Ten front-line maternal social workers were interviewed to determine how they are managing in terms of combining their work and family responsibilities. Supervisor support, and the effectiveness of family-friendly work place policies were explored. All agreed, that motherhood, has had a positive impact on practice including increased empathy and understanding, for both parents and children. The following workplace initiatives were determined to be helpful: flexible and predictable work hours; part-time options; and compressed-work-week. Despite half feeling unsupported by their supervisors, the majority indicated that they are managing well primarily due to flexible work hour scheduling. The attitude of supervisors, regarding the value of parenting, appears to be the key factor relating to their level of support. There was some indication of role conflict and much evidence of accommodation, including turning down supervisory/management positions, postponing education and restricting types of practice.

This goal of this study is to discern the ways in which women's subjectivities have changed through the processes of decolonisation, modernization, and nation building between the 1930s and 2000 in rural Dominica. The relationship between the shifting conditions of colonial and postcolonial life in its material, political, social, and cultural aspects, and the change in the discourses that relate to proper behaviour (moral discourses) are examined. I have explored the ways in which women position themselves with relation to these discourses (which could be called moral discourses), through how they employ them in their representations, and how they negotiate them, engaging them in the creation of what could be called an 'ethics of self.' The research, carried out over a one-year period in the village of La Plaine in Eastern Dominica, involved participant observation in the village; life history interviews with women of three generations; the analysis of skits and pageants; and documentary research involving primary and secondary sources. Several discursive themes emerged in the analyses: women's use of accounts of the past to critique the present, in what I have called critical nostalgia; the change in values epitomized by the notion of respect that formed the basis of local relations and which has begun to disappear with the change in governance and economic relations; the ambivalences involved in gender relations, especially those associated with expectations of women towards men and women's autonomy from men that derive from historical circumstances of colonization and decolonization; and the celebration and discursive dissemination of values that associate femininity with the political entity that Dominica has become. Differences found between women's expressions in both the discourses they engaged with, and in the particular ways they used them to frame their experiences, were related mainly to age and socio-historical changes, but also to socio-economic background.

This research was carried out between June and July 2008 among migrant labour women who work in the clothes manufacturing industries of Lesotho. It aimed at uncovering the effects that women's absence in families has on their families, basing itself on the assumption that women employees of manufacturing industries of Maseru are migrants from rural areas whose families remain in the rural areas. The three main findings in the research are that; men do not remain in rural areas but migrate and work in the manufacturing industries in Maseru as well, while children remain behind in the care of either maternal or paternal extended family. Secondly, this set up (men migrating with their wives) has enhanced marital relationships of migrant labour women, while children of migrant labour women have been affected negatively by being separated from their mothers. A third finding that emerged in this study is that women indulge in extramarital affairs even when they live and stay in the same place with their husbands. Finally, this paper recommends strategies that may ensure that mothers and children maintain a healthy relationship and it makes suggestions pertaining to the spread of HIV in the manufacturing industries. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2008.

This is an examination of the position of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633--1694) with regard to contemporary societal gender-paradigms, which were the conditions under which she produced her literary work; these same conditions are also reflected in her texts. / The first chapter includes a methodological discussion and establishes the importance of applying a socio-historical approach in order to better understand the situation of women in the Baroque period, and of Greiffenberg in particular, in order to answer the question, how it was possible for the author to write and publish at a time that generally excluded women from such activities. / The second chapter provides a brief biography of Greiffenberg and a review of secondary literature, with the main focus on the positioning of the poet within patriarchal society. / The socio-historical framework includes the religious, social, and legal position of women. These include: the hierarchy of power based on gender-roles, definitions of women in marriage, educational paradigms, as well as characteristics typically attributed to women. An analysis of the moral and theological view of women, as outlined by Martin Luther and presented in sermons by Johann Michael Dilherr, evaluates the general conditions for women during the Baroque period and the specific position of Greiffenberg (chapter three). With a similar aim in mind, chapter four examines the genre of "Hatisvaterliteratur" through the example by Wolfgang Helmhard von Hohberg. / This provides a framework for the investigation of Greiffenberg's expressions of her views regarding gender politics. She made the restrictions placed on women a topic in both her published and unpublished texts. She also developed strategies to overcome these restrictions. She found the courage to act against the proscribed role for women by defining her writing as God's will and thus based her profession on a higher authority. She also affirmed the gender-paradigms, while at the same time transgressing their boundaries, whereby she was able to negotiate the roles of both a woman and a publishing writer at a time when one identity conflicted with the other (chapters five and six).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-155). / Microfiche. / x, 155 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Anthropology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Diss. Karlstad : Karlstads universitet, 2007.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-65 ).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1983.