1970s and 1980s feminist writing about rape in relation to early modern legal practice and to its representation in literary works established a paradigm of misogyny and female victimhood that has remained largely unchallenged. Two works in particular have become almost ubiquitous in modern criticism: a 1983 paper by Nazife Bashar, and the 1632 treatise, \(The\) \(Lawes\) \(Resolutions\) \(of\) \(Womens\) \(Rights\). But a scrutiny of source material revealed factual error and misreading of early modern law and commentary in Bashar’s piece. Additionally, \(The\) \(Lawes\) \(Resolutions\) is unreliable in its account of statute law, while its legal credentials are unclear. Mistaken assumptions arising from both sources have been perpetuated and compounded in modern criticism, and established as commonplace. The resulting critical paradigm constrains the scope for further investigation. The thesis attempts to set the undeniably subordinate status of women in a fuller context than that of oppositional gender politics. It reviews early modern statute law, the background to \(The\) \(Lawes\) \(Resolutions\), Bashar’s essay and its influence on subsequent criticism, the cultural context that established women’s secondary status and reinforced their vulnerability to rape, and the part of neoclassicism in the dynamic. Later chapters turn to early modern – particularly Jacobean – drama. The thesis suggests that in a fuller context of complexity and contradiction there is potential for wider and more interesting approaches to rape in literature than ideological assumptions prevalent in criticism over the past thirty years have allowed.

Qualitative research has tended to not recruit participants with learning disabilities due to concerns that they would not be able to engage with the research process. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is a new qualitative methodology which aims to make sense of participant's experiences through the researcher's interpretative enquiry of a homogenous sample. A literature is presented which synthesised, developed a quality guide and evaluated whether IPA is an appropriate methodology to use with people with learning disabilities. The main focus was around the quality of research is this area and additional issues to consider when recruiting people with learning disabilities. An empirical paper that investigated the experiences of women of South Asian origin in receipt of social services using IPA is also presented. It revealed that the participants are satisfied with services through 3 super- ordinate and 8 subthemes. Further research is needed in this area.

The first paper is a systematic review of the impact of informal social support on symptoms of PTSD in female survivors of sexual assault. Thirteen studies were identified and reviewed against quality criteria. The findings suggest that negative and positive social support from informal sources of support differs as to its effects on PTSD symptom severity. Specifically, negative social support was found to increase symptoms of PTSD, whilst positive social support may play a buffering role for some survivors. However, positive social support did not appear to buffer against the more detrimental impact of negative social support on symptoms of PTSD. The second paper explored how police and women with learning disabilities co-construct sexual assault during police investigative interviews. Six closed and archived investigative interviews were identified and analysed using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Analysis observed a central pattern of discourse around fault and blame which was drawn on my both survivors and officers in constructing sexual assault. The analysis highlights opportunities for further police training in identifying and questioning adults who report a sexual assault who also have a learning disability.

In this thesis, I explore the desirability of including polygamous marriages within contemporary legal understandings of marriage in the UK. I develop existing research in this area to undertake a contextualised, historically-conscious examination of English legal and judicial responses towards polygamous marriages which I then use to underpin my analysis of real women’s narratives. My thesis addresses five research questions: 1.) How are legal and judicial responses towards polygamous marriage framed in English law? 2.) What is the impact of current legal and judicial attitudes towards polygamous marriages on women in the UK? 3.) How are women’s views, experiences and perceptions of polygamous marriage constructed in relation to law, religion, culture and society in the UK? 4.) How might the UK’s legal regulation of polygamy be changed to better reflect the needs of women? 5.) Is legal recognition for polygamous marriages in the UK, a desirable or viable option for reform? I argue that current English legal and judicial responses towards polygamous marriages are archaic and remain underscored by colonial imperialist, orientalist and sexist attitudes. These attitudes have also permeated wider social and cultural attitudes towards polygamy. The debate surrounding the legal recognition of polygamous marriages has evolved very little because the same arguments concerning equality and harm have been made for centuries. A more sensitive engagement with the advantages and implications of legal recognition for polygamous marriages is required to promote a nuanced model of recognition.

This study explores the links between women's work, gendered labour markets, and women's institutional political participation in 25 European countries. Although employment is a standard predictor of (women's) political participation, previous research has treated women's work mostly as a characteristic of individual women, disregarding the broader structural inequalities that are behind women's work patterns. Using data from the fifth round of the European Social Survey, in combination with detailed information on work-family policies and labour market structures of the countries included, this study aims to contribute to a more contextual understanding of the effects of employment. My research explores whether the effects of employment status, working hours, and job level are shaped by the context, in which they are embedded. Although labour markets and political systems vary considerably across countries and existing research has provided inconsistent findings, the context-dependency of employment effects has not yet been systematically assessed. Moreover, little research has focussed on direct effects of the labour market; therefore, this study explores the effects of two labour market characteristics that have a particularly gendered meaning: work-family policies and gendered structures in the labour market. The findings indicate that the effects of employment are more complex than often assumed in the literature. Employment can not only affect, for example, mothers and non-mothers differently, but there is also an indication that some employment effects are shaped by the labour market context. Contextual characteristics also affect women's political participation directly by redistributing resources and shaping women's experiences in the work-place. Overall, the findings show that the political effects of work should be understood within the wider context.

Background: Overweight and obesity are major health problems globally, particularly in men. Some group-based interventions for men, such as Football Fans in Training (FFIT), a gender-sensitised weight management and healthy living programme for overweight or obese men, have proven successful in helping men initiate and achieve weight loss. However, there is still a need to understand how men's attempts to make changes to health practices are influenced by their social context. This study explored how men's attempts to change their dietary practices and physical activity to lose weight and maintain weight loss were influenced by, and influenced, their cohabiting female partners within the context of FFIT. Method: Separate interviews were conducted with 20 men and their cohabiting female partners 3-12 months after men had completed FFIT. Their experiences around men's participation in FFIT and subsequent attempts to change dietary practices and physical activity were explored. Data were thematically analysed, guided by Self-Determination, Social Support, Interdependence, and Gender theories. Results: All partners in this study were supportive of men's autonomous decisions to join FFIT. Each partner displayed varied levels of involvement in the process of men's attempts to make changes to dietary practices and physical activity. Men's success or failure in making and maintaining changes, and/or achieving weight loss, was described as resulting from their resoluteness for the changes, responsiveness to FFIT and reliance on/receptiveness to the partner's involvement and support. Men's participation in FFIT also positively influenced the partners' dietary practices and physical activity, as well as couples' relationships despite some tensions and conflicts arising during this process. Conclusion: Cohabiting couples' close relationships provide a supportive context for overweight or obese men to initiate the pursuit of weight loss, and maintain healthy dietary practices and physical activity. This study also highlights the mechanisms by which partners influence men's changes to dietary practices and physical activity following a weight loss intervention, and how they too are influenced in this process. It thus helps explain how varying behaviour change outcomes can occur within an intervention. This study highlights the importance, and the bidirectional nature, of health behaviour change in the cohabiting couples' context.

This thesis considers the role of the Zhenotdel (Woman's Bureau) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in Soviet Central Asia through a close reading of its activist journal Kommunistka from 1920-1930. This research seeks to address conflicting narratives within academic literature concerning the Zhenotdel's status within the CPSU, and in particular between accounts of its role in Central Asia rather than in European parts of the Soviet Union. Historians who have written on a campaign, known as the Hujum, launched by the CPSU in a direct attack on indigenous society in Central Asia in 1927, have tended to view the Zhenotdel as a compliant part of the Party apparatus. This interpretation contrasts with accounts of the Zhenotdel's far more problematic relationship with the Party outside of Central Asia during the same period. A close reading of Kommunistka throughout the entire period of the Zhenotdel's work in Central Asia has not previously been undertaken, although the journal has been relied on along with other source materials by various historians. Therefore, this study brings new and original material and analysis to further our understanding of the Zhenotdel's activities in Central Asia. It provides a close examination of the views of activists and leaders, and a better understanding of the Zhenotdel project on its own terms, as opposed to the goals of the CPSU. The shifts within Zhenotdel policy over the decade can also be situated within the changing conditions of the 1920s within Soviet Central Asia, and the discussions within its ranks. This thesis analyses the opinions expressed by Zhenotdel activists about indigenous women, along with the methods employed to interact with these women. It gives a detailed account of the Zhenotdel's social, economic and legal strategy and contrasts it with that of the CPSU. This thesis also considers the relationship of the Zhenotdel to the CPSU in the context of Central Asia. It shows how the tensions and conflicts within that relationship, already discussed through research focusing on the experience in the RSFSR and other European Republics, expressed themselves in the specific conditions of Central Asia. This research throws new light on many of the assumptions made about the Zhenotdel's programme in Central Asia and shows how this programme actually diverged very significantly from that of the Party leadership. A revaluation of the role of the Zhenotdel in the Hujum has been possible, based on this study. It shows that the involvement of the Zhenotdel in the Hujum and all other aspects of its activity in Central Asia has to be understood on the terms of an organisation which was committed to a woman-centred socialism. Ultimately this research shows the Zhenotdel in a struggle to make progress for its own programme while at the same time seeking to establish itself as a core part of the Soviet strategy in Central Asia.

This thesis examines the construction of frames of Second World War memory in the post-occupation Channel Islands, and considers the impact of gender on both this memory-making process and the resulting popular representations of their shared past. It first explores the gendered tensions and fractures of the occupation years, and their role in the construction of this usable past. The occupation will be shown to have directly challenged the traditional gendered expectations of British wartime conduct (a key tenet of Islander identity), particularly regarding martial masculinity and feminine virtue. These tensions and fractures were particularly acute in the Channel Islands, as they were the only British territory to be occupied by German forces during the Second World War, having been demilitarised prior to the invasion of 1940. The war memories that were popularly adopted by the Islander communities after the war were, therefore, rooted in these early tensions and fractures, as they sought out retribution, closure, and unity, along with a connection to the desirable British war memory and the image of the victorious soldier hero. This thesis examines how this traumatic period has been built into a necessary and powerful founding myth in the Channel Islands, through the gendered sharing of war stories and rituals, as well as the reclaiming of contested spaces and objects to the present day. This analysis of the war memory of these small Islander communities will inform wider understanding of how gendered wartime anxieties might have similarly impacted the construction of war memory within other previously occupied nations across Europe. It also offers an important insight into the role of gender in the subsequent dissemination, disruption and stabilisation of war stories through generations, particularly within small communities recovering from the trauma of war.

This thesis examines the issue of police response to domestic violence. It advances theory on this topic by applying the concept of coercive control to better understand the risk profile of domestic violence that comes to the attention of the police, and police officers’ use of discretion when identifying, recording and responding to domestic violence incidents. The research questions for the thesis are:(1) Can cases of coercive control be identified in national population surveys, and, if so, to what extent is coercive control gendered and more harmful than other forms of domestic violence?, (2) Is coercive control the most common form of domestic violence reported to the police?, (3) What degree of discretion do officers exercise when responding to cases of domestic violence?, and (4) What factors influence police officers’ responses at the scene of incidents of domestic violence? The thesis is structured around four published journal papers. Paper 1 uses national population survey data to show that coercive control is experienced primarily by women, and is more harmful than other forms of domestic violence. Paper 2 uses data from risk assessments to show that coercive control is the most common form of domestic violence that comes to the attention of the police. Using data from force systems, Paper 3 suggests frontline officers retain considerable discretion in relation to identifying and recording cases of domestic violence. Paper 4 uses in-depth interviews with officers alongside case-files to suggest that while officers are now more aware of policies such as presumptive arrest they are prepared to ignore such policies when they believe an incident is not serious; officers’ conceptions of what is serious were primarily incidents that involved physical violence and injury. I conclude that legislation to criminalise coercive control presents an opportunity to change officers’ conceptions of domestic violence and what constitutes threat and risk. I call for a reconceptualisation of the research agenda on domestic violence to focus initially on observational study in order to understand better the factors that influence police response.

This study set out to explore the experience of psychological therapy amongst women survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse. The aim is to give a voice to survivors’ unique experiences of therapy, in order to better meet the multifaceted needs of survivors and to inform policies and clinical practice. The research utilised a qualitative form of enquiry, in order to stay rooted in the participants’ experience. Six women who had experienced sexual abuse in childhood, and who had undergone therapy for the effects of Childhood Sexual Abuse took part in this study. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to gain insight into participants’ experiences of therapy, and the data was analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. The findings demonstrated that there were four superordinate themes related to participants’ therapy experiences: ‘The help-seeking journey’, ‘Development of the therapeutic alliance”, ‘Salient therapeutic experiences’, as well as ‘Healing as a process’. Additionally, each superordinate theme consisted of a number of sub-themes. The findings are considered in relation to the wider literature. Potential implications for clinical practice and polices are addressed, and suggestions for further research are provided.