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Women continue to be economically disadvantaged and under-represented in positions of power and leadership. A discursive disjunction between cultural and media representations of women and leadership has been implicated in these continuing inequalities. We address this issue through an analysis of the ways in which prominent women leaders were portrayed in a UK radio series, BBC Radio 4's "Profile" broadcast between July 2011 and July 2013. Verbatim transcripts of 12 broadcasts featuring women were analysed within a critical feminist framework, to explore the ways in which these women leaders were discursively constructed. Our analysis explicates three constructions of "women leaders": as "traditionally" feminine; as having to balance "masculine" and "feminine" attributes; and as exceptional women who may nevertheless fail. We conclude that the impact of equality legislation continues to be limited while androcentric norms prevail and that we therefore need more gynocentric ways of imagining women leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virginia Braun, Victoria Clarke, Hannah Frith, Nikki Hayfield, Helen Malson, Naomi Moller, and Iduna Shah-Beckley came together at the University of the West of England (UWE) in July 2017 to discuss and share their enthusiasm for the story completion method. Virginia nominally "led" the discussion to keep us on track. This is a transcript of the discussion, edited by the Special Issue editors, principally Hannah Frith, which we have all read and commented on. The discussion begins with the contributors introducing themselves and their experience of the story completion method. It then identifies a series of "knotty issues" about story completion which we explored: 1) what can stories tell us?; 2) research practicalities, comparative design, and sample size; 3) what happens when story completion doesn't go to plan?; and 4) getting published. The conversation ends by considering "future possibilities for story completion research." Our aim was not to reach consensus of definitive "answers" but to debate and gain perspective on an open issue. Hence, we reach no "conclusion" for any of these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous critical analyses have already established the profoundly gendered nature of normative body ‘ideals’ and weight-management practices in Western cultures. Such studies have, amongst other things, elucidated how body dissatisfaction, ‘dieting’ and other weight-loss practices are discursively constituted as both feminised and feminising. Critiquing the over-determined normativity of thinness as a key index of femininity, these analyses have also highlighted how fatness, as abjected flesh, is equated with the feminine and how, in the context of an alleged ‘obesity crisis’, ‘fat’ men, as well as women and children, risk stigmatisation. An emergent research literature now explores men’s engagement with body ‘ideals’, weight management and ‘body projects’ more generally. This article builds on that work, exploring the negotiation of embodied masculinities in the weight-related talk of men who risked being labelled ‘overweight’ or ‘obese’. Drawing on interviews (N = 37), the study illustrates how ‘big’ men attempted to shield their threatened masculine identities by contrasting their own bodily bigness, corporeal concerns and embodied practices with those of women and girls. Also attentive to sexualities, ethnicity and class, this article illustrates the context-specific, intersectional and contested nature of embodied masculinities and body projects in these ‘epidemic’ times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is now a considerable body of research exploring how culturally dominant gendered norms are implicated in mobilising girls' and women's ‘anorexic’ and ‘bulimic’ experiences and practices. However, much less is known about lesbian experiences of ‘eating disorders’. This article explores some of those specificities. Drawing on interviews with self-identified lesbian women with a history of ‘anorexia’ and/or ‘bulimia’, our analysis suggests that while many of the ways in which participants discursively constituted their ‘eating disorders’ were similar to those identified in research with girls and women assumed to be heterosexual, there were also important differences where participants' actual or emerging lesbian subjectivities were integral to their accounts of developing, living with and recovering from ‘anorexia’ and/or ‘bulimia’. Our analysis suggests that the processes of coming to recognise oneself as a lesbian and of ‘coming out’ to others in predominantly hetero-normative contexts may be profoundly implicated in the discursive production of lesbian women's ‘eating disorders’ and that further research is required to better understand lesbian perspectives on ‘eating disorders’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Across scientific and everyday discourses, 'reproduction' has long been a defining feature of the category of 'woman' as well as being a highly significant aspect of women's lived experiences (Sayers, 1982; Phoenix et al., 1991; Nicolson & Ussher, 1992; Katrak, 1996). The 'reproductive body' has figured as a mainstay of positivistic and universalistic construction of 'woman' as a 'biologically real,' quasi-homogeneous category of persons. Because of this, it seems important for 'reproduction' to remain central to feminist research and theorising. However, it can be argued that in these allegedly 'post-feminist', 'gender-egalitarian' times in Western and Westernised societies, 'reproduction' now occupies a less central, all-encompassing place in (some) women's lives than it once did. At the same time, recent feminist theorising (Poovey, 1988; Riley 1988; Butler, 1993) has disrupted modernist notions that the femininity of women's identities, experiences or perspectives could be guaranteed by 'the female body' or by the reproductive capacities that have been central in defining that body. What then should be the place of 'reproduction' in feminist theory and research? The aim of this paper is to revisit this question in the contexts, first, of postmodern feminist theorising of 'women' and, second, of the allegedly 'post-feminist realities' of women's lives. In doing so we seek to briefly explore the key issues we see arising from the places and displacements of 'reproduction' both in women's lives and in feminist theory and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the discursive constructions of anorexic bodies. Constructions of thinness; Distortion in the interview process; Relation between the discourses and Western culture.

Explores the incompatibility between critical feminism and evolutionary theory on gender and gendered behaviors. Gender roles under evolutionary theory; Opposition of critical feminism to notions of gender power under evolutionary theory; Theorizations of sex differences in mate selection.

This paper presents an analysis of discursive constructions of the dying body in relation to anorexia nervosa. The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with 23 women (21 diagnosed as anorexic and two self-diagnosed) who were asked to discuss their experiences of and ideas about anorexia, femininity, identity and the body. Amongst the many issues covered in the interviews were issues surrounding death and dying. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using a feminist post-structuralist form of discourse analysis. After briefly discussing this approach to research, the paper presents an analysis of those discourses and discursive resources deployed in the interviews in talk about death and dying in relation to self-starvation and the meanings of the anorexic, emaciated dying (female) body. The paper therefore presents an analysis of how the (female) 'anorexic' body is discursive and physically constituted as a dying body. It explores the different meanings of this dying anorexic body and the different subjectivities that it may signify. It thereby examines the ways in which this body is profoundly gendered and the ways in which femininity is imbricated in discursive constructions of death and dying. The paper discusses how post-structuralist theorizations of discourse, subjectivity, gender and social discipline can facilitate an understanding of the ways in which socio-historically specific discourses and discursive practices constitute and regulate experiences of the death and dying of women diagnosed as anorexic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to examine the influence of dietary supplements on health related quality of life (QOL), a double blind controlled trial was carried out with 95 middle managers. After an eight week trial, those taking dietary supplements, in comparison to participants in the placebo condition, showed more significant improvements in vigour-activity on the Profile of Mood States (POMS), and on the overall strain sub-scales of the Multi-modal Stress questionnaire (MMSQ). For those on a relatively poor diet only, there was a significant difference between those taking dietary supplements and those in the placebo condition on the sub-scales of tension-anxiety, anger-hostility, vigour-activity, confusion-bewilderment and on overall mood on the POMS. There was also a more significant improvement on the sub-scales of physical strain, behavioural strain, cognitive strain and on overall strain on the Multi-Modal stress questionnaire. It is concluded that for those on a relatively poor diet, dietary supplements may improve health related quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]