Since Sweden can be considered to be a secular society it is interesting to investigate how different actors experience swimming education in the course syllabus of sports and health education, for practicing Muslim girls in middle and high schools. The investigation is based on qualitative interviews with sports teachers, practicing Muslim girls and the staff of the public swimming center in Växjö. The result shows that swimming education can be somewhat problematic, since the Muslim girls only want to attend lessons that are gender separated. In the public swimming center, there are no pools exclusively intended for women, and there are only a few times available for women every week. However, the teachers stress opportunities instead of obstacles, and the students’ experience that their teachers are trying to create possibilities for them to have a gender separated swimming education. The question of swimming education for Muslim girls is analyzed by using Berger’s theories on secularization, pluralism and privatization, as well as discussions on gender and intersectionality. The school and the public swimming center can be seen as secular arenas, which are characterized by secular values and standards. This may lead to consequences, since the swimming education is not designed according to the wishes of the practicing Muslim girls. The subject of swimming education is to some extent negotiated in society, but the swimming education is not fundamentally changing. However there are some possibilities for the Muslim girls to attend, but this may be problematic based on a gender view.

No description available.

Equality and diversity legislation across the UK and Australia has stimulated the health profession sector to make workplace equality and diversity policies transparent to service users (Wadham et al.2010; RCN 2016; GMC 2016; WGEA 2012). However, research literature has identified inequalities within the healthcare workplace as reported by health professions students. Specifically, research has identified issues concerning identities (gender, age, sexuality etc.) adversely interplaying with students' workplace learning experiences (Rees & Monrouxe 2011; Illing et al. 2013;Monrouxe, Rees, et al. 2014). Such negative learning experiences (i.e.discrimination, abuse) have been found to affect students' retention and success (Northall et al. 2016). Despite research shedding light on these issues, studies have typically explored individual identities and demographics and neglected how students' intersecting identities shape their learning experiences, retention and success. Furthermore, research has only offered recommendations for enhancing retention and success of students, rather than exploring the issues affecting retention and success in health professions education. This thesis explicitly explores what and how multiple intersecting personal and professional identities shape healthcare students' learning, retention and success in the context of gendered environments and professions (i.e. male- and female-dominated contexts). Underpinned by social constructionist, narrative and feminist methodologies (Kitzinger 1995; Hunting 2014), I conducted a large secondary analysis on 2255 workplace learning experiences from across the UK and Australia as well as multiple health professions. To follow on from the secondary analysis, I led a multi-site longitudinal audio diary study across two sites in the UK, to explore health professional students' workplace learning experiences in the context of male- and female-dominated environments. Multiple cross-sectional and longitudinal qualitative approaches were employed to explore the data, including thematic, narrative, positioning, and case-study analytic methods. Novel findings from my thesis highlight how participants narrated their intersecting personal and professional identities within male- and female-dominated contexts. I found how recurrent tensions and power imbalances between intersecting identities, learning experiences and environments across time led to an adverse impact on healthcare participants' thoughts and reflections about their learning, retention and success in the health professions. Sensitising the participants to tensions concerning how they negotiate their intersecting personal and professional identities are valuable for understanding and influencing their retention and success. Furthermore, findings from my thesis provide critical recommendations to enhancing healthcare students' workplace learning, retention and success in the health professions, through incorporating intersectionality into healthcare education curricula. The recommendations made in this thesis contribute to helping understand and support a diversifying healthcare workforce and shed light on potential issues around healthcare workforce shortages, which can be addressed through enhancing health professions' educational policies and practice.

This thesis provides a complex understanding of the phenomenological experience of whiteness as a racial category. Based on theories of critical whiteness studies, intersectionality and (white) phenomenology, I conducted five semi-structured interviews with five white women about their understandings of their whiteness within a context of transnational travel. The interviews have been interpreted using thematic analysis, with the aim to show that whiteness is inherently relational and contextual, always in conjunction with Others and in interplay with the spatial context, while at the same time intrinsically related to other intersectional parts of the self. By making use of autoethnography as a methodology, my situated knowledge as a researcher was integrated within the entire thesis. The study has shown that whiteness never stands alone but is inherently relational, not only with racialized Others, but also with other intersections such as womanhood, which complexifies the experience and understanding of it. Moreover, whiteness is perceived as the most normalized standard from which everything different and other is measured by, while it serves as an invisible social category that can move through the world unnoticed. Consequently, the normality of whiteness creates a feeling of reassurance and comfort and thus keeps it in its place as the most normalized social category from which the world unfolds.