be interpreted as a specific anxiety of origins. Shifting between modernist and realist modes of writing, and between nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century concepts of sexuality and gender produces peculiarly hybrid texts which negotiate this anxiety in various fonns of ambivalence and in-between-ness. Through the examination of six novels by Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen and Sylvia Townsend Warner, the thesis examines this anxiety in the difficulties psychoanalytic and fictional texts have in talking about the maternal, placing them in the context of socio-cultural ambiguities about femininity and motherhood during the interwar period. The thesis opens with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations of crossing between post-structuralist, psychoanalytic and historicist readings of modernist texts and provides a brief biographical framework for the three women writers in so far as it relates to gender, sexuality and the maternal. The following six chapters are divided into two parts grouping the first novels against the mature work in order to trace changes in the ways of representing sexuality, gender and maternal ambivalences through form, plot and structure. The first part discusses Rosamond Lehmann's Dusty Answer (1927), Elizabeth Bowen's The Hotel (1927) and Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Will owes (1926), while the second part examines The Weather in the Streets (1936), The Death of the Heart (1938) and Summer Will Show (1936) retaining the order of authors. The conclusion summarises the findings, contemplates its implications for the discourse on modernism and broaches the divergencies of Bowen's, Lehmann's and Warner's fictions in the 1940s.

Thesis (M.A)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007 / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on September 30, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.

This research is about the Social Networks and Social Capital of British-Bangladeshi Young Women in relation to their identity, cultural context and social aspects. It is a qualitative study based on the lives of a small sample of Bangladeshi young women, who are second or third generation British-born Bangladeshis between the ages of 16 and 29, living in London. They are British citizens and were born or grew up in Britain. The main area that the research takes place in is the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Methods encompass in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. This research investigation has found that the social networks and social capital of Bangladeshi young women were impacted by their identity, ethnicity, social and cultural contexts, such as religious and gender identity, patriarchal practice within households and racism. Accordingly, for many women the construction of social networks was enabling; but for others, there were constraints in relation to their identity. On the other hand, the social networks through various places, especially places of study and work, significantly enabled the women to acquire their identity with regard to their social position, which has been helpful for agency and negotiation power. Consequently, their social networks were shaped based on their subjective experience, cultural expectations and social aspects. However, the women were active in order to create and maintain their social life, as well as to negotiate and develop their own ‘strategies to manage’ techniques to cope with the constraints. In this study, my main argument aims to emphasise how social networks are formed and maintained by the Bangladeshi young women in relation to their identity, cultural context and social aspects. I contend that these women actively negotiate a multitude of personal, familial and structural concerns in developing their social networks. I also argue that agency and negotiation power positively contribute to mitigate cultural constraints and inequalities with regard to the social networks of these young women; however social structures and inequalities create significant boundary conditions for these women to acquire negotiation power.

<p>This thesis is a small scale in depth exploration into the perceptions of power held by eight Muslim women residing in the Cape Town Metropole area. Using a Qualitative Feminist approach the study aimed to explore and shed light on the multiple ways in which Muslim women negotiate, construct and co-construct agency, power and authority in their everyday lives. This study also sought to explore whether Muslim women who appear independent or empowered actually feel in control of their own lives / and how their ability to make choices is mediated by intersecting identities such as race, class, age, etc. The research highlights a number of emergent themes in which discussion of the women‟s views around education, finance, reproductive responsibilities, patriarchy, etc. takes place and also explores the ways in which the women contest and resist traditional cultural norms in their everyday experiences. Furthermore this study also sought to create a space where the researcher focused and refocused her gaze on the theoretical and epistemological aspects of her chosen method of enquiry in order to interrogate its merits and limits. Upon reflection the researcher also acknowledges that, similar to the participants, she also holds contradictory views on some of the issues discussed.</p>

<p>This thesis is a small scale in depth exploration into the perceptions of power held by eight Muslim women residing in the Cape Town Metropole area. Using a Qualitative Feminist approach the study aimed to explore and shed light on the multiple ways in which Muslim women negotiate, construct and co-construct agency, power and authority in their everyday lives. This study also sought to explore whether Muslim women who appear independent or empowered actually feel in control of their own lives / and how their ability to make choices is mediated by intersecting identities such as race, class, age, etc. The research highlights a number of emergent themes in which discussion of the women‟s views around education, finance, reproductive responsibilities, patriarchy, etc. takes place and also explores the ways in which the women contest and resist traditional cultural norms in their everyday experiences. Furthermore this study also sought to create a space where the researcher focused and refocused her gaze on the theoretical and epistemological aspects of her chosen method of enquiry in order to interrogate its merits and limits. Upon reflection the researcher also acknowledges that, similar to the participants, she also holds contradictory views on some of the issues discussed.</p>

As popular culture has an increasing presence in America, so do its various sub-cultures. One of such sub-cultures is the world of comic book fans known as cosplayers. Cosplayers dress-up and emulate characters at comic book conventions throughout the United States and the world—a practice known as cosplay, also described as costume-play. Despite the growing popularity of cosplay, little is known about this population. In this research, I set out to answer the following research question: why are women choosing to dress-up and embody these characters (the Gotham City Sirens) when they are often viewed as oversexualized. In order to answer my research question, I focused on women who chose to cosplay characters from the Gotham City Sirens – Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy – who are frequently depicted in “glamorized” or hypersexualized illustrations. My data collection included participant observation, literature review, and semi-structured interviews. Recruiting participants from local Central Florida comic book conventions, I conducted 19 in-depth semi-structured interviews with the women cosplayers about their perspectives on the characters and their cosplays. My findings derived from the analysis of the interview narratives identified three emerging dominant themes – sexuality, body image, and personal identity. Based on this research, there is a concluding realization that empowerment and self-reflection are prevalent in women cosplayers. These are important findings because they are essential to the understanding of how gender identity is perceived in cosplay. When cosplayers connect with their characters on a personal level, often empowerment and self-reflection are the outcomes; due to the connection they foster with the character for the sake of performance.

Background: Gender Variance (GV) is an experience that the gender assigned at birth is different to one’s preferred gender identity. It includes the possibility of a preferred gender identity being different to either male or female. It is reported that around 4000 people per year access care from the NHS in relation to GV (Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES), 2009) and both the physical and psychological elements of these experiences is well documented. However, little research specifically explores how Gender Variant (GVt) people make sense of their experiences and construct meaningful expression of their preferred identity. The aim of this study is to further the understanding of GV with a view to considering the implications for service provision to this population. Methodology: The study employed a qualitative method that explored the narratives of the participants. A purposive sample of seven participants self identified as GVt was recruited for a single interview. The interviews used a topic guide to elicit the narratives that these people tell about their experiences. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using a narrative approach to explore what the participants said and the way they said it. This was then situated within the local and broader social contexts within which the narratives exist. Analysis and findings: The findings are presented through a global impression of each of the individual narratives and then through discussion of the similarities and differences in relation to the collective storylines. Particular attention is paid to the identity construction and the emotional experiences that take place during the interviews. These two elements are told within and through each of the storylines. The local and wider narratives available to the participants are used to contextualise the analysis and findings, and so are reported within the analysis. The analysis offers the following findings: i) their first experiences of understanding GV was important, leading them to find others who felt the same to gain a sense of hope of a normal life ii) sharing their experiences with others was an anxiety provoking time and was part of a decision making process about treatment and establishing an acceptable gender expression iii) relationships with family, friends, peers and members of their social context influence sense making and identity constructions of GVt people and typify the challenges faced within their GVt experiences. Some of these challenges were reported as ongoing and illustrated throughout the stories of the day to day lives of the participants iv) for these participants distressing emotional challenges were often situated in the past and participants spoke of ‘overcoming’ challenges. This offered a counter to the more dominant isolation and loneliness narratives within the literature on GVt experiences The findings of the study are discussed in relation to its clinical implications, the strengths and limitations of the methodology, and directions for future research.