This study aims to define men’s perspective on women’s agency and entrepreneurship, and the gender changing roles within the household in Babati district, Tanzania. Women’s empowerment is a notion recently put into practice in several African states today. The notion has transpired from women’s collective ability to organize, act and demand in patriarchal societies in recent decades, resulting in their increased influential and politicized roles. This has further led to constitutional law amendments in Tanzania as well as the establishment of local microfinance institutions, promoting women’s social mobilization. The study is based on semi-structured interviews and secondary sources. The interviews include local men from Babati district, whose wives are active in organizations and/or own a business, as well as a Social Welfare Officer from Babati Development Town Council. The theoretical framework is mainly composed of literature focusing on African pre-colonial gender roles and stereotypical ideas of gender that have affected how gender roles are perceived today. The results emerged as generally positive attitudes towards women’s empowerment. Most men stated that women have ascertained a position of increased influence both within and outside the household in the past decade. However, the positive results have been interpreted through different aspects. Unemployment is discussed as a large societal issue in Babati district, and most men interviewed were unemployed, which could have affected the results and perceptions of women’s social roles. Additionally, this disempowers the traditional role of men as head of the household, also interpreted as a consequence due to women’s empowerment.

This study was performed during the period March – May of 2007 in Kampala and Gulu district, Uganda, and it was made possible due to a scholarship from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). The main focus of the study is to examine and analyse the peace process taking place in Juba (the Juba talks), southern Sudan, with the goal to solve the 20 year old conflict in northern Uganda between the government of Uganda and the rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army. I am doing this by, first; identify the actors involved by using John Paul Lederach’s pyramid which includes three levels of actors, second; study different methods for peacebuilding and thereafter identify which methods have been used in the Ugandan case and third; discover to what extent the civil society and more specifically women’s organisations have contributed to this process. The data collected consist of qualitative literature studies, analyses of articles dealing with the peace talks and interviews with representatives from different levels of the Ugandan society. The analyse of the material shows that all levels of the society have been involved to some extent, but that the peace process is mainly characterized by the top-down approach to peacebuilding, with the top level leaders as the main actors. I also found that women’s organisations in Uganda want to engender the peace talks, for example by bringing women to the negotiation table and let them participate in high level decision-making. Finally, the civil society has in general contributed to a large extent to the negotiations in order to bring peace, yet with different results.

This Minor Field Study examines whether or not Batswana female master students at the University of Botswana, due to their university education, have become more politically aware and critical towards their national political system. Botswana has been chosen as a critical case on the basis of the country’s long lasting democracy and the Botswana’s positive attitude towards their government. The research takes off in theories such as democratic and critical citizen’s theory and feminism. Based on these theories, an analytical framework with the core assumption that female university education creates politically critical women, has been developed. The study is based on ten qualitative interviews with female master students. The interview questions concern the respondent’s political awareness, participation and their perceptions of political institutions, regime principles and governmental performance. The findings of the study are that university education makes women more politically aware, empowered and active, although we have found no significant correlation between university education and a rise in criticism among the interviewed women. However a majority of the respondents that actually have been affected by their education declare that they have become more politically critical.

The purpose of this study is to map out and to analyze the spatial variation of female representation at the national level in established democracies. The aim is also to explain the variation in the female representation. The main questions that the paper tries to answer are: 1.How does women representation in established democratic parliaments vary? 2.Why does women representation in established democratic parliaments vary? This study is a comparative and statistic study, i.e. a study that includes a bigger number of countries and where quantitative analysis methods are used in order to achieve comparative analyses. This study is both a descriptive and an explanatory study. The statistical method that is used in this study is mainly bivariat analysis and multivariat regression. The results show that the variation in female representation in the established democracies is quite considerable. Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Netherlands feature high female representation at the national level during the period 1995-2005. The result also implies that the proportion of women in parliament increases during the current period. The result also shows that political institutions, socio-economic -and cultural factors, are important and necessary in order to explain the variation in female representation. The overall standards that can be discerned of the statistical analyses is that the proportion of women in parliament is higher in countries with a proportional electoral system, high number of parliament members, high socio-economic development (high HDI, GDI and GNP per capita) contemporary as the country introduced female suffrage in an early stage and have a more positive attitude toward female leadership.

Les scènes publiques et académiques internationales portent une attention croissante à l’entrepreneuriat des femmes (Hughes et al., 2012) ainsi qu’aux pratiques et acteurs de l’accompagnement (Fayolle, 2004 ; Sammut, 2003). Cependant, peu d’études s’intéressent à l’accompagnement entrepreneurial des femmes entrepreneures (Lebègue, 2015), bien que ces dernières présentent des spécificités et que des auteurs appellent à une plus grande mise en cohérence de l’accompagnement et des besoins et singularités des entrepreneurs (Verstraete,2002 ; Chabaud et al., 2010). De plus, les études portant sur les femmes entrepreneures se centrent principalement sur les obstacles rencontrés, et peu sur les leviers existants. À l’aide d’une recherche qualitative, nos résultats proposent, dans un premier temps, un diagnostic des freins et leviers à l’entrepreneuriat des femmes à travers le canevas des 5Ms de l’entrepreneuriat des femmes (Brush et al., 2009). L’accompagnement, la sensibilisation et l’auto-efficacité entrepreneuriale perçue (Bandura, 1997 ; McGee et al., 2009) en sont des leviers majeurs. Ensuite, nous étudions les phases de mise en oeuvre et d’évaluation de la recherche intervention menée au sein d’un centre entrepreneurial. Notre contribution porte sur la mise au jour de trois formes de sensibilisation ainsi que trois modes d’accompagnement favorisant l’engagement entrepreneurial des femmes – l’un de ces modes s’adaptant à quatre profils différenciés de femmes entrepreneures. / A growing interest is given to women entrepreneurs in the public and academic arena. (Hughes et al., 2012), as well as to the actors and practices of the entrepreneurial support industry (Fayolle, 2004; Sammut, 2003). However, few studies are conducted on the entrepreneurial support of women entrepreneurs (Lebègue, 2015). Women entrepreneurs show some specificities and academics call for a greater coherence between the needs and wants of entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial support practices (Verstraete, 2002; Chabaud et al., 2010). Moreover, the studies on women entrepreneurs are centered on their hurdles more than on their levers. Thanks to a qualitative approach, our results first show the hurdles of levers of women entrepreneurs through the 5Ms canvas of women’s entrepreneurship (Brush et al., 2009). The main levers appear to be entrepreneurial support and awareness, and perceived self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997; McGee et al., 2009). Then, our results concern the implementation and evaluation phases of the intervention-research led in an entrepreneurship center. Our contribution is to give an insight on different entrepreneurial support processes – one of them is compatible with the four profiles of women entrepreneurs. We also highlight different forms of entrepreneurial awareness that further entrepreneurial commitment of women.

I yrken med möten med människor som varit utsatta på något sätt och behöver stöd i en förändringsprocess krävs en kompetens för att möta den hjälpsökandes behov. Ständiga möten med människor i en utsatt situation alstrar ett lärande även hos den som förväntas stötta och uppmuntra till förändring. Föreliggande studie avser att undersöka upplevelser av lärande hos individer som arbetar med kvinnor utsatta för våld i en nära relation. Sex kvinnor i en mellanstor kommun i Sverige har deltagit i studien. De arbetar antingen yrkesmässigt eller ideellt i två samverkande verksamheter med utsatta kvinnor. Totalt har elva intervjuer genomförts där förfarandet haft en kvalitativ ansats. Det insamlade materialet har analyserats med en tolkande fenomenologisk analys, där resultatet består av följande tre teman: Ett omedvetet och medvetet lärande, formellt lärande samt informellt lärande. Resultatet visar också hur informanterna upplever olika förutsättningar för lärande samt vilken betydelse lärandet får för den dagliga verksamheten. Deltagarna upplever att de ständigt lär av andra och sig själva, där samarbete och samverkan är viktiga förutsättningar för att det dagliga arbetet skall fungera. Lärande är betydelsefullt för verksamhetens utveckling, individens personliga utveckling och för att den utsatta kvinnan skall få god hjälp. För att kunna lära behövs förutsättningar som exempelvis engagemang och intresse. Och för att dessa ska tillgodoses krävs förutsättningar av mottaglighet och utrymme som ges och fås, dels av individen själv men främst av individer i verksamheternas nätverk. / In occupations where encounters with people who have been exposed in some way and are in need of support in a process of change, competence is required to meet the needs of that person. Every encounter with people in vulnerable situations generates situations of learning also for the person that is expected to give support and encourage change. The present study aims to examine the experiences of learning within individuals who work with women victims of domestic violence. Six women in a medium-sized municipality in Sweden participated in the study. They either work with salaries or voluntarily in two collaborative units with abused women. A total of eleven interviews were conducted where the approach had a qualitative alignment. The collected material was analyzed with an interpretative phenomenological analysis and the result consists of the three following themes: Unconscious/conscious learning, formal learning and informal learning. The result also shows how the participants experience different conditions for learning and the importance learning adress to the daily worklife. Furthermore, the participants experience a constant learning from both other individuals and herself, where cooperation and collaboration are essential for the function of daily work. Learning is important for development of the workplace, personal development and so that the abused woman will get the help she need. To be able to learn, there are necessary preconditions such as commitment and interest. And for these to be met, other conditions are required such as receptivity and space, which are provided and obtained partly by the individual herself but mostly by individuals in the network surrounding the work places.

This is the first full-length study of the writing of the South African Joy Packer (1905-1977), whose 17 works of autobiography and romantic fiction were primarily popular. Packer’s writing, which appeared mainly between 1945 and 1977, blends popular narrative with contemporary social and political discourses. Her first main works, three volumes of memoirspublished between 1945 and 1953, cover her experience of a wide area of the world before,during and after the Second World War: South Africa, Britain, the Mediterranean and theBalkans, and China. In the early 1950s she also toured extensive areas of colonial "DarkestAfrica." When Packer retired to the Cape with her British husband, Admiral Sir Herbert Packer,after an absence of more than 25 years, she adopted fiction as an alternative literary mode. Hersubsequent production, ten popular romantic novels and a further three volumes of memoirs, isnotable for the density of its sociopolitical commentary on contemporary South Africa. This thesis takes as its starting-point the dilemma, formulated by the South African critic Dorothy Driver, of the white woman writing within a colonial environment which compels herto adopt contradictory, ambivalent and oblique discursive stances and strategies. The pragmaticintention of this thesis is, then, to (re)read Packer for her treatment of that problematic in thecontext of South Africa. The approach adopted centres on the reciprocity within Packer’s writing between itsgeneric conventions and its discursive environment, broadly defined here as pre-1950 imperial Britain and, in the main, colonial and apartheid South Africa. Within a critical-biographical frame, attention is paid first to formal aspects of the popular memoir and the popular romanticnovel. Their discursive function vis-à-vis their apartheid environment is then examined withina series of comparative studies. The burden of the analysis rests, in part, on the identity of Packer’s fiction as politicised romans à thèse and, in part, on her personal identification withpolitical liberalism in South Africa, most notably the Cape liberalism of her youth and thevarious manifestations of liberalism under apartheid. By focusing on differing motifs—Packer’sprofessed adherence to political liberalism, her treatment of race within the idealising constructions of popular romance, the metonymy of the fictional family and the patriarchal state,and her portrayal of women held hostage by the racial and masculine other—the study discussesthe extent to which the contradictions predicted by Driver’s analysis exist within the apparentlyseamless fabric of Packer’s narratives. The investigation concludes by recentring its focus on the narrativised identity of the white woman in a colonial environment, at the same time seeking confirmation of the several reasons for Packer’s writing to have gained only contemporary rather than lasting approval. / digitalisering@umu

The purpose of the present thesis is to examine the modes of enunciation (“mode d’énonciation”) and the use of text genres in relation to thematic and semantic aspects of Claude Cahun’s book, Aveux non avenus (Disavowals: or, Cancelled Confessions)(1930), which consists of text fragments. Claude Cahun, who is mostly known for her photographic self-portraits, was active on the margins of surrealism in Paris in the 1920s. The text fragments of Aveux non avenus can be compared to a collage technique that she also uses in the photomontages which open each chapter of the book. As an author, Claude Cahun clearly resisted traditional confessional literature (as the title of the book also suggests), and this study focuses on how she creates images of herself through characters borrowed from mythology, the Bible, and popular and literary texts, but also through reflections on specific themes in dialogues, essays and aphorisms. The thesis examines how Aveux non avenus differs from an actual autobiography, how the fragmented self-portrait is constructed, and how the book expresses a critique of contemporary society. The method of the thesis is based on textual analysis, with the support of the concepts of modes of enunciation (”mode d’énonciation”), text genres, and détournement (”détournement”). It also rests on the contextualisation of Claude Cahun’s practice of writing in relation to the history of literary genres, surrealist avant-garde movement, and in relation to sources within cultural history and the history of women. The thesis analyses how Claude Cahun, through the use of different genres and shifting modes of enunciation, creates a fragmented, diverse, and contradictory portrait of herself, in a way that also conveys a critical image of contemporary society. The text functions, simultaneously, as a collage of different text genres. The conclusion thereby underlines the idea that the text is not arbitrarily fragmentary, but constructed on the principles that the analysis of the work has demonstrated. In previous research on Claude Cahun, the indefinite genre of the book has been emphasised. Instead, this thesis wants to show that the diversity of text genres is deliberately explored to develop varying modes of enunciation that give Claude Cahun the opporturity to reflect and give nuance to representations of the self and to convey a radical critique of society.

La présente étude vise à écouter la voix des femmes s’exprimant à travers leurs œuvres, à comprendre leurs motivations, leurs buts et leur place dans le discours littéraire et social ; on cherchera aussi à analyser la réception par les étudiants de la littérature française féminine contemporaine, considérée comme une proposition de lecture digne d’attention en raison de son caractère socialement engagé. Le fait de se demander de quelle façon la littérature française créée par les femmes observe les problèmes auxquels est confrontée la société contemporaine et de quelle manière elle entreprend un dialogue sur ces sujets, montrant par là un intérêt pour l’ordre social et politique, semble élargir avec profit non seulement les perspectives de l’analyse littéraire, mais également l’horizon de la didactique de la littérature. En se penchant sur la création littéraire contemporaine des femmes, on cherche à proposer un tour d’horizon des formes d’engagement et du degré d’intensité avec lequel sont traitées les questions de société dont la problématique influence la situation de l’individu et les communautés qu’il forme, à commencer par la plus petite d’entre elles : la famille. À travers l’œuvre de Claire Castillon, qui puise dans les modèles créés par les femmes écrivains des générations précédentes, nous pouvons observer la façon dont celles-ci entreprennent une réflexion critique sur leur place et leur rôle dans le tissu social, mais aussi sur l’état général de la société dans laquelle elles évoluent. De même, nous voyons quels problèmes de société apparaissent comme les plus sensibles de leur point de vue. Afin de suivre l’évolution de l’écriture féminine et de mieux comprendre sa place actuelle, il est essentiel d’analyser les motifs pour lesquels les femmes ont saisi la plume, notamment depuis la Révolution française, lorsque ces questions de société ont pris une importance particulière dans le discours public, également dans le champ littéraire. / This study aims to listen to the voices of women expressed through their works, to understand their motivations, their goals and their place in the literary and social discourse ; we also seek to analyze the reception by students of contemporary French women's writing considered a reading proposal worthy of attention because of its socially committed character. The fact wonder how French literature created by women observe the issues facing modern society and how she develop a dialogue on these subjects, thereby showing an interest in social and political order which seems to expand profitably not only the prospects of literary analysis, but also the horizon of didactics of literature. By focusing on the contemporary literature of women, it seeks to provide an overview of the forms of commitment and degree of intensity with which are treated the issues of society whose problems affect the situation of the individual and communities that it forms, starting with the smallest one: the family. Through the work of Claire Castillon, which draws from models created by women writers of previous generations, we can observe how women writers undertake critical reflection on the role od women in society, but also the general state of society in which they operate. Similarly, we see which social issus are most essential to their views. To follow the evolution of women's writing and understand its current position, it is important to analyze the reasons why women have seized the pen, especially since the French Revolution, when the social issues have taken a particular importance in the public discourse, also in the literary field.

Mental illness is one of the major public health issues in Europe and one of the biggest challenges Sweden facing is the growing mental illness among people younger than 25 years. Statistics shows that the self-reported mental illness has increased mainly among young women between 18-25 years. The underlying reasons for the increase in mental illness is relatively unknown, more knowledge is required in this field to develop preventive interventions and strategies. The aim of this study was to examine which thoughts young women have about the future and how those are perceived to affect their mental health. A qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews have been applied. The sample consisted of women who were working or studying and were born between the years 1993-1996. Altogether six individual interviews were carried out and data analysis consisted of a manifest content analysis. The result showed that young woman’s thoughts about the future include both individual thoughts and more general thoughts about Sweden and the world. An optimistic attitude towards their own future were evident while a pessimistic attitude towards Sweden and the future of the world emerged. Thoughts of the future in relation to their own future is a contributing factor to why young girls feeling depressed and anxious. / Psykisk ohälsa är ett omfattande folkhälsoproblem i Europa och en av de största utmaningarna Sverige står inför är den växande psykiska ohälsan bland invånare som är yngre än 25 år. Vid granskning av statistik framgår det att den självrapporterade psykiska ohälsan främst har ökat bland tjejer i åldrarna 18-25 år. Bakomliggande motiv till den ökade ohälsan är relativt okänd, mer kunskap krävs inom området för att kunna utveckla förebyggande åtgärder och strategier. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilka tankar unga tjejer har om framtiden och hur dessa upplevs påverka deras psykiska hälsa. För att genomföra studien har en kvalitativ ansats med semistrukturerade intervjuer tillämpats. Urvalet bestod av arbetande och studerande tjejer födda mellan åren 1993-1996. Sammanlagt genomfördes sex enskilda intervjuer och dataanalysen utgjordes av en manifest innehållsanalys. I resultatet framkom att unga tjejers framtidstankar utgörs av både individuella tankar och mer övergripande tankar som inkluderar Sverige och världen. En optimistisk inställning till den egna framtiden framfördes samtidigt som en pessimistisk inställning till Sverige och världens framtid framkom. Framtidstankar i förhållande till den egna framtiden är en bidragande faktor till att unga tjejer känner sig oroliga, nedstämda och ångestfyllda.