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Item The life course effects of socioeconomic status on later life loneliness: The role of gender and ethnicity(Elsevier Inc., 2024-09-07) Szabó Á; Stephens C; Breheny MPrecursors of loneliness include individual risk factors and experiences of social exclusion. Using the New Zealand Health Work and Retirement Life Course History Study, we investigated the impact of unequal access to material resources across the life course (from age 10 to present) on late life emotional and social loneliness and the moderating effects of gender and Māori ethnicity (indigenous population of Aotearoa/New Zealand) in 613 adults aged 65 to 81 years. Childhood and adult life socioeconomic status (SES) negatively predicted late life emotional and social loneliness, but their effects disappeared after controlling for late life SES, suggesting a mediation effect. Education was also a significant predictor; however, it exerted different effects on social (positive) and emotional (negative) loneliness. Education's effect was moderated by gender, indicating a protective effect for emotional and an exacerbating effect for social loneliness in men. These findings suggest that lifelong exclusion from material resources is a risk factor for late life loneliness.Item Self-initiated expatriation and older women: composing a further life(6/04/2022) Myers B; Thorn K; Doherty NPurpose: Research into self-initiated expatriation (SIE) has increased exponentially, although the focus of these investigations has been on professional workers, and little has been gender specific. The purpose of this research therefore is to explore the career and personal motivations for SIE through the novel lens of older women. In this exploratory study, SIE and socio-emotional selectivity motivation theories (SSTs) are used, in addition to the Kaleidoscope Career Model (KCM), to understand the reasons these women have taken this path. Design/methodology/approach: The paper employs a qualitative methodology, drawing on in-depth life story interviews with 21 women aged 50 or more who had taken a SIE. A five-step narrative process using a story-telling approach was the method of analysis. Findings: The findings show important contradictions to the extant literature. Career dissatisfaction and escape are key motivations for these women. Further, contrary to SST, these women were seeking novelty–new places and new experiences. These women were also seeking authenticity as suggested by KCM, but also challenge was to the fore–not in the career domain, but in the personal domain. Their motivations for SIE extend beyond the current evidence base and understanding of the phenomena. Originality/value: The contributions include new insights into the motivational drivers for SIE for these older women and the importance of timing as facilitators of SIE. The SIE nomenclature is broadened through the inclusion of older women and beyond professional spheres. An initial framework of a more integrated model is developed from this exploratory study and presented as a basis for beginning to understand the phenomenon of older women undertaking SIE.Item Couple-owned business in New Zealand : how couples in business manage the complexities of their lifestyle : a 152.800 thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management, Massey University(Massey University, 2007) Hodgson, Kim Florence AshtonGiven the increasing phenomenon of couples in business and prevalence of SME's in New Zealand, this study contributes to the limited extant literature on couples in business by providing a New Zealand perspective. It also addresses a gap in the research by presenting a step towards building a profile of New Zealand couples in business for interested parties such as New Zealand business, the government and other research projects. The key research aim in this thesis was to examine the dynamics at play within this business lifestyle as couples simultaneously manage both their work and home relationships. Data were collected using a two-phased research methodology. The first phase of the study was exploratory and employed a qualitative methodology (Focus Groups and Case Studies). Phase One of the study established what key themes were relevant to New Zealand couples. This exploratory phase then guided the construction of a survey instrument. The second phase of the study utilised a survey and employed quantitative data analysis techniques. The survey investigated whether factors such as gender and dependents living at home defined differences in the characteristics profiles of entrepreneurial couples in New Zealand. The study also investigated satisfaction and tension levels in the sample. Using summary statistics, cluster analysis, and multivariate techniques, this research found that a couple's personal relationship impacted on all facets of their lives, including their work and life satisfaction levels. Couples who were satisfied with their relationship also experienced less business tension. In essence, the relationship was the fulcrum on which the business and the home balanced. The findings of this research were compared with the limited international data and a degree of similarity was found. The findings also have built on these similarities by offering a unique New Zealand perspective and focusing on the relationship as the keystone to the copreneurial lifestyle. The findings were also examined for relevance to the New Zealand context and it was found that predominant cultural factors affect the couples' lifestyles, home, and work decisions. Further potential for future research was highlighted, for example, investigating eastern cultures, same sex relationships, and industry or targeting specific demographics. Key words: Couples in Business, Entrepreneurial Couples, Copreneurship, Relationship Satisfaction, Business Tension, Cluster Analysis, Multivariate Analysis, New Zealand Business, Home, Work, Family, Dependents, Gender.Item An exploration of New Zealand work value orientations, gender, and personality traits : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand(Massey University, 2011) Hamman, Chloé MThe research objectives of this thesis were a) to explore gender differences in New Zealand work value orientations, and b) to explore the relationships between work value orientations and the Big Five personality traits. The purpose of these objectives was to identify if previous international findings on gender differences in work value orientations could be replicated in New Zealand (e.g., Elizur, 1994; Lips & Lawson, 2009; Weisgram et al., 2010) and to further clarify relationships between important behavioural and motivational influences (Parks & Guay, 2009). The thesis employed a correlational research design. The Values and Motives Inventory (VMI) was used as a measure of work values orientations. A respondent group of 1311 individuals had completed this assessment as part of selection and/or assessment purposes. Of these participants, 459 had also completed the Fifteen Factor Questionnaire Plus (15FQ+) as a measure of the Big Five personality traits. Findings suggested that females scored significantly higher than males on work values endorsing benevolence and supportive relationships with others. Conversely, males appeared to be more financially driven. These gender differences in work values orientations are discussed in terms of their implications for gendered roles and work interests in New Zealand. Findings suggested that the strongest work value-trait relationships occur between Affiliation and Extraversion, Affection and Extraversion, and Aesthetics and Openness. These, and other significant value-trait relationships, are discussed in terms of their implications for goal orientated behaviour, motivation, vocational choice, and the practice of assessment testing in New Zealand.Item Participation of women in grassroots development interventions: reflections on the experiences of development projects in Sudan(2009-07-22T23:04:48Z) El-Gack, NawalThis paper is based on an empirical study, conducted in 2005/06. It provides reflections on gender and development approaches employed in development projects in Sudan and identifies the challenges that development providers need to address when they plan for future interventions. It argues that addressing gender issues requires an in depth understanding of local values, and women’s needs and interests.Item A framework for social capital : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Massey University, Palmerton [i.e. Palmerston] North, New Zealand(Massey University, 2009) Kibblewhite, AndrewThis dissertation is concerned with enhancing the utility of social capital by developing and testing a comprehensive and measurable framework as a tool for researchers, policy-makers, and development theorists and practitioners. A framework was developed for measuring the degree to which different forms of social capital reside in a community and for distinguishing community-to community variations. The Framework was also designed to identify the accumulation of social capital in relation to structural characteristics within a community, and to identify what advantages might be associated with variants of social capital. The pursuit of the understanding of social capital has been convened within narrow disciplinary fields and has reduced the notion in definition, purpose, and utility. Much of the literature and past research has focused on approximations to identify social capital that are field-specific and representative of, at best, markers of social capital, rather than social capital itself. For this reason, this dissertation is concerned with developing a robust framework that has the potential to embrace the nature and extent of social capital across these disciplinary fields, while providing insight into the forms, influences, and trajectories of social capital. The utility of the Social Capital Framework that was developed for this dissertation was examined by transforming the Framework into a survey tool for administering in two communities to identify applicability and sensitivity for identifying the degree to which variants of social capital reside. The results showed that the Framework was able to distinguish the degree to which different forms of social capital existed, and how the social capital accumulates in relations to structural variables, in particular, gender. The Framework’s utility was not universal across all forms of social capital and showed that further enhancements are required, particularly, if it is to enable social capital to be attributed to forms of advantage. The results also identified areas where future research would be of value, particularly, in examining the trajectory of people’s forms of social capital.Item From the rainbow nation to the land of the long white cloud : migration, gender and biography : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand(Massey University, 2007) Meares, CarinaThis thesis contributes to and extends two well-established traditions in sociology: firstly, it uses a biographical approach to study the experience of international migration; and secondly, it generates theory from the lived texture of individual lives. Specifically, the research uses the Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM) to describe, analyse and theorise the gendered experience of migration from ‘the rainbow nation’ of South Africa, to New Zealand, ‘the land of the long white cloud’. The thesis follows and further develops BNIM’s sociobiographic approach, integrating a stronger sociological focus, and emphasising the feminist values of transparency, reflexivity and an attention to power differences between the researcher and her interviewees. In-depth interviews based on a single narrative-seeking question are conducted with South African migrants from several divergent groups, and are then used as the foundation for a process of intensive researcher-led group analysis. From this meticulous analytical process the researcher produces three detailed individual case studies. It is argued that in order to comprehend the significance of broad social phenomena such as migration and gender, it is imperative to have an appreciation of their meaning in the context of individual lives. Noting the occurrence of migration-related disruption across each of the case studies, the thesis uses the concept of biographical disruption to generate an innovative analytic vocabulary and a model that together describe and represent the gendered biographical experience of international migration. The research also uses the analytic language and the model to illustrate the impact of migration on the gender dynamics of migrants’ intimate relationships. It does this by considering one of the pivotal tensions through which gender dynamics are reconstructed in the context of migration, the tension between migrants’ productive and reproductive responsibilities. The language and the model theorise the resolution of this tension in a number of ways, thus extending the terms of the debate about the impact of migration on gender dynamics beyond the current binary conceptualisation of emancipation or subjugation. The utility of the language and the model in their depiction of the overall biographical experience of migration, and the illustration of the effect of migration on gender dynamics is demonstrated in the thesis through their application to each of the individual case studies.Item I write therefore I am : rewriting the subject in "The yellow wallpaper" and "The singing detective" : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University(Massey University. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2001) Beatty, BronwynFocusing on "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Singing Detective" (1986) by Dennis Potter in dialogue with theories from Freud, Szasz, Foucault and Butler, my thesis considers the role of medicine in encouraging a patient toward a normative subjectivity. The protagonists of each text have become ill as a result of their inability to accept the social contradictions and lies upon which gendered subjectivity is reliant; the unnamed narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" comprehends femininity as servitude to male demands, while Marlow of The Singing Detective desires the power patriarchy offers him as a male, but his loss of belief and faith prevent his ascension to masculine status.Both the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Marlow resist the imposition of normative gender by practitioners of mainstream medicine. Therefore, a more complex and subtle method of treatment, the psychoanalysis developed by Freud, is employed in The Singing Detective, thereby encouraging the patient to identify illness and discontent as personal, not societal, responsibility.I commence the thesis with an overview of the unequal power relations presupposed and encouraged by medical discourse. Through a process of 'hystericisation' the patient is infantilised and made dependent upon medical care. Linguistic control is central to manipulating patient behaviour within the hospital, and correspondingly the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Marlow both seek a new subjectivity through their writing. Difficulties in appropriating language leads to internal incoherency for the protagonists, met by a split subjectivity - a defence mechanism which allows the protagonists to deviate from, at the same time as preserving, their 'good self'.The refusal of "The Yellow Wallpaper's" narrator to relinquish her defiant self and assume femininity is contained by patriarchy - embodied by her husband, John - as insanity. The strict limitation upon a nineteenth-century woman's expression prevents her from positively escaping her physician/husband's script leading to her mental demise. By contrast, Marlow successfully resocialises himself by modifying the hypermasculine persona he idealises, and is finally situated to confront and reform the social contradictions that precipitated his ill-health. However, subdued by having been led to identify discontent as a personal problem, Marlow is unlikely to challenge the power relations which have made his subjectivity possible. His capitulation to normalisation demonstrates a fundamental point linking the otherwise divergent theories of Freud and Foucault, that the creation of agency first requires the subject's subordination.Item The currency of heroic fantasy : The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter from ideology to industry : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University(Massey University. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2007) Beatty, BronwynThis thesis proposes that the current popularity of heroic fantasy arises from the genre's capacity to reveal "meaning" to the alienated subject within late modernity. While consumerism potentially undermines the subject's sense of stability both as an individual and as a member of a coherent and unified social group, the hero's journey conveys a compelling model for attaining a purposive subjectivity by acting on behalf of the broader community. However, this "healing" message is in turn appropriated by multinational corporations and nation states for financial advantage. Heroic fantasy can thus be read at various points of its production and consumption as both legitimating and contesting dominant institutions and ideologies.With particular reference to the books and films of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, ontological security is discussed at both individual and collective levels across three horizons: commodification, gender, and nationalism. A combination of close textual analysis and the application of core concepts from cultural studies - particularly ethnographic study, hegemonic power relations and political economy - provides the methodological flexibility necessary to trace consumers' contradictory and ambivalent responses to the three themes: the anti-materialist message incorporated in the genre's moral economy is jeopardised by the rampant commodification of the texts; the normative masculinity and emphasised femininity common to the genre is contested by female readers; and the utopic visions of a secure and homogeneous community are exploited by the New Zealand government rebranding the country as Middle-earth. These arguments are oriented toward a New Zealand perspective; interviews with readers of Harry Potter and a discussion of the World Premiere of Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Return of the King in "Wellywood" contribute to this specific context.This thesis therefore asserts that once heroic fantasy is placed in the contexts of production and reception conflicting trends are revealed, suggesting that the social impacts of heroic fantasy are complex and equivocal. Although the genre is readily commodified by the very system that it retaliates against, analysis suggests that heroic fantasy resists reification into a single dominant discourse as appropriation is never absolute.Item Transformation and time-out: The role of alcohol in identity construction among Scottish women in early midlife(Elsevier, 2015) Emslie C; Hunt K; Lyons ACDespite the increase in drinking by women in early midlife, little alcohol research has focused on this group. We explore how alcohol is associated with the construction of gender identities among women aged 30-50 years in the west of Scotland, United Kingdom. We draw on qualitative data from 11 focus groups (five all-female, six mixed-sex) with pre-existing groups of friends and work colleagues in which women and men discuss their drinking behaviours. Analysis demonstrated how alcohol represented a time and space away from paid and unpaid work for women in a range of domestic circumstances, allowing them to relax and unwind. While women used alcohol to construct a range of identities, traditional notions of femininity remained salient (e.g. attention to appearance, drinking 'girly' drinks). Drinking enabled women to assert their identity beyond the roles and responsibilities often associated with being a woman in early midlife. For example, some respondents with young children described the transformative effects of excessive drinking which allowed them to return temporarily to a younger, carefree version of themselves. Thus, our data suggest that women's drinking in early midlife revolves around notions of 'idealised' femininity but simultaneously represents a way of achieving 'time out' from traditional female responsibilities such as caring for others. We consider these findings within a broader social and cultural context including alcohol marketing, domestic roles and motherhood and their implications for health promotion.
