This thesis traces how feminist subjectivities are shaped, formed and lived through a focus on English schoolteachers from postwar (1945-1979) and neoliberal (1980-2015) generations. The data is located in British society at a time of resurgence in feminist activism which is also simultaneously a period of ‘postfeminist sensibilities’ combined with the pervasiveness of neoliberal rationalities. In this contradictory scenario, and using a feminist approach and qualitative methods, this research is based on fifteen life story interviews that include five further in depth thematic interviews which have been thematically analysed. The core arguments of this thesis are located in a feminist poststructuralist framework. This approach highlights the fluidity of selfhood shaped by experiences, relationality and language. Subjectivity within poststructuralism is understood as neither completely free nor absolutely determined and power relations are not only limiting but also become productive in forming the subjectivities. Accordingly, this thesis explores how feminist subjectivities are constructed and shaped in multiple ways. In particular, the feminist schoolteachers in this thesis narrated the emergence of early forms of ‘protofeminism’ located in an unarticulated sense of injustice. They spoke of the influence of ‘significant women’ and the bonds of ‘imagined sisterhood’ as enabling a more fully developed awareness of gender injustice. They also talked of their practices to support gender justice, mostly non oppositional in form or as micro resistances to patriarchal practices. All these, I argue, are experiential resources for these women to draw upon in order to enable them to form alternative and counter narratives to patriarchal discourses, and thus construct feminist subjectivities and live feminist lives to resist patriarchal regimes in neoliberal times.

With the increase in the number of women working in the formal economy, there has been a growing literature on women handling multiple roles arising from work and the home. Currently there is a gap in the literature about the activities of working mothers in emerging economies, with theories and most findings concentrated on studies in advanced economies. This study therefore intends to fill part of the gap in the literature by investigating the lives of working mothers in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria, with a view of understanding their challenges, pains and gains as they navigate between the home and work spheres. This research adopted a qualitative approach through the administration of semi-structured interviews to working mothers, supervisors and Human Resources practitioners. Using the Greenhaus and Beutell’s (1985) sources of conflict model, this study explored the work and family lives of working mothers in Nigeria, thereby giving a detailed view of the time, strain and behaviour-based conflict they experience, as well as appropriate coping strategies that have been put in place to mitigate the effects of such conflicts. Findings complement earlier studies on work and family in Africa focusing on the experience of strain by working mothers in Nigeria. However, analysis from this study suggests that some of these stress-related conflicts were caused by the prevalent work culture of presenteeism. In comparing evidence of a more equal sharing of domestic tasks between couples in advanced economies, the embrace of equal sharing of housework by men and a demand for such by women in Nigeria is rather limited and slow. A striking difference on the strategies employed by working mothers in the west and in Nigeria is that what working mothers in Nigeria lose by way of government support, they gain in the form of family support.

A diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a World Health Organisation (WHO) grade IV brain tumour, is devastating for patients and their families who bear the impetus of caregiving. GBM caregivers act as de facto health professionals when their loved ones are discharged prematurely from hospitals. Faced with complex healthcare needs, GBM caregivers report the highest psychological burden, and highest unmet needs of all cancer caregivers. Despite this, they rarely accessed rehabilitation services. Researchers hardly engaged with their stories. The current research on GBM caregiving is predominantly from a biomedical perspective, not only offering limited understandings of psychosocial experiences, but also, evidencing the need for caregiver stories in caregiving research. The researcher recruited 7 bereaved caregivers, who had previously narrated stories online about caring for their loved ones diagnosed with GBM and; consented to the use of their stories as research data. These stories covered a period of between 1-3+ years, throughout the illness trajectory and post-bereavement. The researcher further conducted email interviews focussed on the retrospective perspectives of sharing stories online. Participants provided feedback on the preliminary findings of the DNA. The findings consisted of multiple layers of interpretations drawn from social constructionism, narrative and feminist relational theories, beginning with subjective stories, collective story typologies and core narratives, thereby illuminating the relationships between GBM caregivers, the stories they narrated and the event of narrating stories online. An additional layer of interpretation served to shed light on the relational, dialogical, performative and hindsight perspectives of storytelling and the storytelling landscape. This research decentres the dominance of biomedicine in caregiving research to present a perspective from GBM caregivers using their own stories, in their own voices, so as to inform counselling psychology research and practice.

There are two million single parents in the UK, more than nine out of ten of whom are mothers. Despite greater family fluidity and diversity, lone mothers remain materially disadvantaged and subject to derogatory stereotyping. Media representations, public policy and existing research have tended to focus on young mothers or lone mothers in deprived areas. This study therefore responds to a gap in knowledge by taking a comparative approach in investigating subjective experiences of stigma among lone mothers in a more diverse range of circumstances. This thesis documents qualitative research involving 26 lone mothers in two locations in the North of England, which have contrasting socio-economic profiles. It considers the relative significance of agential and structural factors, particularly social class, in their subjective perceptions of, and responses to, stigma. Theoretically, this study draws on feminist critiques of normative family and citizenship models, a critical realist perspective on agency/structure interplay and a feminist Bourdieusian approach to class analysis. These theoretical influences are brought together in a bespoke conceptual framework that seeks to explore stigmatisation of lone motherhood in terms of women's subjective mediation of gendered and classed de-legitimation. This thesis thus introduces the notion of 'subjective social legitimacy' (SSL) as an analytical tool. Importantly, SSL aims to examine women's accounts in a holistic way that recognises degrees of stigma, rather than assuming or reinforcing stigma. Analysis of data from semi-structured interviews revealed the principal factors affecting women's SSL to be: their age; their personal relationship history; whether they were employed or on benefits; reproductive norms in their local area; their level of extended family support; and social connections with people in the 'same situation'. Some women were positioned more favourably than others to mitigate stigma through their access to cultural, economic and social capital. The women's accounts demonstrate agential behaviour in negotiating stigma as well as responding to practical challenges. Analysis of case dynamics identified 'modes' of SSL among participants which could be deemed 'negative', 'positive', 'defensive', 'performative' or 'transformative'. Women in what might be objectively considered the most stigmatised situations did not automatically display 'negative' SSL. The theme of 'judgement' emerged inductively from interviews and using SSL helped understand women's agential response to stigma in terms of 'what matters' to them personally. This thesis includes case studies which illustrate how a process of 'judgement of judgement' can be pivotal to participants' rejection, resistance or absorption of stigma. This research offers an empirical contribution to knowledge through its comparative approach involving mothers in a deprived and a more affluent location; a conceptual contribution through development of SSL; and a methodological contribution through exposition of evaluative judgement as a mechanism in agential mediation of stigma.

This thesis aims to better understand how to effectively assess and manage the risks posed by online IIOC users. First, it presents an introduction to the topic with a commentary on the increasing prevalence of this form of offending. Second, a systematic review of literature is conducted regarding the proportion of online IIOC users also found to perpetrate contact sexual offences. A qualitative synthesis of data revealed 10% of IIOC offenders had an official criminal record for a contact offence. This increased to approximately 40%, when analysing data from interview studies. Third, the thesis presents a thematic analysis of the accounts of 10 online IIOC-only offenders regarding their reasons for accessing IIOC. Here, a number of themes consistent with known pathways of contact sexual offending were identified, characterised by the unique role of general problematic Internet use. The findings are used to construct a cyclical model of IIOC offending, viewed within the context of a maladaptive emotion regulation loop. Fourth, the thesis critically evaluates the validity and reliability of a psychometric tool, the Emotion Control Questionnaire, Second Edition (ECQ2), used to measure emotion dysregulation amongst IIOC users. Fifth, a small-scale exploratory quantitative study is conducted of a mindfulness-based intervention package, aimed at reducing emotion control deficits amongst IIOC-only offenders. This found no clinically significant change in offenders’ scores, pre- to post-treatment, or when compared to a non-treatment control group. The null finding is attributed to a sampling artefact. The thesis concludes with an overall discussion of the work.

This thesis is about the experiences of children born as a result of sexual violence in war and armed conflict. It explores how children conceived in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) are perceived and how those perceptions affect their everyday lives once they left the LRA and joined the families and communities of their mothers in post-war northern Uganda, and particularly in Lango. These children are offspring of forced wives - girls and young women who were forced into sexual relationships with LRA militiamen. Kony used fear and mysticism to manipulate his followers and control their sex life and hence, re-organise their reproductive choices. Yet Kony’s approach to sexuality and procreation was perceived as incompatible with Lango norms and institutions regulating sex, marriage and motherhood. This gave rise to tensions over the reintegration of formerly abducted women and their children. This study explores the circumstances under which these children were conceived and what happened to them when they left the LRA and joined their mothers’ natal families and communities. Moreover, it explores related fields – such as ideas and practices of kinship and gender - influencing the treatment of children conceived in the LRA.

This thesis examines female political imprisonment during the early part of Spain’s Franco regime through the life narratives by Carlota O’Neill, Tomasa Cuevas, Juana Doña, and Soledad Real published during the transition. It proposes the foregrounding notion of the ‘No/Body’ to describe the literary, social, and historical eradication and exemplification of the female prisoner as deviant. Using critical theories of genre, gender and sexuality, sociology and philosophy, and human geography, it discusses the concepts of subject, abject, spatiality, habitus, and the mirror to analyse the intersecting, influential factors in the (re)production of dominant discourses within Francoist and post-Francoist society that are interrogated throughout the corpus. In coining the concept of the ‘No/Body’ as a methodological approach, a narrative form, and a socio-political subject position, this thesis repositions the marginal and the (in)visible as an essential aspect of female carcerality. Read through this concept, the narratives begin to dismantle and rewrite dominant narratives of gender and genre for the female prisoner in such a way that the texts foreground the ‘No/Body’. This thesis thus presents the narrative corpus of lost testimonies as a form of radical textual and political practice within contemporary Spanish historiography.

This thesis seeks to resolve the debate between conservative and feminist thinkers over Muslim women’s participation in public space. It is divided into two parts. The first part examines the discourses of both partisans of the debate, taking Abu A ‘lā Mawdudi as representative of conservative thinking and largely Barbara Stowasser as representative of feminist thinking. This examination identifies that the debate rests decisively on conceptualizations of hijab and the pivotal role of the hadiths in informing these but that both conservatives and feminists are selective and literal in their use of hadiths. The second part examines the hadiths in the collections of Bukhari and Muslim in a full and comprehensive manner in their original Arabic text on the topics of women’s mosque attendance, visitation of graves, joining funeral processions, travelling, jihad and veiling. The findings largely uphold feminist positions but seriously challenge conservative conceptualizations of hijab, demonstrating that these are informed as much by cultural factors as by their reading of the hadiths. Above all, they confirm the hypothesis that apparently “restrictive” hadith when read within the context of other hadiths are found to be predicated in considerations other than to maintain gender segregation.

Despite the heightened focus on the effects of war on girls, they are still being inappropriately grouped under the larger rubric of ‘women’ or ‘females’. Since the distinctions in girls’ and women’s war experiences are not yet well understood (McKay, 2006), this research argues that gender analysis is crucial to effective development as it relates to young soldiers. It also advocates a distinct analytical focus on girls who exit armed forces as young women (at times as a result of having children). This thesis is about formerly abducted girls in Acholi sub region, northern Uganda. As adolescents and teenagers, they were abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army and many returned to their villages with children fathered by the fighters. This thesis systematically looks at their socio-economic reintegration process, experiences and progress over the years. Through a series of 57 in-depth and 12 group interviews, this qualitative study explores long-term reintegration from the participants’ perspectives. The study identifies and analyses the central themes in their lives, including: physical and mental scars of abduction and life in captivity, stigmatisation, marriage complexities, and economic hardships. To date, the growing body of reintegration literature has focused on the first one or two years after exiting an armed group, and long-term reintegration studies are still limited. Therefore, through these themes, the thesis contributes to the conceptualisation of reintegration and understanding of the participants’ past and current life situations.

The main aim of the thesis is to investigate the process of the legislative reforms in Turkey between 1998 and 2005 in the context of gender mainstreaming. To illustrate the process, descriptively, the actors behind the amendments in the Turkish Constitution, Civil Code, Penal Code, Labor Law and the Law on the Protection of the Family are investigated based on the &ldquo / Gender and Development&rdquo / approach. The thesis exposes that international organizations (EU and UN), women&rsquo / s activism and state are incredibly influential in the process of the legislation stage of gender mainstreaming. The legislation stage of gender mainstreaming has been almost eventuated in Turkey, however, the second stage, which is institutionalization stage, has just started to be implemented.