Women S Lives

This book explores the diverse landscapes wherein women struggle for their personal and social identities and lives, between biology and culture, destiny and choice, shared and individual worlds, tradition and modernity. Their “peripheral lives” have “central meaning” (Chaudhary, this volume) in any society – and as such are approached as a primary subject in this book, as the chapters traverse ten different countries on three continents: North America (United States); Latin America (Brazil, Chile, Colombia); Asia (India); and Europe (United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Finland, Estonia). Throughout these different places, women's lives are an interesting stage for observing the interaction between biology and culture (e.g. sex vs. gender; pregnancy and childbirth vs. transition to motherhood). The focus on the cultural variability of human experience opens the door for the search of commonalities so needed in psychological theorizing. Here, this search is directed by how cultural models of womanhood (and motherhood) constrain personal experiences, especially through developmental transitions. This book is, ultimately, an opportunity to approach women’s lives from the perspective of the women themselves, particularly making audible and explicit their voices and the axis of logic that structures their world. Undoubtedly, it is a valuable opportunity for women and men interested in understanding and constructing human experience inside better worlds.

Women’s Lives: A Psychological Exploration, 3rd Edition draws on a wealth of the literature to present a rich range of experiences and issues of relevance to girls and women. This text offers the unique combination of a chronological approach to gender that is embedded within topical chapters. Cutting-edge and comprehensive, each chapter integrates current material on women differing in age, ethnicity, social class, nationality, sexual orientation and ableness. The third edition reflects substantial changes in the field while maintaining its empirical focus through engaging writing, student activities, and critical thinking exercises. With over 2,100 new references emphasizing the latest research and theories, the authors continue to pique interests in psychology of women.

Women’s Lives presents essays on the ways in which the lives and voices of women permeated medieval literature and culture. The ubiquity of women amongst the medieval canon provides an opportunity for considering a different sphere of medieval culture and power that is frequently not given the attention it requires. The reception and use of female figures from this period has proven influential as subjects in literary, political, and social writings; the lives of medieval women may be read as models of positive transgression, and their representation and reception make powerful arguments for equality, agency and authority on behalf of the writers who employed them. The volume includes essays on well-known medieval women, such as Hildegard of Bingen and Teresa of Cartagena, as well as women less-known to scholars of the European Middle Ages, such as Al-Kāhina and Liang Hongyu. Each essay is directly related to the work of Elizabeth Petroff, a scholar of Medieval Women Mystics who helped recover texts written by medieval women.

Providing an in-depth look at the lives of women and girls in approximately 150 countries, this multivolume reference set offers readers transnational and postcolonial analysis of the many issues that are critical to the success of women and girls. For millennia, women around the world have shouldered the responsibility of caring for their families. But in recent decades, women have emerged as a major part of the global workforce, balancing careers and family life. How did this change happen? And how are societies in developing countries responding and adapting to women's newer roles in society? This four-volume encyclopedia examines the lives of women around the world, with coverage that includes the education of girls and teens; the key roles women play in their families, careers, religions, and cultures; how issues for women intersect with colonialism, transnationalism, feminism, and established norms of power and control. Organized geographically, each volume presents detailed entries about the lives of women in particular countries. Additionally, each volume offers sidebars that spotlight topics related to women and girls in specific regions or focus on individual women's lives and contributions. Primary source documents include sections of countries' constitutions that are relevant to women and girls, United Nations resolutions and national resolutions regarding women and girls, and religious statements and proclamations about women and girls. The organization of the set enables readers to take an in-depth look at individual countries as well as to make comparisons across countries.

This cutting-edge and comprehensive fourth edition of Women’s Lives: A Psychological Perspective integrates the most current research and social issues to explore the psychological diversity of girls and women varying in age, ethnicity, social class, nationality, sexual orientation, and ableness. Written in an engaging and accessible manner, its use of vignettes, quotes, and numerous pedagogical tools effectively fosters students’ engagement, active learning, critical thinking, and social activism. New information covered includes: neoliberal feminism, standpoint theory, mujerista psychology (Chapter 1) LGBT individuals and individuals with disabilities in media (Chapter 2) testosterone testing of female athletes, precarious manhood (Chapter 3) raising a gender non-conforming child, impact of social media on body image (Chapter 4) gender differences in narcissism and Big Five personality traits, women video-game designers (Chapter 5) asexuality, transgender individuals, sexual agency, "Viagra for women" controversy (Chapter 6) adoption of frozen embryos controversy (Chapter 7) intensive mothering, integrated motherhood, "living apart together", same-sex marriage (Chapter 8) single-sex schooling controversy (Chapter 9) combat roles opened to U.S. women, managerial derailment (Chapter 10) work-hours dilemmas of low-wage workers (Chapter 11) feminist health care model, health care for transgender individuals, Affordable Care Act (Chapter 12) feminist critique of CDC guidelines on women and drinking (Chapter 13) cyberharassment, gendertrolling, campus sexual assault (Chapter 14) transnational feminism, men and feminism (Chapter 15) Women’s Lives stands apart from other texts on the psychology of women because it embeds within each topical chapter a lifespan approach and robust coverage of the impact of social, cultural, and economic factors in shaping women’s lives around the world. It provides extensive information on women with disabilities, middle-aged and older women, and women in transnational contexts. Its up-to-date coverage reflects current scientific and social developments, including over 2,200 new references. This edition also adds several new boxed features for student engagement. In The News boxes present current, often controversial, news items to get students thinking critically about real-life applications of course topics. Get Involved boxes encourage students to actively participate in the research process. What You Can Do boxes give students applied activities to promote a more egalitarian society. Learn About the Research boxes expose students to a variety of research methods and highlight the importance of diversity in research samples by including studies of underrepresented groups.

This collection deepens our understandings of the ways women are controlled through their bodies. Despite the many inroads made over the past decades, femininity and womanhood continue to be constructed through cultural, political and social ideals. Women's Bodies/Women's Lives is an excellent resource for a powerful movement that can challenge and resist the dominant ideas in society influencing women's sense of self.

Eve has been supposed to have remarked to Adam as they left the garden, my dear, we are in a state of transition, and of course they were. It is no coincidence that Eve delivers this line. While humanity in every era and stage in history has been marked by a strong sense of itself as being in a state of transition, women have always had a particularly close relationship to changeable terrain. In their quest for self knowledge, boundaries, and names, women have found themselves between varying cultural demands. In one view, perhaps the dominant one, the only way to gain positive status is to fit appropriately into approved categories: appropriately beautiful, appropriately young, appropriately thin, appropriately successful. In another view, the view compellingly expressed by Carolyn Heilbrun, women must abandon the appropriate and seek out the liminel. The word limen means threshold. To be in a state of liminality is to be poised upon uncertain ground, on the brink of leaving one condition or country or self to enter upon another. When recognized, liminality offers women freedom to be or become themselves. In Women's Lives: The View from the Threshold Carolyn Heilbrun looks at the biographies and memoirs of women who have wrestled with their own betwixt and betweenness (in the process altering the face of literature, and the world): George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Gloria Steinem. She reveals the ways in which feminism has changed our perceptions of these lives. Surprising explorations of the positions which launch women into uncertain ground extend these lectures outside the academic purview. Each year the Alexander lectureship invites a distinguished scholar to the University of Toronto to give a course of public lectures on the subject of English Literature. These four lectures from the 1997 series put Carolyn Heilbrun in a line of distinguished scholarly work with such previous lecturers as Walter Ong, Robertson Davies, and Northrop Frye. But Heilbrun, within this distinguished genealogy, reworks the very notion of the line, creating a new pattern of writing and approaching literary culture, just as the women whose lives she examines have done. The reader will come out of this experience moved, refreshed, and inspired to create rather than take a position. Electronic Format Disclaimer: Excerpt from the poem "Where Did I Leave Off" by Virginia Hamilton Adair on pages 65-66 removed at the request of the rights holder

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.