This research focuses on young black women’s identity construction in the context of democratic South Africa. It focuses on how they negotiate adolescence and young adulthood as black females in a country with a history of racism. The assumption in the newly democratized South Africa is that opportunities are given on merit as opposed to the inequalities that existed according to racial differences during apartheid. The study aims to find out how young people construct and negotiate their identities and their view of their futures as well as possible threats to these future identities within this context. The young women’s narratives give insight into the state of the socio cultural context of post apartheid South Africa. These young women narrate their lives as the hinge generation: they are the first generation to grow up in the new and free South Africa the first generation to have access to a broad range of opportunities that were denied black people during apartheid governance. The young women’s narratives reveal a very fluid sense of identity. Their lives do not follow the patterns of the lives of the previous generations including those of their parents. They do however, negotiate these opportunities in the context of inequalities inherited from previous apartheid governance. Impoverished livelihoods, death of family members, gender inequities, poorly developed school systems and poor social amenities that they face in everyday life pose possible constraints to their envisioned futures. The study is based on the theorisation of self as a narrative, a story to be told. The self is understood as fragmented and changing as opposed to a single fixed entity. The narrative approach allows for the participants to tell their own stories bringing together past memories, anticipated futures as well as ongoing experiences they consider important. A total of 10 women took part in the study; 5 from Amangwane a rural community located in the Drakensburg area and 5 from the urban location of Chesterville. Their life stories were collected through in depth interviews in a wider context of narrative approach. Further, there was a follow up interview for each participant giving focus to central themes. A two phase analysis was used to examine the way the narratives were put together as well as paying attention to the content of the narratives in order to understand meaning attributed to events and experiences. The young women’s narratives were structured by an interaction of regressive and progressive plots. This is reflective of the challenges and difficulties that they face in their everyday lives in the South African context. The major regressive moments were financial difficulties, death of loved ones and motherhood. In the midst of these challenges, most stories were generally progressive towards the future. Some, however, were in the midst of uncertainties and some of the life stories were entrapped in difficult life circumstances that made it difficult to see success in the future. The key themes that came from the stories were poverty, place, family structure, gender, language and education. Poverty was experienced as very significant and real. It hampered everyday lives and the construction of future identities. The rural areas are the most hit by poverty especially female headed families. Fathers were constructed as possible solutions to economic problems because of their ability to access resources. Migration between urban and rural spaces is prominent in the rural women’s narratives. Urban areas presented improved life opportunities. Even so, urban space is fragmented and racially stratified. The urban young women’s narratives show a desire to succeed and move out of townships into suburbia. English is considered to be the economic language and its use provides young women with access to resources and a better life. Education is constructed as important by the young women as it gives them access to their desired future identities. However, schooling experience is characterised by lack of teachers, inadequately trained teachers and poor education standards. Gender inequities pose challenges which constrain the young women from reaching their full potential. The young women negotiate their lives in a context resonating with apartheid effects. They are faced with challenges and very difficult life circumstances. They however remain hopeful and are able to construct alternative future identities for themselves. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

Introduction: Women possess characteristics and experiences unique and different from men. Menstruation, pregnancy, puberty and menopause may present challenges for self-management, a prerequisite for those living with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). The meaning and experiences of self-management have not been adequately explored from a young woman’s perspective within the diabetes literature. Purpose of the Study: Blood glucose and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) values are keys for determining success in self-management among individuals living with T1DM; however, the values may enable feelings of vulnerability and worthlessness in individuals living with T1DM. Through learning about the experiences of young women, it was hoped that the meaning of self-management would be uncovered. The research question was: What are the experiences of self-management among young women with Type 1 diabetes mellitus? Methods and Methodology: Descriptive phenomenology was used to uncover the experiences of self-management. Unstructured interviews with nine young women aged 22-30 years were conducted to uncover their lived experience. Data collection and analysis followed the methodical structure outlined by van Manen (1997). Findings: Data analysis revealed five themes, and the essence of participants’ self-management experiences. Identified themes included: 1) elusiveness of control; 2) the dualism of technology; 3) forecasting and establishing routines; 4) dealing with the “ups and downs”; and, 5) interface with the health care team. The essence that emerged from the data was “being in balance”. Conclusions: Self-management encompassed the desire and need to be in balance with one’s life and blood glucose levels. Self-management was something that evolved over time, and grew in complexity as phases progressed; it was something participants were still trying to grasp. Individual attitudes, goals, and self-management strategies dominated participants’ discourse in describing their hope of achieving and sustaining balance in their day-to-day lives. / Thesis (Master, Nursing) -- Queen's University, 2012-01-24 18:35:33.911

Weight and body image are issues many females face that can lead to unhealthy exercising and extreme dieting. This paper examines the relationship between perceptions of mothers’ attitudes and behaviors regarding weight and body image and their 18-25 year old daughters’ attitudes and behaviors. This research utilizes a survey of 876 females at a Midwestern university. Respondents report being at least somewhat uncomfortable with their weight and report a lack of confidence with their weight. Regression results indicate that females’ attitudes and behaviors are somewhat explained by perceptions of their mothers’ attitudes and behaviors. Mothers making negative comments about their own weight, mothers telling their daughters to lose weight and mothers’ weight loss behaviors significantly influence respondents’ weight satisfaction, self-esteem, weight loss and weight control behaviors. This research identifies factors contributing to unhealthy eating behaviors and poor body image, and suggests how mothers can help improve their daughters’ body image. / Department of Sociology

The purpose of this study was threefold; to examine the unique challenges faced among young breast cancer survivors’ self-concepts; to explore the identity reformulation process as they adjust to a new lifestyle after completing medical treatment; and to identify women’s creative problem solving solution used to mitigate any long-term distress and discontinuity between past, current and ideal selves. In-person semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 young breast cancer survivors (aged 32-45). The results indicated that exploring women’s narratives through the identity reformulation process created an alternative approach to the four prescribed quality of life domains used to understand survivors’ overall wellbeing. The results also identified three shared domains of social location (gender, youth and health status) that intersected in women’s identity reformulation process. These findings have implications for psychosocial oncology literature, as well as clinical practice for mental health practitioners. Limitations and recommendations for areas of future research were discussed.

Much empirical evidence attests to a strong relationship between the panic-related disorders and alcoholism. Recent data suggest that anxiety sensitivity (fear of anxiety) may be one common underlying vailable contributing to the large degree of overlap between the panic-related disorders and alcoholism. In fact, some data indicate that the relationship between anxiety sensitivity and alcohol misuse may be particularly strong in women, a group which is generally underrepresented in the alcoholism etiology literature. Research described in this thesis was conducted with the aim of further elucidating the nature of the relationship between anxiety sensitivity and alcohol use/abuse in young adult women. The series of seven experiments included in this thesis demonstrated that: (1) high levels of anxiety sensitivity are characteristic of subjects meeting diagnostic criteria for panic disorder, an anxiety disorder frequently associated with alcohol abuse; (2) female university students demonstrate significantly higher average levels of anxiety sensitivity than male university students; (3) anxiety sensitivity is an important predictor of self-reported rates of alcohol consumption in university women; (4) high anxiety sensitive university students are both more likely to report drinking alcohol primarily to "cope" with negative emotional states, and less likely to report drinking alcohol primarily for social-affiliative motives, than are low anxiety sensitive university students; (5) high anxiety sensitive women display greater degrees of sober subjective-emotional arousal when anticipating aversive stimulation, greater degrees of sober electrodermal reactivity to the aversive stimulation, and greater sensitivity to the dampening effects of alcohol on these measures of reactivity, than low anxiety sensitive controls; (6) high anxiety sensitive women show a sober attentional bias favoring the processing of physically threatening information, which is dampened through th

Recent research into advanced breast cancer has suggested that young women in general tend to have more aggressive disease, present at a later stage of disease progression and suffer many more issues and concerns than their older counterparts. Whilst breast cancer in women in general has been the target of a vast amount of research and public attention, values and beliefs surrounding advanced breast cancer have not been a focus of concern. The aim of this thesis is to explore scientific journals, the media and to listen to the young women themselves in order to identify the understandings of advanced breast cancer in young women and the ways in which these understandings are perpetuated and sustained over time. The goal is to illuminate the various discourses that are currently being drawn upon to understand this life-limiting illness and the impact these discourses have on the lives of young women concerned. Poststructuralism is the theoretical perspective within which this thesis is located. This approach allowed for a focus on language, power and text. Discourse analysis of three data sets was used. These data sets were drawn from scientific and medical journals (251), medical texts (5), clinical practice guidelines (2), newspaper articles (230) and transcribed conversations with 12 young women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. The main discourses identified within and across the various data sets were; the discourse of numeracy, the discourse of tragedy and several discourses of the body; the thin body, the declining body, the object body and the gendered body. While the emphasis of each of these discourses varied across the three data sets, they were all present in each to some degree, reflecting broader cultural stories within which the individual stories are located. Young women diagnosed and living with advanced breast cancer are currently being portrayed as living with a tragic disease, controlled and constrained by the statistics and probabilities and played out within and on a body in ‘perpetual disintegration’. The discourses of tragedy, numeracy and the thin, object, gendered and declining body all relate to larger stories of what it is to be dying before one’s time in Western society today.

Thesis (D.Psych.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of Psychology, 2003. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-146).

Thesis (PhD. (Sociology))-University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A. (Population and Reproductive Health Research))--Mahidol University, 2007. / LICL has E-Thesis 0028 ; please contact computer services.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [111]-115).