Dissertations / Theses: 'Women Women Women Women Hindu women Hindu women Hinduism'

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Orr, Leslie C. "Hindu temple women of the Chola period in south India." Thesis, McGill University, 1993. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=41248.

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This study examines the situation and activities of Hindu temple women (devadasis) in the 9th-13th centuries, as revealed in Tamil inscriptions. These temple women, unlike their male counterparts or the devadasis of more recent times, were not primarily identified as temple servants, with professional expertise or ritual responsibilities, but were instead defined with reference to a particular status, predicated on relationship with a temple. This relationship was secured through the donations that temple women made to temples. In the course of the Chola period, the status of "temple woman" became increasingly well-defined and the numbers of temple women increased, while other types of women disappeared from public view. Temple women's strengthening links with--but marginal positions in--the temple are analyzed in this study with reference to the changes that occurred during this period in the structure of the temple and in the temple's position within the social environment.

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Hedman, Hanna. "Hindu goddesses as role models for women? : a qualitative study of some middle class women’s views on being a woman in the Hindu society." Thesis, University of Gävle, Ämnesavdelningen för religionsvetenskap, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-3627.

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Denna uppsats baseras på en fältstudie genomförd i Faridabad, Indien våren 2007. Syftet är att undersöka vilken roll hinduiska gudinnor spelar för kvinnor. För att uppfylla det syftet studeras också de intervjuade kvinnornas underliggande uppfattningar om jämställdhet.

För att kunna uppfylla syftet med uppsatsen har en kvalitativ metod använts och 19 intervjuer har genomförts. Informanterna har fått svara på frågor som handlar om att vara kvinna i det hinduiska samhället och deras åsikter om hur kvinnors situation bör ändras. När resultaten från intervjuerna analyserats har jag inspirerats av tidigare forskning om genus och Hinduism.

I den hinduiska mytologin finns både gudar och gudinnor. Att dyrka gudinnor kan ses som en källa till makt och inspiration för kvinnor. Därför har jag studerat om informanterna ser på gudinnorna som förebilder. Resultaten visar att det är svårt att avgöra om så är fallet. Ungefär hälften av informanterna sade att det ser gudinnorna som förebilder. I motsats till tidigare forskning nämnde inte informanterna de gudinnor som representerar de egenskaper som den ideala hustrun ska besitta, istället nämndes stridsgudinnan Durga. Tidigare forskning visar dock att även de självständiga gudinnorna som beskrevs av informanterna som förebilder är en del av den patriarkala strukturen. Under intervjuerna framgick att rollen att vara en bra hustru och mor värdesätts högt av informanterna. Detta kan, enligt mig, kopplas till det mest framträdande resultatet som framkom i synen på vad jämställdhetsuppfattningen baseras på. Det gäller uppfattningen om att män och kvinnor föds med olika egenskaper. I motsats till genusteori förstås inte skillnader mellan män och kvinnor som främst socialt konstruerade.

This report is based on a field study that was carried out in Faridabad, India in the spring of 2007. The aim is to study what role the Hindu goddesses play for Hindu women. To fulfil this purpose I am also studying the interviewed women’s underlying understanding regarding gender equality.

To fulfil the aim a qualitative method was chosen and 19 interviews were completed. The informants answered questions about being a woman in the Hindu society and their opinions on how to change women’s situation. While analysing the results I was inspired by previous research on gender and Hinduism.

In the Hindu mythology there are both gods and goddesses. Worshipping goddesses can be seen as a source of power and inspiration for women. Therefore I wanted to study if the informants look at the goddesses as role models. The results show that it is difficult to determine whether or not that is the case. Approximately half of the informants said that they looked at the goddesses as role models. In contrast to previous research the informants did not mention the goddesses that are represented with qualities that the ideal wife should posses, instead Durga, the fight goddess, was mentioned. However, previous research also shows that the independent goddesses that were described as role models by the informants are a part of a patriarchal structure. During the interviews the role of being a good wife and a mother is described as the most important thing for the informants. This can, according to me, be related to the most significant result on what the understanding of gender equality is based on. This is the opinion that men and women are born with different qualities. In contrast to the gender theory, the differences between men and women are not understood as primarily socially constructed.

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Hembroff, Nicole, and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "Orthodox Hindu attitudes to menstruation / Nicole Hembroff." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Religious Studies, c2010, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/2600.

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Although menstruation is a biological process that occurs for women of a sexually mature age, many cultures associate it with symbols that shape and affect women's lives within these societies. This thesis examines orthodox Hindu beliefs about the origin and meaning of menstruation, which is fundamentally viewed negatively (i.e., adharmically). Drawing upon sources from the earliest to more recent Dharmasastra literature, the thesis demonstrates that orthodox Hindu menstrual taboos derive from menstruation's adharmic associations, which in turn affect attitudes towards women. The Dharmasastras also attempt to realign women with dharma by prescribing appropriate roles for them and act in tandem with the Hindu goddess tradition. Orthodox interpretations of Hindu goddesses configure these deities to serve as dharmic models "for" and " o f women, thereby transmitting dharma to women in ways that are perhaps more meaningful, accessible, and effective than the sastric literature alone. iv
viii, 102 leaves , 3 leaves of plates : ill. ; 29 cm

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Deshpande, Chitra. "Empowerment through Hindu nationalism? : examining gender relations in the Shiv Sena." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2005. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ab20698f-d74f-441e-be60-dbfd625b0114.

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This dissertation explores whether women and men can be empowered through cultural nationalism based on religious/ethnic identities. Religious fundamentalism is typically not associated with women's empowerment. As a patriarchal, Hindu nationalist party that advocates violence, the Shiv Sena is also an unlikely agent of women's empowerment. Yet, the Sena has been attracting numerous women who claim to have gained confidence through the party. Using the Shiv Sena as my case study, I interviewed four male and seven female Shiv Sena members using the biographic narrative method. By examining their biographic narratives and interviews of their families and colleagues, I was able to delineate the different empowerment cycles for men and women in Shiv Sena and determine each participant's level of empowerment. The empowerment framework defined by Jo Rowlands (1997), which distinguishes between personal, collective, and relational empowerment, serves as the basis of my assessment of women's and men's empowerment. As violence is generally disregarded as a means of empowerment, I discuss it in relation to the construction of empowering cultural identities. While establishing theoretical frameworks regarding empowerment, cultural identity and gender, I also examine the disempowerment of Maharashtrians (whom Shiv Sena originally represented) by the socio-economic and historical conditions of Bombay, India. I then demonstrate how Shiv Sena, led by its Chief, Bal Thackeray, has constructed a new hegemonic masculine identity for Maharasthrian men as a means of empowerment. In the final chapters, I examine Shiv Sena's impact on the lives of individual women and men. This analysis revealed that despite the patriarchal constraints imposed by the Sena, women were becoming personally empowered in both the private and public spheres. In contrast, while Shiv Sena men were achieving collective empowerment in the public sphere, they had more difficulty becoming personally empowered in both the home and workplace.

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Hole, Elizabeth Åsa. "Neither here - nor there : an anthropological study of Gujarati Hindu women in the diaspora /." Uppsala : Institutionen för kulturantropologi och etnologi, Uppsala universitet [distributör], 2005. http://publications.uu.se/theses/abstract.xsql?dbid=6218.

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Mukhopadhyay, Maitrayee. "#Brother, there are only two Jatis - men and women' : construction of gender identity; women, the state and personal laws in India." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.260834.

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Boyle, Corinne E. "Daughters, brides, and devoted wives changing perspectives of Hindu women /." Click here for access, 1999. http://cameldev.conncoll.edu/Libraries/documents/Boyle_Dissertation.pdf.

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Prag, Hanita T. "The coping resources and subjective well-being of dual-career Hindu mothers." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/593.

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With the increasing number of women entering the labour force internationally, the role of women is changing. Consequently, researchers are pressed to investigate how females of all cultures balance their work and family responsibilities. Amongst Hindu couples, this issue can either be a source of tension or positive support. An overview of literature indicates that the psychological aspects of dual-career Hindu women have received little attention in South Africa. The current study aimed to explore and describe coping resources and the subjective well-being of full-time employed Hindu mothers. The study took the form of a non-experimental exploratory-descriptive design. Participants were selected through nonprobability convenience sampling. The sample of the study consisted of sixty full-time employed Hindu mothers between the ages of 25 and 45 years of age who had at least one dependent primary school child aged between 7 to 12 years. Various questionnaires were used to collect data for this study. These included a Biographical Questionnaire, The Coping Resources Inventory (CRI), The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), and The Affectometer 2 (AFM2). Data was analysed by means of descriptive statistics. Cronbach’s coefficient alphas were utilised to calculate the reliability of the scores of each questionnaire. A multivariate technique was used to determine the amount of clusters formed. A non-hierarchical partitioning technique known as K-means cluster analysis was utilised in this study. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilised in order to compare the mean scores of the various clusters. A post-hoc analysis using the Scheffé test was computed to test for significant differences. Cohen’s d statistics was subsequently used to determine the practical significance of the differences found between the cluster means on each of the measures. The cluster analysis indicated three clusters that differed significantly from one another on all three measures. The results of the CRI indicated that the participants used cognitive and spiritual resources to assist them to cope with the transition from traditional to modern contemporary roles. It was also found that the participants with low coping resources had inferior subjective well-being compared to those who had average and high CRI scores. The findings indicated that the participants were generally satisfied with their lives and experienced high levels of positive affect and low levels of negative affect. However, as a group there was a trend for the participants to have experienced slightly lower levels of global happiness or slightly negative affect. The results of this study broadens the knowledge base of positive psychology with respect to the diverse cultures and gender roles within South Africa. Overall, this study highlighted the value and the need for South African research on the coping resources and subjective well-being of dual-career Hindu mothers.

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Augustine, Mercy. "Women awake, arise, and celebrate your womanhood." Chicago, IL : Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.2986/tren.033-0854.

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Menon, Kalyani Devaki. "Dissonant subjects: Women in the Hindu nationalist movement in India." Related electronic resource: Current Research at SU : database of SU dissertations, recent titles available full text, 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/syr/main.

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Gangopadhyay, Monalisa. "Hindutva Meets Globalization: The Impact on Hindu Urban Media Women." FIU Digital Commons, 2010. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/305.

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This study examines the impact of globalization and religious nationalism on the personal and professional lives of urban Hindu middle class media women. The research demonstrates how newly strengthened forces of globalization and Hindutva shape Indian womanhood. The research rests on various data that reveal how Indian women interpret and negotiate constructed identities. The study seeks to give voice to the objectified by scrutinizing and challenging the stereotypical modern faces of Indian womanhood seen in the narratives of globalization and Hindutva. Feminist open-ended interviewing was conducted in English and Hindi in New Delhi, the capital of India, with 23 Hindu women, employed by electronic and print media corporations. Accumulated data were analyzed and interpreted using feminist critical discourse analysis. Findings from the study indicate that while the Indian middle class women have embraced professional opportunities presented by globalization, they remain circumscribed by mutating gender politics. The research also finds that as academic and professional progress empower the women within their homes, their public lives have become fraught with increasing gender violence and decreasing recourse to justice. Therefore, women accept the power stratification of their lives as being dependent on spatial and temporal distinctions, and have learnt to engage and strategize with the public environment for physical safety and personal-professional progress. While the media women see systemic masculine domination as being symbiotic with tenets of religious nationalism, they exhibit an unquestioned embracing of capitalism/globalization as the means of empowerment. My research also strongly indicates the importance of the media’s role in shaping gender dynamics in a global context. In conclusion, my research shows the mediawomen’s immense agency in pursuing academic and professional careers while being aware of deeply ingrained gender roles through their strong commitment towards their families. The findings of this study contribute to the literature on Third World nationalism, urban globalization and understandings of reworked-renewed masculine domination. Finally, the study also engages with recent scholarship on the Indian middle class (See Nanda 2010; Shenoy 2009; Lukose 2005; and Radhakrishnan 2006) while simultaneously addressing the notions of privilege and disengagement levied at the middle class woman, a symbiosis of idealization and imprisonment.

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Mehta, Akanksha. "Right-wing sisterhood : everyday politics of Hindu nationalist women in India and Zionist settler women in Israel-Palestine." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2017. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/24903/.

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Right-Wing movements have gained political momentum in the last few decades, drawing within their ranks women who not only embody their exclusionary and violent politics but who also simultaneously contest everyday patriarchies. This thesis examines the everyday politics of women in two right-wing movements, the cultural nationalist Hindu right-wing project in India and the settler-colonial Zionist project in Israel-Palestine. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic, narrative, and visual 'fieldwork' conducted with women in both these movements, I argue that through a politics of the everyday, right-wing women bargain and negotiate with patriarchal communities/homes, male-formulated ideologies and discourses, and male-dominated right-wing projects and spaces. These mediations replicate and affirm as well as subvert and challenge patriarchal structures and power hierarchies, troubling the binaries of home/world, private/public, personal/political, and victim/agent. I assert that dominant literature on right-wing women focuses on motherhood and family, ignoring various other crucial subject positions that are constituted and occupied by right-wing women and neglecting the agential and empowering potential of right-wing women's subjectivities. I use four themes/lenses to examine the everyday politics of right-wing women. These are: pedagogy and education; charity and humanitarian work; intimacy, friendship, sociability and leisure; and political violence. By interrogating the practices that are contained in and enabled by these four locations of Hindu right-wing and Zionist settler women's everyday politics, this thesis highlights the multiple narratives, contradictions, pluralities, hierarchies, power structures, languages, and discourses that encompass right-wing women's projects. By capturing the processes of subject formation of right-wing women, I encapsulate how my interlocutors shape the subjectivities of those in their communities, transforming the local and international landscapes of the Hindu right-wing and the Zionist settler project. Drawing together ethnographic narratives, 'story-telling', visuals, methodological and ethical reflections, and inter-disciplinary theoretical engagement, this thesis also asks what the many-layered textures of everyday politics of right-wing women might mean for feminist scholarship in gender studies, politics, and international relations, for feminist methodologies, for feminist ethics, and for feminist activism.

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Srinivasan, Vasanthi. "Culture, religion and transition: The experience of Hindu women in Canada." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/9840.

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Bradley, Cynthia. "The changing goddess : the religious lives of Hindu women in West Bengal." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.416946.

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Jalalzai, Sajida. "The politics of recovery : women in the Tablighi Jamaʻat and Vishwa Hindu Parishad." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=98541.

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This thesis examines the construction and utilization of gender in religious nationalist projects. Communalist groups sacralize gendered understandings of time, space, and community, rooted in the bifurcation of the public (masculine) realm and the private (feminine) sphere. Nationalist understandings of citizenship maintain the public and private division, but acknowledge the potential to politicize both. In this conception of citizenship, the private (feminine) is deployed to achieve social and religious change. This thesis analyzes two contemporary South Asian transnationalist groups, the Muslim Tablighi Jama`at and the Hindu Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and investigates women's participation in the nation as cultural repositories and as pedagogues. In these roles, women are able to recover and disseminate the "true" values and identity of the degenerate community, thereby revitalizing the nation. However, while women are empowered in these roles, they are simultaneously limited by patriarchal expectations of ideal womanly behaviour.

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Nath, Renuka. "Notable Mughal and Hindu women in the 16th and 17th centuries A. D. /." New Delhi : Inter-India publ, 1990. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb39038917c.

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Dobia, Brenda. "Śakti Yātrā locating power, questioning desire : a women's pilgrimage to the temple of Kāmākhyā /." View thesis, 2008. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/32785.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2008.
A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, Centre for Cultural Research, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographies.

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Sehdev, Megha. "Moody migrants : the relationship between anxiety, disillusionment, and gendered affect in semi-urban Uttarakhand, India." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=116050.

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Recent work in anthropology has translated systemic disjuncture to individual subjectivity, under the premise that "disordered" political economies cause "disordered" identities. However this work underplays the role of affect in "gathering" subjectivity amidst external transformation. The following thesis proposes a concept of "mood" as a set of conjoined, low-level affects that provides continuity in contexts of neoliberalism and change. It investigates women's "moods" in an urbanizing region of Uttarakhand, India. Drawing from ethnographic interviews in a village, and a migrant community, mood is shown to involve components of capitalist anxiety that articulate with attitudes of docility and duty. Experiences typically described as "postmodern" including "incompleteness", "estrangement" and "alienation", are common to, and produce "classical" gendered affects in both rural and urban settings. Although anxiety can be destabilizing, it joins paradoxically with these affects to lubricate women's sense of "belonging" in a place.

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Koehn, Sharon Denise. "A fine balance : family, food, and faith in the health-worlds of elderly Punjabi Hindu women." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ40539.pdf.

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Kovacs, Anja. "The difference they make : activism and agency of women in the Hindu nationalist movement in India." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.445506.

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Iyer, Sriya. "Religion and the economics of fertility in south India." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2000. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/226114.

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Jaga, Ameeta. "Antecedents of work-family conflict among Hindu working women in South Africa: stressors, social support, and cultural values." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12951.

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Includes bibliographical references.
Little is known about the antecedents of work-family conflict (WFC) among Hindu working women in South Africa, a minority subgroup shaped by a unique set of historical, political, and cultural dynamics. Responding to repeated calls in the literature for the examination of work-family issues in unique cultural contexts, this study began with 20 in-depth interviews to elicit the subjective meaning that Hindu women in South Africa give to their work-family experiences. The qualitative data were analysed adhering to the principles of thematic analysis. These findings, together with a review of extant literature, were used to develop a new and culturally nuanced explanatory model of the antecedents of WFC for this specific context. The antecedents of WFC in the explanatory model include role stressors, sources of social support, and specific individual-level cultural variables. The study’s propositions were tested with survey data from 317 respondents. Psychometric analyses confirmed the portability of the measures and the bi-directional nature of WFC; work-to-family conflict and family- to-work conflict. Multiple regression analyses showed that a significant amount of variability in work-to-family conflict and family-to work conflict were explained by within- domain and cross-domain role stressors; with work overload having the strongest predictive effect on both directions of WFC. The results further highlight the salience of family in Hindu culture, noting that family involvement functioned as an important resource in reducing both directions of WFC and that food-work overload had a distinctive effect on WFC as a significant within-domain and cross-domain stressor. Results of further moderated multiple regression analyses confirmed co-worker support as an important resource for alleviating work-to-family conflict and for buffering the negative effects that work stressors can have on work-to-family conflict. Likewise, the results confirmed spousal support as an important resource for reducing family- to-work conflict; however, paid domestic support increased family- to-work conflict directly and when interacting with food-work overload. Moderated multiple regression analyses additionally showed that work involvement interacted significantly with gender role ideology in predicting work-to-family conflict and that family hierarchy orientation interacted significantly with family involvement in predicting family- to-work conflict. Overall, the results of this study strengthen the argument for the importance of uncovering and examining culturally salient variables in work-family research.

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Abraham, Susan. "The razor's edge of sanctity images of the divine feminine in India /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1995. http://www.tren.com.

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Roy, Reshmi. ""Saptapadi" -- the seven steps : a study of the urban Hindu arranged marriage in selected Indian-English fiction by women authors." Thesis, University of Canterbury. English, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/4690.

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This study explores the influence of the Indian socio-cultural hegemonic discourse on the urban Hindu arranged marriage. For this purpose, four novels in English by Indian women writers have been selected for their location within the specific urban Indian socio-cultural tradition. These novels are the avenues through which the Gramscian theories of hegemony and consensual control are observed. The study focuses on unravelling the damage caused by the hegemonic socio-cultural traditions within the marriages portrayed in the fiction. The interplay between the reader and the texts is vital in further exploring the reach of hegemony into the reading codes of the audience. The need for a model reader is discussed within the study which also addresses the roles of both protagonists and readers as 'cultural insiders/outsiders.' The study focuses on the emotional and socio-cultural dilemmas faced by the protagonists and the audience who occupy the 'in-between-zones' of those who fall into neither category of absolute insiders or outsiders in cultural terms. This thesis is not an attempt aggressively to deconstruct the Indian traditional social structure. The main aim of this thesis is to use the literary discourse as an instrument to explore the subversion of the ancient Hindu discourses whenever it has suited the vested interests shaping the hegemonic socio-cultural discourses. This study also attempts to further an understanding of the exploitative manipulation of married couples by various interest groups. In the process, using fiction as an instrument, there might be a chance to create stronger marriages and more harmonious marital interactions within urban Indian society.

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Akhtar, Rizwan. "Resistance and defiance of patriarchy : a study of Anita Desai's female characters as fictional counterparts to Hindu mythical women and cultural traditions." Thesis, University of Essex, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.577989.

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This doctoral project is an analytical study of Indian writer Anita Desai's four novels produced from 1965 to 1980: Voices in the City (1965), Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), Fire on the Mountain (1977), and Clear Light of Day (1980). In these novels, Desai presents the theme of female resistance to patriarchy. With extensive reference to Indian feminist theorists, I suggest that this patriarchy is inherent in many Hindu mythological and religious traditions. Notable amongst these are the myths of Sita, Draupadi, Kali, and sati (widow-burning). I demonstrate how some Indian feminists, theorists and novelists, notably Desai, co-opt these myths and traditions in order to recharge them to feminist ends. Consequently, this study establishes the ways in which Desai's female protagonists are fictional counterparts to the modified Sita and sati myths. Chapter one deals with the cultural and historical phenomenon of reinterpreting the Sita myth and sati from feminist perspectives. The story of Sita and her husband Rama figures in the Hindu religious epic, The Ramayana. Modem retellings of the Sita-Rama story present Sita a resourceful and resilient woman, compared with the authoritative versions in which she appears as a docile and submissive wife. The subsequent four chapters present close readings of Desai' s four novels. My textual analysis establishes that Desai's women reject the patriarchal versions of these myths and inscribe alternative or oppositional versions. Desai's women defy patriarchal structures of power, and embark upon journeys of self-discovery. Therefore, for example, she employs "departure" as a narrative strategy to illustrate women's resistance to a culture which demands conformity. Women leave their husbands, homes and conformist traditions. This study concludes that in India, literature and culture are intertwined discourses, to which the four novels that I analyse testify

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Andersson, Mikaela. "Hindukvinnor – sida vid sida : En kvalitativ diskursanalys över konstruktionen av hindukvinnor i svenska och indiska läroböcker." Thesis, Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap (from 2013), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-70890.

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School is a place for identity formation. When gender and religion are studied pupils tend to perceive religion, especially non-Christian religions, as traditional and patriarchal. Female oppression in religion is also used as a way of “othering”. Religious education is rarely presenting the women’s perspective. The purpose of this study is to analyze and compare the construction of Hindu women in Swedish and Indian school textbooks. The study was conducted through discourse analysis, using Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’ “toolbox” for identifying group identity. As a theoretical framework postcolonial theory and postcolonial feminism were used. A total of eight textbooks were examined. The results showed that the discourse of Hindu women in Swedish textbooks was not hegemonic, instead, it consisted of four different discourse. Some of them were colonial in character. Only one textbook showed Hindu women as religious agents. Women in Indian textbooks were constructed in a different way, often described as agents, working for change in a traditional society. By studying how group identity and agency are constructed in textbooks religious education can become better equipped to enable gender and religious identities in a multicultural society. Hence this thesis claims that the research between gender, religious education and multiculturalism need further inquiry.

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Dobia, Brenda, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, and Centre for Cultural Research. "Śakti Yātrā : locating power, questioning desire : a women's pilgrimage to the temple of Kāmākhyā." 2008. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/32785.

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The temple of the Goddess Kamakhya in Assam is the pre-eminent site of Hindu Goddess worship. It is revered as the yoni pītha, the place where the generative organ of the Goddess is worshipped. This thesis, centred on Kamakhya, explores the Hindu tradition of Goddess worship, Saktism, and both the possibilities and contradictions it presents for women. The research was undertaken from a feminist standpoint and employed a framework that was collaborative, cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary. Six women co-researchers from India, the U.S. and Australia took part in a pilgrimage that simultaneously explored the Kamakhya site, its history, symbols, myths and customs, alongside our own personal understandings of Saktism and its role in women’s spiritual empowerment. Our aim, in the face of contradictory evidence about the impact of Goddess traditions on the status of Hindu women, was to try to bridge cultural differences of interpretation and develop feminist readings of what may be enabling for women. The thesis establishes the basis of our collective fascination with Sakti, which denotes both the Goddess and the cosmic power she personifies. Through a combination of narrative, exposition of Indian sources and critical cultural analysis, I present our deliberations on the rich tapestry of themes we encountered. From the outset the thesis problematises the cross-cultural encounter and continues this frame throughout. The voices of the principal co-researchers emerge as they co-constitute the research, its methods and its implementation. Their central role is confirmed as the inquiry proceeds. Following the path of my preliminary encounters with the Goddess and with the co-researchers, pilgrimage is established as a traditional means of encountering the Goddess and, in the form we constructed, as a key experiential dimension of the research. In the encounter with Kamakhya, her dual persona as Mother Goddess and Goddess of Love is elaborated. The meanings and origins of both these aspects, their integration through the concept of srsti cosmic creation, and the implications for women of their associated practices of worship are explored at length. Finally, in light of the pilgrimage, I re-consider conjunctions between Saktism, feminist perspectives on women’s empowerment and theological horizons.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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Nayak, Asawari. "Transnational arranged marriages and the lives of married women in the hindu-gujarati diaspora of Portugal." Master's thesis, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10071/14434.

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The present study took place in the Greater Lisbon area, Portugal and used micro-ethnographic methods, to understand the practice of transnational arranged marriages among the Hindu-Gujarati diaspora. Eight married women between the ages of 32 to 52 years were interviewed to understand the experiences and perceptions of women who participate in such marriages. Furthermore, lives of married women within the diaspora were also analyzed using an intersectional structural approach, to comprehend their position within the larger power structures such as caste and gender. Additionally, strengths-based and agency favoring approaches along with migration theories on transnationalism were used to analyze how married women actively negotiated with their environments and countered challenges faced by them while living in Portugal. The study established that arranged marriages between transnational communities served the collectivist purpose of ensuring continuity and reproduction of their culture in while abroad. Traditional marriages among diasporas also entailed that certain power hierarchies from countries of origin sustained in the new geographic context. Although married women from the diaspora were disadvantaged in relation to their male counterparts when it came to certain aspects, they were never ‘passive’ beings within the migration process or while living abroad. Women not only challenged oppressive structures or practices but also occassionally occupied high positions in certain power structures (such as caste) and actively sought to ensure their maintenance in Portugal. The research value of this thesis lies in the fact that this is the first attempt to studying how arranged marriages take place within a transnational context in Portugal. Studying women within diasporas through the lens of strengths-based and agency-favoring approaches is also relatively new approach in social research. Lastly, the study concludes with making suggestions for social work practitioners and researchers who would want to study this group.

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Dhaske, Govind Ganpati. "The lived experience of women affected wtih matted hair in southwestern India." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/6230.

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
Descriptions about the matting of hair given by medical practitioners show a significant commonality indicating it as a historic health problem prevalent across the globe, however with less clarity about its etiopathogenesis. In southwestern India, the emergence of matting of hair is considered a deific phenomenon; consequently, people worship the emerged matted hair and restrict its removal. Superstitious beliefs impose a ritualistic lifestyle on affected women depriving them of health and well-being, further leading to stigma, social isolation, and marginalization. For unmarried females, the matting of hair can result in dedication to the coercive devadasi custom whereby women end up marrying a god or goddess. To date, the state, academia, and disciplines such as medicine and psychology have paid far too little attention to the social, cultural, and health concerns of the women affected by matted hair. A Heideggerian interpretive phenomenological study was conducted to document the lived experience of women affected by the phenomenon of matting of hair. The subjective accounts of 13 jata-affected women selected through purposive sampling were documented to understand their health and human rights marginalization through harmful cultural practices surrounding matting of hair. Seven distinct thematic areas emerged from the study exemplified their lived experience as jata-affected women. The prevalent gender-based inequity revealed substantial vulnerability of women to health and human rights marginalization through harmful cultural practices. The ontological structure of the lived experience of matting of hair highlighted the unreflective internalization of religious-based discourse of matting of hair. The hermeneutic exploration revealed events that exemplified jata-affected women’s compromised religiosity, and control of their well-being, human development, and ontological security. The religious-based interpretation of matting of hair and associated practices marginalize the health and human rights of affected women through family members, institutions, society, and religious-based systems. The study demonstrates the need for collaborative, evidence-based interventions and for effective domestic as well as global policies to prevent the health and human rights violations of women through cultural practices. The study offered foundational evidential documentation of the phenomenon of matting of hair as a harmful cultural practice that compromises women’s right to health and well-being.

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Bhana, Jyoti. "A social constructionist understanding of mourning : Indian widows' experiences." Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/1808.

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Death is one of the few certainties in life. It comes to all of us, but the way in which we deal with it will vary according to a range of social and cultural factors. Based on my mother's experiences since being widowed, this dissertation has undertaken a qualitative research method to examine how Hindu widows express their mourning in their context, thereby defining their experiences of widowhood. The aim of this dissertation is to give voice to the mourning experiences of Hindu widows. By examining these constructions of mourning experiences, one is able to gain an understanding of grief from a cultural perspective, which may serve as a guide for professional counsellors and academics in their endeavours to provide much needed support and understanding for bereaved Hindu women. The epistemological framework is social constructionism. In this study five Hindu widows were interviewed with the intention of providing readers and fellow researchers with insight into their narratives, and the data was hermeneutically analysed. The participants' stories were interpreted and categorised into themes. This study allowed for elaborate and detailed descriptions about Hindu widows' experiences to surface, with the view that this study will broaden the way Hindu widowhood is thought of. Analyses reveals that within patriarchal society, Hindu widows appear inadequately prepared for their widowhood. As a result they experience financial, emotional and psychological difficulties, which make adjusting to widowhood a challenge. The perspective this study hopes to argue for is broader, inclusive, collaborative engagement and thinking in respect of Indian widowhood
Psychology
M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

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Tharakkal, Sowmini. "Diasporic Contradictions: Indian (Hindu) Women Negotiating Canadian Higher Education." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1807/44000.

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Tradition and modernity are often viewed as strong yet opposing influences on the lives of Indian women living in Canada. In particular, the customs and religion of the homeland are assumed to conflict with the modern aspirations of these women. This study utilizes standpoint theory as a framework to question and push against this popular portrayal, and examines how Indian (Hindu) values influence, challenge and contribute to the educational and professional advancement of diasporic women. By analyzing qualitative interviews conducted with recently immigrated and second-generation Indian (Hindu) women, this study reveals that these women take on the role of an ideal amalgamation of Eastern and Western practices and navigate through their educational and professional choices in a manner that accommodates both. Traditional values and modernity are not always mutually exclusive, as evidenced by my participants who mobilize both in order to achieve particular sites of classed and ethnic empowerment.

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Majumdar, Rochona. "Marriage, modernity, and sources of the self : Bengali women c. 1870-1956 /." 2003. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3097134.

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Sineath, Sherry Aldrich Erndl Kathleen M. "Son preference and sex selection among Hindus in India." 2004. http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04062004-180901.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004.
Advisor: Dr. Kathline M. Erndl, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religion. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 16, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

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Imam, Zeba. ""Our Women": Construction of Hindu and Muslim Women's Identities by the Religious Nationalist Discourses in India." 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-12-7568.

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Secular nationalism, India?s official ideology and the basis for its secular Constitution, is being challenged by the rising religious nationalist discourses. This has resulted in an ongoing struggle between the secular and religious nationalist discourses. Since women are regarded as symbols of religious tradition and purity, the religious nationalist discourses subject them to increasing rules and regulations aimed at controlling their behavior to conform to the ideal of religious purity. In this study I examine the subject positions that the Hindu and Muslim nationalist discourses in India are constructing for "their women" and its implication for women's citizenship rights. I focus my research on two topics, where religious nationalist discourses intersect with the women's question in obvious ways. These are "the Muslim personal law" and "marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men". The Muslim personal law has emerged as the most important symbol of Muslim identity over the years, and holds an important position within the Hindu and the Muslim nationalist discourses as well as the secular discourse. The debates around the Muslim personal law are centered on questions of religious freedom and equal citizenship rights for Muslim women. The issue of marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men is located in the Hindu nationalist discourse?s larger theme pertaining to the threat that the Muslim "other" poses to the Hindu community/nation. I juxtapose the religious nationalist discourses with the secular nationalist discourse to understand how the latter is contesting and negotiating with the former two to counter the restrictive subject positions that the religious nationalist discourses are constructing for Hindu and Muslim women. The study is based on the content of debates taken from three mainstream English newspapers in India. Further, interviews with people associated with projects related to women rights and/or countering religious nationalism are used to supplement the analysis. The analysis is carried out using concepts from Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory. The analysis suggests that the subject positions being constructed by the religious nationalist discourses for Hindu and Muslim women, although different from each other, freeze them as subjects of religious communities, marginalizing or rejecting their identities as subjects of State with equal citizenship rights. The women rights and secular discourse counters this by offering a subject position with more agency and rights compared to the former two. However, it is increasingly getting trapped within the boundaries being set by the religious nationalist discourses. I argue that there is a need for women rights and secular discourse to break the boundaries being set by the religious nationalist discourses. In order to prevent the sedimentation of the meaning "women as subjects of community", the secular discourse needs to employ the vocabulary of liberal citizenship as rearticulated in feminist, pluralist terms.

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Pallardy, Jacqueline Lee. "Who are the bhadramahilā?" Thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2009-08-332.

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This thesis focuses on the identity of middle class Bengali Muslim women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historians identify bhadramahilā as members of the social class bhadralok and also use bhadramahilā as an analytic category. I use several authors’ work in order to show that there are two important but differing ideas about who the bhadramahilā were. The most common view is that bhadramahilā were upper caste Hindus who became the new class of English educated Bengalis via the introduction of the British education system. Others suggest that Muslims are also members of this class group, but either 1) do not include them in their studies on bhadralok or 2) have not proven that Muslims were in fact bhadramahilā. The question is, Should we consider middle class Muslim women to be bhadramahilā? Or, does the category bhadramahilā apply to Muslims? After examining women’s writings and the historical, economic, and socio-cultural conditions of the period, I suggest that Muslim women were indeed among the bhadramahilā, and that the category is a useful analytic tool for the study of educated middle class Bengali women, both Hindu and Muslim.
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Cheddie, Stephanie. "Being "brown" in a small white town : young Guyanese women negotiating identities in Canada." 2005. http://link.library.utoronto.ca/eir/EIRdetail.cfm?Resources__ID=362562&T=F.

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Delaye, Ashleigh. "That’s what She Said: Sita in the Lives and Imaginations of Hindu Women: Choice, Ideals and the Oral Tradition." Thesis, 2012. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/974862/1/Delaye_MA_F2012.pdf.

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Sita, the wife of Rama and the heroine of the Hindu epic narrative, the Ramayana, is described as the ideal wife of the Hindu tradition. Terms like demure, loyal, modest, pure, chaste, and devoted are used to depict the woman who typifies the pativrata (perfect wife). Putting aside what the tradition itself says about how Sita should be interpreted, this thesis asks how women of the tradition interpret Sita. By looking at women’s oral tradition about Sita and through interviews with six women from the Hindu tradition, a more nuanced depiction of the ideal wife emerges. This thesis has taken from the responses of women who participated in my study two major themes: the influence of the oral tradition on women’s interpretation of Sita, and concerns over Sita’s apparent lack of choice throughout her life. Emerging from these subjects are questions and discussion pertaining to whether Sita’s ideal character makes her a role model. The prevailing sentiments of the women in this study are that Sita is an ideal of the tradition, but her apparent lack of choice in life tempers her impact as role model for women. This thesis contributes to a small but important field of study on interpretation of Sita specifically, and women in the Hindu tradition more generally. This thesis would also be useful to those interested in religion, women in religion, Ramayana studies, diaspora studies, oral traditions, and feminist analysis.

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Lamb, Clement McArthur. "A qualitative study on the meaning of widowhood in the Hindu-Canadian community." Thesis, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9171.

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The research literature documents the relative disadvantage of widows in coping with grief, both in a greater vulnerability themselves for mortality or ill health, but also for a sudden loss of resources from losing a spouse. Moreover, widowhood in the Canadian cultural communities may be an additional burden if met with service from mainstream care professionals and agencies at variance with their culturally-appropriate grieving practices and assumptions. Specifically, the meaning(s) of bereavement and grief for Hindu-Canadian widows are not well understood, and the goal of this study is to enhance transcultural understanding of this population in counselling and beyond. An inductive, descriptive qualitative method focusing on the subjective, lived experience of key co-researchers, using selective and nonprobability sampling was utilized to maximize the relatively small sample size typical of a phenomenological approach. This was used to describe and explain the meanings and experiences of grief for five older Hindu-Canadian widows within the context of their own cultural setting and world view. Data were collected from five female members of the Hindu- Canadian communities. An additional triangulation method of a general class of culmraUy-informed co-researchers was used to help corroborate the obtained themes. The co-researcher's responses were the data for this study, and a method of "constant comparative analysis" (I^ininger, 1985) was utilized in a search for themes through a process of higher abstraction. Data analysis of the verbatim transcripts occurred simultaneously with data collection and, guided by Leininger's (1990) 'Thases of Analysis for Qualitative Data," the process unfolded with: (a) collecting and documenting raw data; (b) identification of descriptors; (c) pattern analysis; and (d) theme formulation. Ultimately six themes were abstracted from forty-five sub-categories as a portrait of the meanings and experiences of widowhood for this group of Hindu-Canadian widows. Themes for this group of key co-researchers are as follows: First, status transition from wife to widow meant resignation to the husband's death, rather than acceptance through discrete stages of recovery: Second, meanings and expressions of grief centered on beliefs about the enduring and eternal quality of the husband's life force as intrinsic and essential to the widow's own lifeways: Third, the transition from wife to widow entailed a double affliction in status loss as well as in the personal domain of intimacy and partnership: Fourth, the meanings and expressions of both grief phenomena and status transition reflect an ethic of collective good and duty-based interpersonal morality, but with acculturation causing a nascent and generational transition in such moral orientation: Fifth, status transition can entail a degree of liminality, out of bicultural dislocation and transformational variables such as education: Finally, a fundamental meaning of their Hindu-Canadian widowhood experience is its spiritual opportunity. Despite some diversity in their Hindu diaspora and sect, the explicated themes illustrate a common experience and meaning attendant on widowhood for the co-researchers. This study investigated a portion of the underlying cultural logic of widowhood and grief phenomena for these constituents of Hinduism, and highlighted their cultural constructions of meaning and experience, allowing us to improve our transcultural knowledge and understanding of the unique needs of this population in the field of Counselling and beyond. As a phenomenological study, themes and suppositions abstracted from this relatively small sample are limited beyond the precisely-defined context of its five co-researchers. Nevertheless, a counsellor might well benefit from the potential offered here for finer-grained assessments and therapeutic relationships with widows in our Hindu communities.

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Bohra, Rita. "A comparative study of marital adjustment of hindu and muslim women in relation to some of the social psychological variables." Thesis, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/2009/949.

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Wade, Trevor Montague. "Choreography as feminist strategy : three approaches to Hindu feminism in the dance of Chandralekha, Manjusri Chaki-Sircar, and Dahsha Sheth /." 2001. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3006564.

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Hendry, Marie Erndl Kathleen M. "The prolific goddess imagery of the goddess within Indian literature /." 2003. http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-11182003-202608/.

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Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2003.
Advisor: Dr. Kathleen Erndl, Florida State University, College of Social Sciences, Dept. of International Affairs. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Mar. 2, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Women Women Women Women Hindu women Hindu women Hinduism'

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