Bridgette Rickett

‘Cos girls aren’t supposed to eat like pigs are they?’ Young women negotiating gendered discursive constructions of food and eating

While psycho-medical understandings of ‘eating disorders’ draw distinctions between those who ‘have’/‘do not have’ eating disorders, feminist poststructuralist researchers argue that these detract from political/socio-cultural conditions that invoke problematic eating and embodied subjectivities. Using poststructuralist discourse analysis, we examine young women’s talk around food and eating, in particular, the negotiation of tensions arising from derogating aspects of hetero-normative femininities, while accounting for own ‘feminine’ practices (e.g. ‘dieting’) and subjectivities. Analysis suggested that eating/dieting was accounted for by drawing upon neo-liberalist discourses around individual choice; however, these may obscure gendered, classed and racialized power relations operating in local and wider contexts.

Social-cognitive determinants of hoist usage among health care workers.

Injuries caused by unsafe manual handling of patients are a major source of ill health in health care workers. The present study evaluated the ability of 4 classes of variable to predict use of a hoist when moving a heavily dependent patient. Variables examined were occupational role characteristics, such as hours of work and type of shift worked; biographics, including age and height; aspects of occupational context, such as number of hoists available and number of patients; and motivational variables specified by the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985) and protection motivation theory (Rogers, 1983). Regression analyses showed that background and social-cognitive variables were able to account for 59% of variance in intention to use a hoist and 41% of variance in use of the hoist assessed 6 weeks later. Height, hoist availability, coworker injunctive norm, perceived behavioral control, response cost, response benefits, and social and physical costs of not using the hoist each explained independent variance in motivation to use a hoist at work.

Exploring Women’s Agency and Resistance in Health-related Contexts: Contributors’ Introduction

The series of articles presented here addresses the problematic issues of women’s agency and resistance in the context of feminist discursive research conducted by members of the Feminism and Health Research Group, based at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, on the topics of women’s drinking, pro-anorexia, pregnancy, (hetero)sexual and romantic relationships and gender and risk in the workplace. A running theme within feminist research and theorizing has been the constraining and oppressive functions of women’s roles and constructions of femininity (e.g. Humm, 1992; Millett, 1971; Wetherell, 1995; White and Kowalski, 1994; Wittig, 1992). However, whilst the social must remain central in feminist analyses, critics have attacked deterministic explanations that obscure notions of agency (e.g. Morris, 1997). Foucauldian-influenced poststructuralism has enabled feminist work to explore women’s agency within various sites (see for example Currie, 2004 and Raisborough, 2006), with writers arguing that the subject can reflect upon the discourses and discursive relations that constitute her and that she has some leeway in choosing from the options available (e.g. Weedon, 1987). Further than this, it has been suggested that women have the potential to ‘rewrite’ ideologies of gender by subverting dominant discourses through the mobilization of ‘alternative’ or counter discourses that position them in more powerful ways (e.g. Eckermann, 1997). Here, discourse becomes a crucial site for active resistance to gender ideologies, which in turn opens up possibilities for positive action and social change (Burman and Parker, 1993; Gill, 1995; Wetherell, 1995). Women are not simply positioned by existing discourses but can position themselves within these, variably taking these up, resisting, negotiating and tailoring them to achieve a desired identity (Court and Court, 1998; Davies and Harre, 1990). However, at the same time, feminists have cautioned against neo-liberal, individualistic notions of agency and choice (e.g. Petchesky, 1986; Wray, 2004). The

VI. Feminist psychology – poststructuralism, class and maternal subjectivities: Where are we and where should we go next?

Shields’ (1975) paper challenges the ‘‘truths’’ presented in sex difference psychological research over the 19th and early 20th century. In doing so, the notion of the ‘‘maternal instinct’’ is interrogated and is persuasively argued to be imbued with androcentric values that serve to disempower, regulate and hierarchically position women as lesser and ‘‘othered’’ vis-à-vis men, thereby shoring up the social values of the day. This present commentary aims to consider how some of the last 30 years of feminist thinking within psychology has taken Shields’ seminal work in new directions, in particular, towards an understanding of how the socially situated meanings around the ‘‘maternal instinct’’ shape working-class maternal subjectivities. Shields (1975) argues that the functionalist US movement produced ‘‘a prototypic psychology of women’’ (p. 739) where women were considered as subordinate to men. This early emphasis on the functional, biological foundations of ‘‘maternal instinct’’ produced a construction of the purpose of female ‘‘nature’’. In this work, the ‘‘maternal instinct’’ was seen as a complex but ordered system of instincts characterised by a number of emotions including, and primarily, ‘‘emotional

IV. Working Without Sacrifice: Acceptance and Resistance to Dominant Discourse Around Women’s Occupational Risk

Writers such as Holmes and Schnurr (2006), have argued that workplaces constitute one of the more interesting sites where women act out femininities, while at the same time constructing their work identities. Other writers have suggested that discursive practices in the workplace can be ‘a powerful tool in shaping organizationally accepted gender subjectivities, such that workers come to embody and enact organizationally privileged modes of practice, in turn achieving organizationally desired outcomes’ (Halford and Leonard, 2006: 657). Recently, a growing body of research has examined the discursive manner in which female subjectivities are shaped, reproduced and resisted in the workplace, attributing working women with varying levels of agency (e.g. Collinson et al., 1990; Henwood, 1998; Katila and Merilainen, 2002; Phipps, 2007; Søndergaard, 2005; Trautner, 2005). However, with some notable exceptions (e.g. Teeler Sanders’ work on constructions of gender and risk in sex work, 2004), feminist research has remained relatively untouched by the recent theoretical interest in the cultural and political relevance of ‘risk’ (e.g., Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990) to understandings of female subjectivities in traditionally ‘dangerous’ occupational work spaces. While there have been studies aimed at understanding the partnership between organizationally legitimized risk and socially accepted masculine identities in ‘dangerous’ male-dominated work (e.g. Mitchell et al., 2001; Breslin et al., 2007; Walter et al., 2002), few studies have examined how feminine identities are both employed and resisted in traditionally ‘dangerous’ work spaces. Using a poststructuralist feminist discourse analysis, this article aims to analyse how constructions of femininity and risk are variably taken up, reworked and resisted in talk by women who work in physically dangerous work places. In doing so, I will also be drawing upon Foucault’s notion of governmentality, where discourses around ‘risky’ situations in the workplace can be understood as strategies of social control and regulation (Foucault, 1984). Developing this particular understanding of risk I am arguing that employing a gendered understanding of

Old Jokes, New Media – Online Sexism and Constructions of Gender in Internet Memes

The Internet is a space where the harassment of women and marginalised groups online has attracted the attention of both academic and popular press. Feminist research has found that instances of online sexism and harassment are often reframed as “acceptable” by constructing them as a form of humour. Following this earlier research, this present paper explores a uniquely technologically-bound type of humour by adopting a feminist, social-constructionist approach to examine the content of popular Internet memes. Using thematic analysis on a sample of 240 image macro Internet memes (those featuring an image with a text caption overlaid), we identified two broad, overarching themes – Technological Privilege and Others. Within the analysis presented here, complex and troubling constructions of gendered identity in online humour are explored, illustrating the potential for the othering and exclusion of women through humour in technological spaces. We argue that this new iteration of heteronormative, hegemonic masculinity in online sexism, couched in “irony” and “joking”, serves to police, regulate and create rightful occupants and owners of such spaces.

Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis: putting the personal in the political in feminist research

ABSTRACT Discourse analysis is a useful and flexible method for exploring power and identity. While there are many forms of discourse analysis, all agree that discourse is the central site of identity construction. However, recent feminist concerns over power, agency, and resistance have drawn attention to the absence of participants’ first-hand experiences within broad discursive accounts (Lafrance & McKenzie-Mohr 2014; Saukko 2008). For those with an interest in power relations, such as feminist researchers, this is a problematic silence which renders the personal functions of discourse invisible. In this article, we argue that the “personal” and “political” are inextricable, and we make a case for putting the “personal” into broader discursive frameworks of understanding. Further, we assert that feminist research seeking to account for identity must more explicitly aim to capture this interplay. To this end, we argue that voice is the key site of meaning where this interplay can be captured, but that no clear analytical framework currently exists for producing such an account. In response, we propose Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis (FRDA) as a voice-centered analytical approach for engaging with experience and discourse in talk. We then set out clear guidance on how to do FRDA, as applied in the context of women working in U.K. policing. Finally, we conclude that by prioritizing voice, FRDA invites new and politicized feminist readings of power, agency, and resistance, where the voices of participants remain central to the discursive accounts of researchers.

Towards a Critical Social Psychology of Social Class

Social psychologists have paid relatively little attention to class compared with scholars from other disciplines (e.g., sociology). This is a concern as class shapes nearly every aspect of human life and has a profoundly psychological dimension. This chapter critically reviews mainstream social psychological work on class, highlighting the general failure of this to problematise the class system of countries like Britain and the United States. It then moves on to discuss critical social psychological work on class and what this has offered those seeking to alleviate the problems caused by social and economic inequalities. Finally, the chapter reviews the current ‘state of play’ for critical scholarship in this area, considering future directions for this field of study.

Book Review: Elizabeth Kelan: Performing Gender at Work. New York: Palgrave, 2009, 264pp. £60.00 ISBN 9780230577817 (hbk)

to action. If Jeffreys dismisses some women’s claims that sex work is personally and financially fulfilling, she nonetheless offers a compelling argument that the sex industry is far too often exploitative and cruel. Moreover, the industry’s misogyny affects all women in a society – indeed, a world – where its reach is so extensive, its lure so potent and its ideological foundations so plainly nefarious.