No abstract / Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Public Law / LLD / Unrestricted

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No description available.

This study was based on subjective attitudes towards wife rape of 85 women and detailed interviews with 20 of them. It aimed to measure the relation between traditionalism and use of the term wife rape, awareness of wife rape and of its criminalisation; and to understand women's experiences and subjective definitions of wife rape and their coping strategies. Once wife rape was problematised, definitions varied. Women holding more traditional attitudes (informal settlement women) were less likely to define the wife's experience in a vignette as wife rape than women holding less traditional (shelter women) and non-traditional attitudes (Network identified women). Additionally, women holding more non-traditional attitudes were more likely to define the event as wife rape than were other women. Similar intergroup differences in traditionalism on awareness of wife rape and its criminalisation emerged. The line between sexual violence and violent sexuality was a thin one at times. / M.A (Pshychology)

This thesis analyses key documents from the United Nations Security Council (the Council) meetings during the period of 1999 to 2001. This thesis maps out the shift in the discourses that occurred within the Council, when adopting United Nations Security Council’s resolution (UNSCR) 1325. Moreover, this thesis argues that the nodal point ‘Civilians’ has become gendered by being replaced by the concept of ‘Women’. This thesis argues that UNSC is misrepresenting female agency within the discourses, which has contributed to a gendering of the concept of civilians. Sexual violence, defined as a wartime weapon, has also been part of the construction of stereotypical gender binaries, which has constituted a representation of women as either victims or saviors within the discourses. It becomes evident that the notion of female agency as for example independent, empowered or strong has been neglected. The discourse theory provided by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe is applied in order to map out the existing discourses within the Security Council meetings. The aim of this study is to acknowledge the importance of that women have been and still are being excluded from the ontology of war. Furthermore, when the role of women in war is described, it is in relation to constructed stereotypical gender binaries.

This research is about the Social Networks and Social Capital of British-Bangladeshi Young Women in relation to their identity, cultural context and social aspects. It is a qualitative study based on the lives of a small sample of Bangladeshi young women, who are second or third generation British-born Bangladeshis between the ages of 16 and 29, living in London. They are British citizens and were born or grew up in Britain. The main area that the research takes place in is the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Methods encompass in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. This research investigation has found that the social networks and social capital of Bangladeshi young women were impacted by their identity, ethnicity, social and cultural contexts, such as religious and gender identity, patriarchal practice within households and racism. Accordingly, for many women the construction of social networks was enabling; but for others, there were constraints in relation to their identity. On the other hand, the social networks through various places, especially places of study and work, significantly enabled the women to acquire their identity with regard to their social position, which has been helpful for agency and negotiation power. Consequently, their social networks were shaped based on their subjective experience, cultural expectations and social aspects. However, the women were active in order to create and maintain their social life, as well as to negotiate and develop their own ‘strategies to manage’ techniques to cope with the constraints. In this study, my main argument aims to emphasise how social networks are formed and maintained by the Bangladeshi young women in relation to their identity, cultural context and social aspects. I contend that these women actively negotiate a multitude of personal, familial and structural concerns in developing their social networks. I also argue that agency and negotiation power positively contribute to mitigate cultural constraints and inequalities with regard to the social networks of these young women; however social structures and inequalities create significant boundary conditions for these women to acquire negotiation power.

This work fulfills a three-fold purpose. First, it identifies and conceptualizes patriarchal imposition as a social problem. Patriarchal imposition refers to a category of micro-level, social interaction in which male actors attain desired social outcomes at the expense of female actors. Date rape provides an example of such imposition. Second, this work elaborates an integrative theoretical understanding of the socio-cultural production of patriarchal imposition by joining three diverse paradigms: abstract individualism, social rationalism, and identity maintenance. Integration is accomplished by providing elaborations of each paradigm separately, by critically comparing propositions generated from each paradigm, and by treating mutually exclusive propositions as suggesting alternative pathways in the production of social action. This integration yields three central propositions: (1) the socio-cultural presentation of stereotypically dominant male identities and stereotypically submissive female identities influences men's motivation for patriarchal imposition, (2) the socio-cultural presentation of gendered conflicts of interest with respect to outcomes of social interaction influences men's motivation for patriarchal imposition, and (3) the socio-cultural presentation of males as disproportionately successful in attaining desired outcomes in gendered conflict influences men's motivation for patriarchal imposition. In addressing the third purpose, this work applies a unique method of content analysis on a sample of popular motion pictures, the top-ten box-office successes for each year 1986-1990. This content analysis deconstructs the sample into an aggregate data set of gendered relationships and interaction events of gendered conflict. Statistical procedures of logistic regression are applied to this data, and results support each central proposition. Qualitative interpretation of the data provide further support and also identify emergent themes in the cultural portrayal of gendered conflict. These results indicate that paradigmatic debate of patriarchal culture's influence on men's motivation disguises the reality that varying perspectives offer similar conclusions, namely that patriarchal culture does influence men's motivation for patriarchal imposition in various ways. The real debate concerns the politics of social change.

In nineteenth-century Cuba, patriarchy operated at all levels of society. Cuban elites prescribed the place of slaves and that of women. The idealized familial ordering, or the notion that elites benevolently governed society as a father did his family, provided a ready model for the maintenance of order. The male, father-figure occupied the highest position in the societal hierarchy, the female, mother-figure served as his "helpmate," and the children obeyed. Elites' children included their actual children as well as lower orders of Cuban whites, and blacks, both enslaved and free, child and adult. This work examines how patriarchy functioned outside the confines of the family unit by scrutinizing the theoretical foundation on which nineteenth-century Cuban patriarchy rested, and investigating how patriarchy functioned as a method of social control for elite and non-elite women, as well as the enslaved women of Cuba. Through an examination of family, marriage, divorce, public charity, and education, this study provides insight into the Caribbean's longest lasting slave society. Over the last twenty years, scholars have increasingly recognized the important role of gender in the study of slavery in the Americas. However, gendered analysis of nineteenth-century Cuban slave society has yet to attract the same level of scholarly inquiry as have other Latin American nations. Based on a variety of archival and printed primary sources, my study illuminates how gender provides an important lens of analysis for nineteenth-century Cuban society. My project uses gender to examine nineteenth-century Cuban history in order to explore how patriarchy functioned in the lives of both white women and women of color. Moreover, it analyzes the social constructions of gender within the context of race and class. The study of gender implies a relational concept. Gender’s social construction, for both men and women, means it cannot be studied in a female vacuum. The work focuses on women, although in order to understand them better I also examine the place of men. Notions of discourse and power provide insight into the social constructions of gender and further the analysis of women who have long been held at society’s margins. / PhD

O objetivo principal desta dissertação de mestrado é uma leitura do romance Orlando: A biography (1928) de Virginia Woolf a partir do levantamento de uma hipótese interpretativa do processo de construção do romance. Basicamente, procura-se investigar como acontece a seleção, organização e articulação dos materiais sociais e estéticos envolvidos na sua produção de modo a reconstruir momentos-chave da obra, bem como a propor códigos interpretativos. No primeiro capítulo há uma análise dos dispositivos formais que constituem a narração com intuito de revelar os conteúdos sócio-históricos que eles carregam. Já no capítulo dois identifica-se na dialética entre forma e conteúdo do romance duas formações ideológicas antagônicas: a figuração do patriarcado capitalista que organiza a experiência coletiva de maneira autoritária e da estética da modernização cultural que emerge em oposição à primeira. As considerações finais retomam os principais pontos trabalhados nos capítulos anteriores e propõem que o projeto de Woolf tematiza a amplitude da interioridade com o intuito de gerar uma compensação simbólica para crescente desumanização da vida no período entreguerras. Identifica-se, assim, ao menos duas linhas de força da narrativa modernista: uma que aposta na subjetivação e outra na objetivação do processo artístico. Esta dissertação propõe que Woolf se filia à primeira linhagem. / The central objective of this dissertation is a reading of the novel Orlando: A biography (1928) by Virginia Woolf from an interpretative hypothesis of its construction process. Basically, it seeks to investigate how the selection, organisation and articulation of the social and aesthetic materials involved in its production takes place, in a such a way that it is possible to reconstruct the work\'s key moments as well as to propose interpretative codes. In the first chapter there is an extensive analysis of the formal devices that constitute the narrative; in chapter two it is identified in the novel\'s dialectics of form and content two antagonist ideological formations: the figuration of capitalist patriarchy which organises colective experience in an authoritarian way and the aesthetic of cultural modernisation that rises in opposition to the former. Finally, in the conclusion, all the main points discussed in the previous chapters are summarized and it proposes that Woolf\'s project thematizes the human interiority\'s amplitude in order to create a symbolic compensation for the increasing dehumanization of social life in the interwar period. Thus, we identify two modernist paths: one that places centrality on subjectivization and another on objectivization of the artistic process. This dissertation supposes that Woolf belongs to the first lineage.

In The Holy Kinship (1500-1510), the artist Matthäus Gutrecht the Younger defies convention by portraying the importance of matriarchy, via the semiotics of the nimbus. Within Christian art, the nimbus has been widely used as a signifier of divinity. Saints and angels, as well as members of the Holy Family, are often depicted nimbed in the history of art. In particular, men of divine status are frequently nimbed, as Christianity was predominantly patriarchal. However, there are several cases in which women are also represented with this divine signifier. One work in which the nimbus as a signifier of matriarchal status and lineage is epitomized is Gutrecht's portrayal of The Holy Kinship, in which the women, but not the men, are shown nimbed. This thesis explores the varied significance of the matriarchal nimbus. Furthermore, it challenges traditional patriarchal analyses of late medieval, German culture in order to examine how this altarpiece both reflects and constructs attitudes regarding a celebration of women's spiritual and secular roles. In this way, the painting presents a direct challenge to the more familiar representation of patriarchal lineage and power in Tree of Jesse images.