The lives and voices of highly sexual women

American women who experience very strong and frequent sexual desire have often been either ignored or stigmatized. This exploratory study of 44 highly sexual women ages 20 to 82, which used a convenience sample and a semi-structured in-depth interview method, allowed participants to describe their lives and how their sexuality has affected them. Highly sexual women reported that their lives have been strongly affected by their sexuality. First, the participants internally sensed demand for sexual excitement and satisfaction is too intense to be ignored. For some it was a major organizing principle of their time and energy. Second, their lives are lived in a society that often defines highly sexual women in pejorative ways. Women reported experiencing struggles and challenges in almost every area of their lives because of their sexuality, including feelings about themselves and their relationships with partners, female friends, and acquaintances.     

The lives and voices of highly sexual women

Two questionnaire studies on female genital slang (FGTs) are presented. Study One explored semantic categories in 317 different FGTs (and 351 different male genital terms [MGTs]) collected from 156 females and 125 males. Data were coded into 17 categories, and tested for sex differences. More FGTs were coded standard slang, euphemism, space, receptacle, abjection, hair, animal, or money. More MGTs were coded personification, gender identity, edibility, danger, or nonsense. Study Two used 49 FGTs to investigate the extent to which slang provides a consistent specific vocabulary for female genitals. The 251 respondents commented on 5 terms each. Respondents absolutely agreed on meaning for only 4% of terms. The implications of both findings for women's genital experiences and sexuality are discussed.     

The lives of disabled women in Nepal: vulnerability without support

The study examines a broad range of problems faced by physically disabled women. Qualitative interviews with 30 women with physical disabilities (congenital and acquired) were administered to understand various aspects of their lives. The research explores the causes of disability, which include gender discrimination, poverty, an inactive state security system, inadequate family support, negative attitudes and a lack of commitment on the part of government. The available services from non-governmental organizations have been proved to be unsatisfactory and gender biased in terms of training and employment. The importance of disability and its relation to gender has not been recognized by the state.     

The lived experiences of foreign women: Influences on their international working lives

The lived experiences of foreign women were explored to discover influences on their international working lives. Life history narratives were collected in interviews with 12 participants who were female, foreign (nationality differs from their country of employment) and employed or a business owner in the United Arab Emirates. A phenomenological framework of analysis resulted in identification of three emergent themes around life experiences that had shaped participants' working lives: becoming a new generation of expatriates; adjustment to sociocultural change; and centrality of womanhood. The implication of these themes was the influence from lived experiences on the development and professional identity of foreign working‐women. Findings offer insight about influences on the actual and potential economic participation of foreign women for business practitioners and policymakers. A new classification of foreign worker, the ‘foreign working‐woman’ (FW‐W), extends the body of academic knowledge. A research direction is proposed for further international study about influences from life experiences on the FW‐W.     

Mobile Selves: Gender, ethnicity and mobile phones in the everyday lives of young Pakistani-British women and men

This paper focuses on mobile phone use by a young minority ethnic group as a medium through which to explore diversity and technology use in everyday life. Recent research with young people has shown that mobile phones are instrumentally, socially and emotionally important but few have problematized the homogeneous concept of 'youth'. This paper argues for increased recognition of the intersections of social categories such as youth, gender and ethnicity with technologies, specifically mobile phones, in order to understand complexity of use. Drawing on new empirical, qualitative data from an urban area in the North East of England we explore the focus group narratives of young Pakistani-British Muslim women and men focusing on the notion of 'shifting' gendered and cultural identities and social practices, developed and reworked in relation to the use of mobile phones. We look at the gendered dynamics of mobile use, including gender talk and text, and ask whether the young women and men experience mobiles differently in everyday life. We also explore the ways in which mobiles are used to create 'space of one's own' and the gendered dynamics of remaining connected, especially to key peer groups. The paper concludes with the assertion that in order to fully explore the mutability of youth cultures across space and time, we need to develop a more dynamic concept of 'mobile selves' by exploring the place and meaning of technologies such as mobile phones in the rich tapestries of young people's lives.     

Private and public experience captured: young women capture their everyday lives and dreams through photo-narratives

Recent studies about young people suggest a need to change the way researchers and policy-makers have traditionally understood the concepts of youth, transitions to adulthood, educational participation and the need for young people's voice to be heard. For many young women the taken-for-granted features of everyday life such as family, social, education and paid work are the priorities in their lives. Yet those priorities are frequently masked in large-scale studies, resulting in homogenising the diversity of young people's experiences and abstracting educational engagement from other parts of their lives. The study reported in this paper approaches the issue of young women's construction and defining of their identities in interaction with the broad institutional milieu that is part of their everyday experiences. This approach seeks to understand this lived experience through the use of photo-narratives. The paper explores a rationale for this approach in methodological and ethical terms. It allows for an exploration of the complexity of young women's multiple identities and the changing nature of young people's engagement with post-compulsory senior secondary education.     

The city from its margins: rethinking urban governance through the everyday lives of migrant women in Johannesburg

Drawing on ethnographic data, this article explores migrant women’s relationships and encounters with the state in South Africa’s largest city, Johannesburg. Focusing on the experiences of people in this marginal location, the article re-examines the notion of ‘urban governance’, which is often understood as the realm of formal urban institutions in which the state asserts its authority and regulatory powers. Through the everyday lives of migrant women we see that local urban practices are not simply shaped by the formalism of state rules and regulations, or their informal illegal counterparts. The way migrant women navigate the city, trade on the streets, and interact with the state and other urban actors illustrates that governance is co-constructed by a multitude of regimes, legal and illegal, visible and invisible. Indeed, women’s lives collapse the dichotomy of the official and unofficial, governed and ungoverned city, in ways that allow us to rethink how we conceptualise the city.     

When women veterans return: The role of postsecondary education in transition in their civilian lives

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the current state of postsecondary educational settings’ outreach to military women who become students postservice. Participants: Data for the present cross-sectional study were obtained from the American College Health Association’s (ACHA) 2011–2014 National College Health Assessment II (NCHA). Methods: Demographic characteristics of the study sample were explored by calculating frequencies and percentages by military service status. Research questions were explored with Fisher’s exact test, maximum likelihood multiple logistic regression, as appropriate. Results: Women service member and veteran students received health information from their university/college less often than women students with no military experience on the following topics: alcohol and other drug use, depression and anxiety, sexual assault and relationship violence prevention, and stress reduction. Conclusions: The findings of this research identified clear gaps in service provision for women student veterans on college campuses and provided some possible models for intervention development.     

Threading meaningful lives: respectability,home businesses and identity negotiations among newly immigrant South Asian women

This article investigates how women who have come to the United States as brides of South Asian professionals use threading, a hair removal method, as a home business to negotiate new challenges they face as newly immigrant women. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, the article focuses on how these young women combine their expected roles as wives and mothers in a new country with their own aspirations to win the respect of spouses, in-laws and children via threading. The article demonstrates how these women find meaning and identity through threading and evidences how they negotiate respectability by stressing their connections to home and domestic roles even as they dissociate themselves from beauticians who work at salons. Although they disrupt extant notions of ‘good wives and mothers’, these women nevertheless articulate this disruption within existing models and, more often than not, desire to be the bahu that their mothers-in-law admire.     

Doing Disability Research: activist lives and the academy

The relationship between the academy and the disability movement is a problematic one. Disability researchers based in the academic world who align themselves with the social model of disability face contradictory aims and values in attempting to challenge dominant modes of research production in ways that signify the importance of the agendas of disabled people. It could be argued that research that involves people with the label of 'learning difficulties' [1] creates further points of contention. In this paper we do two things. First, we re-present a paper given at a conference on the performing arts of people with 'learning difficulties', where the audience was made up of performers, workers, providers and researchers. This paper attempted to be accessible, theoretical, political and practical. Secondly, we reflect upon this paper in relation to seven points of analysis that emerge at the boundaries of disability politics and disability research. We argue throughout that real efforts must be made to bridge these boundaries in ways that augment disability theory and politics together.     

Faith,work, and women in a changing world: the influence of religion in the lives of beedi rollers in West Bengal

In India, religious norms and values play a significant role in regulating the lives of women and girls in many communities. This article looks at how the lives of women and girl beedi (hand rolled cigarette) rollers in a Muslim community in West Bengal are influenced by their religious background, highlighting the complex relationship between gender, faith, and work. Secondly, the article discusses how secular NGOs – which in India are often seen to be hesitant in addressing questions of religious faith and practice – can engage in development work with women and girls in faith-based communities. The article focuses on the experiences of two secular NGOs working with women beedi workers in villages in Murshidabad, as they come to understand that to bring about significant changes in women's lives they must open up discussions around sensitive religious belief, within the community and their own organisations.     

Lost in transition: the lives of African lifeguards

A study of 11 African surf lifeguards in Durban in 1997, as they were entering employment on the beachfront, revealed their aspirations for a confident and respectable masculinity. A study of the remaining 10 in 2012 instead demonstrated the extent to which their transition into employment was caught up in violence. It is argued that three key elements contributing to this have been the racist hostility that undermined the sense of possibility, the strength and nature of peer-group relationships and a masculinity focused on the display of women and possessions. Thus, some lifeguards replicated the same patterns of violence that they had hoped to leave behind in the township, while others severed connections and left. Following Walkerdine, this underlines the significance of the relationship between space and affect and the role of safety in developing imaginative possibilities. In a context of continued structural violence, spaces need to be developed within which people can reflect on their lives and the transitions they are making.     

The reality of the women who make our lives easier: experience in a company that assemblies electric motors in Venezuela

Objective: intervene a workline throughout ergonomic approach to diminish incidence of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS). Methods and Materials: an ergonomic intervention study was developed in workstations with highest index of musculoskeletal disorder (MED) associated to cumulative trauma. The Deparis method, Reba and Ocra check list methods were used, also morbility reviewes. National and international ethics criteria were carried out. Results: workers identified 3 fundamental issues using the Deparis method: repetitive activities, postures adopted and uncomfortable furniture. The analysis of the workstation with Reba and Ocra methods before the changes, evidenciated that 56% of postures adopted were high risk postures, the 44% remaining were medium and low-risk. Following the active pause program (APP), furniture changes and work rhythm decrease, was noted that the risk of suffering MED decreased. The morbility review, drop in consults of musculoskeletal system (MES) related to CTS observed. The APP was well accepted by women, but not initially men. Discussion: the research show that when the work rhythm decreases, the symptom of MES related to CTS have a remarkable decrease, also that changes in the furniture, generate great ergonomic differences and changes in the work environment are not possible if workers don't empower the tools to make-it.     

Queer country: Rural lesbian and gay lives

Studies of rural life and lifestyles have yet to seriously address issues of sexuality. This paper outlines some of the experiences of lesbians and gay men who live in the countryside. It begins by tracing the history of the relationship between homosexuality and rurality in fiction and film, paying particular attention to the role of rural utopias in the lesbian and gay imagination. The paper then goes on to consider the structural difficulties experienced by those gay men and women who are born and raised in rural areas, and the lifestyles of those who choose to move to country locations in an attempt to create alternative communes. The paper ends with discussion of the ethics researching ‘rural others’.     

'Being there': multidimensionality, reflexivity and the study of emotional lives

Emotional lives tend to be untidy. Yet despite a growing recognition of this, sociological research designs rarely mirror the multidimensionality they are striving to represent. This article takes as its starting point a recent study of beliefs and practices about emotional support and emotions talk in Britain, to illustrate how a methodologically mixed approach offers particular purchase on what passes between us in our everyday emotional lives and in research about these lives. The notion of 'being there' is drawn on to help make this argument. Moving between 'being there' as topic, a form of emotional support, and 'being there' as a methodological resource, the article concludes that the analytical claims we make about our emotional lives are strengthened through a methodologically mixed - and by necessity, reflexive - approach which explores, rather than smooths out, the ragged, sometimes indeterminate, edges between methods.     

Negotiating identities: the lives of Pakistani and Bangladeshi young disabled people

Research has generally amalgamated minority ethnic (all called 'Asian' or 'black') disabled young people's experiences and failed to acknowledge the multiple aspects of Asian and black disabled identities, for example how the combined attributes of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, culture, class and disability shape their perspectives and experiences. In an attempt to address this issue my doctoral research explored the experiences and perspectives of 13 young Pakistani and Bangladeshi disabled people. By drawing on the substantive and theoretical findings which emerged from my analysis in this paper I shall consider how multiple aspects of identity, such as ethnicity, disability and gender, affect this population's identity and self-image and how this makes their experiences different from white disabled young people and other minority groups' experiences.     

Beyond resilience: Resistance in the lives of LGBTQ youth

Resilience has come to define a wide breadth of impactful research on marginalized groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. This resilience framework shifted the deficit “at-risk” model of research on marginalized populations to a more nuanced strengths-based perspective. In this critical review article, we examine this research trend to understand how the shift to resilience has shaped patterns of LGBTQ youth research. In doing so, this piece calls for a more sophisticated engagement with operationalizing resilience–which is vaguely defined and often upholds dominant relations in society, such as capitalistic, heteronormative values of success and happiness. We show how a shift to understanding resistance, joy, and pleasure in LGBTQ youth's lives promotes a more dynamic and complicated look at how marginalized groups navigate their social worlds and exert power in shaping these worlds. Acknowledging and uplifting LGBTQ youth's resistance and power are necessary in pushing scholarly dialogue and the possible interventions informed by research towards a more fully transformative framework in changing and dismantling oppressive societal structures.