PhD contents

PRELIMINARIES; THESIS ORGANISATION;

TERMINOLOGY

IDEOLOGY (Patriarchy; Couples Culture); WELLBEING STUDIES; IDEOLOGICAL ADAPTATION; THE INDEPENDENT WOMAN; SUMMARY

THEORETICAL BASE; METHOD (Interpretative Repertoires; Ideological Dilemmas; Subject Positions; Foucauldian Analysis; Resistance; Quality Management - Credibility; Plausibility; Research Dimensions - Text construction; Analysis (Framing, Discourse analysis); Identification of alternatives; Relationships between discourses and institutions; Historical emergence of discourses; The material basis of discourse; Recommendations for change; Ethical Issues – Information; Permission; Confidentiality; Acknowledgement); SUMMARY

RELIGION AND THE WESTERN TRADITION; BEFORE THE COMMON ERA (Pre-historical; The Hebrews; Greco-Roman (Classical) Era; The Celts); THE COMMON ERA (Early Christianity; The Middle Ages; The Modern Era); CONCLUSION

THE FIRST TWO HUNDRED YEARS; THE EARLY TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY; CONCLUSION

BACKGROUND (Representations of Independent Women); METHOD (Data Collection; Screening; Identifying Story; Reader Identification); RESULTS (Newspaper and Population Profiles; Frames – Widow (Relict, Vulnerable, Worthy of protection, Loyal, Proxy, Autonomous, Caricature, Metaphor); Single (Victim, Deficient, Pitiable, Other, Systematically disadvantaged, Desperate to marry, Predatory, Promiscuous, Autonomous); Divorced (Discard, Promiscuous, Disadvantaged, Affective, Autonomous); Identifying characters - Widow; Single; Divorced; Narrative form; Linguistic analysis; Generalisability; DISCUSSION

BACKGROUND; RATIONALE; METHOD (Participants; Procedure; Analysis); RESULTS (Transition - Deficit/stereotype; Independence/ achievement; Circumstance/choice; Resistance - In/ter/dependence comparison; Status apartheid; Independence/freedom; Achievement; Friendship); DISCUSSION

BACKGROUND (Psychology’s Normative Function; Discursive Construction; Developmental Psychology; The Independent Woman; Women’s Development; Major Theories - Stage theories; Attachment theory; Women-based theory); RATIONALE; METHOD (Materials; Procedure); RESULTS (Difference; Deficiency; Development; Theory); DISCUSSION (Newspaper Frames and Adult Development Discourse; Resistance and Adult Development Discourse; Transition); COMMENT

ACCOUNTABILITY (Contributing to a Feminist Psychology of Singleness; Examining Cultural Constructions of Women Living Single; Role of Psychology); POWER STRUGGLES (Economic Relations); METHOD; LIMITATIONS; FUTURE DIRECTIONS; REFLECTION (Process); CONCLUDING COMMENTS

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Background

Methodology

Genealogy of women's independence

The independent Australian

woman

Study One: Framing the independent woman

Study Two: Negotiating

identity

Study Three: Psychology

and the independent

woman

Discussion

References

Appendices