The number of young women who self-mutilate in different ways has increased dramatically in recent years. Self-mutilation is a way of trying to feel better for the moment. People who self-mutilate often have some other underlying illness such as borderline disease. Women are overrepresented in this group of people and their behaviour is often rooted in a history of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, and psychic maltreatment. The aim of this study is to reveal thoughts about the future among young women who self-mutilate.

Master?s Thesis in Media and CommunicationTitle: See me, buy me ? A study of how women and men are exposed in commercial advertisements for beauty productsAuthor: Annelie EliassonUniversity: University of HalmstadCourse: Media and CommunicationTerm: Spring 2013Supervisor: Ebba SundinExaminer: Ingegerd RydinPurpose: This studys purpose is to examine how women and men are exposed in commercial advertisements for beauty products. To examine this purpose two main questions have been formulated:What differences and similarities are there in the representation of women and men in the commercial advertisements?Are there any differences in the representation regarding the target audience in the commercial advertisements?Method: Quantitative content analysisMaterial: 443 commercial advertisements for beauty products in the Swedish lifestyle magazines Plaza Kvinna and Café Magazine from 2008 to 2012Main results: The result of the study shows that women and men, presented in the commercial advertisements for beauty products, were very much alike in most aspects. For example there were only insignificant differences regarding how much of the person?s body that was included in the advertisement, the body position and the activeness of passiveness of the person in question.

This thesis explore women?s needs when reentering society after having served a sentence at the female prison Färingsö, outside Stockholm and whether those needs are being met in the reentry strategies that are being provided. Parallel to this the thesis also examines if there, based on nonconformity and gender theories, is a socially constructed representation of women maintained in the rehabilitation work.The method of this thesis applied semi-structured interviews and used snowball sampling to expand the network of informants to obtain the data necessary. Totally five interviews were carried out. Previous research has shown that women in prison have much more complex problems than men and that there is a need for reentry strategies that take gender in account.The results showed that in terms of being able to reenter back in society, women needed help to structure a previously chaotic life.

Self-harm is common among young people in Sweden. Therefore people who work with these young people need to have knowledge about self-harm to be able to provide the right help. The aim of this study was to investigate how the individual experience self-harm, and how this could be understood. The empirical material has been based on consisted of 28 life stories. 24 of them were written by women and 4 by men.

The aim of this study was through theories of emotional labor; understand how staff and volunteers within women?s shelter handled their emotions in the encounters with battered women. To examine this we used a qualitative method and interviewed four staff members and three volunteers spread across four different women?s shelters. The data collected was analyzed using Hochschilds? theory of emotional labor.

The aim of this essay is to examine which help a group of women with eating disorders had from thier treatment in daycare in 2004. The aim is to examine how the women have experienced this treatment and how they live today. The central questions are: what was their life situation like before the treatment, what was their experience of the treatment, how could the treatment have been better and how are their lives today? The method is based on qualitative interviews with seven women who were all in the same treatment for eight weeks at Capio AnorexiCenter in Malmö. The women have also redone tests that were done right before and right after the treatment.

The purpose was to look into the pattern of consumption among middleage women. Our questions were how women experienced the need to consume, how they defined the expression of consumption and if there was a difference between "shopping" and "buying". The research has been done through eight qualitative interviews and searching in litterature, illuminating our questions.All women defined consumption as satisfying basic needs. According to them everything bought on a daily bases is consumption. More difficult to define was the experience of "need".

The construction of an identity among lesbian women during 1950-­?1965 is in focus in this master ?s thesis. My starting point is that identity, such as lesbian or any other identity, is formed in relation to other people and groups, as well as society. This thesis will also examine how lesbian women met and formed bonds with like-­minded, and whether these aspects changed, during the defined time period. The empirics is made up by letters written by women to Riksfo?rbundet fo?r sexuellt likabera?ttigande (a Swedish organisation for lesbian and gays) as well as an interview with two lesbian women who were born in 1938 and 1940.

Since Muhammad Yunus, founder of the microloansorganization Grameen Bank, was awardedthe Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, the microloansorganization has received much attention. Thewoman has come to play a central role in the microloansorganizations. Her access to capital isis considered to improve her socioeconomic status. The overall aim of the paper is to examinehow access to microcredit considered leading to empowerment of women. To get an idea ofwhat a microloansorganization is the Grameen Bank is used as an example.

The purpose of this thesis is to understand the ways in which rumors affect the everyday lives of a few young women. The questions are: What kinds of rumors do the young women find are the most common? How do they respond to these rumors? Do the rumors affect their everyday lives and if so, how do they react to them? Do they resist them? Do they feel limited by them?The empirical data was collected through unstructured interviews (focus groups) with three groups. The groups discussed different themes without prompting questions by the interviewer and it was clear that rumors played an important role, in multiple ways, in the lives of the young women. The most common rumors were sexualized and were mostly concerned with the view that the young women should not engage in ?too many? heterosexual relations ? preferably none.

Abstract: The purpose of the study was to analyze the experience of being a woman diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. Another aim was to analyze how the women think itwould have influenced them, if they had been diagnosed during childhood.In the study, with a qualitatively approach, three women diagnosed with ADHD were interviewed. The data was analyzed with qualitative content analysis.The result shows that the women perceived affirmation when they received their diagnosis but they also pointed out that they had wished to receive the diagnose during childhood to avoid unnecessary suffering.The conclusion of the study was that it is essential to, as early as possible, follow up deviances in children and adolescents. Therefore, there is a need for more knowledge of how symptoms of ADHD in girls present itself.It is reasonable to believe that if healthcare and school have increased knowledge of symptoms of ADHD in girls, then these girls would be diagnosed at an earlier time.Keywords:ADHD,women,girls,treatment,self?esteem.

This study aims to investigate how, in Montesquieu?s Persian Letters (1721), religion and religious structures are presented to influence women?s position in French society.In Persian Letters Montesquieu presents a dogmatic religious life, which proceed from a literal interpretation of the bible. Such a reading raises critical questions concerning the nature of women, and subsequently places man over woman. Persian Letters show how this male dominance gets institutionalized in marriage. The religious life depicted is also distinguished by a non-genuine religious conviction and by acts which take on a simulation form.

The proportion of women entrepreneurs in Sweden is, as in many countries, smaller than the proportion of men entrepreneurs. Sweden has therefore created political measures with the ambition to increase women entrepreneurship. However, knowledge about the determinants of women entrepreneurship is needed in order to enable the promotion of it and, at the same time one can question the treatment of women entrepreneurs as a homogenous group. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the determinants of women entrepreneurship and whether these determinants fluctuate regionally. If this proves to be the case, a more spatial/individual approach should be used, when creating measures to promote entrepreneurship.

Background: Women are recommended to breastfeed exclusively for six month; despite this the frequency of breastfeeding duration is decreasing in Sweden. Research indicates that there is an association between attitudes towards breastfeeding and perceived difficulties and initiation and duration of breastfeeding. The aim: to study women?s attitudes to breastfeeding and their perceived difficulties with breastfeeding expressed on parent oriented websites on the Internet. Method: Data consisting of users posts corresponding to the aim of the study were collected from two parent oriented websites on the Internet.

Grief research generally demonstrates that children and teenagers who have lost a parent in suiciderisk developing severe psychological and physical morbidity, as well as social disabilities, in adultlife as a result of traumatic aspects of the death and complicated grief reactions. The youngbereaved also run a highly increased risk of developing suicidal behaviour or to commit suicidethemselves. Despite these alarming reports, the research field is poorly explored and studies thattake an interest in the long-term consequences and the subjective experiences of the bereavedyoungsters are lacking. A qualitative study using narrative methods has been carried out toexamine the experiences of four young women, who during adolescence lost a father in suicide.The study specifically focuses on the grief process, the short- and long-term consequences, and theneed for social support in relation to family, extended network and society. The study reveals thatthe women?s traumatic loss has shattered their basic assumptions about the world as a safe andmeaningful place.