During the last few years the countries in the African continent have experienced an enormous increase in female politicians on a national level. Rwanda is even the country with the highest number of female politicians in its parliament in the world. Despite this development in Africa, the quantitative research on women's political representation in the world has not yet paid attention to the situation there. Some of the surveys that have been done have even excluded countries that do not fit the homogeneous pattern ? which is precisely the problem with African countries ? for it to be possible to explain the situation with existing theories.The intention of this paper is therefore to, with all of the 53 African countries included in the study, examine whether the already existing explanatory factors regarding women's political representation also can be applied to an African context to explain the situation there.

Analysis of the piece Pygmalion in set at the Gothenburg City Theatrefrom a gender perspective with the purpose to investigate which genders that arepresented and how the piece relates to the heterosexual norm. The method consists inthe analysis and discussion of how the pieces portrays females and males (with focuson feminine and masculine coded expression and presentation of desire) and whatconsequences it brings. This based on various method books of norm-breaking designwork for Aesthetic staff, and a theory based on Judith Butler's research. Primarymaterial consists in a piece analysis of Pygmalion, from a spectator's perspective.Main Results: The designing is consciously working with a set of norm-breakinggender expression, particularly female genders. The set translates socially criticalviews against patriarchal hierarchies.

This study has been conducted as a literary analysis of four chapter books for children in the early years of compulsory school: Magister Tutnäsa, Vilken fullträff, Astrakan, Sune och tjejhatarligan, and Alva och Dum-Julia. The aim has been to analyse four teacher characters from a gender perspective. The study has focused on the teachers? personal characteristics and whether these are typically female or male. Another aim has been to study how the character reinforces or runs against stereotyped gender patterns.

The purpose of this study is to analyse and describe social work students? view on a person with self-injurious behaviour and the following issues. The aim and focus is on the general depiction. The theoretical perspectives have been intersectionality and its focus on social constructivism, and gender perspectives. The method was semi-structured interviews with eight social work students at Linnaeus University Kalmar.

This essay is an in-depth, qualitative study concerned with questions about female ?class-travellers?. A class-traveller is a person who is born and raised in a particular social class but changes his/her social belonging through studies, marriage etc. In this study I have interviewed three female class-travellers, all of which have made their ?journey? through studies at the University of Lund.The study is an attempt to enrich the research-field of class-travelling by applying a feminist perspective, and by making women's voices about class-travelling heard.

AbstractThis thesis discusses and analyses a 19th century female author's vanishing from history. The study investigates social relationships as figured and described in the epistolary form, based on letters between the author herself and different members of her family. It also tries to identify the author's position and situation in her time and society according to important themes and motifs in her novels. The main purpose is not to reconstruct history, but rather to show the many complex histories that can also be described, apart from the simplified and generalized one. The aim of this study is to, from a post-structuralist perspective, analyze the position of author Marianne Lundegård-Hagberg, and her role as a performative, discursive person that history forgot..

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate and describe the literary life of Madame de Staël, during the period of the French Revolution and the time shortly after. My intention is to do research on her impact and influence. I also want to examine her effect on Swedish literary society, with special references to Swedish authors. The method used is a qualitative one, where I have studied nonfiction and fiction connected with the field, for example Mme de Staëls own writings, which I make use of to illustrate the phenomena. During this period the society was dominated by patriarchical values and patterns of life.

This study aims to examine attitudes and conceptions of staff who work with mentally disabled persons, concerning normalization and gender. Six qualitative interviews with such professionals were performed and subsequently analyzed. Since the method of this study is qualitative, no claim of generalizability is made. The interview material has been categorized into themes by means of coding. The result of the study is presented according to those themes.

This study aims to examine attitudes and conceptions of staff who work with mentally disabled persons, concerning normalization and gender. Six qualitative interviews with such professionals were performed and subsequently analyzed. Since the method of this study is qualitative, no claim of generalizability is made. The interview material has been categorized into themes by means of coding. The result of the study is presented according to those themes.

The purpose of this study was to investigate if female and male reporters and interviewees get the same amount of time in the news feature in the Swedish news programs TV4-Nyheterna and SVT 1 Rapport. The aim of this study was also to investigate if there is a breakdown of the reporting lines between male and female reporters, that is, if they are reporting on various topics. In our study we also determined if the two television channels in any way are different when it comes to gender.Our main theory was that men are overrepresented both among reporters and interviewees and that they are dominant in both hard and soft news. We thought that SVT 1Rapport would have a better gender balance than TV4-Nyheterna because SVT 1 has been working on gender issues for a long time.We were using a quantitative content analysis to examine the 19:30 news on SVT 1 Rapport and 22:00 news on TV4-Nyheterna for two weeks in November 2010. We examined domestic and foreign news and determined how much time each sex got.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how power structures concerning gender and sexuality emerge through the use of language in the Swedish reality show Paradise Hotel. Of particular interest is the representation of heterosexual relations in the show. Because of its interest in the relationship between power, gender and sexuality, the thesis is based on theories from gender and discourse studies. The specific theories referred to are Michel Foucault?s understanding of power, stereotypes according to Stuart Hall, Yvonne Hirdman?s gender system and contract theory, Judith Butler?s heterosexual matrix and R.W.

Background: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the prevalence and characteristics of deliberate self-harm in a Swedish University population.Method: A random sample of first year students at University of Kalmar was invited to participate in an Internet-based survey in the autumn of 2007. A total of 139 (53,1 %) completed the anonymous survey.Results: The results showed that 25,2 % (n=35) of the students reported having engaged in some kind of deliberate self-harm at least once, and deliberate self-harm was endorsed by 7,9 % within the past year. The most frequently procedures to self-harm were to tear, carve or pinch self, cutting skin and hitting self on purpose. 37,1 % reported that they had told no one about their self-injurious behaviors and 36,4 % significantly reported that they had no one they trusted and who they could talk to if they were concerned about something. Students with self-injurious behavior were also more likely to report a history of emotional, sexual and/or physical abuse, alcohol and drug use, cut classes and questioning their sexual orientation.Conclusions: Findings suggest that self-harm is associated with risk factors and that self-injury is not only associated with adolescence but also with adulthood.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a recognized social problem. The IPV is common in all types of intimate relations, this essays purpose was focused on the violence performed by women against men. To find the social workers conceptions the study conducted a survey sent to local social service in Sweden. The essay had a statistic approach to visualize the social workers conceptions, and a discursive approach to focus on the language used in text answers. Different aspects of the violence were explored to find the conceptions.

This study aims to examine attitudes and conceptions of staff who work with mentally disabled persons, concerning normalization and gender. Six qualitative interviews with such professionals were performed and subsequently analyzed. Since the method of this study is qualitative, no claim of generalizability is made. The interview material has been categorized into themes by means of coding. The result of the study is presented according to those themes.

This study aims to examine attitudes and conceptions of staff who work with mentally disabled persons, concerning normalization and gender. Six qualitative interviews with such professionals were performed and subsequently analyzed. Since the method of this study is qualitative, no claim of generalizability is made. The interview material has been categorized into themes by means of coding. The result of the study is presented according to those themes.