The aim of our study is to explore the empowerment process among micro-business owners in Kayamandi, a black township of Stellenbosch in South Africa. What are the positive and negative implications for the empowerment process? Another aim is to find out the role of local and international support in this process. The theoretical framework of this study revolves around the concepts of gender, power and empowerment. Our methods are qualitative interviews and observations.

This analysis explores the psychosocial aspects in relationship to the occupational role as a correctional officer in Sweden. Historically prisons are hierarchically structured with a military organisation used as the basis for a role model. This military type structured organisation is designed to keep the prisoners under constant observation, thus providing direct authority and control by the prison guards over the prison inmates. Data obtained from investigations conducted by the Swedish Government indicate a direct link between the prisoners's living conditions and the prison employee's work duties and environment. The data strongly suggests that the work needs of prison guards have significant priority over the general work conditions of inmates, thus showing that the status for the occupational role was relatively low.

This paper aims to outline leaders' experiences of managing consultants from their company's performance management system. The study was conducted by qualitative interviews with senior managers and HR professionals within a management consulting firm. The aim was to describe the company's performance management system, their consultants and the challenges of leading in this context. The theoretical framework consists of previous research in leadership, performance management and management consulting. Within these research areas the authors identify a knowledge gap in leaders' perspectives on managing top-talents with performance management systems in the management consulting industry.

Urination is a biological need but the routines surrounding urination are culturally specific and ever changing. This makes the organization of public space an important part in deciding what actions are made possible for the people in it. This paper considers women?s public urination and the possibilities to merge the need to urinate and the construction of the female body as feminine.A number of texts that describe the construction of the female body and identity as both gendered and socially produced are analysed in relation to women?s experiences of incontinence. Incontinence as a medical diagnosis is by this becoming possible to question, and may be seen as one of several strategies used to manage both the organization of the public space and the expectations of the female body to be a docile body.The conclusion is that a woman who wants to enter public space has the following options when it comes to the need to urinate:To strive for the feminine ideal.

At Forsmark nuclear power plant a new course called "education in everyday safety" has been started in an attempt to improve the safety culture. The goal is to spread the of expectations and approach the maintenance management has set, to all employees working at the plants. During the course, theory is mixed with practical tasks to reach a common view how work should be done to achieve safety for the plant and the people that work there.The practical tasks are done inside "maintenance simulators". They are built inside 20 ft containers which contains two dummy pipe systems. On the pipe systems some valves, a flow meter and a pump has been installed.

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 aim of this study is to examine the collection One Thousand and One Nights (also: The Arabian Nights) from a european perspective, by comparing different european translations. The study focuses on three translations into Swedish from different periods of time and how the tales have changed in the translation process - depending on the prevailing line of approach and Western perceptions of Eastern standards. The thesis of the study is that Eastern culture, from a Western perspective, has been seen as exotic and different but not as a high literary culture and that this view has affected the translations into european languages. The study shows, among other things, that Western culture is many times considered normative in the translations and that the translators often give their own voices a prominent role, also that common Western notions of the East affects the translations.The word ?orientalism? is used frequently in the study and it refers primarily to the image of the Orient as it is described in Edward Saids' book Orientalism: as a Western construction whose main purpose is to strengthen its own conception of the Orient and thereby strengthen the Western identity as better than the Orient.

The study aims to examine how the people who have received special needs education during their schooling have experienced it.Since I wanted to take advantage of people's experiences of special needs education, I chose to conduct qualitative research interviews. Five people in the ages of 21-26 years old participated in the study.A summary of the work says that special needs education creates mixed feelings, feelings of joy and alienation. The positive as described in the work is that the special education teaching has created a classroom that is aligned along the pupil's needs and circumstances. All informants have expressed that their negative experiences is about them having to leave the common classroom.Keywords: exclusion, inclusion, special needs education, student needs.

Parenting is increasingly seen as a profession which requires training and support with the purpose of creating improved interaction. A central question appears to be how the concept of interaction is defined. The aim of this study is to examine how training programs, trainers and parents perceive this concept, whether they define it the same way and whether trainers succeed in reaching parents with the message of what it actually is that will improve in the area of interaction. The study uses a phenomenological approach and a qualitative method.The research subject is the parental training program Komet, a manual-based education program for parents. The goal of the program is to offer families training in methods that have strong scientific support in order to reduce conflicts and to improve the relation and interaction between children and parents.One important result of the study is that parents and trainers viewed the concept of interaction from different perspectives.

Many of us have grown up hearing or using words meant as insults or negative adjectives that were in fact names for social groups. Most of them have gone unquestioned in the mainstream consciousness, but the term Gay in the generally negative meaning has in the past years been given attention as offensive and homophobic, with debates emerging in response over whether or not this is true, particularly on the internet. It is the articles and forum threads from these debates that make out the empirical material for a qualitative study as I ask what these people?s thoughts are about this term and how it is perceived.After a qualitative coding and analysis of these texts, and interpretation of the results based on Erving Goffman?s theory of Phantom acceptance and stigma terms, Judith Butler?s theory of performativity, Ferdinand de Sassure?s theory of signifier and signified and how it connects to the community and Baudrillards theory of simulacra, this is the principal conclusion that I have drawn:For some of the people in this debate, the term Gay and its use is about homophobia and heterosexism, though mostly it?s not overt but a subconscious part of the continued dehumanization and stigmatization of homo- and bisexual people. This is a position I callThe socially focused skepticism.

Products and services have for a long time competed with their brands. For some time now, cities have begun to compete with each other to attract visitors and other stakeholders to come to their town. It is important that the citizens feel as they are a part of the message that the city sends out in its communication.Cities are today working actively with their brands, much like regular companies, in order to create the profile and image in order to be competitive against other cities and places. Cities and places are part of a dynamic process which includes both positive and negative events. These events might have an impact on the brands, and therefore it is a necessity to be able to react on these events to make the most of positive things and deal with the negative in a way that minimizes the effects on the brand.Citybranding as a research field is quite new.

Background: Patients with borderline personality disorder represent a large group in healthcare who are struggling with painful emotions in life. Caring should be based on strengthening health processes by focusing on the patients, but research made by the patient's perspective has shown that this population rather felt that their health processes was counteracted, than promoted. The patients felt that the nurses displayed a negative attitude towards them. Attitudes are defined as a system of values, emotions and actions towards others. Aim: the purpose of this study was to highlight the attitudes and experiences of nurses towards caring for people with borderline personality disorder  Methods: A study on the literature based on nine scientific papers was performed. The articles have been analyzed, systematically coded and compiled into a new unit. Results: This study shows that nurses have an overall negative attitude towards patients with borderline personality disorder.

The aim of this study is to examine the collection One Thousand and One Nights (also: The Arabian Nights) from a european perspective, by comparing different european translations. The study focuses on three translations into Swedish from different periods of time and how the tales have changed in the translation process - depending on the prevailing line of approach and Western perceptions of Eastern standards. The thesis of the study is that Eastern culture, from a Western perspective, has been seen as exotic and different but not as a high literary culture and that this view has affected the translations into european languages. The study shows, among other things, that Western culture is many times considered normative in the translations and that the translators often give their own voices a prominent role, also that common Western notions of the East affects the translations.The word ?orientalism? is used frequently in the study and it refers primarily to the image of the Orient as it is described in Edward Saids' book Orientalism: as a Western construction whose main purpose is to strengthen its own conception of the Orient and thereby strengthen the Western identity as better than the Orient.

The Swedish labour market seems to be more gender equal today than what it has been before. A gender equality intervention as the practice of an equality plan is one of the strategies that have been used in the workplace to achieve equality. This study aims to examine women?s work experiences in purpose to identify gender patterns in working life in a comparison between the trading industry and the academy. Central aspects in this paper concerns opportunities for development, space in the workplace and expectations associated to gender.

It?s a fact that fashion companies today are searching for new ways to win consumers.Traditional marketing methods have been replaced with new marketing techniques onInternet. Fashion blogs have a high traffic and because of that they are relevant in themarketing context. Lindex has developed from being a store of underwear to be oneof the largest fashion companies in Sweden with Internet sales which actively workswith bloggers through it?s website.Our purpose in this study is to analyze and describe how a fashion company as Lindexis practical using blogs as a marketing method.