In this project I have created a design for the delivery rooms of Swedish hospitals with the psychological aspects ofbirthgiving in focus. This is something that I think the delivery rooms lack and so far it has been the midwifes job to,without any tools, give the women in labor the mental support and encouragement they need.My goal was to give the midwifes a tool to work with when it comes to encouragement, something helping themhelping the woman to feel safe and relaxed, strengthened, informed and in control of the situation.I choose to focus on the difficulties measuring the physical work the woman in labour had done and what was leftof the labour. I wanted to visualize the process of the birth, allowing the woman to see and being able to focus onwhere during the labour she is, how far she has left and also being strengthened by the amount of work already managed.Further I wanted to make the woman feel invited to take control over the birth and the room in which she isin labour. I wanted her to be able ? if she wanted ? to make her own settings of the mood in the room, deciding forherself if she wanted a more relaxed environment or perhaps a more energetic.

Background: The abortion issue raises many ethical, moral and religious aspectsand is therefore well debated worldwide. In the care for an abortion seeking woman, it isimportant that the nurse find a balance between her and the woman's moral opinions aboutabortion in the quest to achieve good care.Aim: The aim of this study was to describe nurses? experiences of caring for womenundergoing abortion.Methods: Literature review based on ten original articles.Results: Literature review's results highlights two key themes: nurse?s experience of anemotional roller coaster as well as difficulties and challenging experiences at work inabortion care. These two themes consists of three subthemes: to get support in the workthrough to vent thoughts and feelings, how strain and stress affects the nurse's work and as anurse learn to accept the woman?s choice.Discussions: Within abortion care nurses find it difficult dealing with theemotional roller coaster that can occur while they strive to maintain an ethical andprofessional approach.

Abstract in EnglishElsa Grave (1918-2003) is a Swedish writer, artist and composer. The aim of my study is to analyse the female character in Mödrar som vargar, (Mothers As Wolves), which is a collection of poems written in 1972.The analysis is divided into four parts. First I analyse the figures of speech of the female ?I? in the poems. In the second part I`m dealing with how she acts and relates to men.

This essay examines the Alberte triology, by the Norwegian writer Cora Sandel, from a gender/feminist perspective. Taking Yvonne Hirdman's theory about the gender system as a starting point I will show how the living conditions and the different roles of men and women are represented in the novel and how they are changing during the centuries before and after the First World War.I am particularly interested in Alberte, the main character, what attitude she takes to her position in the gender system and in what way she differs from the traditional female model. Is she a New Woman, a different ?species?, who doesn't fit into the rigid gender system? Does the New Woman have a male counterpart, and is he to be found in the novel? Does the novel give a positive vision of a future where men and women can meet as equals?.

There are many researching studies to be found that describes how media relates to men and women differently. Even if it?s a newspaper research or a magazine research they all display the same information. That there are differences in the way that women and men are described or portrayed in articles and pictures. Most of these gender studies are made on a basis of magazines that are mainly intended to men or to women.

Introduction: All women can be subjected to intimate personal violence by theirpartner, but the older woman's vulnerability to violence is not highlighted in research.Consequences of violence can be severe and it is essential from a public healthperspective to explore the issue even for the older woman. Objective: The objective ofthe study was to generate a deeper understanding of the problems of older woman'svulnerability to violence by their spouse / partner. The research questions focused onwhat characterized their situation and how a gender perspective can illuminate theproblem. Method: A structured search for scientific studies was carried out in thedatabases: Pubmed, Cinahl, PsykArticles and Scopus in the area of interest. A qualityassessment of the articles was preformed and 12 qualitative studies were included in thestudy.

This bachelor thesis is based on interviews with staff from three Egyptian NGOs in Cairo during the spring of 2013. The study examines how three Egyptian NGOs discuss the woman?s situation within the Islamic legal discourse in the contemporary Egypt. The empiric material was analysed through a theoretical framework of gender in Islam, and a discussion of the concept of human rights laws in a local context.The respondents emphasize the societies gender stereotypes as obstacles in the discussion regarding women?s rights.

This thesis highlights starting points underlying the notions of two feminist utopians, Christine de Pizan and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In approaching their texts, it focuses on the notions central to understand their writings. These would be historical, social, and cultural contexts. Defining concepts as utopian in its varying forms and feminism has been of significance. A feministic approach grounded in Simone de Beauvoirs philosophical phenomenology in the study of feministic utopia's visibility, has contributed to the understanding of the power structures to which women are tethered. In order to understand the way women are presented, it has become obvious that The Book of the City of Ladies and Herland are literary works that are related not only by their authors? background and personality but by the society in which they lived. Through their engagement in the contemporary intellectual debate on all social planes, both authors contributed to shifting the focus of their own contemporary notions of a woman to the notion of a woman equal to men. Woman, in Christine de Pizans utopia, is given specific properties and through themes of issues given meaning. She is not free in the sense that Simone de Beauvoir says.  She has a broader repertoire than was historically assigned, but her freedom is not arbitrary, contingent, and temporary and judged by her actions.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine from a psychoanalytic point of view how Mare Kandre narrate the complex process when girl becomes woman. Earlier theoretical work concerning Mare Kandre is sparse and limited to narrow cut-outs of her authorship. There are two dissertations, but none with Kandre and her unique fictional works alone in focus. Most frequently she is presented as part of different groups of authors.

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a large public health problem that foremost affects both women and children, nationally and globally. Several accessible reports about IPV and education for staff that in their occupation can meet battered people shows the importance of increased education for several occupational groups to decrease the large number of unrecorded cases.Purpose: The study explored how six occupational groups, in the municipality of Kungälv, related to IPV in their professions, were influenced by whether they had education in IPV or not.Method: We chose a quantitative approach, a cross sectional study. A questionnaire was constructed and handed out to 156 participations. The occupational groups were a section in a hospital, the police, the home care services, an elementary school, a pre-school and the public dental care. The answer frequency was 86 %.

In this study we examine how the image of women, through framing and stereotyping in interviews, is constructed in the Swedish television morning show Gomorron Sverige on International Women?s Day. Our study is based on qualitative method, using the ECA (Ethnographic Content Analysis) model.Our main theoretical assumptions are that media contributes to constructing the images of reality we see in our heads, and that the images of women mediated through television are stereotypes which are displayed in the presenter?s questions and in the respondent?s answers. By defining the problems related to International Women?s Day, showing causal connections, making moral judgments and presenting solutions, television contributes to the viewer?s perception of what is important, why it is important, what is wrong and how to make it right.Based on our theoretical assumptions we have divided our study into three analytical themes:1.

The aim of this study was from the beginning to examine why a woman who has made an abortion comes back for another one. Why does the risk taking continue, despite the fact that abortion is perceived as emotionally hard? How can this be understood? This study consists of a literature review and semi-structured interviews. I wanted to interview women who had made a decision to have a repeated abortion, but it was difficult to get that kind of interviews. I then decided to interview the staff who meets women searching for an abortion to have their attitudes and experiences of women coming back for another abortion.

The aim of this essay is to answer the question of how, and in what ways Martina Bigert?s and Maria Thulin?s picture Allt om min buske (literally, All about my bush) is queer. Inspired by Judith Butler?s idea of the heterosexual matrix, and Michel Foucault?s discourse I attempt to investigate how sex and sexuality are described in relation to heteronormativity, and if Allt om min buske is either norm-breaking or norm-creating in a wider perspective. This study concludes that antinormativity and queerness are evident within the framework of the picture.

This essay examine the femme fatal and the head character in the play Lulu Eine Monstretra gödie by Frank Wedekind. I have studied Lulu, who would be classified as a femme fatal, in terms to see what kind of woman?s portrait a femme fatal is. I will show with the theories of Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan and Joan Riviere how the femme fatal can be seen as a construc-tion, a role done by men. As well as a strong self owned woman.

This thesis revolves around my work Desirable Objects, an installation in glass and other materials, which deals with objectification based on female and animal trophies. The topics included are those that have been crucial to my working process; craft, post-colonial studies and European hierarchical dualism, where woman and nature are seen as connected, but inferior. My motivation has been to get a better understanding of underlying power structures, and put this knowledge in relation to my own work. This process has led me to make a full body casting of my own body as a method of self-exploitation, in an attempt to expose myself to a similar power perspective. By making the dualistic connection between woman and nature, I am commenting a phenomenon that in my view has resulted in a similar exploitation of both..