Leaving home: Irish press debates on female employment,domesticity and emigration to Britain in the 1930s

Although Ireland has had a long history of female emigration, the 1930s saw an important shift in emigration patterns. In the context of southern Irish nation-building, the emigration of tens of thousands of young Irish women to Britain raised serious questions about the opportunities and roles of women in the Irish Free State. This article analyses the Irish print media of the 1930s as discursive spaces within which female emigration was repeatedly highlighted and debated. Discussions of female emigration were usually related to issues of female education, female employment and the duties of women within the home. These issues need to be located within the specific context of Irish Free State economics and politics. The Conditions of Employment Act (1936) and the Constitution of 1937 were legislative measures that attempted to define and regulate the role of Irish women. But that is not to imply a simple ideological hegemony in the Free State; I argue that the media debates reveal the competing discourses surrounding women's roles in the newly established nation state. For example, one view was that young women and girls should be given training and preparation for emigration, another view was that plenty of jobs were available at home, while a third view was that women should be content to remain within the domestic sphere. The much-repeated view that women would be better off (at home) illustrates the overlapping constructions of home – domestic sphere – and home – the nation. The overlapping and interconnecting of these home spaces signified a blurring of boundaries that meant Irish women were expected to carry the responsibility for national as well as domestic well-being.     

The impact of adolescent females' assessments of parenthood and employment on plans for the future

Indicators suggest that today's female adolescents will spend a substantial part of their adult lives in the labor force. It is less clear, however, what significance these young women will give to the empolyee role and how they will integrate it with other roles they plan to fill as adults. The present study explores adolescent females' assessments of the rewards and costs of employment and parenthood, and the impact of these assessments on their plans for organizing their adult lives. Five hundred and forty-nine 11th- and 12th-grade females completed questionnaires addressing their future work and fertility plans, characteristics of their family life at present, and their assessments of how rewarding and costly the roles of employee and parent would be to them. Results suggest that daughters of homemakers and daughters of employed women differ in their assessment of each role, and take different factors into consideration when making these assessments. Both groups, however, appear to give priority to the costs of employment when considering how they want to organize their lives as adults. The implications of these assessments for young women's role expectations and future satisfaction are discussed.This research was supported in part by a Faculty Research Grant from Fordham University, New York, New York. The author would like to thank Dr. Toby Tetenbaum for her assistance in the development of the project and data collection, and Dr. Judy Shea and Dr. Michael Johnson for their comments on an earlier draft of the paper.Dr. Leslie received her Ph.D. in Human Development from The Pennsylvania State University. Her current interests are in the area of social networks and family functioning.     

Delinquency: The role of self-esteem and social values

Self-esteem and value orientation are recognized in several theories as important factors in the development of delinquency. In a comparison of these theories, value orientation and different aspects of self-esteem were assessed using an individually administered test battery with male delinquents, marginal delinquents, and nondelinquents. No value orientation or overall self-esteem differences were found. The results are interpreted as generally supportive of the Kaplan theory, which holds that delinquents use psychological defenses to enhance their self-esteem and to retain endorsement of socially accepted values.     

Woman and home in Australia

Jill Julius Matthews, Good and mad women: the historical construction of femininity in twentieth century Australia (George Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1984; Kerreen Reiger, The disenchantment of the home: modernising the Australian family 1880–1940 (Oxford University Press) Melbourne, 1985.     

The relationship of values to identity achievement status

Each of 61 college undergraduates was classified as a high or low scorer based on his score on the Simmons Identity Achievement Status (IAS) scale. Ss from each group also ranked Rokeach's terminal and instrumental values in order of importance. The finding of differential ranking of several values by the high and low IAS Ss was congruent with Erikson's statements regarding the constructs of ego identity and identity diffusion and, in addition, seemed to lend further validity to the IAS scale.Received Ph.D. in 1968 from Syracuse University in the area of school psychology. Major areas of interest are socialization; personalty development in children and adolescents.     

The production of a woman in Andrei Tarkovsky's the sacrifice

In this essay, I explore the semiotics of the terno, the Philippine national dress, creatively interpreted by diasporic artists as a dense metaphor for the proper and improper Filipina. These artistic deployments of the terno lay bare unquestioned notions of Filipina femininity and nationalism to be fabrications of colonialism, militarization and globalization. The reconfigurations of the infamous “butterfly dress” by multimedia artist groups Barrionics and Mail Order Brides (M.O.B.) take center stage in my discussion. The genealogy of the terno I focus on in this article emphasizes alteration and transformation, to resist facile binaries of the nation as traditional and the diaspora as the site of modern and innovative modifications. My historicization of the terno underscores it as an emergent form in which to situate the uses of the terno in Filipino American performance projects within the history of the terno itself. Specifically, the essay focuses on the defamiliarization of feminine constructs that operate both in the nation and the diaspora, as well as to foreground the imbrications of colonial histories and our neocolonial present in the current global circulation of Filipina bodies. I highlight how these artists in the Filipino diaspora spectacularize the inchoateness of categories of gender, race and sexuality. Their performance works delink the dressee from the dress, the terno from the Filipina, the dress from the girl and the boy, the dress from the straight and from the queer, the dress from the diasporic and from the national. Within such figurations, the terno emerges as an overprivileged icon – of ideal womanhood and of the mother nation – whose iconicity is re-routed through bodies that do not belong.     

The value of physical change in adolescence: Consequences for the parent-adolescent exchange relationship

This research examines the effects of specific physical changes associated with puberty on peer and parent relationships of early and middle adolescent white boys. The data used are from a longitudinal study of Milwaukee school children conducted by Simmons and Blyth (1979). On the basis of past research, most of the physical changes that occur during puberty were expected to increase peer status. According to Richer's (1968) exchange model, these positive effects in the domain of peer relations should, in turn, reduce the resource dependency of the adolescent on his parents. As a result, greater independence from parents should ensue and the likelihood of conflict should increase. As expected, significant positive relationships were found for the effects of various physical changes on most peer status variables and independence from parents. However, no significant relationships were found for the effects of physical changes on parent-adolescent relationship quality or conflict with parents. Also contrary to expectations, controlling for changes in peer status did not alter the positive effects of physical change on independence from parents. Finally, tests for interactions showed that the parent-adolescent relationship was negatively affected when parents did not grant greater independence to the physically changing adolescent. In conclusion, it is suggested that while resource dependencies may indeed change during puberty, parents alter their expectations for their children and grant greater independence based on the adolescent's physical appearance alone.An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations, New Orleans, 1989. It is based on the author's doctoral dissertation, submitted to the University of Minnesota.The author has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Minnesota. He is currently analyzing data from the recently completed National Survey of Families and Households on dating and remarriage in later life. He is also continuing his analysis on the data set used here to explore changes in the factor structure of orientations to parents and peers as a result of pubertal and other early adolescent transitions.     

The effects of the Yom Kippur War on values of Israeli female students

The Rokeach Terminal Value Scale and an attitude questionnaire were administered to two similar groups of female Israeli students before and after the Yom Kippur War. The second group also responded to a questionnaire about the effects of the war on the importance attributed to each of the values. The results were as follow: (a) Subjects stated that after the war 14 out of the 18 values in the Rokeach list increased in importance. (b) The war brought about a significant increase in the relative importance (rank) of 4 values (Pleasure, National Security, Happiness, and Mature Love), and a significant decrease in Equality. (c) No attitude change was found in respect to issues related to the war itself. (d) Values accounted for a smaller percent of the variance in attitudes after the war than they did before it. In view of these findings it is suggested that a distinction be made between relative and absolute importance within a value system.Received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Fields of interest include cognitive processes, psychology of mathematics education, and evaluation.Recieved his Ph.D. from the Committee on Human Development, the University of Chicago. Fields of interest include motivation and moral development.     

Midlife,adolescence, and parental employment in family systems

Parents' midlife concerns and the resolution of those concerns were examined as a function of their children's adolescence and their involvement in employment via analyses acknowledging the interdependence of mothers and fathers. Multivariate analyses of variance results demonstrated that fathers' and mothers' midlife concerns were similar and modestly related to their children's pubertal development. There were significant differences between families of sons and of daughters. Mothers' and fathers' temporal and emotional involvement in paid work were differentially related to their own and to one another's midlife concerns. Finally, the relationships among parents' midlife concerns, work involvement, and children's pubertal status depended in part on the degree to which spouses felt supported by one another.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 1989.Received Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University. Research interests: work-family relationships, men's and women's development during midlife, and work-family issues in small businesses.Received Ph.D. from Cornell University. Research interests: relationships between work and family life in families with school-aged and adolescent children.     

The Work of Memory: embodiment,materiality and home in Jeanne Bouvier's autobiographical writings

In this paper I follow trails in the memory of work by reading the books and papers of Jeanne Bouvier, a French seamstress, ardent trade-unionist and passionate writer, who left a rich body of labour literature including four published historical studies, as well as the memoirs of her life, work and struggles. Work, action and creativity are three interrelated planes on which Bouvier situates herself, while memory and imagination are interwoven in the way she seeks to understand herself in the world with others. What emerges as a particularly striking theme from Bouvier's papers is a material matrix of mnemonic and imaginary practices, wherein bodies, places and objects are entangled in the narrative constitution of the self of the woman worker/writer.     

The rewriting of home: Autobiographies by daughters of immigrants

This article will explore the autobiographies of three writers who were daughters of immigrants (Audre Lorde, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Eva Hoffman), focusing on the connections between the autobiographers and their parents' place of origin. I will argue that this takes the form of a myth of origin: the autobiographers recreate a magical homeland, or the strong emotions of a childhood that resembles a lost paradise. However, they also show the fraught relationship between daughters of immigrants and this place of origin: for all autobiographers who are second-generation immigrants, “home” can never be fully recovered, but has to be reclaimed and rewritten. On the other hand, Lorde and Kingston, as feminist autobiographers, contest the patriarchal traditions that prevail in their place of origin. They fashion a matrilineal tradition of strong ancestresses that challenges the tradition of fathers and sustains them against the isolation they encounter in the diaspora.     

remembering home: nation and identity in the recent writing of Doris Lessing

In the UK, the writing of Doris Lessing has frequently been associated with left-wing politics and the second-wave feminist movement. Critics have concentrated primarily on issues of class and gender and have focused their attention on novels published in the 1950s and 1960s. This essay suggests that Lessing's work is over-ripe for reassessment in relation to ideas from post-colonial theory. Her writing repeatedly addresses questions about national identity and its imbrications with ‘race’. These ideas intersect in complex ways with her more familiar analysis of gender and class. This essay discusses Lessing's recent novel The Sweetest Dream (2001), which was widely read as an attack on the political idealism of the 1960s. It relates the novel to her collection of essays, African Laughter (1992), her recent essay on the situation in Zimbabwe, ‘The Jewel of Africa’ (2003) and the second volume of her autobiography, Walking in the Shade (1997). Zimbabwe (previously Southern Rhodesia) is of crucial importance in these works. The article explores how Lessing makes use of notions of city, home and memory that can be instructively compared with some of Toni Morrison's ideas in her novel Beloved (1987) and the essays ‘Home’ (1998) and ‘The Site of Memory’ (1990). Lessing revises the notion of ‘home’ so that it becomes capable of both recognizing racial and national differences and moving outside them. She also interprets memory as productive for the individual and the nation only when it becomes, as Morrison would say, ‘rememory’: when it can acknowledge the importance of imagination in dealing with trauma and thus suggest the fluctuating, mobile status of identity. The article demonstrates that similar ideas about home and memory are present in her fiction, essay and autobiography, indicating that her intention is to explore generic classification and blur the boundaries between different methods of writing personal and political history. Lessing's work strongly suggests the possibility that apparently ‘fictional’ writings may be more fruitful than ostensibly factual ones in allowing individuals and nations to make sense of their immediate pasts.     

Female education and full-time employment in Guinea: an ambiguous relationship

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the direct and indirect effects of female education on full-time labour market employment using Guinean demographic and health surveys. It addresses potential endogeneity of female education, unobserved heterogeneity and sample selectivity concerns using the control function model and a non-self-cluster identification strategy. Results show that female education has a diminishing direct effect on full-time employment, with the inverted-U-shaped relationship portraying that women with seven-plus years of schooling are less likely to be regularly employed than their counterparts with less years of schooling. Interacting female education and its square with the corresponding reduced form residuals increase the probability of full-time labour market employment – an indication that female education and unobserved correlates are complementary. Thus, highly educated Guinea women do not increase their full-time market engagements – a pointer of the importance they may be attributing to home-produced goods and services that push them to perhaps prefer flexi-work arrangements such as occasional or seasonal market engagements.