<p> A review of sociological literature reveals a long history of the study of gender, and an increased popularity in the application of feminist theories and ideas to sociological research. As transmitters of the discipline, introductory-level textbooks have been heavily studied over the past quarter-century to assess the accuracy with which they portray the field of sociology. In order to update the literature available on the topic, this study analyzed the current cohort of top-selling, introductory-level sociology textbooks for coverage of feminist theory and gender issues. Each of the ten textbooks was read cover-to-cover and coded for both latent and manifest data using a coding sheet. The researcher found a notable increase in the incidences of both feminist theories and gender issues within the current cohort of textbooks. The specific treatment of each topic varied widely across books, and within each book the topics were presented one-dimensionally and were ghettoized to feminized chapters. Definitions of feminist theory and feminism within the books primarily described liberal feminism and little else, and discussions of both feminist theory and gender were most heavily featured in the gender and family chapters. Generally, the gender issues present in the textbook sample were mostly to do with women, and erased non-binary experiences of gender. Additionally, an intersectional approach to discussions of gender was applied about one-third of the time. This study concludes that the current textbook cohort is still far from the ideal model, and the feminization and marginalization of these topics is likely due to the textbook production cycle and the specific phenomenon of textual isomorphism.</p><p>

<p> <i>From Syrian Sea to Shining Sea</i> is a collection of poetry that reflects the lives of Arab-Americans. Whether they may be first generation, Muslim, or immigrants, there is a piece within their self that reflects a longing for the homeland, ties to the motherland, and struggles that arose as a result of the Syrian Civil War. As a first-generation, Arab-American, Muslim woman I wrote these poems through the raw lens that is my experience. </p><p>

<p> The image of Eve leaning toward the serpent and reaching for the forbidden fruit lives at the heart of the predominant creation myth of the Western world and still reverberates in its psyche. At the same time, a singular and literal interpretation of Eve has dominated cultural discourse and psychological life: Eve is understood as the one who brought death and depravity to humanity and is cast as Everywoman. The Eden story has been implicated in the patriarchal narrative regarding the inferiority of women&mdash;if every woman is Eve, then <i>Woman</i> holds the fall of humanity from divine grace in her guilty hands&mdash;as well as in narratives contributing to racism and environmental degradation. This hermeneutic inquiry asserts this interpretation and these implications are highly questionable and deeply problematic, then reconsiders Eve and her transgression in cultural-historical, mythological, and archetypal contexts&mdash;seeking to deliteralize and recover the complexity of this figure. Close attention to these contexts reveals Eve to be a mythic figure deeply linked to Goddess traditions during a great mythological shift as Goddess mythologies were being supplanted by Sky Father mythologies, and an exemplar of a larger mythic motif of feminine transgression. The resulting depth psychological reading of Eve&rsquo;s transgression shows Eve as a particular style of consciousness, demonstrating specific archetypal dynamics, characteristics, and ways of knowing.</p><p>

The origins of the recent interest in gender and mental health are discussed, and in this context the controversy over the meaning of the apparent higher incidence of mental illness in women is examined. Several approaches are distinguished in the current investigation into the differential incidence of mental illness, both between and within the sex groups. Work reviewed here includes attempts to establish links between the mental health of women and: their reproductive system; their gender roles; and the ways that they structure and define their identities. The community studies reported here are part of the latter inquiry, and specifically address the way that women's mental health may be affected by the extent to which they define themselves in terms of gender stereotypes. Some insights are gained into the processes which mediate the relationship between femininity, masculinity, and mental health. However, only equivocal support was found for the advantages of an androgynous self-definition. Furthermore, for these women their femininity was a more important predictor of their mental health than their masculinity. It is noted, that the relative importance of masculinity and femininity is opposite to that found in other studies carried out within this paradigm. However, these studies have typically been carried out with students, whereas this research was carried out with samples of women drawn from the general population. This observation, in conjunction with other findings reported here, is used as a basis for arguing the importance of including contextual factors whenexamining the issue of sex-typing and mental health. More specifically, it is suggested to be crucial for this literature's development to take full account of the fact that gender stereotypes are not just a source of self-definition. They are part of a dynamic process by which inequalities between the sexes are maintained and changed at both the intergroup and interpersonal level

No description available.

No description available.

Grâce aux statuts de métiers parisiens de la fin du Moyen Âge, il est possible d'approcher la place réservée aux femmes dans le milieu artisanal. Ce type d'étude a bien été mené, mais toujours pour un siècle en particulier ou un seul secteur d'activités. La présente étude analyse en revanche les règlements de métiers sur la longue durée, du XIII e au XVIe siècle, et confronte tous les groupes d'artisans peu importe leur genre et leur rôle. En examinant tous les articles des statuts replacés dans leur contexte historique, il est possible de démontrer que la présence des femmes dans les métiers change et que son rôle se modifie au cours de la période. Cette étude évolutive des statuts de métiers repose sur une analyse quantitative et qualitative des continuités et des ruptures du travail de l'artisane. Les caractéristiques du travail des femmes sont conformes à celles que connaissaient la plupart des villes européennes. Toutefois à Paris, à partir du XVe siècle, les difficultés grandissantes résultant entre autres de l'augmentation de la population, les changements économiques et une méfiance grandissante envers les femmes, ont entraîne les métiers à émettre des statuts qui deviennent plus répressifs pour contrôler cette nouvelle compétitivité. Mais cette fermeture valait aussi bien pour les hommes que pour les femmes. Finalement, le résultat le plus intéressant est celui de l'influence de la famille est ce qui permet d'expliquer plus précisement la place et le rôle de la femme dans les métiers.

Edna O'Brien is a prolific and highly successful contemporary Irish novelist, short story writer, and playwright. Her first six novels were banned in 1960s Ireland and since then, her subversive writing about Irish women's lives has often sparked controversy and debate in and even beyond her Irish homeland. This thesis explores O'Brien's portrayal of rural Irish girlhood in post-Independence, twentieth-century Ireland in the novels The Country Girls (1960), A Pagan Place (1970), the short story collection Returning (1982), as well as the later novel Down by the River (1997). Chapter One delves into the mother-daughter bond in O'Brien's fiction. Chapter Two, in turn, examines the often painful father-daughter relationship Finally, Chapter Three discusses O'Brien's complex portrayal of female sexuality. This study argues that O'Brien constructs powerful and haunting fictional voices of "Irish girlhood" and through them, makes a unique contribution to the Irish Bildungsroman tradition. Her fiction points to some of the immense challenges confronted by young adolescent girls in mid-to-late twentieth-century Ireland, not only in their homes but also within their relationships, schools, and rural communities.

<p> My dissertation aims to provide a virtue reliabilist account of the epistemic effects of social location. I use a reliabilist theory of virtue epistemology as a framework for understanding the epistemic effects of social marginalization and privilege. </p><p> To do so, I describe how marginalization and privilege affect social cognition. I argue that social cognition is underwritten by various social cognitive capacities, some of which can and do qualify as intellectual virtues. Understanding these capacities as virtues elucidates how epistemic benefits and harms accrue to agents as a result of identity and associated social status. </p><p> Additionally, I argue that drawing on an information economy framework illuminates the epistemic effects of social location on groups. Specifically, I use John Greco&rsquo;s distinction between transmission and generation, two functions of knowledge with distinct epistemic norms, to explain how structural marginalization and privilege work to influence the movement of knowledge into, within, and among marginalized and privileged epistemic communities. </p><p> Finally, I describe the relationship of the virtues to knowledge justification. In simplified terms, I argue that knowledge demands both reliability and responsibility. Responsibility involves those dispositions an agent manifests when sensitive to the reliability of the evidence for her beliefs. Such sensitivity takes environment into account, and for humans, that environment is generally social. So, I argue that responsibility involves sensitivity to the social nature of human knowledge. I explain what the relationship between types of virtues means for the epistemic effects of social location, and how that relationship suggests potential correctives to some epistemic harms.</p><p>

This thesis examines representations of ageing in women‟s magazines. Although ageing is an inevitable part of the human condition, this thesis takes the position that ageing is culturally constructed and that women‟s magazines are a key site in such constructions. It is noticeable that, within the Academy generally, there has been less work into the social construction of the ageing process than there has been into other relations of „difference‟ such as gender or race. That said, in the last two decades, work in this area has started to emerge. Factors which account for this include the influence of the baby boomer generation, a sizeable age cohort, born between 1945-1964 who are now growing older themselves. The thesis presents a textual and semiotic analysis of the way in which getting older is constituted through written, visual and spoken texts. The primary data in the research consists of articles from women‟s magazines, analysed using a range of semiotic and linguistic tools, most notably the theories of Roland Barthes, particularly his concept of „Myth‟. Metonymy and the function of stereotyping are also key theoretical concepts. In addition, I analyse data from transcriptions of informal interviews with women magazine readers drawing on the same theoretical concepts. In this way, I am able to examine how magazine texts are received by their readership and, moreover, how women position themselves in relation to what they are reading. The analysis is underpinned by three Myths of Ageing: firstly, that ageing is a decline scenario: it involves both mental and physical decline; secondly, that ageing is synonymous with loss of power: sexual, economic and social; and lastly that ageing must be resisted. I show how the „new positive‟ images of growing older that are being drawn out and portrayed in media representations are not necessarily positive in terms of the impact they have on contemporary women. These images are presented as „new‟, but I shall demonstrate that they are, in fact, a re-working of the underlying Myths of Ageing, myths which construct ageing as a culturally very negative experience, particularly for women in this historical moment.