This thesis presents a series of feminist counter-readings of the two women in Proverbs 1-9: Woman Wisdom and the Strange-and-Foolish Woman. It therefore seeks to both discern and challenge the traditional male scholarship's understandings of both women, and, more importantly, to read both as women rather than as stereotypes. Most readings of the text construe Woman Wisdom as a personification or a hypostasis, and the Strange-and-Foolish Woman as a stereotype or series of stereotypes of promiscuous and assertively sexual women. Few scholars focus on the significance of these representations of women as women. My feminist counter-reading methodology involves a triple hermeneutic-suspicion, resistance, rereading and representation. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 1999

Errata sheet pasted inside front cover. / Bibliography: leaves 372-400. / ix, 400 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Politics, 1996?

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The thesis involves a re-examination of feminist views of the childbearing body from a post-structuralist perspective and applies these theoretical ideas to an empirical investigation into contemporary childbirth and midwifery. Critiques of medicalised childbirth developed in Australia, Britain and the USA in the 1970s are related to debates within feminism about appropriate ways to theorise motherhood and the female body as well as to understand the role played by midwives and doctors in childbirth. It is argued these critiques were the product of three strands of feminism that differed in their analysis of gender politics, their philosophy of knowledge and their understanding of power. The three critiques are also related to differences between the USA, Britain and Australia in respect of their medical system, ways in which the history of childbirth practices are viewed and differences between the professional roles of midwives. It is argued that these critiques need to be modified by more recent post-structuralist feminist approaches, particularly the way in which bodies are shaped by language and power is related to the distribution of knowledge The empirical study concentrates on a maternity unit in a regional town in New South Wales. The unit was studied through repeat interviews with mothers attending the hospital for the birth of their second or a later child, interviews with the midwives and doctors working in the unit and observations over several months. Childbirth is re-imagined as a drama and found to be an intense embodied experience shaped in turn by the practices of the hospital and the changing boundaries between medicine and midwifery, relationships of the women with the staff and the women’s own diversity. This approach to the analysis of the interview data demonstrates the limitations of the liberal feminist critique that there is insufficient rational and ‘scientific’ evaluation of childbirth practices, the radical feminist critique that the key issue is men’s domination of women’s bodies and the materialist feminist critique of the lack of fairness and support given to childbearing women, while showing how these discourses continue to circulate in debates over the management of childbirth.

Thesis (PhD) -- McMaster University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-264). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 289 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Zugl.: Diss.

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Seminary, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-84).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2006. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-06, page: 2534. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-129).

Thesis (M.A.I.S.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-54). Also available on the World Wide Web.