Body image is a term that refers to a person?s feelings and attitudes toward his or her body. There are many different factors that influence a person?s body image: historical, cultural, social, biological and individual. The purpose of this study was to investigate young Indian women?s body image in India from a cultural perspective.

In the beginning of this century United Nations expressed their concern about the lack of female participation in politics through a number of resolutions and conventions. To ensure sustainable development and democracy, United Nations argued the importance of women?s participation in every level of politics within a state.Burma is a country that is in the middle of an ongoing democratization process and women are not considered to participate in this process. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to analyze the experience of politically involved Burmese women in their political participation progress.This study has been realized through semi-structured interviews with nine Burmese women, in both Thailand and Burma. The questions that have been asked are about what societal and cultural barriers women meet when they are, or want to be, political involved, both from the society and within their own political organizations.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the ways in which the constructions of heterosexuality and gender in three Disney movies about princesses affect the power relations between men and women in the movies, and how discourses on gender and heterosexuality have changed over time. Research questions were:How do characters in the movies talk about gender and heterosexuality?How does the interplay between gender and heterosexuality affect the power relations between men and women in the movies?What are the likenesses and differences between movies from different time periods?Discourses were mapped out using a model based on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe?s political theories. These discourses were then analyzed with a theoretical framework consisting of Yvonne Hirdman?s concept of gender system and gender contracts, Judith Butler?s view on the heterosexual matrix and an understanding of power relations based on Michel Foucault.

The presence of nostalgic emotions during consumption is often seen as something purely positive to a product. To evoke these emotions has become a very common tool in marketing and advertising. Paradoxically very few studies have focused on the effects of nostalgia. The purpose of the thesis has been to understand how the presence of nostalgic emotions during consumption effect consumers. The research model used is a quantitative study with testing of hypotheses generated from theory.

The discussion about high culture and popular culture in our society has been going on for decades. In few places is it as loud as within culture journalism and the critics? society, where the question of what is good taste and what is dumb entertainment constantly gets brought to the surface. Film is a particularly vulnerable area, since it is such a universally appealing and rather young medium. In America and England several studies have been performed of the reviewing society and reveiwers? use of high and low art-discourse in their writing.

Swedish consumption habits led to a discourse on consumption needs of the general public during the first half of the 20th century, involving primarily several institutions, but also a variety of popular movement organizations, among which we find Kooperativa Förbundet. In this discourse, ascetic consumption and a rationalized outlook on consumption were idealized, as the Swedes needed to be economical not to live beyond their means. The objective of this study is to investigate the ideals this type of discourse conveys throughout the latter half of the 20th century. This will be achieved by investigating selected editions of the cookbook ?Vår Kokbok? published by Kooperativa Förbundet.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine how women who have committed crimes feel they have been treated by authorities. Our research questions were: How do women who have committed crime feel they have been treated by authorities? How has this treatment affected the women and their life worlds? In our study we have conducted semi-structured interviews with four women who have committed crime. Our theoretical basis has been phenomenology, symbolic interactionism and Hirdmans theory on the gender system. Our main results show that the women have different experiences of treatment, some positive and some negative.

This report is an inventory of the street lighting in half of the residential estates owned by Karlstad Bostads AB, a public housing company. The inventory was made to reduce the environmental impact of the street lighting. From the inventory an estimation of the total installed power and the energy consumption was made. The total estimated power of the street lighting was 125 kW and the energy consumption was 500 000 kWh/year with an estimated running time of 4 000 h/year. The dominating source of light was 125 W discharge mercury lamps.

Previous research often includes juridical, political, economical and historical aspects of the Sami population. The research about the Sami women are limited therefore is was important to investigate the living conditions of the Sami women. The purpose with the study was to investigate the living conditions of the Sami women from a culture- and reindeer-herding view in relation to social gender and the majority society. Four individual interviews were performed with women who worked with reindeer-herding in the Sapmi area in north of Sweden. The interview guide was semi-structured and the data were analysed with the phenomenological method Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, which has a focus on subjective experiences.

The aim of this study was to investigate in what way content marketing can be understood through podcasts as an alternative marketing tool. The material which the study was based on is Ölpodden, a podcast initiated by Carlsberg Sweden. The study intended to shed light on the interdiscursivity that emerges when brands are communicated through podcasts. Another aim was to understand how relationships and identities are constructed through the podcast by examining its intended audience. In order to achieve this a critical discourse analysis was used as both underlining theory and comprehensive method.

Music has always been an important form of communication and it can be found in many different contexts including aesthetical, cultural and emotional forms. In the globalized society of today music can be distributed fast through radio, TV, CD: s and the Internet. For many people consumption of music is an important part of the daily life and it can contribute to shape an individual?s attitudes and personality.The main purpose of this study is to find out whether there are any differences between men and women?s musical preferences. I will apply an explorative approach using qualitative interviews to describe what causes the differences.

The aim of this study is to explore the approach and views on female genital mutilation(FGM) among young women from Somalia, and how they perceive the tradition afterimmigration to Sweden. This is structured under the following questions: What do theyknow about FGM? What are their experiences? And what do they reckon about FGMtoday? The study is based on one recorded interview with a group of young femalesfrom Somalia. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The women?sfeelings were ambivalent though they on one hand opposed FGM because of serioushealth risks, but on the other hand were conscious of the tradition?s great influence inthe social network and daily life.

With emphasis on women's magazines and men, this essay will revolve around the image of the ideal woman. Our purpose was to examine whether men have a distinct image regarding the appearance and behaviour of the ideal woman. Next step was to establish whether the women's magazines also presented a specific image to their readers.The answers were found through a qualitative study that included ten men, and through an extensive analysis by women's magazines. The result indicated that both the men questioned and the women's magazines presented a clear view of an ideal woman. The views held by the men, were then compared to the images presented by the women's magazines and were found to be very similar.We used Erving Goffmans sociological theory to describe the actual woman and the ideal images of women that the men questioned and the women's magazines presented.

The violence against women is an important matter. In Sweden there are several organisations that takes care of the women and children in need.One of the many organizations you can turn to is women's shelter organizations. They are nonprofit organizations. They depend on the contribution of peoples free time and on the government's awareness of the work that the organization do. The social services has the main responsibility to take care of women and children in need.

The study aims to illustrate how women victims of male violence in intimate relationships are treated during the legal process and with professional perspective describe what women?s experiences considered to be in the legal process. The study also aims to draw attention to the interventions for abused women during the legal process.The results are based on interviews with professionals in the justice system, and on observations in the courtroom. Overall our results show that abused women are in need of a great quantity of help and support before, during and after the negotiation. The legal process is very stressful for the women.