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Subject: search.filters.subject.440502 Feminist methodologies

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    Examining the discursive landscape of women's sexual desire and implications for sexual subjectivity : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025-10-28) Tappin, Jessica
    Sexual desire and pleasure can be an “awkward” subject to bring up in conversation, many choosing to ignore it completely, or relegate it to the private realm. Yet, our media landscape is filled with various representation of sex that fundamentally shape the way we can think about, speak about, and enact expressions of sexual desire. A substantial corpus of feminist research suggests that discursive representations of sexual desire are highly gendered and heteronormative. These researchers have mapped cultural and social constructions of women’s sexual desire, tracing its portrayal as, for example, absent, relational, and aligned with postfeminist discourses of sexual agency. Previous scholarship has considered how these discourses are circulated within talk, and through mainstream media. A research gap remains in considering alternative feminist media, and psychological literature as sites that circulate discourses of sexual desire. The central aim of this thesis is to determine how women’s sexual desire is constructed across three sites of discourse circulation: (a) mainstream media, (b) alternative media, and (c) psychological literature, how prevalent discourses are supported, transformed, and resisted, as well as the implications for women’s sexual subjectivity and sexual agency. Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis was conducted with each set of textual data collected from those sites. Specifically, 75 advice columns or articles from mainstream media websites, 55 articles from alternative feminist publications, and 12 published articles from psychological and therapeutic journals. Key findings from these analyses indicate that (i) an essentialist biological discourse of desire is prevalent, shaping women’s sexual subjectivity in relation to men, (ii) many discourses and sexual subjectivities on offer within the texts are highly heteronormative and restrict agency outside of a narrow prescription of appropriate desire, (iii) a neoliberal incitement for women to reflect on and work on themselves in various ways underscored much of the data, and (iiii) alternative media texts provided opportunities for resistance of heterosexual norms, along with a broadening understanding of what desire is and can be for women.
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    I am (M)other-wise : decolonising Family Court systems in Aotearoa New Zealand through nomadic processes of re-membering and becoming : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand. EMBARGOED until 2nd May 2026
    (Massey University, 2025) Tweedie, Shannon Renee
    This project flows from my own experience of silence and suffering within the Family Court of Aotearoa New Zealand as I attempted to move my life, and those of my children, to safety following the end of my marriage. It seeks to disrupt the demonisation of separated (m)others within the Family Court system that results in unsafe outcomes for women and children and is perpetuated by the privileging of majoritarian/masculinist, colonial and patriarchal knowledge. I move through this project alone, but not alone, my own knowing linking deeply and inextricably with that of others in a process of collective becoming-with (Haraway, 2019). Informed by a feminist politics of location that privileges situated knowledge as the route to strong objectivity, albeit always partial and incomplete (Haraway, 1988), and a relational process ontology, I engage in a nomadic process of re-membering (Braidotti, 2011), listening hard to hear the unsaid in order to map a cartographic figuration of the conditions of the present from within my embodied and embedded location. Creative, nomadic re-membering opens space for the ethical affirmation of difference and dis-identification from dominant, singular representations, enabling me to resist the figuration of vindictive, hostile, obstructive, selfish, uncaring and in-credible (m)other produced through the gendered norms of Western heteronormativity that form the bars of my epistemological cage. As I push against the bars of my cage, I seek to move away from pathologisation and suffering by re-telling myself differently, transforming my own knowing and repositioning my song as legitimate. Through acknowledgement that the personal is political, my resistance to the figuration of Vindictive (M)other also seeks to decolonise knowledge systems that perpetuate the suffering of women who have left coercively controlling relationships. My creative, interdisciplinary process of affective re-membering enables re-imagining of new possibilities for my own future and the collective futures of other (m)others engaged in Family Court processes within Aotearoa New Zealand, opening space for the (m)other-wise knowledge of women to be heard and legitimised. I re-imagine a future in which (m)others who leave coercively controlling relationships might be permitted the right to freedom and flourishing.
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    Good m(others) : re-storying narratives on abortion together : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2024) Malkin, Sacha
    Statistical reports on women who access abortion in Aotearoa are produced within a context that refuses to acknowledge that mothers represent the largest group of women accessing abortions. The same lack of recognition permeates the academic and clinical health care research, where the dominant narrative produces a stereotype of abortion with little focus on the everyday conditions of mothers. The aim of this research was to hear and affirm the stories of mothers who have had abortions, so that in and through their locations as mothers we could emerge knowledge that had transformational potential. I drew on the concept of women’s stories as gifts, which enabled me to develop an ethically responsible methodology through which to hear stories response-ably. The reflexive process of hearing enabled me to listen for and respond ethically and relationally to stories of pain, and through our collaboration we reimagined a figure of the (m)other who has an abortion, understood through the multiplicity and partiality of our everyday lives. The research itself tells a narrative of the re-storying of the singular figure of abortion. Listening in ways that are response-able and affirmative facilitated a shift, where stories of pain moved and there was a reimagining of our subjectivities, and new stories of difference and resistance were produced. Through my analysis, potentials emerge, opening space for us to understand differently, through stories of motherhood, abortion, and affirmation, producing a new figure – multiple and partial and moving, M(other).
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    Negotiating grandmothering, paid employment and regular childcare in urban Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2021) Day, Caroline
    Grandmothers are increasingly called upon to provide regular childcare to enable parents to engage in paid employment. Many of these grandmothers are in paid employment themselves. Combining paid employment and regular childcare is managed in the context of their lives, which includes family relationships and broader societal expectations for older women. This thesis examined the experience of grandmothers living in Auckland City, who were in paid employment at least twenty hours a week and who provided regular weekly childcare of at least ten hours a week to their grandchildren. This research was based on feminist poststructuralism. Poststructuralism focusses on multiplicity and subjectivity, attending to the wider contexts in which language is located. Feminist poststructuralism focusses on gender and how gendered norms describe and establish the ‘right’ ways of behaving. These expectations contribute to assumptions that the accommodation of childcare and paid work is normal and natural for women. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen grandmothers and their accounts were analysed using narrative analysis. Narrative analysis focusses on the importance of stories as the primary way in which people make sense of their lives. These stories draw on wider social, cultural, political and gendered narratives. The analysis found that paid employment was particularly important in the participants’ lives, allowing for the construction of an identity which was different to a grandmother-focussed identity. This importance of paid employment also shaped participants’ understandings of the importance of paid employment in the lives of mothers; maternal paid employment was constructed as important for wellbeing and for enabling an identity different to that of ‘mother’. Two clear intentions for providing childcare were storied: supporting maternal paid employment, and childcare as a response to concerns about grandchildren’s wellbeing. Finally, holding multiple roles and balancing paid employment and childcare were storied as the juggling of identities rather than the juggling of the tasks involved in combining paid work and childcare. The research findings have contributed to how grandmothering is understood; it has contextualised participants’ experiences in wider societal expectations for how women can and should combine their paid employment and family lives in later life.