Using a feminist, autoethnographic methodology and in depth interviews with twenty-three participants, I sought to better understand the meaning of family memory keeping for women and their families through this research, paying particular attention to the ways that dominant gender ideologies shape family memory and the act of preserving family memory. This research also endeavoured to explore those instances wherein families lose that memory keeper due to memory loss, absence, or death. Interviews revealed that, despite its absence from the literature, women’s family memory keeping is a valuable form of gendered labour – and leisure – that makes significant individual, familial, and social contributions, while simultaneously reproducing dominant gender ideologies and gendered constructions of fatherhood, motherhood, and the family. Through an exploration of the loss of a mother’s memory due to illness, death, or absence, this study also demonstrated the loss of a mother’s memory is both deeply felt, and deeply gendered. However, this study illustrated participants challenging these dominant gender ideologies, as well, and using family memory keeping as a way to resist, critique, and cope. As such, this study speaks to the absence of women’s family memory keeping from the gendered work, leisure studies, social construction, and loss literature, contributing a better understanding of both the activity itself and the gendered ideologies that shape the activity, as well. Not only does this study speak to gaps in existing literature, but findings make fresh theoretical contributions to this literature through three new concepts: the notion of the good mother as the “remembering mother”, the concept of “compliance leisure”, and the re-envisioning of women’s unpaid labour as contributing to “the homing of the home”. And with these contributions to the literature, this research also provides valuable insight for professionals working to improve policy and services surrounding postpartum care, individual and family therapy, caregiving, extended care, and palliative care.

The pursuit of the perfect language intrigued and obsessed the literary circle of the seventeenth century, as political turmoil and chaos initiated the desire for the stable even in the aspect of language. As the perfect language is self-explicative, it indicates a perfect correspondence between the signifier and the signified in order to guarantee the purity and singleness of the meanings to avoid confusion and ambiguity inevitably occurring, for instance, in postlapsarian language. The concept of the perfect language, nevertheless, finds evidence in Milton¡¦s prelapsarian world, where unfallen Adam is endowed with divine insights to discern the nature of the animals and translate his comprehension into perfect matching names. However, the presumption of the perfect language in the prelapsarian Eden is challenged by critics as the preconditioned absoluteness could not possibly exist for it would have preempted any possibilities of inferring, implying, and guessing from the context. In my thesis, I argue that languages marked by gender as masculine and feminine dominate in the characterization and narratives of Adam and Eve, for gender is the sole mark distinguishing the first couple along with their hierarchical roles as man and man¡¦s helper. I examine Eve¡¦s gendered discourse in particular as Eve as a lesser vessel turns out to be the main target of Satan¡¦s verbal temptations and sophistries. I analyze the traits of gendered discourses and discuss how they render Eve more vulnerable, disadvantaged, and disempowered in face of Satan¡¦s rhetoric and eloquence. Also scrutinized are the critics¡¦ viewpoints concerning Eve¡¦s gendered discourse, which significantly reveals certain ingrained biases attached to stereotypical expectations for women shown in the critics¡¦ word choices and arguments in regard of Eve.

Researcher focused on the phenomenon that how schools and society had made parents to contribute more efforts on their children¡¦s education to promote the education effects. From gender perspective, researcher discovered that the role of volunteering mothers had strengthened the traditional gender division of labor ideology. Researcher also found that the main reason for the volunteering mothers to join the services in elementary schools is to help their child and most of them came from middle class families. For those women who had left their career because of the conflict between family and work, to join the volunteer services can help them maintain the self-identity and sense of achievement. The main consideration among choosing volunteer works is whether the time will be mach up with family care and expertise their own interests. The school administrations think that the value of the volunteer women is not only increased school human sources, but also made a good example for the students. However, parts of the volunteering mothers in school with strong selfish motives had caused conflicts between mothers and teachers because of privileges and unfair attitude. Researcher concluded that the participation of volunteering mothers in elementary school campus is not only helpful to the child but also can increase the individual value and the social welfare. However, it may also deepen the inequality in sex distinction and education unfair.

Examining historical ideology of women’s position within society and how that socialization has influenced historical legal cases of gender inequality is the backdrop for a modern case study of sexual harassment and sexual assault. This thesis explores how women’s voices have been, and continue to be, silenced socially and legally through ages old ideology of women’s subordination to men. By examining a 2007 legal case of ongoing sexual harassment and sexual assault perpetrated by Federal Judge Samuel Kent against women in subordinate positions working within his courthouse it is demonstrated that socialization of gender inequality is stronger and slower to change than the laws prohibiting it. / text

This thesis explores images of the Japanese schoolgirl as accessory to the Occidental Self in contemporary Orientalist pop culture in the US. In an analysis of a series of images by four different Western pop culture artists, each artist expresses an appreciation for Japan that is based primarily on their encounter with Japanese pop culture. Furthermore, they express identification with the Japanese Other and a desire to introject into Japanese subjectivities. However, lacking the material body needed for full immersion or identification with the Other, they produce the Japanese schoolgirl as an accessory to the Self. The accessory provides false immersion or identification with the Japanese Other. In this way, the Japanese schoolgirl becomes the embodiment of Japanese pop culture and an object for Western fetishization. / text

This qualitative study explores six child care teachers’ perceptions of their work as gendered work. The purpose of the study is to understand how the experiences of women child care teachers are connected to the larger issue of gendered teaching embedded in culturally pervasive beliefs about child care teaching. This study answers the following questions: 1) What do child care teachers perceive about their work? 2) How do they conceptualize child care teaching as women’s work? 3) How do they describe the practice of their perceived work as women’s work? Data were collected through in-depth interviews and, following Corbin and Strauss’s (2008) grounded theory methodology, analyzed to find emergent themes. Six themes emerged from the analysis of interview data: 1) child care teaching is not gendered work, 2) child care work is an identification of self, 3) child care teaching is a way of relating to one another, 4) vulnerabilities of child care work, 5) child care is hard work, and 6) contradictions and paradoxes. These themes answer the three research questions. First, these teachers perceive their work to be gender-neutral work, self-identification, mutuality, vulnerabilities, and labor profession. Second, the teachers conceptualize child care work both as gender-neutral and gendered, as creating women’s culture, and as women’s culture being stigmatized. Third, the teachers show paradoxical and inconsistent attitudes about the practice of their perceived child care work as gendered work. The categories about the participants’ conceptions of their work are interrelated and interwoven. They reflect a complexity in the participants’ understandings. The inconsistencies of the teachers’ perceptions reflect the complexity of child care teachers’ reality and their negotiations between dominant beliefs about what child care work means and the elements of their individual and collective experiences that they bring to their profession (Biklen, 1995; Dillabough, 1999, 2005; Murray, 2006; Ryan & Grieshaber, 2005). The findings of this study provide implications for teacher educators. The implications involve the need to utilize contemporary theories and feminist perspectives to better understand the nature of child care teachers’ work and to help teachers develop a critical and more realistic understanding of the nature of their work. / text

Women entrepreneurship has been well-studied, over the past 30 years, in OECD countries. However, women's roles as entrepreneurs advancing economic development in war torn and post conflict countries are under-studied. Recent research conducted in Africa, and within Rwanda, has focused on listening to the voices of women enterprise leaders, but there is a gap in understanding the best models of women entrepreneurship training to create sustainable entrepreneurship curriculum relevant to local culture. This research engages 30 graduates of the 2012 Peace Through Business program using a qualitative research approach reflective of feminist theory, post colonialism and empowerment studies relevant to women entrepreneurship. Participatory Action Research methodology has been applied through a combination of an in-country forum, an electronic survey and in-depth interviews. Using the simplified version of the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method of data analysis, findings address whether current, Western-based women entrepreneurship training smacks of failed development efforts of traditional 20th century aid.

Physiotherapy in Sweden has developed from a practical, hands-on, assistant job predominantly taught at college level to a university-based academic discipline emphasising evidence-based practice and research. Women are in majority although an increasing number of men have entered the profession. Women and men physiotherapists tend to undertake different career paths. The overall aim of the present thesis was to use a gender perspective to describe and analyse attitudes to the professional role, health care work and the development of the profession among actors engaged in physiotherapy education. A questionnaire was distributed in 1997 to all Swedish physiotherapy students in the second semester of the education (n=273). The same cohort was investigated in 1999 at the completion of the education. The response rate was 93 percent at both occasions. For an international comparison, the same questionnaire was distributed in 1997 and in 1999 to a group of Canadian physiotherapy students in their first and last semesters (n=60). Qualitative research interviews were conducted with 8 novices in physiotherapy and with 14 women educators in academia. Five focus group discussions with clinical supervisors were conducted (10 women and 5 men). Methods used were Grounded theory, factor analysis, logistic regression and path analysis. Feminist theories and Bourdieu's theory of culture constituted a theoretical framework Four ideal types were identified among the novices representing attitudes to the professional role. The Treater and The Supervisor were attitudes found among the women, whereas The Coach and The Entrepreneur were attitudes among the men. Type of health care facility was important for their positioning in the organisational hierarchy. Swedish students favour future employment in private practice. Sports medicine clinics and fitness centres are health care facilities highly endorsed, as is health promotion. Neither care of elderly nor hospital work are preferable fields of practice. Research is not favoured. Men students are more likely to have chosen the profession because of their interest in physical activity and sports. They are also more likely to prefer owning a private clinic and working with alternative approaches such as fitness training in sports medicine clinics. Women students are more likely to prefer an employment in private practice. The Canadian men students favour private practice whereas the women prefer the public sector of health care. The academic educators experience a gap between theory and practice which causes conflicting messages to students. Competing professions, emergent societal change and a conservative clinical practice constitute threats to the profession. The uniqueness of professional competency, theoretical development and new arenas such as home rehabilitation, consulting and research constitute a vision for future development of the profession. Masculinity is highly valued for status and power whereas femininity symbolises empathy and caring. The clinical supervisors update their theoretical knowledge base through supervision of students, but claim that students lack hands-on skills. Stress at work, unequal power relations in the hierarchy and restructuring of health care are factors that influence work satisfaction negatively. To conclude, gendered habitus, different symbolic capital and different attitudes towards health care work and development of the profession were found in the sub-fields of physiotherapy. / digitalisering@umu

This essay aims to explore Evelina’s abilities to self-author her life as a tool of agency, self-authoring means to be able to write your own life. Evelina was written by Frances Burney in 1778 and tells the story of a young orphan lady who visits London. She is inexperienced and makes mistakes that can be seen as fatal in the social sphere. Despite that she reflects on her mistakes and reactions and gains agency in the end. One of her bigger problems is her beauty. It puts her in situations she almost cannot control.  She becomes a sexual prey quite easily. Jane Eyre written by Charlotte Bronte in 1847 is relevant for this essay because a lot of criticism has been made about the threats and abilities that Jane’s agency has. The theoretical framework for this essay is based on the works by eight different critics: Diana Meyers, Judith Butler, Jane Spencer, Ellen Moers, Virginia Woolf, Gayatri Spivak, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. The framework explains what agency and gendered act is, it also explains the historical context behind Burney and Bronte. Lastly it discusses how the other half of the two heroines has to disappear in order for them to achieve agency. The conclusion for this essay is that Evelina attains agency though her reactions and behavior, even if she looks at herself trough the eyes of another, or in other words attains a God-like perspective, she manages to self-author her life and herself in to being.

There is an emerging body of literature about older women and play, often focused on social groupings (e.g., Red Hats Society, Raging Grannies). This study aimed to contribute to this body of literature by exploring the meaning, experience, and place of play and playfulness in the day-to-day lives of older women. Interpreting older women’s play as a phenomenologist informed by the feminist gerontology literature, I explored, described, and interpreted play using the voices, words, lived experiences, and artful reflections of four focus groups comprised of nineteen women between the ages of 63 to 95 years. Play emerged to be a wonderful, complex, and paradoxical phenomenon for older women that interconnected in three ways: as a doing, a feeling, and a being. Within and across the women, play was characterized by these paradoxes: time flies by and time slows down, productive and unproductive, social and solitary, and serious and silly. Play was infused into the everyday lives of these older women. Arts-based methods served to invigorate and engage the women and me, and transformed the research environment into a comfortable, open space to play and be playful, and to share, gather, and build knowledge. Thus this research contributes to the growing body of literature about the lives and experiences of older women, from their perspective, adds insight into older women’s play, and grows our knowledge about collecting data through arts-based methods with older women.