时尚杂志对青年女性美学观的影响

时尚杂志充斥着靓丽的图像、知性的文字和体贴的语气,它们在给读者带来视觉快感的同时,也向读者传达了一种新鲜的美学判断。在时尚杂志所引导的女性美学观中,身体是女性美的中心,而时间美学观和空间美学观是女性美的两个基点,背后隐藏着现代性的追寻、安全感的诉求、消费观念的刺激、男性凝视的快感等美学缘由。时尚杂志潜移默化地向青年女性传达了一种新鲜的美学判断,但其所倡导的美学观是病态的、不健康的,在批判这种美学观的同时,青年女性应该在自我独立的基础上追求一种健康的、朴素的、自然的女性美。     

Like mother, (not) like daughter: The social construction of menopause and aging

In recent American history, the definition of menopause has shifted from a natural, developmental transition to an increasingly more medicalized perspective that emphasizes biological deficits of the aging female body. Using qualitative data from two generations of women, this essay explores how and why this redefinition has occurred and what effect it has had on women's attitudes toward health and aging. The physical experiences of menopause were remarkably similar across mother-daughter pairs; however, daughters (who represented a slice of the baby boom cohort) differed from their mothers in how they talked about menopause, how they defined and treated menopause, and how willingly they accepted or fought the changes associated with menopause. Major social institutions, including the media and pharmaceutical industry, have played a significant role in reshaping the cultural lens through which women experience issues of health, body, and aging. This essay emphasizes the baby boomers' desire to maintain control over their bodies and considers how this cohort of women, as a result, may experience late-life issues of body and health.     

International women's magazines in China: Global and local perspectives

Unlike other global media products that are imported from overseas, international women's magazines in China are published via licensing agreements or joint ventures with local companies. These ownership patterns allow local editions of international women's magazines to negotiate the tensions and contradictions between the global players and local publishers. Given the influence of cultural and commercial forces in different economic environments, international women's magazines provide a challenging platform for exploring the interaction between global and local forces. Through a theoretical framework of hybridity theory and in-depth interviews with editorial personnel from the magazine industry, this study explores the global and local forces that have contributed to the production process of international women's magazines in China. The findings reveal that these magazines are a result of a multi-level convergence of local realities and global influences. Although there are factors of control and dependence in many areas such as the publishing ideas, editorial policies, the training of personnel, and the quality of production, both Western-style and Japanese-style women's magazines tend to appropriate and rework global cultures to satisfy local readers' needs, albeit in different ways. As a result, local and transnational influences are inextricably interwoven in the production process of international women's magazines in China. The study provides an extensive understanding of the global processes, the consumers, and the cultural forces that are shaping the media, particularly magazines in China.     

Transnational cultural flows: An analysis of women's magazines in China

This study examines the expansion process of women's magazines in China, particularly over the past few decades. From 1921 to 1976 only a few women's magazines were available in China and all were owned and published by the government. However, since the late 1980s, there has been a proliferation of women's magazines – both local and international. Today, Chinese language versions of Western women's magazines, such as Elle, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Harper's Bazaar, and Japanese magazines like Rayli can be found on the magazine racks of any major city in China. The introduction and competition from international magazines has changed the look and content of local women's magazines. This preliminary study uses historical analysis and political economy to examine the growth of women's magazines in China and to discuss how the changing face of women's media represents a shift in gender ideology in China.     

Farm women in Canada,New Zealand and Australia redefine their rurality

This paper focuses on rural women's networks in Ontario, New Zealand and Australia. It investigates three issues: the social contexts in which farm women in Canada, Australia and New Zealand have developed new networks since the late 1970s; the responses of farm women in each country to the changes in the agricultural industry in the last two decades; and the way farm women's organisations are responding to contemporary changes in rural society. In the concluding section, the farm women's movement is interpreted in terms of agency and structure. It is suggested that the establishment of organisations that can speak for farm women at government levels has countered their deep sense of marginalisation and alienation within their industry. In keeping with the dynamic nature of contemporary society, farm women's organisations will need to be flexible and adaptable in order to facilitate quick responses to rapidly evolving economic an social issues.     

Women's body image self‐consciousness during physical intimacy with a partner

In Western cultures, women's bodies are objectified more so than men's, and other writers have noted the multiple ways that such objectification may negatively impact women's lives. As women's sexual desirability is often equated with physical attractiveness and thinness, it is surprising that previous investigations have not included women's body image self‐consciousness during physical intimacy with a partner. In the current set of studies, a 15‐item measure of the construct was developed and shown to have excellent psychometric properties. Approximately one third of college student women indicated experiencing body image self‐consciousness during physical intimacy with a heterosexual partner at least some of the time. Even after statistically controlling for actual body size, measures of general body image, general sexual anxiety, and general well‐being, scores on the new measure were predictive of heterosexual experience, sexual esteem, sexual assertive‐ness, and avoidance of sexual activity. Results are discussed with regard to implications and directions for future research.     

‘Bad Mum Guilt’: the representation of ‘work-life balance’ in UK women’s magazines

The social policy climate, labour market trends and gendered arrangements for paid and family work mean that ‘work-life balance’ remains a key social issue in the UK. Media representations of ‘work-life balance’ are a key source for the construction of gender and working motherhood. Despite evidence of gendered representations in media coverage of other social issues, little attention has been paid to the construction of work-life balance in UK women's magazines. Articles from the highest circulating UK women's magazines are analysed using a discursive approach to explicate constructions of work-life balance and working motherhood. The analysis reveals that multiple roles are constructed as a problematic choice leading to stress and guilt. Problems associated with multiple roles are constructed as individual problems, in a way that decontextualises and depoliticises them and normalises gendered assumptions and a gendered division of labour. Parallels can be drawn between this and wider discourses about women's daily lives and to the UK social policy context.     

From Tupperware to Scentsy: The gendered culture of women and direct sales

Consumer culture has transformed the lives of working women and family life for well over a century. Perhaps one of the most gender distinct forms of consumer culture introduced in the 20th century was the direct sales industry. The business model of direct sales depends on women's social circles as a means to market products directly to consumers, antithetical to retail spaces of malls and shopping outlets. In this literature review, I explore how women construct meaning behind products in this sales culture, while examining the emotional investment that women make as direct sales consultants and the personal outcomes of this investment. To begin, I include a brief history of the direct sales industry with a focus on three pioneering companies: Avon, Tupperware, and Mary Kay as foundational to women's contributions and involvement in the industry today. Next, I explore the pathways that motivate women's draw to direct selling as a form of emotional labor that allows them to balance professional work and family life while yielding minimal financial gain. I analyze the messaging of direct sales companies that cleverly speak directly to women's needs for recognition and assist in constructing personal identity and self‐worth. Finally, I examine trends for the future of direct sales companies as they look to maintain relevance through global markets and brand recognition that will expand beyond women's social circles and parties.     

Women's Status,Fertility Decline,and Women's Health in Developing Countries: Direct and Indirect Influences of Social Status on Health

Abstract In the present three‐wave study of 72 developing countries, we use growth curves to examine how changes in fertility and level of fertility mediate the effect of women's social status on women's health as measured by infant mortality, maternal mortality, and female life expectancy. We find that level of female education, average age at marriage, and the percentage of married women using contraceptives influence attained level of fertility, with controls for economic growth and dependency status. Change in fertility, however, is predicted only by average age at marriage and by level of education. Change in fertility, in turn, predicts improvement in all three women's health indicators, while the level of fertility predicts improvement in maternal mortality and infant mortality. In addition to the mediating effects of fertility, both age at marriage and education contribute directly to reduced level of infant mortality; level of primary education contributes directly to reduced levels of maternal mortality; and use of contraceptives contributes directly to improvement in female life expectancy. These findings provide strong evidence that women's social status makes direct contributions to women's health which cannot be attributed to economic growth, dependency status, and/or the mediating effects of level and change in fertility. The policy implication for developing countries is that greater gains can be made in women's health, particularly maternal health, by improving women's social status, especially in rural areas.     

“She was buried in her purple dress and her red hat and all of our members wore full ‘Red Hat Regalia’ to celebrate her life”: Dress, embodiment and older women's leisure: Reconfiguring the ageing process

There is a significant literature on women's dress and clothing, women's dress and identity, and women's dress and body image. However, the way that dress shapes the self, gives public meaning to the body, and situates it within culture—its embodiment—is understudied. Older women's voices on how dress-up in leisure contexts is linked to embodiment are absent. Using data from an online survey of the Red Hat Society®, a leisure-based social group with over 1 million members, we examined the relationship between older women's dress and embodiment. Data analysis revealed three themes: 1) Dress and embodiment, doing “dress-up”; 2) Dress and embodied subjectivity, linking the personal with the social; and, 3) Dress and perceptions of ageing, fashioning to freedom. We extend the embodiment and leisure literatures by: (a) including older women's viewpoints on dress; (b) understanding linkages between embodiment and older women's leisure; and, (c) illustrating how public displays of dress contribute to older women's development.     

Attitudes towards Women's Work Roles and Women Managers in a Sports Organization: The Case of Turkey

In recent years the need to apply gender equality principles to all sectors of Turkish society has been widely acknowledged and has become an increasingly important issue because of the modernization and recent Europeanization project of Turkey. However, even as this has been acknowledged, attempts to apply gender equality in employment in sports organizations have been mostly ignored. This article reports on the attitudes towards women's work roles and women managers of 83 women and 138 men who work in the General Directorate of Youth and Sport (GDYS) which is the biggest national governing body for sport in Turkey. The findings of this study indicate that both female and male workers in the GDYS scored lower on their attitudes towards women's work roles and held more negative attitudes towards women managers. Although male workers scored higher on attitudes towards women's work roles than female workers they held more negative attitudes towards women managers. In addition, femininity scores were found to be the only predictor of attitudes towards women's career advancement. Finally, we discussed these findings regarding previous studies and the sociocultural context of Turkey.     

Women in Politics in Norway

This paper attempts to explain how and why women in Norway have achieved unusually high political representation. The study, based on forty-three personal interviews with female politicians and persons familiar with Norwegian political culture, found that certain favorable social and political preconditions existed in Norway that encouraged women's entry into politics. However, it was the strong and effectively organized women's movement which was responsible for the significant increase of women in politics. A number of environmental opportunities and threats facilitated the formation of a successful coalition between establishment and new feminist factions of the women's movement. This coalition then used effective strategies to get more women into politics.     

U.S. trends in feminine beauty and overadaptation

Men place more importance on the physical attractiveness of women than women do on the physical attractiveness of men. As a result, women's social opportunities are more affected by their physical beauty than are men's, so that women are under more pressure to conform to an ideal of beauty. Although standards of female beauty are not as arbitrary as is sometimes claimed, they do vary greatly over time and across cultures. Modern institutions of advertising, retailing, and entertainment now produce vivid notions of beauty that change from year to year, placing stress upon women to conform to the body image currently in vogue. The best known of these beauty standards are the “bosom mania” of the 1950s and 1960s and the current trend toward slenderization. As women attempt to adapt to each of these changes, a minority overadapt, sometimes to the point of incapacitation. Among these over‐adaptations have been hysteria, early in the century, which was an exaggeration of the fragile feminine ideal of that time; bosom anxieties of the 1950s and 1960s, when women worried if their breasts were sufficiently large; and anorexia and bulimia today.     

Gendered Dimensions of the HIV Pandemic: A Cross‐National Investigation of Women's International Nongovernmental Organizations,Contraceptive Use,and HIV Prevalence in Less‐Developed Nations

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pandemic has a profound impact on women as a result of social and biological vulnerabilities to the infection. In this article, we explore the influence of democracy, women's international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and contraceptive use on female HIV rates, using indirect‐effect modeling techniques to properly test the interrelationships among key variables. Structural equation models reveal that democracy and women's INGOs work to reduce female HIV rates indirectly, by promoting the use of contraceptives among women in less‐developed nations. Despite these promising findings, the analyses also reveal that INGOs are negatively associated with sociohealth dimensions of female empowerment, which thus serves to promote HIV rates. The results suggest that interventions undertaken by INGOs may not be as successful as government programs in addressing inequalities in health and social resources for women in poor nations.     

Men and masculinity in men's magazines: A review

This review article provides a thematic synthesis and overview of 30 years of research into the study of men and masculinity in men's magazines. Over 100 articles, book chapters, and books were reviewed to explore how scholars have approached the study of masculinity in such magazines and identify four major areas of inquiry: the commodification of masculinity; the relationship between sexism and misogyny in men's magazines and men's attitudes towards women; the vulnerability of men to, and the role of magazines in the construction of, men's body image anxieties; and the increasing sexualisation of men's bodies. The strengths and potential limitations of these four thematic approaches are identified, including an insufficiently nuanced account of the ways in which men might actually engage with images and ideas about masculinity in such magazines; an overly singular view of male sexuality that naturalises sexist and predatory behaviour; and an overemphasis on men's bodies as sites of vulnerability, risk, or crisis at the expense of more substantive considerations of the relationship between the representation of body modification practices and technologies, and men's embodied identities. The review concludes with an overview of the present field and some suggestions for future research.     

Intimate Violence against Rural Women: The Current and Future State of Feminist Empirical and Theoretical Contributions

Rural crime in general ranks among the least studied social problems in the social sciences; however, a growing body of research shows that rural woman abuse is a major problem. The current state of progressive critical feminist social scientific knowledge enhances an empirical and theoretical understanding of intimate violence against rural women. Revealing the complexities of rural women's experiences and struggles with violent relationships reconstitutes violence against women as a public crisis that requires continued serious attention with regard research, theory, and policy. Three primary objectives of this article are as follows: (i) briefly review recent feminist social scientific literature on research, methodology, and theoretical contributions on violence against women in rural areas, (ii) suggest new directions in researching and theorizing rural women's experiences with intimate violence, and (iii) offer creative practical and policy solutions towards a broad vision of social change.     

Reprivatized Womanhood: Changes in Mainstream Media's Framing of Urban Women's Issues in China, 1995–2012

After waves of women's liberation movements, the reform era has witnessed a puzzling stagnation, if not decline, in women's status in China. Among the existing literature on the changing public gender discourse in postsocialist China, few studies have substantially engaged with feminist critiques of the “separate spheres” as an analytical framework. In this study the authors performed content analyses on 202 articles drawn from 3 Chinese mainstream magazines between 1995 and 2012 to describe changes in media's framing of urban women's issues. Over time, topics on marriage and private relationships became increasingly predominant, while concerns over gender discrimination diminished in the mainstream media. The results provide evidence for a revitalization of traditional gender values attributing women to “private” spheres and reveal the media's repeated use of individualistic approaches to structural problems, suggesting an alliance between patriarchal and neoliberal ideologies in shaping public gender discourse while concealing structural inequalities in urban China.     

Survivors of Woman Abuse

Abstract

The feminist social work and related literature on abused women has focused on women's processes of empowerment but has overlooked the question of women's movement from individual survival to collective resistance. In this feminist qualitative study, I explore the processes through which survivors of abuse by male partners become involved in collective action for social change. Using story telling as a research method, I interviewed 11 women about the processes, factors, insights, and events that prompted them to act collectively to address violence against women. I found that women's movement from individual survival to collective action entails significant changes in consciousness and subjectivity. Women's processes of conscientization are complex, contradictory and often painful because they involve political and psychic dimensions of subjectivity, protracted struggles with contradictions and conflict, and resistance to knowledge that threatens to unsettle relatively stable notions of identity. I suggest that feminist social work theory and practice must take into account three interrelated elements of women's transformative journeys: the discursive and material conditions that facilitate women's movement to collective action; the social, material and psychic costs of women's growth; and the multifaceted and difficult nature of women's journey in recognizing and naming abuse, making sense of their experiences, and acting on this knowledge to work for change. I recommend that feminist social work practice with survivors recognize that survivors can and do contribute to social change, and develop new, more inclusive liberatory models of working with survivors of abuse.     

Employment Conditions in the Senegalese Horticultural Export Industry: A Worker Perspective

The rapid transformation of the agri‐food sector in developing countries has created rural off‐farm employment opportunities, especially for women. There is growing concern about worker welfare and employment conditions in agri‐food and export sectors, but empirical evidence on this issue is scant. We analyse contractual preferences of female workers in the horticultural export sector in Senegal. We use a discrete choice experiment to assess women's preferences for a labour contract and employ a latent class model to capture preference heterogeneity. We find that women have a high willingness to accept a labour contract in the horticultural export industry, and that differences in preferences for contract attributes can be explained by women's empowerment status.     

Eye of the Beholder? Sociocultural Factors in the Body Image and Sexual Well-Being of Heterosexual Women

ABSTRACT. Participants (124 heterosexual women) completed measures of thin-ideal internalization, discrepancy between perceptions of actual and ideal figure (DISC_SELF), perceptions of the discrepancy between estimates of partner's view of actual and ideal female figure (DISC_PART), body image, and sexual well-being. We found support for the proposed perception-of-partner pathway in that greater DISC_PART was associated with poorer body image, which in turn was associated with poorer sexual well-being. However, we found little support for a link between thin-ideal internalization or DISC_SELF and sexual well-being. The results suggest that heterosexual women's beliefs about how their partners view them are important to their sexual well-being.