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Smoking cigarettes is a leading global cause of preventable death and disease. Men historically smoke more than women, but the prevalence of smoking among women in low and middle-income countries is increasing at an alarming rate. Understanding the factors that influence smoking initiation among women and girls is needed to address the growing epidemic of women smokers and the looming impact on women's health worldwide. We assume that smoking initiation is embedded in socio-culturally influenced gendered context and use a social cognitive model with a gendered lens as a framework for organizing and synthesizing the research. Guided by this framework, we identified gaps in the literature and make recommendations for future research in this review paper. The results suggest that psychological and environmental determinants are rooted in fluctuating cultural influences and values, but few research studies provide a gendered analysis or systematically examine these factors in the context of gender and culture. Sex/gender is a significant construct through which women and girls experience the psychological, environmental, and other influences on smoking initiation. Much more research is needed to understand the psychological and environmental influences as well as the intersection of gender roles and other social categories on female smoking initiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media can become a site of public pedagogy (Rich, E., & Miah, A. (2014). Understanding digital health as public pedagogy: A critical framework. Societies, 4(2), 296–315. doi:) through which young people learn about health and fitness. Photo and video-sharing social networks are emerging as sites of media practices through which images of the perfect fit body circulate, popularly known as 'fitspiration' media. Our research examines how girls and young women negotiate contemporary discourses around body, health and fitness circulating through Instagram and the subjectivities such technology enables. We draw on participatory and collaborative research with young women from three Spanish Secondary schools who each engaged with exercise-related content on Instagram and who self-defined as physically active. Focus groups and semi-structured interviews explored participants' uses, meanings and influences of this digital content over their embodiment and subjectivities. Through the concept of 'postfeminist biopedagogy', we articulate the learning processes that girls experience as they engage with media about 'fit' female bodies on Instagram. This involves a series of pedagogical micro practices through which girls learn about the health and fitness subject and which bring together a postfeminist sensibility (Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2), 147–166. doi:), neoliberal notions of the self and discourses of health consumption. A postfeminist biopedagogy (Wright, J. (2009). Biopower, biopedagogies and the obesity epidemic. In J. Wright, & V. Harwood (Eds.), Biopolitics and the 'obesity epidemic': Governing bodies (pp. 1–14). New York, NY: Routledge) instructs and regulates girls' bodies and health subjectivities through a language of choice, empowerment and health although, at the same time, framing exercise as disciplined work to achieve the normative body. Although participants criticized such representation of the perfect body, they considered these normative pressures as necessary to 'successful' identities in postfeminist times. Our analysis reveals how some young women learn about exercise as 'aesthetic labour' through the biopedagogies circulating on Instagram, with continual work upon the body associated with performing subjectivities which are confident, happy and powerful. We conclude by exploring the implications of our findings for Physical and Health Education and young women's wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have found that although young adults are arguably less constrained by gendered norms and expectations than previous generations, they have nevertheless continued to imagine their biographical futures in highly gendered ways. In this paper I draw on an analysis of 28 in-depth interviews in which 16 women and 12 men (aged 18-34) were asked to discuss their expectations for both the biographical and social future. The results of this study largely confirm the findings of previous scholarship, with young women often viewing childbearing and caring responsibilities as compulsory, while young men largely viewed these commitments as complementary to their chosen careers. This paper extends existing findings in this area by examining, firstly, whether these perceptions of the biographical future are mirrored in the participants’ views of the long-term, social future, and secondly, what implications such views may have when they are extended into this register. In so doing it ultimately finds that the gender norms that shape young adults’ expectations for their own futures are echoed in their outlooks upon the social future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an analysis of ‘pleasure’ in sex and relationships education (SRE) in England. Drawing together two distinct sources of data and different but complementary analytical frameworks, we argue that pleasure is largely absent within SRE and that this discursive silence serves to produce highly gendered and heteronormative understandings of sexual agency, autonomy and empowerment. A critical linguistic analysis of the current Department for Education (DfE) SRE guidance for England reveals that sex is positioned as a ‘risky’ and dangerous activity, which is clearly linked to child protection; sex is not discussed as pleasurable. Focus group discussions conducted with young women in the North East of England highlight the ways in which gendered discourses about pleasure construct expectations for ‘appropriate’ sexual identities and behaviours. These may be linked to negative experiences such as sexual harassment and bullying and compromised sexual subjectivity. We suggest that existing DfE SRE guidance in England be re-examined with particular reference to addressing gender equality, including in relation to access to a discourse of sexual pleasure and rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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