Young Women

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (LES) is one of the most common immune system disorders that primarily affects young women and the chan- ges in the functioning of the immune system during pregnancy can flare self reactions and the resulting signs (anaemia, thrombocytopenia, hypertension, nephropathy, rashes, arthritis). Furthermore, the presence of non specific antibodies (anticardiolipin and LAC) increases the risk of miscarriage,

Nearly a million people take their own lives every year, more than those murdered or killed in war. Suicide is a problem that affects people of all ages and economic levels, and is recognised by the WHO as a significant public health problem. A large significant proportion of suicides are among young women. This document emerging out of the experience

We drew on Foucault's notion of ‘practices of the self’ to examine how young people take up, negotiate, and resist the imperatives of a public health discourse concerned with the relationships between health, fitness, and the body. We did this through a discussion of the ways young women and men talk about their own and others' bodies, in the context of a number of in-depth interviews conducted for the Life Activity Project, a study of the place and meaning of physical activity in young people's lives, funded by an Australian Research Council Grant. We found that the young women and men in the study engaged the health/fitness discourse very differently: for the young men, health conflated with fitness as an embodied capacity to do physical work; and for the young women, health was a much more difficult and complex project associated with managing and monitoring practices associated with eating and exercise to maintain an ‘appropriate’ body shape.

The number of women attending institutions of higher education in Iran has been steadily increasing since 1989. Growing enrollment rates for women in colleges and universities have sparked wide social and political debates in that country. The basic question of why young Iranian women might even choose to pursue tertiary education, however, has not been adequately addressed in the critical literature. This study gives voice to young women who explain for themselves why they are interested in higher education. It reveals that college or university studies represent for female students many things: a sphere of hope, a refuge, and a place to experience limited freedom beyond restrictive family environments; an asset that can increase a woman’s value in the marriage market; a right that may make possible financial independence; and a vehicle that can earn respect for women. On the whole, the desire for higher education illuminates the challenges facing women in Muslim nations and the ways in which Muslim women are using this institution to change their social status. DIE FEMINISIERUNG DER HOCHSCHULEN IM IRAN – Die Anzahl von Frauen, die Institutionen der höheren Bildung im Iran besuchen, hat sich seit 1989 ständig vergrößert. Die steigenden Einschreibungsquoten für Frauen an höheren Lehranstalten und Universitäten hat weitreichende gesellschaftliche und politische Debatten in diesem Land ausgelöst. Die grundsätzliche Frage, warum junge iranische Frauen überhaupt die Wahl treffen, tertiäre Bildung anzustreben, ist jedoch in der kritischen Literatur nicht in angemessener Weise angesprochen worden. Diese Studie lässt junge Frauen zu Wort kommen, die für sich selbst erklären, warum sie an Hochschulbildung interessiert sind. Sie zeigt, dass ein Studium an Hochschulen für Studentinnen viele Dinge bedeutet: eine Sphäre der Hoffnung, eine Zufluchtsstätte und einen Ort, an dem sie die begrenzte Freiheit jenseits der restriktiven familiären Umgebung erfahren; einen Bonus, welcher den Wert einer Frau auf dem Hochzeitsmarkt anheben kann; ein Recht, welches finanzielle Unabhängigkeit ermöglichen kann; und ein Mittel, welches Respekt für Frauen einbringen kann.␣Insgesamt macht der Wunsch nach Hochschulbildung die Herausforderungen sichtbar, denen Frauen in muslimischen Ländern begegnen, und die Art und Weise, wie muslimische Frauen diese Institution benutzen, um ihren gesellschaftlichen Status zu verändern. LA FÉMINISATION DE L’ÉDUCATION SUPÉRIEURE IRANIENNE – Le nombre de femmes suivant les cours d’institutions de l’éducation supérieure en Iran s’est continuellement accru depuis 1989. Les taux d’immatriculation en augmentation pour les femmes dans les collèges et les universités ont enflammé un large débat social et politique dans ce pays. La question principale de savoir pourquoi de jeunes femmes iraniennes peuvent même choisir de poursuivre une éducation tertiaire n’a cependant pas été abordée suffisamment dans la littérature critique. Cette étude donne la parole à de jeunes femmes qui expliquent en ce qui les concerne pourquoi elles sont intéressées par une éducation plus élevée. Elle révèle que des études au collège ou en université représentent plusieurs choses pour les étudiantes de sexe féminin : une sphère d’espoir, un refuge, et un lieu pour faire l’expérience d’une liberté limitée au delà des environnements familiaux restrictifs ; un acquis qui peut augmenter la valeur d’une femme sur le marché du mariage ; un droit qui peut rendre possible une indépendance financière et un moyen pour les femmes de gagner le respect. En somme, le désir d’une éducation supérieure illumine ces femmes qui font face à des défis dans les nations musulmanes et les façons dont les femmes musulmanes utilisent cette institution pour changer leur statut social. LA FEMINIZACIÓN DE LA ENSEÑANZA SUPERIOR IRANÍ – El número de mujeres que asisten a los institutos de enseñanza superior en Irán ha crecido constantemente desde el año 1989. El aumento de estudiantes matriculadas en los colleges y universidades ha suscitado amplios debates sociales y políticos en este país. Sin embargo, las publicaciones que se ocupan del tema aún no han prestado atención a una cuestión fundamental: los motivos por los cuales las jóvenes iraníes deciden cursar un estudio terciario. En este trabajo, las mismas jóvenes explican las razones que las impulsan a recibir una educación superior. El estudio revela que los␣estudios de college o universitarios tienen un significado muy amplio para las estudiantes: son un ámbito de esperanza, un refugio y un lugar en el que pueden experimentar una cierta libertad, más allá de sus restrictivos entornos familiares; son una ventaja que puede aumentar el valor de una mujer como futura esposa, un derecho que puede proporcionarles independencia económica y un vehículo para ganarse el respeto como mujer. En términos generales, el deseo de cursar estudios superiores y los modos en que las mujeres musulmanas están usando estas instituciones para cambiar su status social ilustran los desafíos que están encarando las mujeres en las naciones musulmanas.

Picture singer Britney Spears, if you can. Imagine her at different moments in her career, starting post-Mickey Mouse Club, impossibly fresh-faced, sweet, innocent. Later, singing "no longer a girl, not yet a woman." Finally, swaggering and brash onstage and off, announcing her engagement to an unemployed back-up dancer and young father of two. Britney proposed and bought the enormous diamond engagement ring. She is, in some very real senses, the "future girl" Anita Harris ably describes in her book. The girl of the future, the women of tomorrow and tomorrow and beyond...

Literature data suggest that breast cancers occurring in young patients may be different from those arising in older women. In this study the clinicopathologic characteristics of 50 patients under 40 years of age were compared with those of patients aged over 60. Patients under 40 years old more frequently had a family history of breast cancer than did older patients (24% vs 17%) and had more often used oral contraceptives (29% vs 13%); on average they had experienced menarche 1 year earlier. For early onset breast carcinomas there was a higher frequency of grade 3 tumours (38% vs 17%) and oestrogen receptor negativity (46% vs 20%). In addition, in younger patients the carcinomas were mostly DNA aneuploid (78% vs 58%), with a higher proliferation rate (48% vs 26%) and more frequent c-erbB-2 overexpression (48% vs 26%) and p53 alteration (30% vs 8%). Our data demonstrate that breast cancers arising in young women have a significantly different biopathological profile from those in older patients, with a predominance of unfavourable prognostic parameters.

The increasing share of arrests for violent offences by young women in Britain has prompted the media to brand such offenders as “ladettes.” Their behavior is argued to result from their adoption of “laddish” attitudes that in turn is derived from new, aggressive images of women in the media. These images explicitly portray female aggression as an instrumental act in

In this chapter, I examine two social movements as they involved young women seeking to create new paths in Wellington, New Zealand in the 1990s: the Young Women’s Division of Soka Gakkai International New Zealand (SGINZ), a lay Buddhist movement; and the radical lesbian feminist movement. I was an active participant in both movements, thus the chapter is autoethnographic, distilling insights from the perspective of a Complete Member Researcher (CMR). For each movement, I analyse the motivations for young women’s involvement, the type of revolutionary change sought, and the approach to organisation. I determine that the lesbian feminist movement of the 1990s was ‘of its time’: a flotilla lashed temporarily together to explore and create landing spaces in barely charted waters. It unleashed an outpouring of radically transgressive energy that transformed young women’s lives and the social landscape, but it struggled to support all its members in the face of internal schisms. The Young Women’s Division of the Soka Gakkai International, in contrast, existed within a tightly designed organisational structure based on deep historic roots, that carefully directed participants’ energies to enhance their self-development, grow
the organisation, and transform wider society. The SGINZ did not confront political oppression head-on, but rather gave young women opportunities to undertake their ‘human revolution’ with a view to contributing to social change. The overlap of the membership of these two groups suggests that individuals may be drawn to more than one model. Looking back, from a relatively near future, it is clear that social movements work in mysterious ways, with at times unexpected results.

Although transactional sex has been linked to undesirable sexual health outcomes, there is a lack of clarity as to the meaning of the practice, which appears to extend beyond behaviors related to women’s economic circumstances. This article explored the perspectives of parents and unmarried young people on motivations for, and beliefs about, transactional sex in rural Tanzania using an ethnographic research design. Data collection involved 17 focus groups and 46 in-depth interviews with young people aged 14–24 years and parents/caregivers. Transactional sex was widely accepted by both parents and young people. Male parents equated sexual exchange to buying meat from a butcher and interpreted women’s demand for exchange before sex with personal power. Young men referred to transactional sex as the easiest way to get a woman to satisfy their sexual desires while also proving their masculinity. Young women perceived themselves as lucky to be created women as they could exploit their sexuality for pleasure and material gain. They felt men were stupid for paying for “goods” (vagina) they could not take away. Mothers were in agreement with their daughters. Although young women saw exploitation of the female body in positive terms, they were also aware of the health risks but ascribed these to bad luck. Interventions aimed at tackling transactional sex in the interests of women’s empowerment and as a strategy for HIV prevention need to understand the cultural beliefs associated with the practice that may make it thrive despite the known risks.

Feminist scholars have begun to unpack the ways in which neoliberalism is underpinned by particular gendered affective investments: drives for perfection (Angela McRobbie 2015), confidence (Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad 2015), and the careful observance of feeling rules mandating a pleasing balance of resilience and approachability (Akane Kanai 2017a). In this context, we are interested in mapping the cultural production of affective dissonances (Clare Hemmings 2012) with neoliberal modes of thriving. We draw attention to post-recessional television made by and about young women that articulate affective dissonances with the confident subjectivities associated with neoliberal cultural mythologies of girlpower. We suggest that within recent, largely US, television some important questioning of such mythologies is taking place through the articulation of young women’s anger, insecurity, anxiety, and misplaced confidence. Such affective dissonances may to some extent serve to problematise myths about both the accessibility and appeal of highly individualist career-oriented lifestyles idealised in cultural mythologies of powerful “can-do” girls (Anita Harris 2004). Our analysis aims at two-fold consideration of: first, how giving voice to young women as “suffering actors” (Harris and Dobson 2015) may open space for dissonant affective positions that connect to feminist aims of social transformation (Hemmings 2012); and second, consideration of the ways in which exclusionary technologies of femininity may also operate through representations of young women’s anger, insecurity, and anxiety. Through this analysis we contribute to understanding dialectical tensions in the psychic and affective life of postfeminism and feminine subjectification in the neoliberal, post-recessional socio-cultural context.

Physical activity (PA) patterns are likely to change in young adulthood in line with changes in lifestyle that occur in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether key life events experienced by young women in their early twenties are associated with increasing levels of inactivity.This was a 4-year follow-up of 7281 participants (aged 18 to 23 years at baseline) in the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women’s Health, with self-reported measures of PA, life events, body mass index (BMI), and sociodemographic variables.The cross-sectional data indicated no change in PA between baseline (57% “active”) and follow-up (56% “active”). However, for almost 40% of the sample, PA category changed between baseline and follow-up, with approximately 20% of the women changing from being “active” to “inactive,” and another 20% changing from being “inactive” to “active.” After adjustment for age, other sociodemographic variables, BMI, and PA at baseline, women who reported getting married, having a first or subsequent child, or beginning paid work were more likely to be inactive at follow-up than those who did not report these events.The results suggest that life events such as getting married, having children, and starting work are associated with decreased levels of PA in young adult women. Strategies are needed to promote maintenance of activity at the time when most women experience these key life-stage transitions.

Exposure to media images of thin-and-beautiful women negatively affects the body image and mood states of young women. However, not all women are equally susceptible to these effects. The present experimental investigation with 123 young college women evaluated the moderating effects of the extent of internalization of media ideals. It also examined the preventative impact of two brief interventions (i.e., media literacy information with and without a dissonance-induction procedure). Results indicated that relative to a control group, the exposure to thin-and-beautiful media images adversely influenced the state body image of participants with high internalization levels. Media-literacy psychoeducation prior to the media exposure prevented this adverse effect. Adding a pre-exposure dissonance-induction procedure did not significantly enhance the preventative effects relative to psychoeducation alone. These results and their implications for the treatment and prevention of body image disturbances are discussed in the context of the empirical literature on the media's effects on body image.

Initial strength of quadrupled hamstring tendon grafts fixed with titanium interference screws was assessed in 30 pairs of porcine tibiae. Bone tunnels were drilled with either compaction drilling (stepped routers) or conventional extraction drilling (cannulated drill bits). Fifteen pairs of specimens were subjected to a single-cycle load-to-failure test, while the rest underwent a cyclic-loading test to further assess the quality of the fixation. No significant difference between the two drilling techniques was found with regard to yield load, displacement at yield load, stiffness, or mode of failure. Porcine trabecular bone mineral density was determined using peripheral quantitative computed tomography and compared with that of young women and men at a site corresponding to that of the tibial bone drill hole of an anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. There was a significant difference between the two species (210 +/- 45 mg/cm(3) in porcine tibial bone versus 129 +/- 30 mg/c...