The purpose of this study was to explore how adolescent female athletes cope with social physique anxiety (SPA) within the context of sport. The participants of this study were 73 female athletes ranging in age from 13 to 19 years (M = 15.5, SD = 1.7). The participants provided coping responses to a self-identified situation within sport in which they experienced SPA. Measures of state and trait SPA, coping function, coping effectiveness, and reasons for sport participation were also completed. <p>The female adolescent athletes reported a total of 129 strategies (an average of 1.77 strategies per participant) to cope with their SPA provoking situation, with a range of 1 to 4 coping strategies identified by each participant. Social support (reported by 31.5% of participants), behavioural avoidance (reported by 23.3% of participants), short-term appearance management (reported by 23.3% of participants), humour (reported by 23.3% of participants), cognitive avoidance (reported by 19.3% of participants), and acceptance (reported by 17.8% of participants) were among the coping strategies reported by the highest number of participants. The number of open-ended coping strategies reported was significantly related to State SPA (r = .34, p < .05). Trait SPA was significantly related to avoidance coping function (r = .21, p < .05). This study supports that within the context of sport the way in which female adolescents cope with situations they experience SPA is similar, yet unique, to outside of this specific context. Most coping strategies appear to be consistent in coping with SPA across various contexts outside of sport, such as social support, acceptance, avoidance, and appearance management. It is important to note that consistent with the literature, there was much diversity in what functions were associated with various coping strategies. However, uniqueness occurred as other coping strategies emerged, such as humour, in the context of sport. This study has potential to act as a starting point to better understand the complex links among coping strategies, function, and effectiveness for adolescent females coping with SPA.

A critical feminist discursive approach was used to explore how and to what ends women organized their talk about female genitals. Exploration and interpretation of how the eight women in this research used talk to orient their constructed positions for female genitals, within the dyad conversational sessions, was informed by the analytic concepts of interpretative repertoires, subject positioning and ideological dilemmas. Findings indicated that these women repeatedly drew on socially available information (e.g., fictional and non-fictional literature, media, family and friend, empirical research) regarding female genitals during their dyad discussions. Shared components in the womens accounts were organized into two opposing interpretative repertoires consistent with those identified in a selection of reviewed textual resources: powerful female genital repertoire and powerless female genital repertoire. The participants drew on both these repertoires when arguing and defending multiple, and often contradictory, subject positions on this topic. Although the women discursively demonstrated a strong pull toward a position that aligned with the powerful repertoire, their powerful subject positions were tenuous. This tenuousness may have been due to the sensitive nature of this topic, the rhetorical demands of the research conversations, and/or the untenability of an extremist position in either of the powerful or powerless female genital repertoires. Further, these women did not construct any new information in their talk regarding female genitals, thus suggesting that the female genital repertoires are discursively pervasive and constraining. This research contributes to our knowledge of talk regarding female genitals by illustrating how and to what ends women choose to organize, interpret and exclusively use existing discourses on this topic.

The Italian labour market seems unable to allocate a significant fraction of the working age population efficiently. The gap between the employment rate in Italy and in the other developed economies is foremost attributable to the low employment rates of youth, seniors and women. The low employment rates of these three groups are due to several factors limiting both labour demand and labour supply. For women in particular, constraints on the allocation of time play a crucial role in determining labour supply behaviour. In this thesis we try to understand how non-standard time constraints may affect the behaviour of women, and their labour supply in particular. In the first chapter we study how the constraints on work-schedules affect the time allocation of workers in Italy. For a large fraction of employed individuals the work schedule is very rigid, as a consequence of outdated industrial relations. In order to understand whether constraints on the work-schedule produce significant effects on the allocation of time of wage/salary workers in Italy, we exploit the intrinsic differences between them and self employed workers. In fact, one of the main features of self-employment is the greater control over the days worked and daily hours of work. We use the last wave of the Italian time use survey (2008-2009) to provide evidence that the distribution of hours of work of self-employed workers is much more dispersed than that of wage/salary workers and that average standard deviation of their daily minutes of work within a week is significantly larger. Then we show that self-employed workers respond more to shocks affecting the value of leisure. We show that on sunny days the increase of leisure and the reduction of work are significantly larger for self-employed workers. We address whether unobservable characteristics, such as preferences for leisure and for outdoor activities in particular, determine this differential response and find no evidence for this. We interpret the differential response to weather shocks as a consequence of the time constraints on work-schedules. This evidence is relevant for female labour force participation since in Italy a large fraction of women choose not to work because they would otherwise not be able to reconcile family and work responsibilities. In the second chapter we study the Added Worker Effect (AWE). The retrospective questions provided by the new labour force survey allow identification of transitions between labour market states in a 12 month time-window. Since we are able to identify the reason for the husband’s job loss, we distinguish between transitions associated with low or high income losses. We find that both the wife’s probability of joining the labour force and that of finding a job increase when the husband is dismissed or he is forced to quit his job for health reasons, two cases of usually high income losses. Moreover, we estimate the wife’s full transition matrix between labour market states and we find that the loss of a job by a husband increases the probability that his wife will enter the iv labour force. Finally, we provide some descriptive evidence that time constraints can also impact the magnitude of the AWE. Focusing on mothers with young children, we show that the estimated AWE is positively correlated with the regional provision of child care services. The third chapter is based on the time use files of the Canadian General Social Survey. We study how Sunday shopping deregulation changed the time allocation of women, with a particular focus on those with children. The empirical analysis relies on the provincial variation in the time of the policy change. Our results suggest that women with children, who usually face stringent time constraints, respond to the policy change by substituting weekday shopping with Sunday shopping. The amount of time these women save from doing shopping on weekdays allows them to increase their minutes of work. On Sunday, shopping increases at the expense of leisure. The main result of this chapter is that the labour supply of mothers may change even when non-obvious constraints on the allocation of time change.

This study addresses the shortage of research on the meaning of travel experiences for tourists as well as research on female travelers. I examine the activities of Canadian women who backpacked in Europe and to what extent, if any, these activities facilitated identity development. The sample group is comprised of 19 Canadian women ranging from 20-40 years of age. E-mail interviews were conducted with participants to gain information about their travel activities and the meanings of these activities. Identity growth was evaluated on the basis of participants’ reports including the extent to which participants reported experimentation. I hypothesized that during travel women would partake in risky behaviours (defined as increased alcohol and drug use, participation in adventure sports and atypical sexual activities) and thereby explore their identities. Interviews revealed that while women did explore their identities during travel, it was not primarily through risky behaviours. Moreover, participants responded with difficulty to questions concerning their out-of-character behaviours. Participants reported that while their behaviours may have been atypical, they did not necessarily define their behaviours as out-of-character. Rather, participants framed these behaviours as extensions of typical activities. Identity development principally resulted from respondents having to navigate the trip for themselves, which conferred a sense of independence and personal strength.

According to Ibeh et al (2008) organizations with women in top management positions tend to excel financially, but if we look at recent statistics women are strongly underrepresented in those positions. In Sweden, 5 of the 291 stock market companies have a female CEO (www.skane.se, 2011). I started to wonder how this could still be a problem, when we are an equal society in many other ways. I found in my first search for literature that female networks were not as researched about as male networks which made this area both difficult to find other research in but even more important to conduct. My hopes are that this thesis will bring more interest into this field of research and have a positive impact on the development of more female leaders. What I try to find the answer to in this thesis is how female networks influence women aspiring to become leaders and how these networks could work more as supportive networks. I conducted my research by having 5 interviews with female leaders that has been successful. We had long discussions about what made them successful and how their female networks works. I have also used a great deal of literature, both literature that has done similar interviews in order to support my arguments but also literature in the subject Networks. I used an actor’s view, which means that I tried to understand what these women have experienced and tried to give them a fair picture. I found that there is a big difference between informal and professional networks and that woman were more likely to grade informal networks higher. Informal networks could be very unsupportive to women’s careers. In these informal networks I found that women tended to push each other to become "good girls" and do everything perfectly which could be conceived as very stressful and become an obstacle when women tries to excel in their career. In order to dismantle yourself from the wishes of the group that you need to be perfect I found that a high self esteem was something crucial that all of my interviewed women seemed to have. In order to "fight" the female laws that women are learned that they should follow you need to believe in yourself. The implications I found that can be done in this area is that women need to grade professional networks higher, we need to bring our profession into our informal networks and we also need to be supportive inside our informal networks in order to change this statistics. Since people are very dependent on having good relationships with other people, we are likely to listen to each others criticism. This change is not done in one day, and therefore we also need more research within this area.

According to the different studies, there is a strong correlation between (GDP) per capita as the index of economic growth and indicators of human development such as life expectancy, infant mortality, adult literacy, political and civil rights. Based on Millennium Development Goals, which is a program made by UN to reduce extreme poverty and improve human development in developing countries, we can find the indicator of which has key role and affect the other goals of human development directly and clearly. Considering the concept of education accurately we also would be faced with subject of literacy for both genders in a society. Recent empirical research reveals the benefit of women's education and describes the importance of this subject for the economic development.Therefore the main object of this paper is the relation between human development and economic growth and the effect of education on human capital accumulation and thereby on the economic growth, especially the case of female literacy rate and its consequences for human development. This paper will analyze the effect of the human development on the economic growth and well being with special attention to the female education concept related to the MDG in developing countries generally. It will consider mainly the sub Saharan countries as developing countries. For this purpose we will verify the theoretical literature via comparing statistic and charts for the region under consideration.

This study addresses the shortage of research on the meaning of travel experiences for tourists as well as research on female travelers. I examine the activities of Canadian women who backpacked in Europe and to what extent, if any, these activities facilitated identity development. The sample group is comprised of 19 Canadian women ranging from 20-40 years of age. E-mail interviews were conducted with participants to gain information about their travel activities and the meanings of these activities. Identity growth was evaluated on the basis of participants’ reports including the extent to which participants reported experimentation. I hypothesized that during travel women would partake in risky behaviours (defined as increased alcohol and drug use, participation in adventure sports and atypical sexual activities) and thereby explore their identities. Interviews revealed that while women did explore their identities during travel, it was not primarily through risky behaviours. Moreover, participants responded with difficulty to questions concerning their out-of-character behaviours. Participants reported that while their behaviours may have been atypical, they did not necessarily define their behaviours as out-of-character. Rather, participants framed these behaviours as extensions of typical activities. Identity development principally resulted from respondents having to navigate the trip for themselves, which conferred a sense of independence and personal strength.

A critical feminist discursive approach was used to explore how and to what ends women organized their talk about female genitals. Exploration and interpretation of how the eight women in this research used talk to orient their constructed positions for female genitals, within the dyad conversational sessions, was informed by the analytic concepts of interpretative repertoires, subject positioning and ideological dilemmas. Findings indicated that these women repeatedly drew on socially available information (e.g., fictional and non-fictional literature, media, family and friend, empirical research) regarding female genitals during their dyad discussions. Shared components in the womens accounts were organized into two opposing interpretative repertoires consistent with those identified in a selection of reviewed textual resources: powerful female genital repertoire and powerless female genital repertoire. The participants drew on both these repertoires when arguing and defending multiple, and often contradictory, subject positions on this topic. Although the women discursively demonstrated a strong pull toward a position that aligned with the powerful repertoire, their powerful subject positions were tenuous. This tenuousness may have been due to the sensitive nature of this topic, the rhetorical demands of the research conversations, and/or the untenability of an extremist position in either of the powerful or powerless female genital repertoires. Further, these women did not construct any new information in their talk regarding female genitals, thus suggesting that the female genital repertoires are discursively pervasive and constraining. This research contributes to our knowledge of talk regarding female genitals by illustrating how and to what ends women choose to organize, interpret and exclusively use existing discourses on this topic.

The purpose of this study was to explore how adolescent female athletes cope with social physique anxiety (SPA) within the context of sport. The participants of this study were 73 female athletes ranging in age from 13 to 19 years (M = 15.5, SD = 1.7). The participants provided coping responses to a self-identified situation within sport in which they experienced SPA. Measures of state and trait SPA, coping function, coping effectiveness, and reasons for sport participation were also completed. <p>The female adolescent athletes reported a total of 129 strategies (an average of 1.77 strategies per participant) to cope with their SPA provoking situation, with a range of 1 to 4 coping strategies identified by each participant. Social support (reported by 31.5% of participants), behavioural avoidance (reported by 23.3% of participants), short-term appearance management (reported by 23.3% of participants), humour (reported by 23.3% of participants), cognitive avoidance (reported by 19.3% of participants), and acceptance (reported by 17.8% of participants) were among the coping strategies reported by the highest number of participants. The number of open-ended coping strategies reported was significantly related to State SPA (r = .34, p < .05). Trait SPA was significantly related to avoidance coping function (r = .21, p < .05). This study supports that within the context of sport the way in which female adolescents cope with situations they experience SPA is similar, yet unique, to outside of this specific context. Most coping strategies appear to be consistent in coping with SPA across various contexts outside of sport, such as social support, acceptance, avoidance, and appearance management. It is important to note that consistent with the literature, there was much diversity in what functions were associated with various coping strategies. However, uniqueness occurred as other coping strategies emerged, such as humour, in the context of sport. This study has potential to act as a starting point to better understand the complex links among coping strategies, function, and effectiveness for adolescent females coping with SPA.

Given the relative lack of information about female gang membership in Canada and the hidden nature of this population, a qualitative approach for understanding the lives of female gang members, through a life course perspective guided by feminist standpoint epistemology is utilized in this dissertation. The data for this study are obtained from interviews with fifteen girls and young women who claimed youth gang membership in their lives, from the cities of Saskatoon and Edmonton. .<p>The critical feminist perspective serves as the theoretical framework for this study. It directs us to an understanding in which girls are regarded as active agents in their own lives and who are striving to better their lives albeit with the limited options available to them in the face of locally available constructions of opportunity and possibility. The analyses reflect the lived experiences of the respondents and illuminate the ways in which the personal troubles and daily lives of respondents are explicitly overshadowed by larger public issues. Through critical analysis, this study draws attention to the ways in which girls experiences of ageism, racism, classism, and sexism interact, resulting in social exclusion, isolation from social institutions, and a subsequent involvement with youth gangs. .<p>The study reveals a heterogeneity of respondents experiences especially with respect to being treated as equals by their male counterparts. From the analysis, it is evident that gangs are highly gendered groups in which gender hierarchies force girls to find ways both to create personas of toughness and independence through participation in violent activities yet also to display appropriate feminine behaviours of sexually non-promiscuous females. Importantly, the decisions to leave the gang are triggered by the negative affects of gang life. Once out of the gang, the girls under study seemed to refocus their efforts toward educational opportunities and obtaining job-related skills. In the end, my research indicates that awareness about the dangers of gang life including the negative consequences of gang membership need to form a core of prevention programs, especially those designed for younger girls and children.