This thesis examines the appropriateness of the use of rights based strategies in meeting children's needs. In an era of proliferating international conventions this is an issue that demands further debate. The starting point of the thesis is the way that rights talk about children. It is suggested that ideas of difference are integral to child rights. Needs and rights are attributed on the basis of difference. The difference between children and adults is defined and informed by the scientifically based discourse of child development, on which a prescriptive model of childhood is built. Difference also structures the relationship between child rights and other cultural norms of childhood. Rights make claims to a universal application. Other constructions of childhood are redefined as local, and required to fit into the rights framework, or delegitimised. Developing these points it is asked whether rights, as an internationally dominant discourse, can succeed in accommodating rather than excluding difference, since the process of exclusion involves an operation of power which serves to reinforce the status quo. This is a problem that is recognised in some theoretical perspectives (although only rarely applied to child rights). The response is usually in terms of restating universal claims, or advocating some form of cultural relativism. This thesis leans in favour of the latter. However, it also departs somewhat from this dichotomy, and argues, relying on ideas of chaos and complexity, that child rights need to be reworked. Two distinct approaches are suggested: either the recognition of radical, incommensurable difference, in which there can at best be convergence under a limited overarching framework of values; or the removal of difference as a structuring concept. The argument is elaborated through a detailed analysis, structured by theories of globalisation, of the interaction between the dominant rights discourse of childhood, and alternative conceptions of childhood in Sri Lanka. The analysis is based on field research, in which the response of the child care authorities to the practice of child placement was investigated, as was the impact on children and families of their responses. This investigation involved one of the only pieces of empirical research yet done in Sri Lanka, on either the juvenile courts, or on child placement and domestic service. The findings supported the conclusion that in order to be able to embrace complexity, and empower children, child rights need to be rethought.

The main purpose of this research is to explore the interconnections between reproduction and production, and women's roles in a wide range of social and economic process in the Caribbean in general, and in Antigua specifically. The focus on Antigua allows for an examination of women's integration into the social, political and economic development of a small Caribbean territory. Using gender theory as an analytical tool, I analyze the results of a large social survey of Antiguan women (504), together with data obtained from my own interviews and from a wide range of previously unavailable and unpublished secondary data. These have enabled me to demonstrate both the contributions Antiguan women have made to development, and the constraints which they have confronted over the period 1834- 1990. The thesis is organized into eight chapters. Divided into two parts, it begins by examining a wide range of sociological and anthropological theories which purport to explain the nature of Caribbean family organization, and relations between men and women, namely the concepts of matrifocality and male marginality. It also looks at the utility of gender theory for analyzing Caribbean social reality. Chapter Two moves on to look at the contemporary situation of Caribbean women, particularly with respect to national development policy. Chapter Three then turns to the situation confronting Antiguan women from Emancipation in 1834 up to the present. Part Two moves away from the general Caribbean situation to an analysis of data gathered in 1980/81 on Antiguan women by the Women in the Caribbean Project, University of the West Indies. Chapter Four sets this data in perspective, while Chapters Five through Seven examine in detail the impact of education, work, and the family on women's lives. One of the major purposes of this section is to listen to what the women themselves have to say from their own experience. This section is then followed by a concluding chapter. In conclusion, we see that despite new opportunities and different behavioral patterns of women and men, Antigua is still very much a patriarchal society with power concentrated in the hands of a few men. Women's self-perception and social interaction continues to be mediated by their ascribed gender roles, and both young and old women conform to traditional gender stereotypes. It is hoped that the data generated by and included in this thesis will contribute to a cross-cultural perspective on women in development as well as offer a critical contribution to current and future research on Antigua.

Contraception is often a taken-for-granted element of actively heterosexual women’s lives. Yet while modern contraceptives have technically enhanced women’s ability to control their fertility, the history of women’s struggles to achieve this control shows the importance of understanding the social context within which women’s contraceptive decisions are situated. Previous feminist studies of contraception in the UK have tended to concentrate either on aspects of medicine or on heterosexuality. Whilst both areas have highlighted the need to understand how power relationships structure women’s contraceptive experiences, these two aspects have not been integrated adequately. There has also been a tendency to focus research on younger women, and mature women’s ongoing use of contraception has generally been overlooked. This thesis is based on qualitative interviews with twenty-two mid-life British women aged between 30 and 40, as well as observations at a family planning clinic. It demonstrates that only by giving full consideration to the extent and complexity of the power relationships surrounding contraception can an understanding of women’s decisions and everyday practices be achieved. The concept of ‘subjective power’ is developed to explore how these women make strategic and creative use of circulating discourses, interact with disciplinary regimes, and situate themselves within multi-faceted webs of power relationships, such as in relation to the institutions of medicine, the media, and heterosexuality. The embodied nature of both the risk of pregnancy and the use of contraceptive technologies is argued to lead the women to assert a right of bodily autonomy. Yet this assertion conflicts with their expectation of equitable coupledom within heterosexuality and their routine consideration of men’s preferences. In addition, this thesis will show that taking ‘proper’ responsibility for preventing pregnancy constructs women as respectable, yet may increase their risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections.

This thesis explores early modem perceptions of menstrual bleeding, demonstrating that attempts to understand menstrual bleeding extended beyond the early modem medical world and captured the imagination of an entire cross-section of French society revealing culturally- embedded concerns about marriage, progeny, the family, patrilineage and state formation. The thesis draws on diverse sources including medical, casuistic and judicial texts, court records and private documents. Chapter One outlines the database of medical texts which forms a cornerstone of the thesis. The database includes texts printed between 1495, with the French edition of a medieval Latin work by Bernard de Gordon, and 1761, with Montpellier physician Jean Astruc's treatise on women's diseases which introduced the term 'menstruation' into French medical vocabulary. Chapter Two examines medical notions of menstrual bleeding within the context of attitudes to blood, blood-related fluids and the humoral and mechanical bodies. Sixteenth-century casuistic interpretations of Biblical taboos surrounding sex during menstrual bleeding and notions of menses as polluting are cross-referenced with medical notions of the relationship of menses to conception demonstrating the overriding concern for healthy progeny. Chapter Three explores the significance of concepts of time and periodicity, in the context of the merging of blood-related fluids in the humoral body, as a key to early modem perceptions of menstrual bleeding. Chapter Four examines early modern debates on the length of gestation and the calculation of a woman's time on the basis of the monthly menstrual cycle relating these to Sarah Hanley's model of the 'marital regime'. In Chapter Five, the ambivalent nature of menstrual bleeding in the medico-legal arena is investigated and the different cultural meanings ascribed to various bloody discharges emanating from the living female body are analysed. In the sixth and final chapter the role of menstrual bleeding in issues of sexual difference and hermaphroditism is discussed.

Rapid social change has become a hallmark of post-apartheid South Africa and part of this process has been the expansion of a middle class amongst previously disadvantaged people. My thesis contributes to our understanding of this upward mobility by investigating the role of two Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian churches in helping young, professional, previously disadvantaged women (re)shape their identities and negotiate the various networks of social, economic and political power they encounter as they strive towards socio-economic advancement. The thesis details His People and Grace Bible church and gives an explanation of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity in South Africa. In contrast to Latin American studies it is argued that within both churches there was a masculinization, rather than feminization of Christianity, which was attractive to men and women. Using some of Bourdieu's ideas I have tried to show that a central contribution these churches make in the lives of some of their members is to help them develop various social and cultural capital resources, which they felt they lacked. Through their engagement with these churches women (re)shaped their identities seeing themselves as having a life purpose and the potential to realise it. Their identities as mothers, wives and single women were impacted by the ideal of the nuclear family and wifely submission upheld in both churches and which the women in this study tried to fulfil. By aligning themselves with this ideal women found their faith legitimated distancing themselves from their extended families and the various demands of African cultural practices. Both churches strove to establish a sanitised, modem, African Christianity, which promoted individuality and socio-economic success, and offered an alternative to the hedonistic trends of popular Y culture.

This study draws on a feminist perspective on time and space, or a feminist time and space literacy, in order to better understand the times and spaces in distance learning. I seek to respond to some of the key gaps in the literature by considering the multiplicity of times and spaces in distance learning, and the underpinning power relations, within respondents' stories of being a distance learner. This research makes a substantial contribution to the research on time, space and distance learning. This is not only in terms of bringing a feminist time and space literacy to the area of distance learning but, by doing so in conjunction with data collected over time and space, it also adds many new layers to the stories about the multiplicity of times and spaces in distance learners' lives, and the ways in which gendered and other power relations shape these. Moreover, this study has contributed to the wider body of feminist knowledge in seeking to explore a multiplicity of times and spaces in women and men's lives- as opposed to a binary of women's time and space and men's time and space - and in seeking to focus on time and space simultaneously.

This thesis argues that questions of ethical life, moral identity, and gender are inextricably involved, and that an appropriate conception of each is necessary for the thinking of the others. In particular it seeks to demonstrate that the way in which freedom is conceived in its relation to moral identity and ethical life has profound implications for the thought of gender relations. It is further argued that the writings of Kierkegaard open up a way of relating freedom and the finite that offers the possibility of re-thinking gender. The writings of Rousseau and of Freud are examined to show the interdependence of their philosophical anthropology and the systematic subordination and exclusion of women that operates in each of them. In each case it is shown that, despite the very different, and even opposed ways that they construe the nature of moral identity and its relation to ethical life, a parallel gender polarity is at work. In Rousseau male moral identity rests on independence from society and infinite, excessive freedom. This is brought into relation to the mundane world of ethical life through gender. Women are denied independence and moral identity and made responsible for social being. Their subordination is such that dependence on them does not destroy the integrity of men. The crisis of this unstable structure is demonstrated through a reading of Rousseau's novel La Nouvelle Heloise, the death of whose heroine is shown to be the moment of collapse of the Rousseauean synthesis. In Freud moral identity is achieved through the identification of the self with social authority. The finite freedom that can be thought in psychoanalysis rests on a fusion of ethical and moral life. The "depersonalisation" of the super-ego is the road to liberation. Through the gendered experience of the Oedipal drama this path can only be taken by men. Woman are again exclude from moral identity, being allowed only a "masochistic" relation to the Law. The crisis of this structure is found in the notion of the "archaic heritage", which it is argued, represents a collapse of Freudian thought. Finally both Freud and Rousseau are brought into relation with the psychological writings of Kierkegaard, whose distinctive notion of freedom and faith is held to address the limitations of both sets of writing. Infinite freedom is made to co-exist with finitude. The implications of these writings for the thought of gender is briefly explored through other of the writings of Kierkegaard.

This thesis is concerned with the ambivalence expressed towards feminism by many women in the last decade and identifies post-feminism as a problematic through which to explore this in contemporary women's writing. It focuses on selected fictional and non-fictional texts of the 1980s and 1990s and examines the ways in which they engage with feminist concerns. Until now, post-feminism has not been studied through its articulations in popular literature. To do justice to the wide range of views held by women and avoid a defensive and pessimistic reading of commercialised mainstream culture, I have made use of intertextual readings. The methodology is derived from feminist critical theory and cultural studies in order to address the relation between feminist and non-feminist literary texts and the dynamic interchange between what have been labelled as feminist politics and mainstream or consumer women' s interests. The significance of the research lies in the identification of ways in which such works of fiction and nonfiction provide an outlet for women's voices which could serve as a basis for developing feminist criticism and politics. The thesis is divided into three chapters, the different themes of which illustrate post-feminist concerns. In the first, I address the literature of popular therapy by women. The second chapter focuses on contemporary fictional and non-fictional writings by women on sex. The final chapter examines women' s relationship to transgression through genres of crime writing. I have found that popular literary forms used by women may offer a progressive and complex reading of post-feminism. I conclude that post-feminism has drawn on popular elements of feminism and that, at the beginning of the 1990s, one may identify a reincorporation of feminism into postfeminism.

This thesis analyses international gay rights advocacies in Africa, using the country Ghana as a focal point. Gay rights by their mere sound, seem a concept that all should embrace without questions or qualms. Yet, there are not many concepts that have seen so much controversies, complexities and ironies than gay rights; especially in Africa. This thesis attempts to understand what gay rights are; how they have been received; and the reasons that underpin such receptions in an African country. It argues that, the intrinsic complexities embedded in gay rights advocacies require a cautious socio-legal unpacking beyond the easy and lazy racial stereotyping that currently characterises the debates. That systematic unpacking of the events of the (colonial) past and (postcolonial) present in order to make sense of the future is the central objective here. Using qualitative empirical evidence from primary and secondary sources, this thesis juxtaposes the philosophical realms of human rights theory, postcolonial theory and queer theory to the everyday and practical realities affecting gay people and stakeholders alike. It holds that, perhaps it is through engaging these theories holistically; and transposing them meaningfully to the contextual dispositions, could we make sense of the enormous issues (like the sources and effects of homophobia) that confront us.

This thesis is a critical introduction to the ideas and public influence of French child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto (1908-88). In the late twentieth century Dolto was a figure of significant cultural importance in France, seen as the country’s leading authority on child psychology. The thesis approaches her career from the perspective of social and cultural history. It historicises Dolto’s resonance with wider French society, explains the intellectual genealogy of her ideas, and explores the societal implications of her fame. It constitutes a substantial contribution both to the history of psychoanalysis ‘beyond the couch’, and to the socio-cultural history of twentieth-century France. The thesis covers a relatively long historical period, and a wide range of topics including child-rearing, education, autism, radical psychiatry and broadcasting history. This span is justified by the length and breadth of Dolto’s career and by the consistency in her ideas over time. The thesis contends that fundamental tenets of Dolto’s thinking were rooted in the intellectual and political climate of interwar France – specifically debates over the social roles of women, children and the family in the 1930s. Dolto’s stances were ‘permissive’ in that they opposed intransigent authoritarianism in child-rearing, education and religion; and patriarchal in that Dolto upheld paternal primacy and familles nombreuses, and often argued against extending women’s rights. The thesis proceeds in two parts. Part I, ‘Becoming Dolto’, focuses on the intellectual, personal and historical background to her emergence as a public figure. It situates Dolto as a product of the interwar haute bourgeoisie and of intellectual trends towards holism and technocracy associated with the anti-Republican Right of the 1930s-1940s. Part II, ‘Taking Psychoanalysis Public’, explores the settings in which Dolto popularised her ideas and her impact on popular opinion and state institutions. It mines the archive of letters to Dolto’s radio programmes to show how her ideas interacted with the concerns of the 1970s French public. It demonstrates her impact on contemporary children’s centres and on the treatment of autism in France into the twenty-first century.