Search

This thesis explores the intersectional identities of British South Asian (BSA) Muslim women, examining their everyday lives across different spaces of home, work and public spaces. It draws on interviews, photos, diary extracts and walk-along interviews with 28 women, aged between 25-40 years, living and working in Oldham. The thesis examines how dominant discourses on Muslim women - which present them as extreme, and a threat, yet as also a silent, oppressed minority - affect their interactions with family, co-workers and community members in everyday situations. The thesis utilises intersectional thinking (Crenshaw, 1989) when looking at the lives of BSA Muslim women. In particular, it explores how applying an intersectional lens, which takes into consideration gender, ethnicity, social class age, as well as religion, can provide rich, nuanced and holistic accounts of everyday encounters and interactions across spaces of home, work and public spaces. Importantly, this approach provides a powerful tool with which to challenge stereotypical, normative and narrow understandings of BSA Muslim women. The thesis unsettles assumptions about home, work and public space through emphasis on the different aspects of Muslim BSA women's everyday lives including employment, motherhood and family ties. The thesis further explores how discursive discourses shape understandings of BSA Muslim women, as well as how these influence affect BSA Muslim women's interactions and experiences as the minority 'Other'. The thesis begins by considering the home as a social field (Bourdieu, 1998) the family as a 'realized category'. Through an intersectional lens which considers gender, ethnicity, religion and culture the thesis challenges perceptions of the home as a private 'sealed space'. Instead, analysing the socio-cultural of home, as a site of nested influences situated within a particular community and locality illustrates the porousness of the home for BSA Muslim women. Furthermore, through the use of Goffman's (1959) concept of the 'performative self' the home is further troubled, as a space where women must continuously perform in accordance to expected social norms. In this chapter the experiences of working from home or establishing home based businesses further complicates the dichotomy of public/work and private/home spaces, and seeks to understand the motivations behind such entrepreneurship as well as the effect on family and spatial practices in the home. The second chapter explores the space of work and analyses the difficulties faced by BSA Muslim in work environments. Analysing institutional practices through an intersectional lens highlights the way stratification of gender, race and religion are already in place in organisations. The chapter also challenges stereotypical discourses of economic inactivity of BSA Muslim women through the need to consider locality, life stages and discrimination as barriers to employment. The chapter further explores what happens when a visible religious identity such as the hijab enters the workplace, and analyses BSA Muslim women's experiences of othering in the workplace through micro-aggressions, infantilization or interpersonal discrimination. The final chapter explores how the dual discourses of BSA Muslim woman as victim/threat vacillates according to the types of space that BSA Muslim inhabit. This vacillation is considered using the concepts of hypervisibility, invisibility and 'double consciousness' (W.E.B. Dubois', 2007), and considers how these concepts can highlight the experiences of BSA Muslim women as they move across everyday spaces of hospitals, public parks or public transport. I argue that these concepts are interlocked and that BSA Muslim women are generally solely understood through dominant discourses, which not only ensure they are 'hypervisible' in public spaces, but that this visibility in turn renders BSA Muslim women 'invisible', as they can only be understood through this hypervisibility. This chapter further argues that BSA Muslim women's experience in the everyday are routinely punctuated by interactions which challenge or deny their right to belong and illustrates how such exclusion from public spaces reflects by extension their exclusion from the nation. The final empirical chapter also explores BSA Muslim women's within 'homogenous community' spaces and considers how 'community' considered through an intersectional lens are spaces layered with gendered, religious and cultural expectations. This thesis presents key arguments which examine the everyday experiences across home, work and public spaces and demonstrates how encounters across these spaces affect women's sense of self, often resulting in modifications of behaviours through knowledge of the unwritten rules and socially constructed norms of each space.

This thesis is concerned with investigating the lives of British-Pakistani women and their agency in constructing and reconstructing their identities. Previous constructions of British-Pakistani women's character have deemed these women 'passive', hence my concerns have been to examine their passivity/agency in relation to identity construction processes. Identities were conceptualised using Avtar Brah's notion of identities, as difference, situational and subjective, in order to understand the nature of identities in relation to British-Pakistani women and to present the women's specificity. Previous studies ignored British-Pakistani women's agency in their communities, which has meant an absence of literature within the social sciences relating to their experiences in contemporary Britain. The aim of this study was to redress this balance and place these women and their concerns onto the research agenda and to retheorise our understandings of the women, but also the community in which they live. Research comprising observations, in-depth interviews, was conducted in Luton. Analyses of fieldwork data were interrogated with theory derived from literature by Black and South Asian feminists with biographical insights used to develop a specific approach which allows women a voice to speak of their experiences in order to understand British-Pakistani women's specificity and agency in (re)creating their own and future generations' identities. The relationship between British-Pakistani women's identity creation and the empirical chapters, 'Community: Site for Negotiating and Renegotiating Identities', 'Negotiated gender relations within family contexts', 'Intergenerational Relations: Contested Identities' was discussed. What emerged was that identities of British-Pakistani women are multidimensional and dynamic, and that women's agency in producing and reproducing these was of importance. British-Pakistani women are the bearers and upholders of traditions, but they are also modifying, changing and challenging elements of their traditions to appropriate these in a contemporary context. This demonstrated that they have fluid identities and use them to negotiate various aspects of their lives in order to maximise control over their lives. The study illuminates the contested nature of identities in this community, implying identity creation is an ongoing process, due to the multifaceted nature of the individuals' identities.

This thesis suggests that whilst feminist theory has been, and remains, a significant political influence which has contributed to wholesale legislative and social changes, the climate in which this theory circulates is now markedly different from that of the 1960s, when Second Wave Feminism began. Consequently, a new form of feminist theory is developing, which attempts to respond to an increasingly more complex situation, without losing sight of the many important elements of the earlier work. This thesis is situated within this movement and I term the approach it takes Third Wave Feminist Analysis. Third Wave Feminism seeks to challenge sexism and to explore notions of femininity as they are manifested in texts, looking for both the restrictions these seek to impose on women and for the potential these offer for liberatory ways of behaving and being. As this reference to texts might suggest, Third Wave Feminist Analysis is primarily a form of literary criticism. However, it does not only draw on work from that discipline. Instead, it employs ideas and approaches used by feminists working in other fields, in order to formulate a more comprehensive analysis than was generally found in earlier feminist literary criticism. Moreover, the thesis is not limited to an exploration of only literary texts but also explores other cultural forms. This diversity is important because constructions of knowledge and subjectivity are enabled by all types of representations. Thus, interdisciplinarity moves analysis on from a straightforward identification of the Tacts' of literary cultures to an exploration of cultural identities, a step which is assisted by Third Wave Feminist Analysis's insistence on the importance of extra-textual features, including the analyst's own background knowledge of the society in which the texts being explored are produced and interpreted. The object of this emphasis on the cultural and the societal is a more equitable world; in other words, I am claiming that Third Wave Feminist Analysis aids feminist praxis. As part of this attempt, Third Wave Feminist Analysis attempts to interrogate the ways in which femininity is defined in the case studies explored. In this thesis three texts in circulation in the 1990s are examined: Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (1992); The Rector's Wife by Joanna Trollope (1991); and the TV Soap Opera archetype, the Soap Queen. As part of this examination, femininity is understood as one of a number of inter-connecting discourses which not only reflect but shape gender. Thus, discourses disseminate social and institutionalised values and also create them, influencing people's behaviours and attitudes, although individuals do have the potential to resist or challenge this influence. A recurrent discursive theme in the three case studies explored here is the association of femininity with the 'private' or domestic realm of home and family. In many ways, this association is rooted in an outdated notion of femininity; the Victorian concept of the feminine domestic ideal. To this extent, this thesis argues that its case studies are implicated in the promulgation of anachronistic discourses. However, all three texts also subvert this ideal in a number of ways and the ways in which this subversion occurs are also explored.

This thesis is an exploration of infertility and assisted conception in contemporary India. It explores some of the prominent themes underpinning the cultural engagement with reproductive disruption and seeks to understand how people - inflicted infertile individuals and treatment providers - grapple with conception gone-awry. In doing this, the research locates both clinical and non-clinical responses to the process of assisted conception, within the wider cultural context that views infertility as highly undesirable. The research is multi-sited and attempts to connect a number of disparate domains in which the experience of infertility and the promotion and management of its treatment lies dispersed. This has principally entailed an eclectic engagement with a number of diverse 'locales,' such as the political economy of health in India, the mass media as a field for promoting and contesting assisted conception, ancient norms and ideas about fertility and their reverberation in contemporary Hindu conceptual domain. The thesis highlights the importance of this cultural frame for producing stigma and as a 'sense making' resource for understanding assisted conception. Taken together, these locales unravel the complex nature of infertility and assisted conception in India.

This thesis investigates how the social organisation of the populations of the South Wales Valleys has transformed by restructuring processes at the end of the twentieth century. In doing so it engages with issues which have long concerned sociologists, examining the complex relationship between structure, culture and agency. In particular it looks at how group loyalties have been disrupted by the demise of coalmining and the heterogenisation of the Valleys' labour markets, how spatial attachments have been affected by a growing awareness of a broader range of spaces affect life experiences, and how under broader transformations, self-understandings have become more complex. This is investigated through fieldwork conducted in three distinct 'waves' in the western anthracite district of the South Wales Valleys and consisting of fifty semi-structured interviews and a focus group with seventy individuals, distinguished by their processing a former or current coalmining household identity. The project draws upon a theoretical framework which reconfigures class processes in order to understand how individuals' responses to restructuring are related to their positioning in relation to a series of unequally distributed 'resources'. The work of Bourdieu is employed to develop an analytical scheme which recognises that resources are interdependent, cumulative and dynamic, and derivative of a broader range of sources than the labour market. In order to understand how individuals' structural positioning enables them to effect greater or lesser degrees of agentic behaviour, their behaviour is analysed in terms of 'strategic' and 'survivalist' behaviour, respectively consisting of long- and short-term planning. Through a holistic examination of individuals' life experiences, this categorisation enables a complex understanding of the significance of class processes in determining mobility and lifestyle, to be developed, illustrated in the form of a model. It is argued that a series of unequally distributed and inter-related resources fundamentally determine individual behaviour, but these are mediated through a multi-dimensional and dynamic class culture which is specific to individuals' environment. This imbues meaning on their circumstances and facilitates the inherent tensions in their complex attachments to become reconciled and comfortably inhabited.

The fact of death is universal. So too is the fact of womanhood. Yet each age aims to ameliorate the fear of death, and to cope with the construction of womanhood, in its own way. This study explores the female experience of death in Early Modern England. By tracing attitudes towards gender through the occasion of death, it aims to advance our understanding of the construction of femininity in the period. The underlying hypothesis of the study is that the process of dying could be a positive event for a woman, and for her mourners, in terms of defining, enabling and elevating her. The thesis is divided into three sections. The first section, comprising three chapters, takes a cultural and historical overview of death in Early Modern England, examining the means by which the inescapable fact of human mortality was confronted, and how the fear of death and dying could be used to uphold the mores of society. The female experience of death is considered, and the advantages, to both dying women and their supporters, of achieving a death well done are examined. The power of the deathbed is recognised, as is the empowerment of motherhood, in allowing women to speak out from the deathbed in order to bestow dying maternal blessings upon their offspring, or to leave instructions and advice to their survivors, including their children. The second section of the thesis explores, in two contrasting chapters, examples of good and bad female deaths. The motivation behind the reporting of deaths is discussed, and the veracity of such accounts is scrutinised. The societal need to create posthumous images of women, both good and bad, is highlighted, and the ways in which such reports could be used for religious, political and patriarchal purposes is considered. The main body of the research concludes, in the final section of the thesis, with a consideration of how death, as well as confining women within a patriarchy, could also paradoxically liberate them, albeit within accepted gender boundaries. Chapter Six evaluates the opportunity for female involvement in dying and posthumous rituals, including funeral rites, funeral sermons, elegies and epitaphs. Chapter Seven focuses upon two specific areas of posthumous female representation: will-making and the posthumous marital status of women. In the final chapter, the genre of women's literary legacies is discussed. In this chapter it is argued that death could be a catalyst by which women were privileged into print and an assessment of the female response to this unusual opportunity is made. Throughout the thesis it is understood that perfect femininity is an unachievable icon, an artificial construct of its age, and that Early Modem women were necessarily living, and dying, within this construct. Whilst accounts of dying women largely underpinned the existing patriarchy, the experience of dying allowed some women to express themselves by allowing them to utilise an established male discourse. It is this opportunity for expression, coupled with the power of the deathbed, that provides the focus for the thesis.

This study explores the processes by which people in families manage the experience of chronic illness, specifically in relation to dietary recommendations for medical reasons. The two medical conditions chosen to represent chronic illness were coeliac disease and coronary heart disease. Adults in 41 families were asked to talk about organising and managing the special diet within the family setting. Most participants were married or living as married at the time of the interviews, but a few were widowed or divorced. In half of these households one spouse was diagnosed with coeliac disease, and in half one spouse was diagnosed with coronary heart disease. The study was designed so that within each medical condition equal numbers of men and women had the condition. Participants were interviewed on two occasions approximately three to four weeks apart. The study used in-depth interviews conducted using a framework drawn from previous research but allowing for the emergence of new and unanticipated data. The interviews were taped, fully transcribed and analysed using a process of detailed general coding and then focused coding for emergent themes. At the outset it was assumed that gender would be a significant factor particularly in the organisation, production and consumption of food and meals. The position of the 'home manager', that is, the person mainly responsible for food and meals in the family, (usually female) was the main focus of the study. Analysis of the data revealed: Gender remained a significant factor in the ways that the families organised and managed domestic tasks and activities. However, the nature and meaning of the family relationship was seen to be equally important as a process by which social life was created and reproduced on a day to day basis. The intrusion of chronic illness into the family relationship, although disruptive in both consequence and significance, was absorbed and managed, usually by wives and mothers, in ways which sought to minimise perceptions of the burden involved. An emphasis upon the natural and the ordinary was conveyed by participants which lead to a sense of stability yet flexibility reflective of Gidden's term 'ontological security'. The desire to lead a normal life', expressed by some participants and implied by others, provided a key overarching theme.

In Vietnam,w omena ccountf or nearly5 2 percenot f thet otal populationo f approximately 68.1m illion. The statuso f womenh asg raduallye volvedf tom a subordinationp ositionb egun under the feudal Chinese Period and continued during the period of colonisation, to a more equitables tatusi n present-dayV ietnam. During the war of reunification,V ietnamesew omen werep ut in a dynamics ituationw heret heyh adt o operatea t parw ith men. Thew ar whichl asted well overa decadec, reateda no pportunityf or themt o participatein whatw asa traditionallym ale dominateds phereo f activity. Subsequentlyth, e societyr eciprocatedb y grantingw omenb asic rightst raditionallyr eservedfo r mena ndt he constitutiona ndl egislationo f then ew independent state was clear about supporting the rights of women. Although Vietnam does lag behind economicallyc omparedto mostd evelopingc ountriesa ndt he industrialw orld, in many domains includingm atemalm ortality,l ife expectancyn,u mbero f womenc omparedto men in the labour force,p arliamentarrye presentatioann dl iteracyr ates,t he gap is minimal, andi n somei nstances surpassese ven figures of women in the developedi ndustrial countries. Following the reunificationw ar (southa ndn orth Vietnam),T he SocialistR epublico f Vietnamh as beenr uled by theV ietnamesCe ommunisPt artyu ndera regimeo f neo-StalinisCt entraPl lanning. Sincet he 1980sV, ietnamh asb eeng raduallym ovingt o a markete conomy.I n 1987w ith the introduction of Doi Moi (economic recovery programme), the Government committed to transform the countryi nto a socialistm arkete conomy. However,w hile progresst owardsa markete conomy is gradually evolving, a disturbing trend is emerging: it appears that women are being marginaliseedc onomically.O f thew orkforcem ader edundanitn 1990,70p ercentw erew omen. Most enterprisesa,n d evena dministrativeo fficesn ow put womena t a disadvantageO. ftens uch discriminationsa re linked with maternityl eavea nd relatede ntitlementsa ccordedt o women employees. This thesiss etso ut to examinet he following hypothesesa: ) to ascertainw hethert he status of women in Vietnam as compared to that of other women regionally and globally is relativelyp ositive; b) to examinet hen atuTeo f the impacto f the emergingm arket economyo n their status;a nd c) to ascertainth e effectso f small and mediums calei ndustryo n that impact, either negative or positive. The research methodology employed to test the above hypotheses consists of a combinationo f methodsc omprisinga nalysiso f archival informationa ndm ultiple cases tudies with two questionnairecso mplementebdy exploratory,e xplanatorya ndd escriptives trategies. The empirical phase is based on two case studies of two small-medium sized industries in Vietnam.T hesep articularc ompaniews eres electedm ainlyb ecauseth eyc ontaineda high female representatiofnro m the textile industry ast hey traditionally employw omen. The resultso f the surveysc onductedf or CaseS tudyA and CaseS tudyB are analysedto identify the statusa nd aspirationos f womenw orking in a small-mediums izedi ndustry. Sociala nd cultural aspectso f these women are also explored. In conclusion, the thesis wraps up the findings of the surveys and draws summations from the literature reviewed. It also offers recommendations aimed at empowering women in overcoming economic difficulties in order to maintain their social equality.

Before examining the different methodological and epistemological approaches developed within feminism, the tension arising out of its dual mandate, to provide both a radical scholarship and radical politics, is considered. Mindful of this continuing debate, it is argued that out of three different feminisms considered - feminist empiricism, standpoint feminism and postmodern feminism - feminist standpoint approaches remain pre-eminent with feminist research on domestic violence. Within this literature patriarchy continues to be positioned as a pivotal political and analytic concept, and male sexuality is regularly identified as its central site. A more general shift in analytical focus is identified, however, from patriarchy to gender and power, and the consequences for this are considered in conceptualising the relation between power and violence. In directing attention towards gender and power, a central problem is identified within the current feminist conceptualisation of domestic violence, in that it frequently serves to confirm rather than disturb the configuration of gender identity along the lines of masculinity as active and powerful; femininity as passive and powerless. In trawling through various theoretical configurations of masculinity and identity, from feminist writing on domestic violence, through psychoanalysis, the 'new masculinity literature' and the writing of postmodern feminists, an argument is advanced for attention to sexed bodies and for seeing gender/sex as performance. Whilst such a formulation of gender/sex is posited as finally breaking from biologism, an argument is made for considering how we participate in the performances required of us. Continuing the focus on gendered/sexed identities, an argument is made for rejuvenation of the debate concerning the relation between men and feminism. For while consideration of this 'impossible relation' appears to have abated, feminist insight and understandings of domestic violence appear to be increasingly incorporated into policy and practice initiatives. Illustrated through a discussion of male probation officers, it is argued that this debate is essential if men are to practice as reflexive practitioners whilst attuned to the aims and principles of feminist politics.

Over the last two decades increasing numbers of studies have focused on African pastoral livelihoods in the light of drought, environmental and economic change. Studies discussing gender issues in pastoral societies have suggested that women are progressively losing out as a result of impoverishment, growing commercialisation and through cultural ideals that often discriminate against women. This study aims to contribute to an understanding of how gender, commercialisation, impoverishment and cultural ideals, all interact in Fulbe production, particularly agricultural and pastoral. The study is based mainly on participant observation and multi-round socio-economic surveys among 39 pastoral and agropastoral Fulbe Djelgobe, Gaobe and Liptako households in the north-eastern part of Burkina Faso. In terms of pastoral production, almost half of the study households had fewer than ten cattle, only three had a hundred or more. Women were found to be disadvantaged in accessing livestock, especially in poor households and among sedentary agro-pastoralists. Whereas Fulbe men had, with impoverishment, diversified their income strategies considerably, women had not. This was partly because of women's own interpretation of cultural ideals and men's obligation to provide millet for the household. Men's engagement in agriculture was essential for most households to secure livelihoods. For women agriculture lowered their social standing vis-à-vis other women and hence participation was limited to sowing and thinning. Fulbe women's only source of monetary income was through the selling of milk. Proceeds were spent as they wished, mostly on personal needs. Although milk yields were in general low, there was no simple link between impoverishment or commercialisation and milk selling behaviour. The determinants of milk selling were far more complex and involved age, parity, location on transhumance, ethnicity and potential to adhere to cultural ideals of seclusion. The thesis reveals that while cultural ideals do indeed restrict Fulbe women from diversifying their income sources, they also secure their status and provide them with a relatively strong bargaining position within the household despite the effects of impoverishment and commercialisation.

This thesis explores issues round gender and job segregation which emerged during a qualitative study of the different work experiences and attitudes of over fifty female and male computer programmers, in a number of computer software companies and in two internationally renowned manufacturing organizations. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the emergence of a sexual division of labour in this occupation and thus illustrate the process of segregation. It explores a qualitative approach to the study of vertical segregation in the computing industry amongst computer programmers. It uses Foucault's concept of discourse to suggest that a number of discourses are productive of gender segregation at work.

Through empirical, qualitative research and theorisation of the associated findings, this thesis investigates how certain children's homes may operate, making specific reference to sexuality and sexual abuse issues. Two children's homes in two different local authorities were researched via ethnographic research over a two year period. This involved utilising participant observation techniques in conjunction with formal interviews and documentary analysis. The documentary analysis entailed analysing logbooks, care plans and policy or practice documents around residential care and sexuality. The number of interviews conducted as part of the ethnographic fieldwork totalled 39 and the interviewees were comprised of residential workers, managers, social workers and children. This fieldwork was supplemented by 64 non-ethnographic interviews with residential staff, ex residents and other relevant personnel such as HIV workers. Both contemporaneous and historical practices and perspectives were evaluated, information about historical practices being drawn from interviews with some workers and ex-residents and from analysis of past documents in the ethnographic studies. Overall information was gained about over 100 different settings and 14 different local authorities. The empirical work commenced in 1994 and was concluded in 1997. Additionally media documents relating to scandals surrounding the sexual abuse of children in these settings were analysed. Children's homes are 'last resort' residential settings that children, predominantly abused teenagers, or those with behavioural problems are placed in by local authorities. Although the monolithic Victorian poorhouses and asylums were their historical predecessors, contemporary children's homes are now becoming increasingly smaller and many are intra community located. Despite assumptions by some commentators that these settings are no longer institutionalised this research showed the converse; many typically incorporating most of the characteristics delineated by Goffman (1961) as defining 'total institutions'. These features included isolation, uniform treatment of residents, rigid regimes, an emphasis on surveillance and control, and divisive child and staff cultures. These institutionalised settings intensified both the potential for, and the actual occurrence of, sexual and other forms of abuse of children by peers, staff and outsiders. Local authorities perpetuated the abuse not only by inadequate training, policies and support but often by failing to investigate allegations or follow them through thorough! y. The social construction of childhood induding child and adolescent, gendered sexuality, affected how children were perceived both generally and with regard to sexuality in these settings. This led to a protectionist, paternalist stance towards children in care which allowed them little voice and few rights. 11 The sexual beliefs, behaviour and responses of both children and staff were also examined in a deconstructionist manner which revealed the impossibility of separating sexuality from notions of either sex or gender. Sexed, sexualised and gendered behaviour was therefore shown to be performative and also subject to interiorisation, although simultaneously incorporating massive anomalies and instabilities. Both the notions of performative gender and institutionalisation were then broadened and evaluated in terms of a wider analysis of power. The institutionalisation and stigmatisation of children in children's homes was shown to be linked at micro, meza and macro levels with concepts of class, dangerousness and deviance. The sexual beliefs and behaviour of staff, children and the organisations they are embedded within was also found not only to be influenced by the settings and organisations themselves but by wider, gendered, legal, social and psychological structures, laws and discourses.

The thesis examines the connections between being physically active and becoming empowered. It centres on the experiences of women and investigates their involvement in physical activity and how this relates to the rest of their lives and their subjectivities. In so doing the research explores the relation between physicality and social power, and considers the role of the body in the construction of gender power relations. The key concepts used to explore this area are agency and structure, hegemony, negotiation, empowerment and physicality. More broadly the research has been informed by debates in feminist postmodernism and poststructuralism. The main data set were generated through interviews with twenty-eight women with additional information coming from questionnaires returned by one hundred and seventy-two women representing a range of activity levels, ages and class locations. The findings were generated largely from the experiences of white women living in a market town within commuting distance of London. The findings demonstrate the potential for women to become empowered through their bodies, as a result of being involved in physical activity. The acquisition of new skills and the discovery of new physical potential in their bodies such as feeling stronger, having more energy, were foregrounded by the women as being important to them. This led them to feeling more positive about themselves and their potential. There was nothing to suggest that particular activities were more empowering than others, although the context and purpose of the activity was found to be important. There is little evidence of there being any difference between working-class and middle-class women in terms of their experience of empowerment or disempowerment through physical activity. The findings also highlight the need to set an understanding of physical activity within the context of intra-household relations. By doing this it is argued that we are better able to understand how the construction of women's subjectivities operates simultaneously across fields of activity.

This thesis addresses general questions about the relationship between the making of gender, the politics of national and ethnic identities, local - global articulations and the process of cultural transformation amongst Muslim Tausug and Sama communities in Sulu, the Southern Philippines. Specifically, I am concerned with the meaning, and experience, of the bantut, transvestite / transgender, homosexual men in Sulu. There is a long tradition of transvestism and transgendering in island Southeast Asia, where transvestites were considered to be sacred personages, ritual healers and/or, as in Sulu, accomplished singers and dancers who performed at various celebrations and rites of passage: embodiments of, and mediatory figures for, ancestral unity and potency. More recently, however, transvestites have emerged as the creative producers of an image of beauty defined in terms of an imagined global American otherness. This thesis is an attempt to understand and explain this phenomenon. In particular, I explore the relation between the collective endowment of the bantut as the purveyors of beauty, and their symbolic valorisation as impotent men and unreproductive/defiling women: those who are seen to have been overexposed to and transformed by a potent otherness. What is ultimately at stake, I argue, (and what is being asserted through the symbolic circumscription of the bantut) is local persons' autonomy over the process and consequences of cultural and political transformation in the face of the exclusionary violence of state enforced assimilation. However, the thesis is also concerned with the expressed transgenderal projects of the bantut themselves, a project which is variously about status and gender transformation, the elation and pleasure they experience in the production and performance of beauty, and the attempt to overcome the prejudice of the local populace, whilst establishing relationships that are based on mutuality and shared respect. What this thesis demonstrates is that there is nothing ambiguous about ambiguity, sexual or otherwise. Rather, it is the specific product or effect of different historical relations of power and resistance through which various cultural subjects are created and re-create themselves.

This study investigates the effects of employment on the status of Pakistani Immigrant women through the analysis of the division of labour In the family. women's access to family resources and their control over sexuality. Migration has brought many changes In the lives of Pakistani women in Britain. Both first and second generation migrant women are engaged in income-earning activities. It is hypothesised that Pakistani women's waged employment in Britain will affect their traditional roles within the family. This thesis examines the changes and continuities in women's status and attempts to see how this has been affected by their employment situation in Britain. The findings of this study suggest that despite women's engagement in waged work the their role in the family remains a subordinate one. Employment does not radically change their traditional roles nor does it liberate them economically or socially. However, waged women seem to be better able to negotiate greater space for themselves within the family.

The transition from education to the labour market is a constant theme for sociological investigation, but the study of occupational choice itself has occupied a peripheral place in the theory and research literature for the past two decades. Of particular concern here, neither extant theories of occupational choice nor the contemporary youth studies literature offer satisfactory accounts of the patterns of girls' aspirations and the social processes in which these are embedded. It is argued here that occupational choice processes are a critical switch in the social reproduction of gender relations. Specifically situated subjects construct a transitions biography from a range of legitimated and concretely available alternatives. The possibilities are specified through the terms of gender discourse which, in describing the confluence of circumstances and understandings, represents the social space in which girls are positioned and position themselves across time. A model of the modalities of gender relations is developed and explored through a study of primarily working class girls aged 11-14 and 14-16 between 1983-1986 who were attending three inner London comprehensives. The data were collected by cross-sectional survey (N = 169) and interview (N=61) and by longitudinal interview (N=37). These girls see occupational structure in highly gendered and partial terms, corresponding to the specific social worlds they inhabit. Over time, perspectives and aspirations focus increasingly on female-typed jobs. Within this, their expectations reflect what is judged realistically available. Such processes of gendered closure are modified by educational achievement and by schooling milieu in relation with family and cultural context. Subject specialisation fixes the course of these processes, since options are generally chosen with current aspiration/ expectation in mind. In sum, gendered transitions across the secondary schooling years are shaped not only institutionally but also socially and culturally by girls' personal attempts to resolve the contradictory puzzle of production/reproduction relations under modern patri3 archy and in the light of the resources at their disposal. Most trajectories inevitably prefigure accommodative arrangements and do not threaten social reproduction processes, but this does not imply non-critical and automatic consent. The potential for critical consciousness is fostered by various cross-pressures in the specific configurations of girls' lives, but the partial insights they open up are held in check both ideologically and through social-educational selection/ allocation.

The present investigation studied the effect of the sex typed labelling of tasks on children's performance. The children were selected from the 1st, 3rd and 6th forms. To investigate whether the sex appropriate labelling of the task had a direct influence on performance, the same measure of performance - a perceptual motor task - was used across all conditions. The task was labelled either as Needlework (female appropriate) or Electronics (male appropriate). Two main dimensions were investigated. Firstly, the effect of direct labelling of a task as sex appropriate or inappropriate. Secondly, the effect of the instruction to role enact a person competent at the task. In the second study, the role enactment procedure required the children to enact a same age peer whose sex was congruent with the sex typing.of the task. Results of both studies indicated that children perform better at tasks labelled as sex appropriate compared to sex inappropriate. Under the role enactment conditions in both studies, children performed at a higher level than under conventional testing procedures. However, whilst in the role enactment procedure there was no difference in the performance of girls between sex appropriate and sex inappropriate labelled tasks, boys perform better at sex appropriate tasks in both studies. Two measures of sex role stereotyping were used in the investigation. The Rosenkrantz, et al (1968) sex role questionnaire established that the sex role stereotyping of the sixth form sample was similar to a British adult sample. A measure of sex role stereotyping (S. Measure), was developed on a comparable sample of children to the sample selected in the present study. Although the direct relationship between sex role stereotyping and task performance was not established, results suggested the more rigid sex role stereotyping of boys. The third study examined further the effects of sex role enactment on children's performance at tasks. Children were selected from the 3rd and 6th forms. Two tasks were employed, differing on the dimensions of convergence-divergence and sex typing. The tasks were a mechanical reasoning test (D.A.T., 1973) and the Uses of Objects test (Hudson, 1968). Results indicated that under the conventional administrative procedures, boys scored better than girls on the mechanical reasoning test, whereas girls scored better than boys on the Uses of Objects Test. However, the effect of opposite sex role enactment differ- , ed for the 3rd and 6th formers. At the 3rd form level, boys , and girls scores reflected differences in performance according to sex typed dimensions. However, at the sixth form level, girls exhibited a slight but non-significant increase in mechanical reasoning scores and decrease in Uses of Objects scores, while boys'scores significantly decreased on both tasks. The results are interpreted in terms of the increased salience of sex-appropriateness of tasks at adolescence. Further, the results of the measure of sex role stereotyping, B.S.R.I (Bern, 1974) from which,due to sample size,only limited conclusions may be drawn, confirm the results derived from the S Measures of sex role'stereotyping of the stricter adherence of boys to the masculine stereotype

This study investigates the sphere of gender relations in rural Rembau, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia, a state long famous for its 'matriliny'. The central aim of the thesis is to explore the significance of this historically reconstituted 'matriliny' for women's situation, arguing for a re-examination of the clasfc debates ri about 'matriliny'. This re-examination is conducted by an analysis of the complex relationships between economic and political developments in the agrarian economy, kinship relations and gender relations. The thesis first briefly looks at the historical material on Rembau 'matriliny', suggesting that this has been reified both in the literature and in local Rembau discourse. It then explores the interplay between local social forms and the political and economic changes in the wider society, giving detailed material on women's and men's activities and land owning in a situation of a declining village economy and massive out-migration. The following chapters examine aspects of domestic production, class and gender differentiation, kinship relations and practices, household relations, marriage, sexuality and childrearing. The concluding chapter explores the ways that Rembau women's autonomy is being undermined by contemporary developments in the Malaysian economy. The central argument of the thesis stresses the intervention of. capitalist class interests and the colonial state in reconstituting a 'matrilineal' peasantry characterised by non-capitalist relations of production within subsistence and petty commodity producing sectors. Stressing the historical specificities of developments in Malay(si)a, it rejects functionalist theorisations implying a symbiotic rektionship between non-capitalist enclaves and the dominant capitalist sector. The thesis also argues that most previous attempts to characterise the linkages between these sectors and the dominant capitalist sectors in many parts of the Third World have been blind to the significance of gender differentiation within so-called peasant sectors. An attempt is made to show how deconstructing the peasant household and exploring the political significance of women's land ownership and of gender relations overall historically can cast light on past and present developments in Rembau and other Malay peasant society.