Browsing by Subject "gender"

The aims of this study are to determine the prevalence of clinically apparent orolabial herpes and the rate of recrudescence in the Finnish population. As a secondary aim we evaluate the significance of sociodemographic, health-related and other factors previously associated with the disease. The study sample was collected from the Finnish population register office using simple random sampling. A mailed questionnaire was sent to 3200 adults and 1000 children in 1989-1990. Response rate was excellent. In the adult study sample (15-65 years old) the lifetime prevalence of recurrent herpes labialis is 19.4%. Over 60% of cases have 1-3 relapses per year. Family background and health factors are found to be independent predictive factors for recurrent herpes labialis: mother (OR 3.38; 95% CI 2.35 – 4.86), chapped lips (OR 3.28; 95% CI 2.39 - 4.49). A larger proportion of women than men have the disease (OR 2.17; 95% CI 1.70 – 2.77). In order to develop the management of the disease further studies on the role of factors affecting the clinical manifestation, symptomatic and asymptomatic latency reactivation are needed.

Teacher burnout has negative consequences on an individual, transactional and organizational levels between teachers and pupils. Compared to other fields, the educational field experiences higher levels of burnout. Previous studies indicate that burnout is connected to turnover, withdrawal, pupils’ motivation, and problems in the working community in addition to the individual’s health. The burnout symptoms have been found to differ in gender, career phase, academic level, socio- economic level of the neighborhood and organization size. Previous research has found that burnout crossover happens from an individual to another across the teacher community. The buffering and exposing attributes concerning the crossover of teacher burnout have been studied rather little. The aim of this research is to discover which individual, transactional and organizational attributes could potentially buffer or expose to the crossover of burnout. Research data was gathered as a part of a wider, national research project called School Matters by the members of the Learning and Development in School research group (Pietarinen, Pyhältö & Soini, 2017). The participants were selected from six different areas. Altogether 1531 teachers from primary, secondary and combined schools completed the questionnaire. The teachers were divided into groups based on their gender, academic level, the level of socio-economic status (SES) of the school neighborhood, career phase and school size. Individual, transactional and organizational factors’ connection to the burnout symptoms were examined through correlations, t-test and One-way analysis of variance. Results indicate that on average the teachers are doing quite well and experience quite moderate levels of burnout. Even so, quite many of them reported higher and lower levels of the symptoms. The symptoms correlate positively with each other. Based on the research findings it can be suggested that individual attributes, including male gender and higher number of years in the profession, buffer from the crossover of burnout. In addition, the higher socio-economic status (SES) of the school neighborhood – a transactional attribute – and smaller school size – an organizational attribute – also act as buffers. On the other hand, exposing attributes include the female gender, less years in the profession, lower socio-economic status of the school neighborhood and large school size. The result may be generalized to the Finnish teaching community as a whole because the research population was large and the geographical distribution of the population was comprehensive.

This thesis examines the role of the three female protagonists in Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun. The thesis argues against the interpretation of the play as pro-integration and assimilationist and posits instead that there is an inherent radicalism in the play that reflects the feminist and political views of its author. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the feminist themes are highlighted through the three female protagonists of Raisin: Ruth, Beneatha and Lena Younger. In order to further assess these themes, the 1959 play is contrasted with three screen adaptations, by Daniel Petrie (1961), Bill Duke (1989), and Kenny Leon (2008). This comparison is carried out with a particular focus on how the protagonists are represented in these adaptations. The thesis begins with a discussion of the historical context in which the play was written, set and performed for the first time. This is followed by a discussion of Hansberry’s biographical background, in order to contextualise and clarify her political beliefs so as to better support the main arguments in the thesis. These arguments are also supported by the works of the Black feminist scholars Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, and Tricia Rose. The thesis examines the play and each of the three screen adaptations separately, presenting a close literary analysis of the play before contrasting it with the three films. The literary analysis discusses three core aspects of the play that serve as a rejection of racist and patriarchal values: the rejection of the American dream; the domestic sphere of the play; and the subversion of racialised gender roles and stereotypes. This analysis highlights the ways in which Black women experience a specific form of double oppression due to their race and gender, an experience that is reinforced by the use of racialised gender roles and stereotypes. This thesis argues, however, that Hansberry uses the female protagonists to reject these roles and the racist and sexist ideology from which they stem. The film analysis places the films within their temporal and socio-cultural contexts to observe how they reflect, highlight or undermine the three core aspects discussed in the literary analysis. This analysis reveals the significant role played by context in producing starkly different representations of the female protagonists. The analysis of these works, written and visual, demonstrates the enduring significance of Hansberry’s famous play, which continues to be revived and performed. The conclusion underlines the importance of challenging representations that perpetuate racist and sexist ideologies, and of granting agency to groups that have long been under- or misrepresented across mediums.

This thesis is a part of Development through Sports discussion, particularly from gender perspective and its effort to improve women’s position and status in developing countries by using sport as a tool. The study aims to depict the position and effects produced by gender in the field of sport and education by the means of ethnography. The perspective of the study is holistic in its attempt to acknowledge the impact of Tanzanian society, economy and politics for girls’ and women’s position within sport and education. The study was carried out with 7-week long fieldwork in a Tanzanian teacher training college. The college was a boarding school and the study focused mainly on students of physical education. The data of the study was collected with participant observation, informal discussions, semistructured thematic interviews and structured survey questionnaire. Also study material used in the college was collected, such as course outlines and directions given to the students. The interviews were analysed with thematic analyse. The space of girls and women in the masculine field of sport in Tanzania is narrow and challenging. For sociocultural reasons, it is difficult for women to obtain the motorical and psychosocial skills needed in teaching physical education in childhood and youth. It is more difficult for girls and women to have access and to move in masculine spaces that in addition to sport and sporting fields, is salaried work done outside home. Salaried work is necessary for financing the studies, but acquiring the money has moral effects. The morally acceptable financiers of women’s education are families – fathers and husbands mainly. Moral conflicts are caused if a woman acquires the funding through transactional sex and/or uneducated, physical labour. By moving in these masculine, independent spaces of sport and money, the morality and value of a woman can be questioned and thus inhibit the development of women’s position in society and women’s financial independence.

Social and cultural interaction is a very important aspect of the modern society. Body modifications are a clear sample of this kind of interaction. The process of body modifying has been started as a cultural issue many ages ago and remains current nowadays. The thesis explores modern nature of body modifications in terms of Helsinki, Finland. Body modifications are the phenomenon that has always existed in the human civilization and it should be studied properly as any developing social tendency. That research covers such aspects as motivation and inspiration for having a body modification and relation of the modern society to body modified people. The research is conducted in 2016-2018 in Helsinki. I used qualitative research method in order to analyze deeper every particular case. The base of the research is ten personal interviews conducted on the same questionnaire. The respondents have different gender, age, professional area and personal background, the only common point for them is living in Helsinki at the moment of the interview. The questionnaire consists of eight questions. The first questions explore the modifications that the respondent has: the age when the respondent got the first modification, the motivation for body modifying, the meaning and kind of current body modification. The second part of the questionnaire explores the respondent’s personal aspects. Facing criticism in the society, relationship with a family and friends, identity formation in terms of the body modifying and regret issues are in the list of questions. The interviews also divided according to gender factor. Five of the interviews are male and five are female. The gender factor has a great influence on the research. The interviews were analyzed in two groups, female and male. The results of each group were compared for the comparative analysis. The comparative analysis showed that women face criticism toward their appearance more often than men and stereotypes on the base of appearance are also more connected with femininity image. There is also a correlation between the gender and location, size or kind of a body modification that the respondents have. In terms of that research I explored so-called “the blue disease” that means addiction to the process of modifying body. According to the results, the age when the first body modification was made might have effect on following inclination to “the blue disease”. For proving of my hypothesis I used other sources in the field of tattoos and gender studies. Its overview and correlation between these studies and my research helped me to clarify the data I collected from the interviews. At its broadest, we can say that society becomes more and more tolerant to body modified people though some gender related stereotypes are still exist. Body modifications develop and change. Its historical sacral and social meaning remains in some way but nowadays body modifications are more about the perception of beauty and ways of self-expression. New kinds of body modifications such as eye balls tattoo or silicone implants appear often, so the body modification phenomenon will remain current for a long time.

Anti-gender movements that oppose women’s and LGBTQI+ rights have gained more support and visibility in Europe during the last ten years. These movements pose a threat to human rights as well as liberal democratic values as they depict feminist policies and the promotion of gender and sexual equality as a threatening “gender ideology”. Understanding how anti-gender discourses are constructed and employed is essential to addressing their influence in society. This Master’s thesis tackles this issue in the Finnish context. This study provides a nuanced understanding of how the notions of gender and sex are discursively constructed in the texts of a Finnish anti-gender organisation, Aito Avioliitto. Moreover, this Master’s thesis examines how the distinction constructed between gender and sex differs from the one made in feminist theory. The empirical material of this study consists of a sample of texts published on the website of Aito Avioliitto. Critical Discourse Analysis, which focuses on the relationship between language and power, is applied to analyse these texts. Moreover, the social constructionist theory of knowledge and feminist theories of gender and sex provide the theoretical framework for the analysis. The results of the analysis are categorised into three discourses: the discourse of “natural sex”, the discourse of “ideological gender” and the discourse of “deviant transgender”. Through these discourses Aito Avioliitto constructs sex as a purely biological, binary and permanent category; gender as an ideological and threatening notion that is used for immoral purposes; and transgender as deviance from normal, caused by “gender ideology”. These discourses disregard and oppose feminist theorising which has for decades problematised naturalistic attitudes concerning sex and explored the variety of sex and gender. The findings of this Master’s thesis propose that the anti-gender discourses employed by Aito Avioliitto reproduce and enforce unequal gender relations in Finnish society. Through the identified discourses, Aito Avioliitto positions people in unequal relations depending on their gender identities. Moreover, Aito Avioliitto’s discourses relate to current social struggles, such as the trans law reform. By depicting “gender ideology” and transgender as a threat to society, Aito Avioliitto legitimises neglecting trans rights in Finland.

In my master’s thesis (pro gradu) I analyze three novels that are set in the future: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, The Circle by Dave Eggers, and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. I suggest that while the novels share a great deal of tropes with such dystopian classics as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Geroge Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Yevgeni Zamyatin’s Мы (trans. We), they also differ from these novels to a significant degree. For this reason, I suggest approaching them as corporatocratic dystopias. In the analysis of generic dystopian characteristics in the novels, I refer to Erica Gottlieb’s (2001) notions of dystopian fiction. Another important literary concept in my study is satire, in the analysis of which I refer to Dustin H. Griffin’s (1994) views on satire as a playful and questioning genre. Central for all dystopias is the notion of a dystopian waning: the implied author of a dystopia exaggerates and ridicules in order to warn a contemporaneous reader against dystopian developments that take place in the reader’s own reality. The elementary difference between the three novels I analyze and Gottlieb’s characterizations concerns the novels’ description of tyranny. Traditionally, dystopias depict the supremacy of a state or a political party. In the novels I investigate in my thesis, the negative developments that take place in society are closely linked to the fact that corporations have gained power at the cost of political rulers, i.e. to the birth of a corporatocracy. I approach the question of power with the help of Antonio Gramsci’s (1975/1992) two dimensions of power: hegemony and dominance. I argue that unlike earlier dystopias, in which tyranny manifests itself in coercive deeds of dominance, the kind of corporatocracy the three novels depict functions to a great extent through hegemony, which is based on consent. In the three novels, corporations renew and uphold their power by maintaining excessive consumerism and mediatisation in society. In the analysis of these developments, I turn to Jürgen Habermas’ (1962/1989) views on mediatisation, and to Jean Baudrillard’s (1970/1998 and 1981/1994) and Joseph D. Rumbo’s (2002) conceptions on consumer society. The effects of consumerism penetrate also the private sphere in the novels, and thus questions about the body, sex, gender and sexuality are central to my thesis. Additionally, the novels seem to suggest that corporatocracy threatens reciprocity and togetherness between people, and alienates them from nature and from religion. I approach these themes with the help of Baudrillard’s theorisations on the body in consumer culture and Luce Irigaray’s (1985) discussions on patriarchy and women as commodities. The central outcome of my study is that the characters in the novels do not merely appear as identifiable victims of corporatocracy, or as fearless heroes who challenge the tyranny. Rather, as members of their fictional societies, the characters also contribute to the establishment of corporatocracy. I suggest that the dystopian warning all three novels eventually communicate leads directly to the behaviour, norms and ideologies of the characters, and finally, to human nature. Thus, through their characters, the implied authors of these novels encourage their readers to critically assess also their own roles as members of society.

This thesis answers to a question “Why adolescent girls drop out of school in Northern Uganda?” In Uganda, approximately 70% of the children drop out of public school before 7th grade, the final year of primary school. In northern Uganda, girls drop out of school in more significant numbers than boys, and it happens around the age when girls reach puberty. Northern Uganda is also a particular location because it is recovering from long conflict, affecting strongly the whole population living in the area. The thesis is based on two-month ethnographic fieldwork in northern Uganda during the spring of 2015. To answer the main research question this study seeks to analyse it through taking a look how the school, the community and the girls themselves experience and talk about dropping out, education and growing up in the current post-conflict state of the social life. The thesis argues that the dropout rate is linked to the adolescence as life-stage of becoming an adult that is making the girls to make decisions about the future. The analysis is done through three different perspectives – the educational, societal and personal narratives of the youth. The first perspective is the education and schooling in northern Uganda. It explores the concept of ’educated person’ by Levinson and Holland through sexual education and gender in education. The study shows that Ugandan public primary and secondary education is deriving its ideas and understanding of educated person from the national curriculum, which often conflict with the local concepts of the educated person in the Acholi community, influencing the blamed and real reasons for dropping out. The second perspective looks into the community and the societal pressures the girls are facing when growing up. It will describe family, kinship, marriage and gender in post-conflict context and show how in these areas of life, the past conflict, “loss of culture”, generational conflicts and subsequent disobedience are presented as reasons behind the challenges to stay in school. The third perspective tells the stories of the girls met and talked to during the ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Uganda. It answers the question “What is happening in the life of a girl when she drops out of school?”. It is argued that the girls take actions of a gendered agency to further their lives and become adults. Thus, dropping out of school cannot just be explained as a simple event just suddenly happening without their own will. It will further answer the question “What makes some girls stay in school?” to show how those girls still in school manage the crosscurrents of growing up in Acholiland. The thesis argues that the girls in northern Uganda are active appropriators and social agents who through their own actions contest, struggle and penetrate the structures in their society while also at the same time reproduce them. In Northern Uganda, both the community and the state together with different international agencies will have plans and expectations for the girls’ future. The study shows how the girls navigate the school, community and peer expectations and sociocultural and economic structures to stay or finally drop out of school. These structures are state organised and aid-infused formal schooling and society in amidst of post-conflict recovery which creates a framework where the girls are acting. The school presents the modern and globally orientated educated person, and in contrast to it, the community is looking for to restore ‘traditional’ way of life. It is argued that these two sides are often in conflict and in the middle of this conflict the girls act and solve their way out of it, looking for adulthood and gaining respectable status in the society. The schools, the community and even sometimes the development actors see the girls as passively following the things they will encounter. The thesis will show that they are not. The girls either stay in school or drop out of it, but more often as a consequence of their own decisions and actions than passively because the school or the community could not support them. It is demonstrated that dropping out of school looks more of line a tactic for the future as a respectable grown-up than mere problem to be solved.

The past decades witness a dramatic increase in Chinese student migrants, particularly women. This study focuses on Chinese female student migrants in Japan who are from intermediate and lower middle class urban families and examines how they renegotiate and challenge the gendered expectations of their family and society and achieve mobility through educational migration. On one hand, because of the one-child policy and reform and opening up, sons and daughters have relatively equal access to educational resources. They are encouraged to be self-reliant, cosmopolitan, and independent individuals. On the other hand, they still face a normatively gendered life circle, such as marriage. Three lenses are used to understand the life experience: positionality, transnationalism, and mobility. Education is the key to migration and mobility. The mobility in their transnational journey is gendered, both in terms of its causes and consequences. This study tells a story of “finding a way out”. From the geographical aspect, it is a way out of their hometown, and from a gendered viewpoint, it is a way out of the gendered maze of modernity and tradition which breaks the gender norms and creates their own lives. However, migration does not solve the gender problem, and the maze of modernity and tradition transcends national borders. As a woman, a new employee, and a foreigner, they face a new set of challenge abroad. Even though there is no answer to liberation, they depict their lives with autonomies and agencies.

Tutkielma käsittelee sukupuolirooleja ja poliittisia teemoja joita ilmenee 1960-luvun yhdysvaltalaisissa supersankarisarjakuvissa. Tutkielmassa alkuperäisaineistona käytän kahden yhdysvaltalaisen sarjakuvajulkaisijan, Marvelin ja DC:n, sarjakuvia. Nämä sarjakuvat ovat Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, The Avengers, Action Comics, Batman, Detective Comics, Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane, Wonder Woman, ja World’s Finest. Sarjakuvien tulkitsemisen apuna käytän joitakin kulttuurintutkimuksen ja sukupuolentutkimuksen teorioita. Näistä tärkeimmät tutkielman sisällön kannalta ovat käsitteet sukupuolesta, feminiinisyydestä ja maskuliinisuudesta. Esittelen lyhyesti sarjakuvateollisuuden historian Yhdysvalloissa noin 1930-luvulta 1960-luvulle, jonka jälkeen tulkitsen alkuperäisainestoani. Supersankarisarjakuvissa esiintyy lähinnä valkoihoisia, keskiluokkaisia amerikkalaisia sankareita, jotka taistelivat rikollisuutta ja kommunismia vastaan. Suurimmaksi osaksi tarinat esittävät perinteisiä sukupuolirooleja ja länsimaisia arvoja. Kommunismi on tarinoissa paha, ja vain amerikkalaiset sankarit pystyvät tehokkaasti vastustamaan sen uhkaa. Latinalaisen Amerikan kansat ja kaikki alkuperäiskansat delegoidaan toissijaiseen asemaan, ja heidän ei anneta päättää asioistaan itse. Amerikkalaisten supersankareiden puuttuminen muiden maiden asioihin esitetään kiistatta hyvänä asiana. Suurin osa hahmoista on valkoihoisia, ja kaikki ei-valkoihoiset hahmot ovat usein stereotyyppisiä ja yksiulotteisia hahmoja. Maskuliinisuus liittyy erottamattomasti isänmaallisuuteen ja valmiuteen puolustaa länsimaisia arvoja ja demokratiaa. Feminiinisyys sitoutuu vahvasti avioliittoon, perheyksikköön ja huolenpitoon. Vaikka kaikki hahmot voivatkin saada feminiinisiä ja maskuliinisia ominaisuuksia, naishahmot saavat harvoin olla yhtä vahvoja ja kykeneviä kuin heidän miespuoliset kollegansa. Naispuoliset supersankarit joutuvat usein kamppailemaan feminiinisten ominaisuuksiensa kanssa. Mieshahmot taas kamppailevat vahvistaakseen jatkuvasti omia maskuliinisia ominaisuuksiaan, ja torjuakseen feminiiniset vaikutukset. Miesten homososiaaliset suhteet asetetaan etusijalle miesten ja naisten välisiin suhteisiin nähden, koska mieshenkilöiden on rajoitettava feminiinistä vaikutusta elämässään. Miespuoliset supersankarit kammoavat erityisesti avioliittoa. Tästä huolimatta kuvatut suhteet ovat heteronormatiivisia, ja kustantajat eivät halua esittää homoseksuaalisuutta. Kertomuksissa vahvistetaankin konservatiivisia arvoja, ja supersankarit ovat yhteiskunnan auktoriteettien kanssa samalla puolella.