This thesis addresses how mothers and caregivers take care of sick children in rural north central Nigeria combining secondary analysis of the Nigerian Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) and ethnographic fieldwork in a village in a rural area. Theoretically, the thesis draws on concepts from epidemiology and anthropology in order to analyze and extend understanding of plural health seeking behaviour in a socially disadvantaged setting Methods: Rapid ethnographic assessment of mothers and caregivers in rural village in north central Nigeria was carried out using focus group discussions, household interviews and non participant observation over eight months. Findings: The NDHS analysis showed a social gradient generated by different level exposure to socially patterned risk and protective factors overtime in relation to illness, nutrition and living conditions. These mothers and caregivers were constrained by materialistic and neo materialistic factors shaping their circumstances within their daily lives and within Nigerian society – an example of structural violence. They express human agency in their decisions concerning caring for their children in a way that is shaped by cultural behavioural understandings of social and medical diagnostics of health and illness which is manifested in plural health seeking behaviour.

Chapter 1 comprises a review of the literature on the mental health of women prisoners. Historically, research of this kind has tended to focus on male prisoners. In recent years Government initiatives have promoted prison healthcare to be brought in line with the National Health Service. Through a review of the literature this chapter discusses the mental health of women prisoners, with an emphasis on women in the United Kingdom. Treatment needs and marginalised groups in women’s prisons receive a specific focus and recommendations for future research are considered. Chapter 2 is an empirical study, focussed on The Lived Experiences of Women in the National High Secure Healthcare Service for Women, NHSHSW. Following recent changes in the secure hospital system in the UK, the NHSHSW is now the only high secure hospital for women. The women patients in the NHSHSW are admitted from court, prison or hospital if they are assessed to require high secure conditions by virtue of their perceived dangerousness. Research shows that little is known about the experiences of women in this setting. Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis approach, an idiographic methodology; the experiences of eight women in the NHSHSW are explored. The themes identified are discussed in detail and considered in light of the existing research. Recommendations for further research are discussed. Chapter 3 reflects on the research process. It considers the anxieties of a first time qualitative researcher, a woman researching the experiences of women patients in a, secure setting. Reflections on the research process and the impact on the researcher are considered.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the activities of American women's associations in the international realm. In the years immediately following the Second World War, American women saw both an opportunity and an obligation to become active in the international sphere. With obstacles and prejudices preventing their inclusion in mainstream political and diplomatic circles, many American women channelled their interest and activities in the international realm through the medium of voluntary women's organizations. These organizations participated in a number of programmes which sought to export the American way of life, and women's place within it, to overseas markets. Whilst many of these programmes were a product of American women's authentic desire to assist women in other nations, many originated with and were directed by the US government. The work of American women's organizations in international relations were an important component of two government strategies. Firstly, they were a response to the enthusiasm and encouragement of the US government for the involvement of the private sector in Cold War propaganda. Secondly, the efforts of the US government to reach and influence group identities (such as women) in the international realm was aided by the co-operation of American representatives of that group. In co-operating with their government, American women's organizations were engaged in a constant process of negotiation between their 'natural' and international role as women and their role as Americans. The task of defining and exporting the interests and identities of American women to a world audience was both the result of direct government involvement and the willingness of leaders of American women's organizations to serve national interests. Government involvement ranged from help arranging the details of overseas tours to full-scale funding for a women's organization to combat Communist propaganda. The co-operation of voluntary organizations with the government challenges traditional divisions between the private and public realm, which have in the past contributed to a historiography which has placed undue emphasis on American women's commitment to the domestic ideology of the post-war years, at the expense of an accurate assessment of their role in American foreign relations.

The under-representation of women and over-representation of men in trade unions raises questions as to why it occurs, its consequences for women and how it can be overcome. This thesis engages with these questions. It indicates the dominant ideologies and institutions which underpin the dominant male model of trade unions and discusses strategies designed to change the 'rules of the game'. The creation of UNISON on 1st July 1993 provides a research site in which to study the extent to which trade union democracy can be deliberately re-shaped so as to reflect the interests of women. UNISON represents 1.3 million workers within the public service sector, two-thirds of whom are women. It has been the express intention of UNISON to achieve gender democracy through empowering its women members to participate in its representative structures. In particular, the adoption of three key principles in the rule book: proportionality for women, fair representation at all levels and self-organisation for four disadvantaged groups, is intended to have a significant impact on the nature of women's involvement in the union. This thesis contains extensive case study material collected within UNISON over a two year period, ending November 1995. It reveals the opportunities which the three rule book commitments provide for effective representation by women in UNISON. By excluding men so that women can take the majority of representative positions, proportionality and fair representation change the predominant values and beliefs of trade union democracy. By providing opportunities for women to determine their own agenda, in the absence of men, self-organisation challenges the ideology that union strength is based on unity and common interests. However, the dominant model of trade unionism is not being re-shaped without tension or resistance. This thesis argues that ideologies and institutions remain which prevent women's access to representative structures being translated into the discussion of women's concerns in UNISON's decision making arena. VII

This thesis analyses the cultural work performed by confessional discourses. It contributes to feminist cultural theory by refining and extending the Foucauldian theory of confession through a comparison of the cultural instrumentality of the mainstream, male-authored confession and women's versions of the mode. The thesis begins by arguing that though the mainstream, male-authored confession constructs and addresses a mutable subject suited to the requirements of modern power techniques, the polyvalence of confessional discourse also registers a resistance to subjection to contemporary forms of power/knowledge. The second section of the thesis extends and refines this argument by contending that the gynocentric deployment of confession by the woman's confessional novel produces a double-voiced discourse, which mutedly resists patriarchal forms of femininity. The application of psycho-analytic literary theory to a close reading of Marilyn French's The Women's Room leads to the conclusion that this novel's deployment of confessional discourse allows for a muted venting of repressed active female desire. The third section of the thesis extends the preceding examination of the cultural work performed by gynocentric confessional discourse through an analysis of the madefor- TV-movie version of French's The Women's Room. This section argues that that though the application of a film studies and a TV studies approach to the movie appears to produce two contradictory readings of it s cultural instrumentality, this divergence results from the different emphases of film and TV theory: while film theory emphasises text at the expense of context, TV theory tends to reverse this trend. In conclusion, the thesis argues that discourse theory points the way towards a perspective which can address the relationship between textual and social subjects. This thesis examines the textual negotiation of confessional discourse by gynocentric forms; it also points towards the need for a perspective which can more adequately address the question of reception as negotiation.

The impact of severe mental illness on the individual and their family can be substantial. In addition to living with the vagaries of a condition that can be of unpredictable duration and severity, individuals and their families may also have to live with public perceptions that can be devaluing, discriminatory or indeed hostile. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the impact of severe mental illness on the individual and their key relatives using a social cognitive perspective. Chapter 1 provides a review of the mechanisms and consequences of stigma and discrimination in severe mental illness, and explores ideas for intervention that are predicated upon empirical research findings. Chapter 2 examines the pattern of desynchrony between lay representations of severe mental illness held by individuals, their carers, and a sample of the general public. It also highlights the association between aspects of perceived stigma and divergent patient-parent representations of schizophrenia. Chapter 3 adopts a self-regulation theory approach to distress in the relatives of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and concludes that aspects of the self-regulation approach, (perceptions of psychosis, coping, and primary appraisals) have some utility as a framework to understand distress in the carers of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Finally, chapter 4 reflects on the research process and discusses the development and course of the research. It also provides some further reflections by participants on the experience of severe mental illness.

In the last few decades female permanent sterilization became the most used contraception method in Mexico. During this time the demand for short-term contraceptives fell consistently. The shift in the demand for contraceptives raises concerns among demographers that the timing of children may remain unchanged regardless of the observed reductions in period fertility rates. After presenting a brief discussion of the economic theory on fertility behaviour (Chapter 2) and introducing the reader to the main demographic issues of modem Mexico (Chapter 3), Chapter 4 assesses these ideas in the context of modelling the timing of a first child, using duration models as main analysis tool. Findings suggest that young cohorts of women are effectively delaying first birth relative to the experience of older generations. Chapter 5 reports a study of the determinants of completed fertility. Special attention is given to studying how characteristics such as religion and ethnic group affect the likelihood of transition from low to high order parities. An innovative Double-Hurdle count model is developed for the analysis. Findings indicate that education and Catholicism are associated with reductions in the likelihood of transition from parities lower than four to high order parities. Being an indigenous language speaker increases the odds of a large family. Chapter 6 enquires how fertility plans of young individuals who live in intact families (i.e., those where both biological parents are present) differ from fertility plans of young individuals who live in non-intact families. The role of family background in the formation of fertility plans is studied. Count data models are used in the analysis, including an innovative technique for estimating quantile regression for count data. Findings suggest that an absent father reduces planned fertility, especially when women have weak preferences towards children. Education decreases planned fertility if strong preferences towards children are felt.

The thesis examines Sex Education lessons integrated to the fourth and fifth year core curriculum of a mixed comprehensive school. It studies their stated objectives, contents and implementation in the classroom and analyses how pupils interpret curricular meanings with regard to their gender expectations from sexuality, employment and domesticity. A variety of qualitative methods - in particular, participant observation and informal interviews - has been used. The first chapter argues that sexual and gender socialisations must be understood from a materialist position and that the Sex Education curriculum may be structured by the fundamental functions of schooling in a gender - and class - divided society. The second chapter locates the marginal position of Sex Education within the Health Education course of the deeply divided school. Strategies for control over curriculum and classroom social relations developed by both Sex Education teachers and pupils constitute the theme of the third chapter with illustrations from the lesson on childbirth and pregnancy. Contraception, sexual intercourse and marriage are discussed in the next three chapters which follow the same pattern. Each considers the selection of curricular meanings, their transmission in the class and boys' and girls' perceptions of these topics. The last chapter underlines the dominance of traditional views on sexuality, gender and marriage in teachers' and pupils' perceptions alongside a liberal reformist theme. Both dominant and negotiated meanings form the ideology of personal relationships which blends objective information with commonsense knowledge of sexual and gender conflicts. Consistent with the social democratic views of education, this ideology serves to negotiate the fundamental contradiction between the socialisation of pupils to ascribed positions (sexual, familial and occupational) and individuals' self-determination with regard to these. By and large, pupils' accommodative strategies based on conflicting sexual - and gender - interests validate this ideology but also give them some limited control over definitions of appropriate behaviour.

The focus of this dissertation entitled 'Difference, Identification & Desire: Contemporary Lesbian Genre Fiction' is the representation of lesbian identity in four contemporary popular lesbian genres: autobiographical fiction, speculative fiction, romance fiction and crime fiction. The aim of the dissertation is three-fold. Firstly, it seeks to acknowledge and celebrate the large variety of representations of lesbianism produced by lesbian writers working with popular forms of the novel during the past twenty five years. Secondly, it explores the ways in which lesbian writers have reworked popular genres in order to highlight lesbian and feminist concerns and to depict aspects of lesbian existence. It analyzes the effects of introducing discourses of lesbianism into the plots of popular genres, showing how the latter have been subverted or adapted by lesbian use. Thirdly, the thesis seeks to specify the ways in which the generic forms themselves, according to their own codes and conventions, shape and mediate the representation of lesbian identity in the text. In addition to this focus, the dissertation traces a number of themes and concerns across and within the four genres under discussion. These include the relationship in the texts between the sign 'lesbian' and the discourse of feminism, and the oscillation between the representation of lesbian sexual identity in terms of woman-identification and difference-between women. The aim throughout the analysis of contemporary lesbian genre fiction is to identify both that which is specific to lesbian representation and that which is characteristic of the particular genre under discussion. The dissertation represents a contribution to three areas of literary study: Genre Studies and Feminist Studies in general, and to Lesbian Studies in particular.

This research project is based on ethnographic observations of andinterviews with a sample of nineteen young women about their experiences of sexual harassment in everyday life. The fieldwork was carried out in a school. The aims of the project were to explore young women's perceptions and negotiations of sexual harassment as much as to document the variety of forms it took and to explore the role of schools in the institutionalization of sexual harassment. The methods employed and the methodological perspective adopted were both ethnographic and feminist, underpinned by a realist philosophy and a standpoint epistemology. I highlight the need to address questions about how methodology, epistemology and substantive data are indissolubly interconnected. Thus, the traditional 'scientific' principles of objective impartiality and unemotionality are explicitly challenged by the demand that we reflect critically on -our own inevitably emotional knowledge of the world which we investigate. The appeal to reflexivity rather than to reason or rationality (supposedly unfettered by emotionality) profoundly challenges our understanding of what 'science' means and, therefore, what knowledge is. A definition of sexual harassment is offered. I argue that the phenomenon is a situated, mundane and masculine power practice which reconstructs or reproduces patriarchal social relations. It is patriarchy operationalized. Since the young women with whom I worked collaborated in defining what the research was about by relating their experiences of heterosex, the thesis also explores some of the oppressive continuities between these more intimate encounters and sexual harassment in everyday life. Given that sites of oppression are also potentially at least sites of resistance, the thesis critically examines the ideological context which structures human agency and explores the extent to which young women are empowered to resist rather than accommodate themselves to the oppressive exercise of masculine power. I argue that the school effectively reproduces the oppressive reality in which the young women live their everyday lives.