This qualitative study focuses on the investigation of different actor?s ideas concerning gender and womanhood in a post-socialist nation Bosnia and Herzegovina. The aim of this study is to try to provide experiences and attitudes of one not a new, but definitely one constantly changing phenomenon, trafficking in women for sexual exploitation. The qualitative data is mainly collected through nine interviews with people from Bosnian Governments, International organizations and NGOs during my stay in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The causes to trafficking are complex and intertwined but it directly relates to gender discrimination and attitudes on sexual relationships between women and men.

The thought behind this bachelor essay regarding gender and rhetorical feminist criticism developed years ago out of the fact that I read just a little too many dirty chick lit-pockets as a teen. Those chick lit-pockets were my first introduction to sex, to gender roles, to how men and women react and are supposed to react to each other and, in some sense, even to feminism. Those chick lit-pockets, later turning into hardcore Harlequin-books, became my benchmark when I started to contemplate the fact that this is a man?s world, produced and reproduced by a male gaze which influences everything from sex, porn, advertising, gender roles, jobs and payment to dirty pockets for teenage girls.The essays aims to show how the male gaze-phenomenon could be to use for the rhetoric discipline: first combined with other rhetorical theories as a way to analyze and understand gender and objectification. The main question asked; How to put the male gaze on a rhetorical leash? This bachelor essay consists of a qualitative literature study focusing on four articles and one book in which five different male gaze-perspective appears.

This study has the purpose to reveal whether gender stereotypes are manifested or challenged in the children comic Bamse - världens starkaste björn based on six different stories widespread over 40 years. The results will be studied in the light of the contemporary gender development in society and emanate from theories about power, discourse, representation, queer and gender. An eclectic analysis based on semiotics and critical discourse analysis will be the method to reveal the underlying gender perspective in Bamse. The conclusion of the study shows an ambiguous perspective in the comic where both men and women occasionally are represented in a manifested as well as a challenged stereotypical role. In some of the stories the gender is erased and all characters are represented based on their individual attributes instead, meanwhile in some stories men are represented as active heroes while women are portrayed as passive nurturer.

The purpose of this study was to examine how school personnel describe and interpret the phenomenon bullying among girls, and also what their interpretations are based upon. More specifically its aim was to find out what characterizes and causes girl-to-girl bullying, according to school welfare officers and teachers. We wanted to find out how school personnel look upon aggression among girls and social expectations on girls behavior. The analysis was based on two kinds of perspectives: one focusing on gender and one focusing on power in relationships. Research shows that girl-to-girl bullying is hard to observe and that this problem has been invisible in earlier studies.

Violence is put in a specific context when the police are the perpetrator of violence rendering violence possibly legitimate through sovereignty. The possibility of legitimization of police violence raises important questions of how such violence is legitimized and how resistance is conceived of and defined. I have interviewed seven people in Sweden from different backgrounds, all of whom share the experience of having been subjugated to police violence, including threats, harassments and physical violence.This paper analyzes the performativity of police violence through the relations between police violence, power, sovereignty, subjectstatus and resistance, in order to understand how police violence is being legitimized and to understand its consequenses with respect to those subjugated to it. I?ve also analyzed if this violence is being politicized and, in that case, how politicization is made possible.

By the same time as the recent enlargement of the European Union, where Poland became a member, it was officially stated that the gender mainstreaming-policy was to be integrated into every area of EU. NGO:s working as entrepreneurs for the gender mainstreaming norm in Poland supported the accession largely because they believed it would help spreading the norm also on a national level. Qualitatively analyzing the Polish case and the difficulties gender mainstreaming as a norm candidate meets with I contrast expectations with what could actually be EU:s role in this matter.Arguing that EU is a context with room for spreading norms by both bargaining and socialization, this paper takes a social constructivist approach. Gender mainstreaming as a norm is difficult for EU to apply on their members, and thus was not widely discussed during accession negotiations. In the same time.

The purpose with this essay is to look at how categories of "us" and "them" are created, reproduced and categorised. The areas of politics and media are in focus, though they are powerful and influential actors in generating discourses.The method is qualitative analyses of current research and analyses of discourses, contexts and resources from an intersectional perspective. Intersectionality presents a theoretical tool for complex understandings of power as it takes its point of departure in an understanding of power as multidimensional and one where gender, ethnicity and class are constitutive and bearing principals. Intersectional analyses aim to understand how these dimensions are created and changed in relation to each other and how they interact with specific gender orders in specific contexts.The analyse shows that "immigrants" are in a subordinate position compared to "Swedish" when it comes to resources, contexts and discourses. The analyse indicates the relation of power between "us" and "them", where "us" have the power and with that preferential right of interpretation in discourses, contexts and resources.

Historically the library has owned more than silent, book-filled halls; it has been a center for learning and ideas, a source of both freedom and oppression, in other words, a medium for knowledge, truth, and power. Cultures have been divided into powerful and powerless through access to the library's content; those who have - and those who do not have - access to information determine which voices are heard and which are ignored, thus determining the outcome of the future. This thesis investigates how The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence portrays the relationship between knowledge and power using Michel Foucault's discourse theory. More specifically, how this relationship is manifested through the structures and norms of society, and how the library as a place and institution serves as the means by which this relationship plays out. An established classic like Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is placed as a contrasting reference point to help deepen its thematic message of information control and cencurship. Furthermore, the agency of one of the main characters is also examined in the light of Anthony Giddens' stratification model, as an actor with the potential to move beyond the confines of the power structure. The analysis demonstrate how knowledge, truth, and power remain continuously thematically relevant within literature, and how the reality of our time may be better understood through literary contributions.

Equality between the sexes has been discussed in Sweden for more than 50 years. In the 60´s and during the 70´s the discourse that dominated the debate was based on the assumption that both men and women needed to liberate themselves from their traditional gender roles. In this approach information and education was perceived as the key to equality. During the 80´s however, power and subordination became the main focal point of concern within this debate, and focus upon changing the patriarchal power structures dominating society were perceived as the principal key for establishing equality between the sexes. Today, the latter discourse still dominates both the scientific and the political perspective upon equality.

The main purpose of the culture is to serve people and represent the people's social will and freedom. Culture does not exist in a vacuum but shaped and framed by political and artistic structures that are not neutral, and this is why the artwork itself cannot be an independent business. The public function of art can be understood as a defense of the ideals of democracy. But today, when political power is often replaced by hegemony, the role of art and functions are changing. How these changes reflect to the identity, reality and truth of society? What political functions are fulfilled when art becomes ?public?? The issue of democracy is linked question of people?s power in a democratic society where power is legitimized in social space.

Violence is put in a specific context when the police are the perpetrator of violence rendering violence possibly legitimate through sovereignty. The possibility of legitimization of police violence raises important questions of how such violence is legitimized and how resistance is conceived of and defined. I have interviewed seven people in Sweden from different backgrounds, all of whom share the experience of having been subjugated to police violence, including threats, harassments and physical violence.This paper analyzes the performativity of police violence through the relations between police violence, power, sovereignty, subjectstatus and resistance, in order to understand how police violence is being legitimized and to understand its consequenses with respect to those subjugated to it. I?ve also analyzed if this violence is being politicized and, in that case, how politicization is made possible.

The aim of this study was to describe and analyse the constructions andinterplay of gender, ethnicity and sexuality between female and male careworkersand residents in a nursing home. To explore this from a qualitativeeveryday life?s approach, material was collected through participating observations,interviews, and informal conversation with careworkers and residents.The result points out that historical patterns of gender and caring relatedto this context still matter and affect both careworkers and residents. Forexample, female careworkers talked about the concept of caring as a genuinefemale experience, while male careworkers, who were in a minority, insteadtalked about caring in more gender-neutral words. The result also indicatesthat a larger number of male careworkers not necessarily leads to a highergrade of gender equality.

The education curriculum states that one of the tasks for schools and preschools are to promote gender equality by discouraging traditional gender roles. Gender equality is therefore a part of the fundamental values of the education system. In order to be able to work with the issue of gender equality, the employees need help and further education. Therefore some schools and preeschools contact a teacher specialized in gender equality work.In this essay I have chosen to do a field study of such a teacher at work during different workshops with nurses and teachers. The aim is to examine how she discusses gender ideas and what discussions arises from the meetings with the attendents.

The aim with this thesis is to investigate teachers view on gender equality and what this may be due to. Teachers are supposed to follow the curriculum where it is written that gender equality should be encouraged. After interviewing teachers it has come to light that depending of the teacher?s personal interest and the school?s management of the question, there is a difference between how teachers are working with gender equality. That is why we want to know why gender equality should be encouraged and how teachers should reach the aim from the curriculum about gender equality.

This study examined by content analysis and semiotic picture analysis how gender equal the UK newspaper The Times, the U.S/Iranian nespaper Iran Times International and Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet were May 1st 2009 and May 8th 2009. The study had a foundation of feminist theory about patriarchy and gender theory with a contribution of research about race and its impact on patriarchy.None of the three papers were fully gender equal. Even though Svenska Dagbladet was found to be the most gender equal when it came to the number of women represented all of the newspapers examined showed patriachal structures since women more often than men were described as victimes, trivialized, incompetent and inferior.  People with a race other than white were in minority but patriarchy seems to be a stronger form of oppression than racism. White men were in majority and were less opressed than other groups and were because of that most in favour of the newspapers symbolic powers..