As new technology develops, society develops with it; we find new ways to interact with our business associates, our friends, and our family. This study looks specifically at the ways individuals in our contemporary community express sexuality and how dating and forming new relationships is being affected. We begin with a brief history on the study of sex and sexuality, and continue with a section exploring theories and more contemporary research on the subject. Focusing on current social phenomenon such as gender objectification and the anonymity pertaining to online interactions, we investigate social media and phone/computer applications focused on dating. We look for answers to questions regarding how the evolution of sexuality influences power structures within a community, through empirical interviews and hidden online observations, and from a feminist perspective. The intricacies of text communication and the interpretation of such interactions is a cornerstone of modern dating, which this thesis analyses closely by looking at how the participants initiate contact with potential partners.

Uppsatsen hade som övergripande syfte att utifrån kvalitativa intervjustudier undersöka om muslimska och kristna kvinnor var feminister och använde sig av feministiska strategier. Uppsatsen sammanfattade i stora drag under rubriken tidigare forskning vad feministiska strategier är och hur de kunde tillämpas inom islam och kristendom, men ger också bakgrund och förståelse för ämnet ur ett religionshistoriskt perspektiv. Studien visade att de religiösa kvinnorna inte medvetet kallade sig feminister, men hade jämlikhet som en självklar grundsyn. Feministiska perspektiv på teologi och religion behövdes då den traditionella religiösa historiesynen och religiösa erfarenheten, kulturen, är manligt beskriven och behöver utmanas inom kristendom och islam. Detta kunde göras genom att medvetet tillämpa feministiska strategier och tolkningsmetoder. Feministiska strategier användes av vissa av de intervjuade kvinnorna, dock behövde de bli medvetna om att det var just feministiska strategier och tolkningsmetoder som de använde.

PhD (Translation), Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 1998

Abstract My dissertation interrogates the ways in which Zakes Mda has made women central to his novels. I argue that the women characters in Mda's novels are key to the idea of the rebirth of Africa (and the simultaneous birth of a (South) African identity) a rebirth made necessary by years of dispossession through colonialism and apartheid. I will explore how on one level Mda, through magical realism, represents women as symbols of both destruction and construction; and how on another level he represents them as complex characters existing as agents of history. Mda’s novels: Ways of Dying (1995), She Plays With the Darkness (1995), The Heart of Redness (2000) and The Madonna of Excelsior (2002) critique the topdown approach of the postapartheid, postcolonial discourse of African Renaissance a discourse which aims to reverse the damage done to the lives of Africans who have been brutalised by history. Mda writes an African renaissance (with a lower case “r”), which acknowledges and explores the ways in which people on the margins of power, recreate and transform their lives, without necessarily waiting for politicians to come up with policies and solutions. The renaissance of ordinary people privileges the spirit of ubuntu, whereby the individual strives to work with the collective to achieve a more humane world. Mda’s female characters are central to the debate on renaissance and reconstruction in that he questions existing gender roles by ii highlighting strongly the rights still denied African women his challenge to the discourse is whether a renaissance is possible if the humanity of women (and others marginalised by class, age, location, ethnicity, and other categories) continues to be denied. I ask the question whether Mda, goes further, and envisions women participating as leaders in traditionally male spaces.

This thesis investigates to what degree women developed a politicised gender consciousness and participated in political activity in Dundee in the period 1870 to 1997. It is a gender and political study on Scotland's fourth city which has three key objectives. The first is to examine whether gender was relevant in the city's history of representation and whether it made a difference to political structures, policy and activity. The second charts the advance of women in the city's political elites to determine whether they shared common interests which formed the basis for collective action, which could be characterised as women's politics. The third sets out to further our understanding of why there is a commonly-held and repeated public view that Dundee was a woman's town and that Dundee women were and are in some way radically "different" because of the city's unique industrial circumstances and the intervention of gender into local political activity. The thesis uses several sites to explore whether the women involved made a difference in terms of political outcomes. It examines parliamentary and local government elections. It looks at the emergence of trade unions, elected bodies and autonomous women's organisations. It involves an interdisciplinary exploration of issues and problems in political studies, political history, community politics and the analysis of gender relations. It is an idiographic study of gender and political activity that utilises new evidence to challenge myths associated with the object of analysis. It argues that the distinction between the voluntary welfare associations in which women were involved and political activity was often blurred. Influential women's activity which does not fall within conventional definitions of "political" activity is also highlighted. The study seeks also to place these discourses within the context of theories about representation and equality. Within political science the thesis explores empirical explanations within the context of Dundee, and contends that analysis of the situation in the city during the study period, in particular the role of middle-class women in the 20th century, goes some way to providing a flexible alternative to important feminist approaches on political participation and representation. It is also argued in this thesis that time and place are important factors in charting representation, and that they are factors seldom prominent within feminist theoretical scholarship. Thus, this thesis is as much a first women's political history of a major Scottish city as it is an important analysis of political representation and a framework for establishing new ideas about political activity in Dundee. It provides an original contribution of a historically and socially-specific location and in so doing provides a basis for further comparative work on gender and political activity and in placing tacit assumptions in the research literature in question.

Contestations around religion and secularism in the UK continue to unfold. These debates converge most polemically around women’s religiosity, as evidenced by proposed bans on the hijab, and the criminalisation of female circumcision. Research on religious women creates a binary juxtaposition between religion as an oppressive force, on the one hand, and religion as a means of emancipation for women, on the other. These accounts fail to address how religious women experience their religious communities as oppressive and choose to stay. In this doctoral thesis, I introduce a new analytic approach to the study of religious women by investigating how women stay in a restrictive religious context and the strategies they employ, in order to theoretically expand understandings of agency. This research examines how British evangelical Christian women negotiate their religious and gendered identities in London. My findings are based on a 12-month ethnography and 33 semi-structured interviews with unmarried evangelical women (aged 22 – 40) living in London. Recognising the unique challenges that single religious women face, including dating and sexual abstinence, I focussed on unmarried women. My research asks: How is the female evangelical subject formed through religious practices such as observing sexual purity, attending Bible study groups and fellowship with like-minded believers? Taking a lived religion approach leads me to theoretically analyse how women practice their religion in everyday, ordinary ways. I then examine how these practices shape women’s identities. Evangelical women are assumed to be either empowered by submission, or frustrated and leaving the church, but an exploration of the everyday, ordinary ways that women live their religion reveals the nuanced and important identity negotiations that women make. My key finding is that evangelical women confront a double bind in their identity formation; the attachment to a Christian identity liberates and supports women, but also ensnares them in a constraining network of norms. Through this discovery, I emphasise the salience of gender in the study of religious practice. By analysing how identities require exclusion for consolidation, I also explore women’s responses to marginality, and re-conceptualise agency. Despite important theoretical contributions to understanding religious women’s agency, scholars continue to ground their approach to agency solely in piety and submission, obscuring alternative modalities. By refusing to align with one side of the emancipation/oppression binary, my research brings a renewed attention to the benefits and the costs of religious belonging.

As women navigate the intersecting meanings of feminism and submission, some struggle to reconcile their feminist politics and submissive practice (i.e., belief in equality and desire to yield authority). Bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM) has been examined through diverse feminist lenses, including radical feminism, postcolonial world-travelling, and a sex-critical approach. However, scant empirical research focuses on the intersection of feminist and submissive identities. The purpose of this collected papers dissertation was to better understand the identity navigation of women in the BDSM community who identify as feminist and submissive. Two studies were conducted to explore this gap. Study #1, a structured literature review of BDSM, examined how feminism and submission are discussed related to women who are feminist and submissive. Data were collected through a library database search, Google Scholar, reference scans, and Google Scholar Cited by. Important segments of data were identified and analyzed. Four themes emerged: feminism in the context of BDSM, normalization of BDSM, navigating identities, and power as transgressive. Implications focus on three areas: the importance of consent, transgression, and diversity; helping women understand and navigate identities; and reducing stigma through education. Study #2, a phenomenological study, explored how 23 women in the BDSM community perceive and navigate their feminist and submissive identities. Data were collected through interviews. Inductive analysis revealed six themes: feminist identity as distinct from feminist values, the complexity of submissive identity, women learn to accept their submissive identity in different ways, BDSM community perceived as generally accepting of feminist identity, feminist community perceived as not very accepting of submissive identity, and being out as feminist and as submissive. Implications focus on four areas: exploring how women challenge oppressions; understanding how women understand and negotiate consent; learning about how individuals learn about, develop, and engage in BDSM D/s relationships; and examining how college women experience these identities, feminism, submission, consent, and abuse while they develop as individuals. The findings can apply to counseling, feminism, sex education, higher education, adult education, and human resource development through incorporation into curriculum, training, and policies. Research and practice can be enhanced through exploring how consent is understood, operationalized, and violated; broadening discussions about identity development; and increasing awareness of how adults learn.

This thesis examines how young, married, heterosexual Christian couples talk about and make sense of pregnancy loss, specifically loss before the twentieth week. Studies of pregnancy loss often focus on individual differences in response to pregnancy loss, but this research engages a shared, relational notion of pregnancy loss. Furthermore, this project focuses on Christianity as a tool for making sense of pregnancy loss, not simply a demographic characteristic. I conducted six open-ended interviews with two couples, with one interview together and an individual follow-up interview with each spouse. Following the interviews, I analyzed and interpreted the interview transcripts for symbols of identity and forms, which are communicative practices described by Carbaugh (1996) that construct social identity and cultural scenes, to examine how pregnancy loss is characterized as a "me," "you" and "we" experience. Through this analysis I observed how multiple agents (God, the couple, the community, family members and clinicians) continually construct what pregnancy loss means for the couple, but also for this cultural scene. This is a transformative experience for all entities as they continually interact with this notion of loss. Significantly, these couples see this experience continuing on past death and know that they will see their baby "in heaven."

Abstract not available

Early motherhood is a much debated and highly contentious topic. This research aimed to explore young Pākehā women's experiences of motherhood using a feminist qualitative framework. Twelve women, six current young mothers and six former young mothers, were interviewed via focus groups and individual interviews. The analysis revealed that Pākehā culture constructs young mothers as problematic because they challenge the 'traditional' family dominant in Pākehā culture. By having children prior to, rather than after, workforce participation and achieving economic independence, young mothers challenge the prescribed life trajectory for Pākehā women. The women in this study discussed both the positive aspects and the challenges they faced as young mothers. In contrast to common public perceptions and media representations of early motherhood as negative, motherhood positively transformed the women's lives. This was discussed in terms of ceasing destructive activities and gaining motivation to return to education. The young mothers in this study had flexible parenting styles, which allowed them freedom from Pākehā cultural pressure to 'do motherhood' in a particular way. As young mothers, the women had high energy levels and anticipated early future freedom from childcare duties to pursue their dreams. Challenges discussed by the women included incorporating unanticipated early motherhood into long-held life goals, feeling exhausted, having a lack of time for themselves and having too little support. Financial hardship, poverty, judgment and stigma surfaced as major challenges which affected all areas of the women's lives. However, the women also resisted this discrimination by using a range of strategies, which positions them as women with agency, challenging their representation within literature as passive victims. Young women will not use services where they perceive they will be judged for being who they are. As levels of support appear to determine how young women experience motherhood, services have a vital role to play in supporting young mothers. The findings of this study highlighted the complex and contradictory nature of the young mothers' stories, presenting a challenge to simple and stereotypical negative discourses of early motherhood.