This study examines the three novels Cat s Eye, The Robber Bride, and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. It focuses on the female characters and their relationships to each other: Their friendships are formed in a patriarchally structured environment and are therefore arenas for defending and controlling the norms of such a structure. The women continually watch each other and themselves, and through the power exercise of watching, femininity is constructed. Atwood describes acts of dialogic storytelling as a means to find options to gendered behavior. / digitalisering@umu

Using feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial lenses, I explore how young Lebanese-Canadian women construct health, obesity, and the body within the context of the dominant obesity discourse, which over-emphasizes supposed links between inactivity, nutrition, obesity, and health. Participant-centered conversations were held with 20 young Lebanese-Canadian women between the ages of 18 and 25. The conversational texts were analyzed according to two consecutive methods: a thematic analysis which allowed us to focus on what the participants had to say about health, obesity, and the body followed by a poststructuralist discourse analysis which helped us to decipher how the participants spoke about these topics. The findings of this study attest that the young women construct health, obesity, and the body as matters of individual responsibility. They speak about achieving health and avoiding overweight/obesity through disciplinary practices such as rigorous physical activity and proper dietary restrictions. The participants also construct health in close linkage with the physical appearance of the body; moreover, they conflate the “healthy” and “ideal” female body, which they represent as thin. As such, the young women reject “fat” and portray obesity as a disease, a matter of lack of will, and an “abnormal” physical appearance. Finally, the young Lebanese-Canadian women report their involvement in various practices such as restriction of the quality and quantity of their nutritional intake, rare and non-organized forms of physical activity, and problematic practices such as the use of detoxes, dieting pills, and compulsive exercise, all in the name of health. Throughout this study, I highlight the participants’ multiple and shifting subjectivities: While the young Lebanese-Canadian women most often construct themselves as free neoliberal subjects re-citing elements of dominant neoliberal discourses (of self-authorship, self-responsibility for health, traditional femininity, and obesity), they at times construct themselves as “poststructuralist” subjects showing awareness of, and “micro-resistance” to such discourses. The impacts of the Lebanese and Lebanese-Canadian cultures on the participants’ constructions of health, obesity, and the body comprise an important part of this thesis. The participants accentuate the major importance of beauty and physical appearance—particularly not being fat—in the Lebanese and Lebanese-Canadian cultures. However, they also attempt to distance themselves from “Lebanese” ways of thinking about health, obesity, and the body, and in doing so they replicate homogeneous representations of Lebanese, Lebanese-Canadian, and Canadian women. I offer practical suggestions to inform health and obesity interventions that target Lebanese-Canadian women and women from ethnic minorities and I discuss future research possibilities that may stem from the present thesis.

The purpose of this study is, based on theories of gender and hegemonic masculinity, to studyhow masculinity and femininity is constructed and reproduced in one of the most popularSwedish podcast: Filip & Fredriks podcast. The main theory in this study is that gender issocially created and sustained by humans through language and interaction with others.The study's research questions is: How are gender roles/gender portrayed in Filip & Fredrik'spodcast? What characteristics are attributed to men and women in Filip & Fredrik's podcast?How does Filip & Fredrik's podcast represents conditions and power relations between menand women?Through an linguistic textual analysis, which is an application of discourse analysis, I seek toget beneath the surface meanings of texts and examine more implicit social meanings andideologies regarding gender. It includes an analysis of metaphors, word choices and syntax.The analysis shows underlying values and ideologies that indicates gender structures in abroader societal context. Choice of words and metaphores in Filip & Fredriks's podcastexpresses symbolism where men and male-typical attributes are highly valued, whilst womanand female-typical attributes is being devalued and representative of the opposite.Masculinities and femininities are also constructed and represented in various ways throughsentence constructions that guides the listeners in certain directions. Men are e.g. more oftenthan women in active roles when Filip and Fredrik describe different processes.Consciously or unconsciously, the presenters language establish and maintain a genderorder, gender roles and gender discourse. Dominant gender ideologies are reinforced in theeveryday conversations in Filip & Fredrik's podcast through linguistic structures and genderideologies inherent in the communication.

Film är ett av de medier som påverkar vår identitetskonstruktion och vår uppfattning om normer och verkligheten. En av de mest populära filmgenrerna är komedifilm. Det är därför intressant att studera konstruktionen av karaktärer i komedifilm för att se vilka normer som är rådande idag. Studiens syfte är att ur ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv undersöka olika karaktärer i modern komedifilm för att ta reda på hur genus är konstruerat, vilken humoristisk funktion olika karaktärer tilldelas samt vilka eventuella skillnader det finns i komedifilm med i huvudsak manliga skådespelare respektive kvinnliga skådespelare. Resultaten av analysen visade att komedifilm med i huvudsak manliga skådespelare bekräftar traditionella könsnormer samt sociala normer medan en komedifilm med i huvudsak kvinnliga skådespelare visar nya tendenser gällande maskulina och feminina karaktärer. Maskulina egenskaper visades dock vara de mest eftersträvansvärda. Studien fann även att den humoristiska funktionen hos karaktärerna ligger i stereotypisering, överdrifter samt brott mot sociala normer. / Film is a medium that influences the construction of identities and the perception of norms and reality. One of the most popular movie genres is comedy. Therefore, it is of interest to study the construction of the film characters to see what standards are prevailing today. The study's aim is to - from a social constructionist perspective - examine different characters in a contemporary comedy film to research how gender is constructed, the humorous function different characters are assigned, and the differences between a comedy film with mainly male actors and a comedy film with mainly female actors. The results of the content analysis showed that a comedy film with mainly male actors confirms traditional gender norms and social norms as a comedy film with mainly female actors shows new trends regarding masculine and feminine characters. Masculine characteristics were shown, however, to be more desirable. The study also found that the humorous function of the characters lies in the breaking of social norms, stereotyping and exaggeration.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2000. / Includes abstract. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 341-362).

The purpose of this study is to expose the strategies through which extreme sports constitute gender through exaggeration, parody, queering, resistance, and transcendence of normative gendered binaries. I interrogate how extreme sports operate on the margins of sport, gender, media, and lived experience to better understand the processes and performances that retain, reinforce, and resist our notions of normative gender, bodies, and sexuality. Starting with the claim that performance is constitutive of gender and culture, I will focus on how extreme sporting performances create significant commentaries on mainstream assumptions surrounding sporting gender, sexuality, and corporeality. These commentaries function in extreme sports' spaces: to critique how extreme sports reclaim oppressive language of gendered binaries; to give voice to sexual silences in performances that lampoon, retrofit, and transcend those assumptions; and, for athletes to reclaim corporeality through strategies of parody, resistance, and elision. Taking up the transcendent possibilities for gender, body, and sexuality in extreme sports, I suggest that these are also places to reimagine a phallocentric combat myth, revisit issues of class and performance, and speak of the invisibility of racial difference. Using critical analysis, interviews, and personal narrative, I explore performances of gender, sexuality, and the body in mediated and live extreme events beginning with the revival of the roller derby phenomenon exemplified in the 2007 documentary Hell on Wheels, the 2006 A&E series Rollergirls, and the multiple websites, leagues, and fictional representations such as 2009's Whip It. I then turn to MTV's pranktainment playground of Jackass, Viva la Bam and Nitro Circus as well as the traveling motocross spectacle Nuclear Cowboyz. Finally, I attend to the extreme bodies of ultradistance running through multiple texts and conversations with runners as well as my own participation in the 2011 Keys100 in the Florida Keys. My study will not repeat the many questions, critiques, or concerns of foundational or traditional scholarship on sports, media, or risk. Instead, I focus on several key issues across the chapters: how sport is housed as always already a masculine realm, how mainstream and extreme sports do gender corporeally, and the ways extreme sports challenge our mainstream notions of sexualities.

With this thesis I wanted to find out how a teacher-team in Stockholm reason about and whether they have specific expectations of male teachers in the early school years. Interviews with five teachers from pre-school to grade 3 and in after-school have shown that specific expectations of male teachers is something obvious. Are male teachers expected to enter into the role of male role models to contribute with masculinity and a male perspective? However, the informants are not able to define how a male role model is or should act. Men and women are often defined as two separate, and often as opposite, groups. According to Lpo´94 the school has to counteract traditional gender patterns, making specific expectations of male teachers problematic, when these rather helps to underpin these patterns.  The conclusion is, based on the perception of gender as a socially constructed phenomenon, that schools and teachers contribute to gender-building by setting, and constantly repeating and practicing the standards for what is considered male and female. As long as this continues, the school will remain an arena where these gender patterns are reinforced rather then counteracted.

Sex and sexuality are embodied experiences that are highly constructed by society. Sexual acts are subject to varied historical meanings, both dominant and subversive, which change over time and space. This dissertation explores how embodied heterosexual married sexual experiences were constructed for, and by, women in the immediate postwar era (1946-1966) and how that sexuality interacted with related social paradigms such as gender roles, motherhood, and femininity within English Canada. Using the body as a lens, this dissertation explores how three main sites of authoritative discourse attempted to police postwar sexual bodies through the creation of ideal, or Leviathan, bodies and associated systems of encoded knowledges and mores called “body politics.” The first case study examines the medicalized body, using the Canadian Medical Association Journal demonstrating how mothers were constructed as the keystones of their families; it reveals the intimate ties between familial gender and sexual role deviance and reproductive illnesses in women’s bodies. The second case study examines how the Anglican, United and Roman Catholic Churches reframed sex as sacramental for English Canadian married couples encouraging them to engage in sexual coitus to both strengthen their marriages and renew their spiritual connection to God. The third case study uses I Love Lucy to interrogate how mass media created and reflected postwar sexual and gender norms while simultaneously subverting them, generating a carnivalesque situation of tightly contained deviance. This dissertation then moves on to examine how the discourses of the previous three chapters affected actual women as demonstrated by a series of eighteen interviews with women who married between 1939 and 1966. The oral histories establish that actual corporeal bodies were at best distorted, or “fun house,” mirrors that only ever reflected imperfect copies of the ideal bodies they were supposed to emulate. In addition to making significant contributions to the historiographies of each of the case studies contained therein, this dissertation adds new knowledges about the ways that “normal” bodies work throughout history, creating simultaneous continuity and change, as well as how sexuality and gender norms are intimately connected within the realm of the body.

The importance of customer experience in the banking sector is steadily increasing due to product similarity, competition and the global expansion. Additionally, in the twenty-first century, the focus has shifted from a service-based to an experience-based economy where senses, feelings, impressions, perceptions and emotional connections have become central. The global expansion in the banking sector has created a need for cross-cultural studies of customer experience, because of the increase of success when the service delivery is in tune with the cultural differences of customers. Despite the scarcity of cross-cultural studies, the few existing studies have shown significant results. The purpose of this study is hence to compare the perceived customer experience in the banking sector in Sweden and the United States. These two countries are culturally different on the masculinity versus femininity dimension explained by Hofstede in the universally acknowledged study on cross-cultural dimensions. The study has a positivistic, deductive, cross-sectional approach. A questionnaire survey is used based on the three most critical factors affecting customer experience: convenience, employees and servicescape. The findings are significant, showing how culture is affecting customer experience. Swedish respondents have a more positive perception of the total customer experience despite scoring lower on the critical factors than their American counterparts. This can be linked to the high degree of femininity in Sweden, meaning that Swedish customers are putting emphasis on balance, care for others and the quality of life, rather than being materialistic, goal-oriented and competitive. The original value of this dissertation is a better understanding of the impact of cultural differences in customer experience in banks in two culturally different countries: Sweden and the United States.

This thesis explores the increasing medicalization of society, the process whereby social phenomenon are transformed into medical problems. Alike the general tendency of neuropsychiatric diagnoses, the number of people with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) has increased and expanded from a boys’ diagnosis to include both adult men and women. Studies on the latter category is however scarce. The objective of the thesis is to contribute with a micro sociological and critical perspective on the effects of the biomedicalization process, by focusing women's experience of getting and living with ADHD. The empirical material consists of narrative interviews with sixteen women, diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood. The participants, age 20 to 50, were enrolled via Swedish NGOs in 2010 and 2013. The thesis resides on four analytical themes: biomedicalization, pharmaceuticalizaton, functionality and gender. It shows how diagnostics evokes processes that involve learning and using a biomedical terminology to describe and understand oneself. ADHD is, in general, depicted as diffuse, expansionary, masculine and deviant sociability and cognitivity. Unlike depression and anxiety, described as temporary and unwanted illnesses, the ADHD-diagnosis embraces the whole personality. Hence, the women find it difficult to identifying and separating ADHD from the self. Furthermore, categorizations of oneself as a ‘woman with ADHD’ imply constructions of individual and collective identity that has ideological implications, i.e. the individual narratives are related to grand narratives. These contradictory grand narratives bring about ideological dilemmas that are handled rhetorically in the women's everyday life. The masculine connotation of ADHD, for example, render the women experiencing themselves as transgressing not only femininity but also ADHD-personhood. Additionally, as social actions are attributed to the ‘ADHD brain’, the brain is portrayed as a pathological deviant and dysfunctional object for pharmaceutical intervention. Nevertheless, this discourse is also contested by the women by pointing to 1) positive aspects of the ‘ADHD-brain’ in everyday life, or 2) gender inequalities and demands of the late-modern society. Concluding, the women in this study are not only victims of their bodies or societal norms, but also agents negotiating – adapting and opposing to – expectations of how to be an ideal citizen or woman.