This paper analyzes the financial and professional circumstances of two single working women in early-to-mid eighteenth-century Lyon. Using the documents deposited in court for their debt investigations, the author examines the matrix of credit, reputation, and gender to understand the challenges facing working women in an increasingly professionalized world, as well as the ways women sought to appropriately represent themselves in court. Several key challenges working women faced are highlighted; women who did not successfully negotiate these challenges might find themselves in court for debt litigation. These challenges included collecting debts (in specie), activating community and regional patronage networks, exercising control over property, and claiming gendered authority against the threat of male-controlled guilds. In response, both women constructed narratives of charitable activity to refute their charges; the documents submitted to the court evince both women's charitable activity in Lyon. By casting themselves as philanthropists they engaged gender and class categories to create an appropriately feminine reputation that would still allow for transacting money and labor. / text

This thesis is based on fieldwork carried out among weavers of rush-woven objects in rural Taiwan. In this thesis, I argue that nowadays rush-weaving is good work, though not good labour, for the weavers, and the social logic of Yuanli rush-weaving lies in the process of craft production. It is an ethnographic investigation into the practice of rush-weaving in association with colonialism, the heritage movement, and museum operation. Firstly, this thesis examines the economics and history and practice of craft production, in order to understand how the craft industry has become what it is and what is embedded in the process of production. The skill-based knowledge required of weavers is embedded in the relationship between a weaver and her environment. While this fundamental characteristic remains, new meanings and uses are attached to craft practice and the objects produced. Secondly, this thesis explores the process by which craft production is involved in the heritage and museum movement in contemporary Taiwan, so as to understand the interrelationship between craft production and the movement. I consider how ideas of tradition, heritage, and museums are perceived and enacted in everyday life, and find that these ideas contain contradictions and have different meanings for insiders and outsiders. The analysis as a whole seeks to explain why artisans keep weaving in contemporary society, and that it must be understood in terms of their continuous reaction to the constant transformation that the rush-weaving industry has undergone, which is reflected in the relationship between artisans and their objects in the process of production. The thesis addresses current issues – which are both fiercely contested in events and policies, and marginalised in everyday life – in Taiwan, but also attempts to contribute to the anthropological perspective on knowledge in practice, technology and social logics, past and present, and tradition and innovation.

Under the prevailing global capitalist model, increased access to the formal economy for women is touted as a panacea to women´s empowerment and gender equality. Despite an unprecedented increase in women's participation in the global workforce and international labor standards, women are often assigned to precarious and exploitative low-wage work with little opportunity for social mobility. This thesis examines the effects of U.S.-Colombia Free Agreement and Labor Action Plan on women workers in Colombia's cut flower export-oriented industry. The impacts of free trade on women are contradictory, and despite hopes for the Labor Action Plan, women in the cut flower industry have seen little improvement in the working conditions and gender inequality. I explore the ways in which women actively resist exploitation and argue that women face powerful structural barriers to collective action under the imperialist and racist order of the capitalist patriarchy enshrined in Free Trade Agreements.

In this thesis the situation concerning women's musculoskeletal disorders in three different types of workplaces is studied, and differences in women's and men's working conditions which affect this situation are identified. How diffe-rences in working conditions are constructed and reconstructed in and by gen-dered processes is analysed, and this analysis also shows how the work organiza-tions are gendered and gendering. The empirical material consists of studies of one electronics plant, two grocery stores, and five mail delivering offices. A qua-litative method is used. The study shows how horizontal and vertical sex segregation at the electronics plant and in the grocery stores resulted in women continually performing mo-notonous tasks, thus being exposed to high risks of developing musculoskeletal disorders. At the mail delivery offices where women and men performed the same work tasks the working conditions nevertheless were different. Recent changes of the organization of work had led to sex-specific consequences, such as the workload becoming heavier especially for women. The psychosocial work environments also varied. At the studied workplaces construction of gender and construction of diffe-rences in working conditions were intertwined in processes that also led to the reconstruction of men's dominance and women's subordination. Gendered processes were results of management policies, affected by the strategies of the local unions, and tied to the extended social relations. Gendered processes were also present in, and re-created by, the day-by-day interaction between fellow workers. Both women and men at the workplaces were faced with expectations of appropriate gender behaviour, and both women and men often, but not al-ways, conformed to these expectations. In the thesis an analysis of sexuality and heteronormativity at the studied workplaces is integrated in the analysis of the construction of gender and diffe-rent working conditions, in order to reach an increased understanding of gende-red processes in the work organizations.

On January 31, 1911, the Homemakers' Clubs of Saskatchewan became an official organisation under the direction of the University of Saskatchewan. Established to provide isolated rural women with companionship, access to education, and the opportunity to carry out community service, Homemakers' Clubs appealed to thousands of farm women because they provided the means by which they could improve themselves, their farm homes, and their communities. Its appeal also lay in the fact that the organisation remained non-political and non-sectarian, focusing instead on women's primary responsibilities to their homes and their families. To that end, Homemakers' Clubs embraced a domestic ideology that institionalised notions of gender and celebrated women's roles in the home. Given that the nature of farm women's work was not restricted to the household, however, Homemakers' Clubs allowed rural women to redefine an urban domesticity to include their farming responsibilities. Moreover, in a setting where gender lines were often blurred and the division of labour was not always strictly defined, membership in an organisation that reinforced gender roles, promoted family and community life, and embraced a traditional mandate provided farm women with a level of respectability and femininity that was often lost in a farming setting. Finally, the domestic ideology under which the Homemakers' Clubs operated allowed its members to find recognition and validation in their work, and, in their goals to elevate home life, to legitimise their work, and to adjust domestic ideology to include their farming responsibilities, the organisation became a space in which its members discussed, debated, explored, and, in some cases, challenged common perceptions of women; they subtly challenged the status quo and demanded validation and recognition for their work in and contributions to their farms and communities. As such, an organisation that may outwardly appear to be a traditional women's organisation devoted strictly to the exchange of recipes and household advice, was, in actuality, quietly political and provided farm women with a sense of identity that enabled them to contribute fundamentally to their rural homes, families, and communities.

On January 31, 1911, the Homemakers' Clubs of Saskatchewan became an official organisation under the direction of the University of Saskatchewan. Established to provide isolated rural women with companionship, access to education, and the opportunity to carry out community service, Homemakers' Clubs appealed to thousands of farm women because they provided the means by which they could improve themselves, their farm homes, and their communities. Its appeal also lay in the fact that the organisation remained non-political and non-sectarian, focusing instead on women's primary responsibilities to their homes and their families. To that end, Homemakers' Clubs embraced a domestic ideology that institionalised notions of gender and celebrated women's roles in the home. Given that the nature of farm women's work was not restricted to the household, however, Homemakers' Clubs allowed rural women to redefine an urban domesticity to include their farming responsibilities. Moreover, in a setting where gender lines were often blurred and the division of labour was not always strictly defined, membership in an organisation that reinforced gender roles, promoted family and community life, and embraced a traditional mandate provided farm women with a level of respectability and femininity that was often lost in a farming setting. Finally, the domestic ideology under which the Homemakers' Clubs operated allowed its members to find recognition and validation in their work, and, in their goals to elevate home life, to legitimise their work, and to adjust domestic ideology to include their farming responsibilities, the organisation became a space in which its members discussed, debated, explored, and, in some cases, challenged common perceptions of women; they subtly challenged the status quo and demanded validation and recognition for their work in and contributions to their farms and communities. As such, an organisation that may outwardly appear to be a traditional women's organisation devoted strictly to the exchange of recipes and household advice, was, in actuality, quietly political and provided farm women with a sense of identity that enabled them to contribute fundamentally to their rural homes, families, and communities.

The aim of this study is to describe and analyse three different discourses on elderly care, as they emerge in statements from care staff and research. Each discourse centres on a sign, or pair of signs: care, education/professional competence, and the elderly/ageing. Drawing its main inspiration from Laclau and Mouffe, and Foucault, the analysis is made with regard to how the discourses are constructed, what they include and exclude. The discourse on care interconnects family, homeliness and mutuality. Empathy, a good attitude, family ideals endow elderly care with distinctly feminine connotations. Theoretical concepts such as rationality of care and an almost exclusive research focus on women’s work have tended to construct the same nexus. Unknowingly, or sometimes despite intentions, the discourse in this way reproduces conservative gender roles. A discourse on ‘anti-care’, exemplified by disorganisation and incompetent management, is also created and invested with responsibility for shortcomings. The discourse on education and professional competence centres on claims to medical and executive tasks by nurses, the struggle against deprofessionalisation of assistant nurses, and the attempt of nurse aids to resist categorisation as ‘anybody’. Education/training are considered important to raise work status, but also leading to an instrumental attitude and distance from the core of the occupation – care. The discourse on the elderly and ageing characterises them as lonely and depressed. Also being violent and ungrateful, their behaviour undermine the notion of mutuality. Social interaction and outdoor walks are presented as means to improve their situation. Fundamental to the discourse is an ambiguous approach to ageing as both natural and something to be deferred. Ageing is further presented as decivilisation process, in which gradual loss of control over the body is also a loss of human-ness. The body is, paradoxically, what both defines and disqualifies the elderly as fully human. The depersonalising and biographing procedures of elderly care, sequential but overlapping, display its proximity to Goffman’s total institution and Foucault’s panopticon. Conversation plays an important disciplinary part in encouraging the elderly to want to do right, i.e., be socially active, and avoid amoral or asocial habits like drink, sex or solitude.

The aim of this study is to analyse the importance of social factors and so­cial relations around food preparation. Methods used: a questionnaire, a food diary kept by the person(s) respon­sible for food preparation in the family and a number of interviews. 348 families from the counties of Uppsala and Umeå with at least one child un­der 18 years of age filled in the formulas. The kitchen is a working-place where women dominate as workers. Class has a considerable effect on patterns of meals, on methods used for food preparation and on the choice of food and dishes. The division of la­bour is auso effected, members of the family are more involved in the pro­cess of food preparation when the mother is a higher non-manual employee or self-employed. Distinctions revealed when reading the diaries with Bourdieu's con­ceptions in mind were of three kinds. One dimension is geografical, an other dimension is that of age. The third dimension is class. Upper-class families distinguished themselves by using more extras and more elaborate ways of labelling the gravy, the vegetables, the dishes themselves. They also had more alcohol with the dinner. Still another dimension is the gen­der power system. The results from the interviews revealed two patterns. One is that women express in various ways that there are conflicting goals involved, hard to cope with satisfactorily. The other is that there is a great variety of ways the couples deal with the gender system - men's open or hidden domination and women's open or hidden subordination. / digitalisering@umu

This qualitative study explores six child care teachers’ perceptions of their work as gendered work. The purpose of the study is to understand how the experiences of women child care teachers are connected to the larger issue of gendered teaching embedded in culturally pervasive beliefs about child care teaching. This study answers the following questions: 1) What do child care teachers perceive about their work? 2) How do they conceptualize child care teaching as women’s work? 3) How do they describe the practice of their perceived work as women’s work? Data were collected through in-depth interviews and, following Corbin and Strauss’s (2008) grounded theory methodology, analyzed to find emergent themes. Six themes emerged from the analysis of interview data: 1) child care teaching is not gendered work, 2) child care work is an identification of self, 3) child care teaching is a way of relating to one another, 4) vulnerabilities of child care work, 5) child care is hard work, and 6) contradictions and paradoxes. These themes answer the three research questions. First, these teachers perceive their work to be gender-neutral work, self-identification, mutuality, vulnerabilities, and labor profession. Second, the teachers conceptualize child care work both as gender-neutral and gendered, as creating women’s culture, and as women’s culture being stigmatized. Third, the teachers show paradoxical and inconsistent attitudes about the practice of their perceived child care work as gendered work. The categories about the participants’ conceptions of their work are interrelated and interwoven. They reflect a complexity in the participants’ understandings. The inconsistencies of the teachers’ perceptions reflect the complexity of child care teachers’ reality and their negotiations between dominant beliefs about what child care work means and the elements of their individual and collective experiences that they bring to their profession (Biklen, 1995; Dillabough, 1999, 2005; Murray, 2006; Ryan & Grieshaber, 2005). The findings of this study provide implications for teacher educators. The implications involve the need to utilize contemporary theories and feminist perspectives to better understand the nature of child care teachers’ work and to help teachers develop a critical and more realistic understanding of the nature of their work. / text

This paper discusses the means by which some British women created professional roles for themselves out of their philanthropic work in India between 1880 and 1900. I examine the development of these roles in the missionary and secular philanthropic communities and how these women used periodicals as a space to implicitly demonstrate their competence and explicitly argue for their status as educators and medical workers. Colonial India provided a particular context of imperial ideals and gendered realities: Indian women were believed to be particularly deprived of learning, medical care and ―civilisation‖ by custom and culture, and Englishwomen could call on the rhetoric of imperial duty to legitimise their care of these disadvantaged women. I argue that India provided the means for British women to demonstrate their capabilities and to involve themselves in the ongoing nineteenth-century project to incorporate women into previously masculine professional societies. / Graduate