The women's movement in Bulgaria in a life story

This article is a first attempt to research the activity of Dimitrana Ivanova, one of the most prominent Bulgarian feminists and, for almost two decades, chairwoman of the major feminist organisation in the country, the Bulgarian Women's Union (founded in 1901). It explores the social conditions of her life and provides a perspective for the understanding of gender relations in modern Bulgarian history. The article highlights the key issues that were addressed by the women's movement in Bulgaria as well as the international context in which Bulgarian feminism was situated.     

Memories of menarche: Age,preparation, and prior knowledge as determinants of initial menstrual experience

The relationships between age at menarche, preparation for menarche, and initial experience of menarche, were assessed in a retrospective questionnaire administered to 97 college-aged women. The more knowledgeable a girl was prior to menarche, the more adequate she perceived her preparation for menarche to have been; and the older she was at the time of menarche, the more likely she was to report a positive initial experience. These data support clinical anecdotes describing initial responses to menarche, and provide information about the factors which can moderate the extent to which menarche is experienced as a traumatic and disruptive event.Portions of this research were presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Hartford, Conn., April 1980.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Tufts University. Major interests are psychobiology and adolescent development.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Clark University. Major interests are clinical psychology and personality development.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. Major interest is cognitive development.     

“She's not really a woman, she's half a man”: Gendered discourses of embodiment in a French farming community

This paper is about constructions of embodiment in farming families in a community of the Aveyron region in Southern France. More particularly, it explores how the discursive representation of women's bodies both reproduces and legitimates unequal gender relations between women and men on the farm and in the local community. It is argued here that gender is constituted through the ways in which individuals live and construct their bodies within a particular social, cultural, and economic context. But because what is constructed as masculine is valued over what is constructed as feminine, women's bodies and abilities are inferiorised and devalued. In the farming context discussed in this paper, farm women are never seen as having bodies which enable them to farm in the same terms as men. Women's work on the farm is seen as only secondary and complementary to that of farmers in the same way that women's bodies are seen to be lacking in masculine attributes which are defined as central to farming. So that even when women show that they can run farms by themselves and do work which is usually defined as masculine, they are either represented as only being able to do so because they have male help, or because their bodies and attributes do not conform to culturally constructed heterosexual norms of femininity.     

Self-reported delinquency and home life: Evidence from a sample of British girls

This study examines the correlation between family variables and delinquency (both self-reported and official) in a small sample of British teenage girls. Factor analysis of the 72-item Home Life Questionnaire (from T. H. Hirschi [1969] Causes of Delinquency, University of California Press, Berkeley) revealed a clear four-factor structure of caring and communication, discipline, pressure and mother-daughter closeness, which cumulatively accounted for 31% of the variance. Multiple regression of these factors onto self-reported delinquency indicated the maternal factor to be most powerful, explaining 25% of the variance in self-reported delinquency. Institutionalized and noninstitutionalized girls showed only chance differences in terms of the quality of their home life.Anne Campbell's research interests are in sex differences in antisocial behavior, especially aggression.     

Two models of infant welfare in the first half of the twentieth century: New Zealand and the USA

In New Zealand, as elsewhere in the Western world in the early twentieth century, maternal and infant health became a national concern and the task of organising health services was taken up by women in a voluntary capacity. In the USA this culminated in the Sheppard-Towner (Maternity and Infancy) Act of 1921. However, within a decade American paediatricians had assumed control of the services. By contrast, the services in New Zealand remained in the hands of a female-run voluntary organisation, the Plunket Society. From the foundation of the Society in 1907, health services for mothers and their infants became the site of territorial disputes between various health providers – the Health Department, the Plunket Society and paediatricians. This article explores why and how the Plunket Society managed to retain control of this important area of public health in the face of challenges by these other health providers. It will be argued that the reasons relate to the tenacity with which the ‘maternalists’ claimed the territory as their own, their informal access to channels of power, their public support, and their success in maintaining medical respectability through their own honorary and paid professional staff.     

Adolescents' self-perceptions of competence in life skill areas

The perceptions of a sample of 1061 adolescents of their own competence in a number of life-skill areas were assessed. Three sets of scales were used—those concerned with competence viewed as efficacy in various life areas and situations, those concerned with competence as the satisfaction of goals based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and assessments of the structural complexity of performance on a short essay task. In addition to comparisons among self-perceptions for different areas, a number of major comtextual and personal variables was studied for differences in self-perceptions—course type, school type, state, career aspirations and expectations, major life concerns, age, and gender. There were strong gender differences that suggested that females generally underrated their own competence. The major educational or work contexts reflected important differences in patterns of self perceptions of skill. Differences between those with different major life concerns and career hopes and expectations aligned with course type differences. Finally, there were strong indications that the self-perceptions of competence that were reported formed a strong general factor, favoring the notion of generic over domain specific self-perceptions.Reveived Ph.D. in Socio- and psycholinguistics from La Trobe Unitersity. Research interests include youth and adolescence and social policy.Received Ph.D. in educational psychology from University of Queensland. Research interests include adolescent life skills and learning and cognition.     

Some problems of constructing and reconstructing a suffragette's life: Mary Richardson,suffragette, socialist and fascist

Abstract

Drawing on recent work on feminist autobiography, this article discusses the ways in which a range of autobiographical writing was used by Mary Richardson, a former suffragette, at different stages of her life. It considers the ways in which autobiography was rewritten to fit various political circumstances and to suggest political continuity and cohesion. The article explores the role of the historian in analysing her writing and raises questions about the use of autobiography in history.     

Introduction: The changing life space of early adolescence

The socialization of children and adolescents is shaped by how they spend their time. This special issue maps the daily experience of white American 5th–9th graders, describing both the quantities of time they spend in different contexts and the affective states associated with these contexts. Each paper examines a separate segment of daily activity (e.g., schoolwork, talking, sports), employing data from a common study in which 401 participants provided experience sampling reports at random times during their daily lives when cued by a pager. The findings show substantial age and sex differences, indicating significant changes in the daily life space of girls and boys between preadolescence and early adolescence. Implication for socialization to healthy adult adjustment in love, work, and play are discussed in each paper.Received Ph.D. from Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago, Research focuses on daily experience associated with health and psychopathology in adolescence and across the life span.Received Ph.D. from Committee on Human Development, University of Chicago. Current research interests: pubertal development, precursors of eating disorders, and the effects of maternal employment on young adolescents.