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Magister Artium (Psychology) - MA(Psych) / In April 2016 students from South African universities launched the #Endrapeculture movement to protest their universities’ institutional policies towards sexual assault on campus, which was seen as perpetuating a rape culture. Through the use of social media, students from across South Africa were able to provide instrumental information and mobilise support for the protests. This thesis focused on exploring the rape culture discourse that emerged from the online debates following the #Endrapeculture protests, as well as the potential of social media as an accessible and affordable pedagogical tool to address rape culture on campus. An exploratory qualitative design was used and this was framed within a postmodern feminist framework. To address the aims of the study two methods of data collection were utilised. All ethics principles were adhered to for both forms of data collection. Firstly, natural observation of comment threads of Facebook relating to the April 2016 #Endrapeculture protests was conducted. A total of 590 comments from 8 Facebook posts were collected and analysed using qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate that rape culture discourses were prominent within these comment threads with Perpetuating Victim-blaming emerging as the most significant theme followed by Rape or Rape Culture, Patriarchy, Race and Culture, Sexualisation and Bodily Autonomy, Trivialising Rape Culture and Role of Universities and Law Enforcement. The second part of the data collection involved conducting online, asynchronous focus groups using the Facebook secret chat group application. Participants for the SFFG were recruited on Facebook through a process of snowball sampling. A total of three SFFG were conducted with 16 participants. Thematic decomposition analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings revealed three main themes namely; Defining Rape Culture, Learning about Rape Culture and The Role of Social Media. Based on the observations from the comment threads and the findings from the SFFGs, it is argued that social media can be used as a pedagogical tool to address rape culture on campus in two ways. Firstly, it is beneficial on a macro level by using social media platforms to provide instrumental information about rape culture. Secondly, it can be utilised on a micro level by using applications like the SFFG to provide a safe space where students can engage in small-scale interactive discussions.

Sports fandoms, historically, have been categorized as a male domain, even in academic studies. Therefore, as Formula 1 has been a sport with a remarkable increase in digital engagement and women are one of their main target audiences, I study Spanish F1 female fans’ behaviours, attitudes, and motivations towards F1 and Twitter as part of their fan experience. Through nethnographic methods, where semi-structured interviews and participant observations have been central, I try to gain knowledge about individual experiences as well as the functionality of the F1 Twitter community. It is illustrated that F1 female fans cannot be considered a homogeneous group by applying a postmodern feminist approach where identities are considered to be fluid, fractured, and in constant flux, distancing from previous feminist ideals that promoted binary and determinate gender concepts. Raney’s affective, cognitive and social/behavioural sets of motivations are employed in order to contemplate F1 female fans' motivation for consuming F1 and choosing Twitter as the social network to follow the sport. Moreover, Jenkin’s participatory culture is taken into account to analyse the F1 Twitter community. Patterns regarding becoming a fan due to Alonso's success and family ties, common interests in information and shared F1 popular knowledge are encountered. However, diverse usage of Twitter and different levels of sense of belonging to TwF1 are also displayed. Hence, I conclude that more research is needed to gain a better understanding of them because despite displaying different facets, F1 female fans are ‘authentic’ fans who should be taken into consideration by sports, media and fan studies in addition to sports organizations and fellow fans.

This thesis is a study of female authorship that examines the feature films of Jane Campion in order to determine how her preoccupation with the cinematic articulation of 'female experience' is expressed in her films-whether female experience can be aestheticised, and to discover whether her gender can be discerned through the films of a woman director. The exploration of these ideas entails a review of the feminist thinking, methodologies and epistemologies that are relevant to cinema, and that examine relevant theoretical positions within feminism and theories of cinematic authorship. The key lens employed here for theorising Campion's cinema is that of postmodern-feminism. As an approach, this allows an understanding of difference rather than 'Otherness', and an enquiry into gender that is neither essentialist nor constructionist, but facilitates critical thinking about both positions. The central argument of this thesis is that Campion's film practice functions as an investigation into gender difference, how women and men live together in the world-experience that world, and are engendered as female through historic, psychological and cultural experiences. This thesis therefore argues that Campion's aesthetic and perspective is not only feminist, but also, female, and feminine, and her work a cinematic articulation of female experience.

Achievement and the experiences of women in secondary school mathematics have been well documented in the research literature (e.g., Benbow & Stanley, 1980, 1983; Tartre & Fennema, 1995; Sherman, 1982; Ryckman & Peckham, 1987; Keller & Dauenheimer, 2003). With respect to achievement, the research literature primarily focuses on how women are deficient to men (e.g., Benbow & Stanley, 1980, 1983) and the roles affective attributes (e.g., Sherman, 1982; Fennema, Petersen, Carpenter & Lubinski, 1990) and stereotype threat (e.g., Quinn & Spencer, 2001; Steele & Aronson, 1995) have played in women’s deficiencies. Despite the perspective and nature of this research, there are, however, women who have achieved at extraordinarily high levels in the secondary mathematics classroom. It is important to examine this historical research as it has impacted the views of teachers, researchers, and media with regard to female mathematics students’ opportunities. By reflecting upon the research literature and its far reaching impacts, high-achieving women in mathematics can begin to reverse the perceptions that limit their opportunities. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore, through the experiences and stories relayed by the study’s participants, how young women might negotiate the (historic all male) mathematics domain. Employing a qualitative research designed within a phenomenological framework and analyzed through a combination of postmodern and standpoint feminisms, I examined the stories of four undergraduate female students who were identified as being high-achieving in secondary school mathematics. These young women, by reflecting upon their secondary school experiences, and by reflecting upon their experiences within the context of the existing research literature, not only identified the aspects of their lives they felt had the greatest impact upon their opportunities but also examined their personal definitions of success and the impacts their gender had on their (socially defined) achievements within secondary school mathematics.

Industrialization and "development" during the last 200 years have led to an increase of pesticides, an intensified use of synthetic chemicals, higher levels of environmental pollution, and more exposure to hazardous working conditions. Environmental toxins, many of which are endocrine disruptors, are stored in fat tissue, increasing reproductive health risks for both women and men. Women’s bodies are particularly vulnerable as sites for creating, growing, feeding, and nurturing the next generation. And yet, women’s lives are consistently devalued, especially in a capitalist economy, so that a woman’s rights to her own reproductive health are no longer guaranteed. In this thesis I first review ecological destruction, environmental policies, and food safety/security issues for women. I then examine neoliberal globalization as an active participant in the destruction of the environment and an attack on global health. I discuss how utilizing feminist theory effectively, and actively, will ensure women the right to their health. I employ postmodern feminist and refigured ecofeminist theory to demonstrate how a feminist perspective is necessary in the development of policies that address the problem of endocrine disruptors in terms of women’s reproductive health and the health of future generations. Finally, I suggest that the precautionary principle must include a feminist perspective to fully succeed.

The purpose of the study was to analyse and compare the current Swedish socialist government, which have declared themselves as the first feminist government, with the previous non- socialist government. This is to see if, and if so how, the current government’s policies regarding gender differ from the former government’s policies. This paper has analysed both governments using different feminist theoretical approaches to see which of the perspectives characterize the government’s policies regarding gender, and if there has been a shift towards any of the perspectives. The three feminist theoretical perspectives used were liberal feminism, socialist feminism and postmodern feminism. The method used was an idea analysis, and ideal types of the three theoretical feminist perspectives as the analytical instrument. The material contains public texts released by the governments. The result of the study showed that the government’s policies regarding gender are highly similar and that their policies can be related mainly to the liberal- and socialist feminist perspectives. The result also showed that there has not been a shift towards any of the perspectives since the current government was elected, although only the current government could be related, to a small extent, to postmodern feminism.

<p>Uppsatsen behandlar ur ett genusperspektiv konsumtionens delaktighet i individens identitetsskapande, där fokus ligger på att påvisa hur begreppet kvinnlighet till stor del konstitueras utifrån en definition given av konsumtionssamhället. Med Norman Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys som verktyg görs en tematisk analys av diskurser gällande kvinnors kropp, stilskapande och sexualitet i ett material bestående av konsumtionsrelaterade mode- och skönhetsartiklar som hämtas från fyra svenska kvinnotidningar som riktar sig till skilda åldersgrupper; julia, Silikon, amelia och tara. Här tydliggörs hur man, när man talar om kvinnan i materialet, hela tiden är positionerad inom en konsumtionsdiskurs såväl verbalt som visuellt. Studien syftar även till att sätta detta kommersiella kvinnoideal i relation till diskussioner om genus som lyfts fram av den postmoderna feminismen samt ur ett vidare perspektiv peka på konsekvenser som tidningarnas representationer har på kvinnors vardag, då studien påvisar deras medverkan i reproduktionen av en patriarkal och ojämlik samhällsordning. Avslutningsvis diskuteras konsumtionssamhällets objektiva ställning samt konsumismens betydelse för den moderna kvinnorollen historiskt och nutida sett.</p>

Uppsatsen behandlar ur ett genusperspektiv konsumtionens delaktighet i individens identitetsskapande, där fokus ligger på att påvisa hur begreppet kvinnlighet till stor del konstitueras utifrån en definition given av konsumtionssamhället. Med Norman Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys som verktyg görs en tematisk analys av diskurser gällande kvinnors kropp, stilskapande och sexualitet i ett material bestående av konsumtionsrelaterade mode- och skönhetsartiklar som hämtas från fyra svenska kvinnotidningar som riktar sig till skilda åldersgrupper; julia, Silikon, amelia och tara. Här tydliggörs hur man, när man talar om kvinnan i materialet, hela tiden är positionerad inom en konsumtionsdiskurs såväl verbalt som visuellt. Studien syftar även till att sätta detta kommersiella kvinnoideal i relation till diskussioner om genus som lyfts fram av den postmoderna feminismen samt ur ett vidare perspektiv peka på konsekvenser som tidningarnas representationer har på kvinnors vardag, då studien påvisar deras medverkan i reproduktionen av en patriarkal och ojämlik samhällsordning. Avslutningsvis diskuteras konsumtionssamhällets objektiva ställning samt konsumismens betydelse för den moderna kvinnorollen historiskt och nutida sett.

ABSTRACTObjectification of especially women have often been mentioned in connection to discussions concerning negative body image wherein individuals have been claimed to evaluate their body and look based on standardized societal ideals (Nash:2015, Hodgkinson, Wittkowski & Smith:2014). Studies have also shown that newspapers, magazines, and movies routinely present post-pregnancy bodies as something temporarily that women should strive to improve (Breda et al.:2015, Roth et al.:2012, Williams et al.:2017). Although, it has been stated that social media can work as a supportive and inspirational tool for this specific group of women (Baker & Yang:2017, Jarvis:2017) as well as platform of expression where users can shape and spread their own beauty standards (Cwynar-Horton:2016a, Guha:2014, Earl & Rohlinger:2018). Women’s thoughts of their post-pregnancy bodies in connection to the motivations behind their bodily exposure on social media platforms have not yet been examined, even though it has been claimed that this group is particularly vulnerable to body image concerns due to social media representations (Coyne et al.:2017). As a contribution to the field of post-pregnant body advocates affordances of Instagram, this paper has focused on Swedish post-pregnant women that have posted images of their bodies under the hashtags #mammamage (mum tummy) and/or #mammakropp (mum body). By applying affordance theory’s suggestion that environments afford different affordances for individuals, this paper has asked 94 post-pregnant women how they feel about their bodies and what they think of societal body ideals, as well as examined their motivations behind their use of Instagram with the aim to identify prominent emotional affordances. Here, objectification theory, comparison theory, postmodern feminism, and feminist reflexivity were used as supporting theories in the analysis of the data which was conducted through a mixed methods survey.The main findings have been that Instagram is seen as a platform that enables its users to experience emotional affordances of 1) criticism and comparisons, 2) inspiration and support and 3) acceptance, where post-pregnant body advocates are using the affordances primarily to visualize average post-pregnancy bodies, challenge standardized body ideals and get inspired or inspire other women into re-thinking the notion(s) of their post-pregnancy bodies. What this paper further has contributed with is a greater understanding of post-pregnant body advocates experiences of their own bodies, a broader perspective on post-pregnant body advocates thoughts of societal ideals, a more profound comprehension behind post-pregnant body advocates motivation(s) behind their use of Instagram, and new knowledge to the field of emotional affordances among Instagram users.Keywords: post-pregnant women, body advocates, Instagram, affordances, affordance theory, emotional affordances, objectification theory, feminist reflexivity, comparison theory, postmodern feminism, survey, mixed method