The majority of women's health nurses in this study work in generalist community health centres. They have developed their praxis within the philosophy and policies of the broader women's health movement and primary health care principles in Australia. The fundamental assumption underlying this study is that women's health nurses possess a unique body of knowledge and clinical wisdom that has not been previously documented and explored. The epistemological base from which these nurses' operate offers important insights into the substantive issues that create and continually shape the practice world of nurses and their clients. Whether this represents a (re)construction of the dominant forms of health care service delivery for women is examined in this study. The study specifically aims at exploring the practice issues and experience of women's health service provision by women's health nurses in the context of the provision of cervical cancer screening services. In mapping this particular group of nurses practice, it sets out to examine the professional and theoretical issues in contemporary nursing and women's health care. In critically analysing the powerful discourses that shape and reshape nursing work, the study raises the concern that previous analyses of pursing work tend to universalise the structural and social subordination of nurses and nursing knowledge. This universalism is most often based on examples of midwifery and nursing work in hospital settings, and subsequently, because of these conceptualisations, all of nursing is too often deemed as a dependent occupation, with little agency, and is analysed as always in relation to medicine, to hospitals, to other knowledge forms. Denoting certain discourses as dominant proposes a relationship of power and knowledge and the thesis argues that all work relations and practices in health are structured by certain power/knowledge relations. This analysis reveals that there IX are many competing and complimentary power/knowledge relations that structure nursing, but that nursing, and in particular women's health nurses, also challenge the power/knowledge relations around them. Through examining theories of power and knowledge the analysis, argues that theoretical eclecticism is necessary to address the complex and varied nature of nursing work. In particular it identifies that postmodern and radical feminist theorising provide the most appropriate framework to further analyse and interpret the work of women's health nurses. Fundamental to the position argued in this thesis is a feminist perspective. This position creates important theoretical and methodological links throughout the whole study. Feminist methodology was employed to guide the design, the collection and the analysis. Intrinsic to this process was the use of the 'voices' of women's health nurses as the basis for theorising. The 'voices' of these nurses are highlighted in the chapters as italicised bold script. A constant companion along the way in examining women's health nurses' work, was the reflexivity with feminist research processes, the theoretical discussions and their 'voices'. Capturing and analysing descriptive accounts of nursing praxis is seen in this thesis as providing a way to theorise about nursing work. This methodology is able to demonstrate the knowledge forms embedded in clinical nursing praxis. Three conceptual threads emerge throughout the discussions: one focuses on nursing praxis as a distinct process, with its own distinct epistemological base rather than in relation to 'other' knowledge forms; another describes the medical restriction and opposition as experienced by this group of nurses, but also of their resistance to medical opposition. The third theme apparent from the interviews, and which was conceptualised as beyond resistance, was the description of the alternative discourses evident in nursing work, and this focused on notions of being a professional and on autonomous nursing praxis. This study concludes that rather than accepting the totalising discourses about nursing there are examples within nursing of resistance—both ideologically and X in practice—to these dominant discourses. Women's health nurses represent an important model of women's health service delivery, an analysis of which can contribute to critically reflecting on the 'paradigm of oppression' cited in nursing and about nursing more generally. Reflecting on women's health service delivery also has relevance in today's policy environment, where structural shifts in Commonwealth/State funding arrangements in community based care, may undermine women's health programs. In summary this study identifies three important propositions for nursing: • nursing praxis can reconstruct traditional models of health care; • nursing praxis is powerful and able to 'resist' dominant discourses; and • nursing praxis can be transformative. Joining feminist perspectives and alternative analyses of power provides a pluralistic and emancipatory politics for viewing, describing and analysing 'other' nursing work. At the micro sites of power and knowledge relations—in the everyday practice worlds of nurses, of negotiation and renegotiation, of work on the margins and at the centre—women's health nurses' praxis operates as a positive, productive and reconstructive force in health care.

The purpose of my work is to understand and examine the reasons why Ethiopia has not developed a larger decline of female genital mutilation, despite their ban on it? A ban that has been operating for ten years should reasonably have reached a greater change than the one Ethiopia has developed today. Based on two different branches of feminist theory, the liberal feminist theory and radical feminist theory, I will try to understand the potential power relationship that can be a immense reason for Ethiopia's continued practice with regard to female genital mutilation.   I will examine the liberal feminist approach when it comes to seeing the state as the source of the balance of power that generate inequality in the world between men and women. I will also apply the radical feminist theory on my case study and understand the problem of patriarchy and its already set roles for men and women that we are following in the society today, resulting in gender inequality.   The result shows that the radical feminist approach with patriarchy as essential explanation, which articulates that because of ancient traditions and the exercise of power, the amendment must be the changing of power relations between men and women in the private sphere rather than the liberal feminist approach which applies that the state repair the problem.

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Trafficking in human beings and prostitution is an increasing occurrence within the EU. However, vast differences in legal frameworks regarding prostitution can be detected among member states.The Netherlands is an example where prostitution is regarded a legal activity. In other member states legal standings toward prostitution remain ambivalent, where Sweden here serves an example. Finally, Lithuania is among member states where prostitution is considered illegal.The purpose of this paper is therefore to study underlying attitudes and approaches that these three countries have in this rather delicate political question. By interpreting the content and quoting parts of propositions, an ideology analysis is constructed.The theory chapter consists of Rousseau’s theories, Objectivism, Radical Feminist Theory, and Sex-positive Feminist Theory. A model with the most important features of these theories is constructed and works as a base for the analysis.The general results suggest that the Government of Lithuania consistently uses arguments pending towards Radical Feminist Theory and Rousseauan values, with catholic morality as an additional important feature in the argumentation against prostitution. The Government of Sweden also views prostitution with predominantly Rousseauan and Radical Feminist theories. The Government of the Netherlands arguments greatly differ from these viewpoints. Instead, individualistic and sex-positive arguments remain dominant here.