Embodied Shame And Gendered Demeanours In Young Women In Sri Lanka

In South Asia, shame is valued as a virtue and a means of social control, particularly for women. For Sri Lankan women, shame (læjja-baya) denotes modesty, purity, innocence, and self-effacement. For unmarried girls, sexual improprieties—rumoured or real—threaten loss of respectability and jeopardise a girl’s marriageability and her family’s honour. We investigated the dynamics of shame and norms of propriety in adolescent girls’ lives by re-analysing a subset of interviews of daughters and mothers (N = 24 pairs) collected in a prior study of nonfatal suicidal acts. Many such acts took place after girls were accused of violating norms of propriety. Other such acts served to ‘blame and shame’ wrongdoers. Girls and their mothers reported further that public knowledge of a suicide-like act sullied a girl’s reputation because onlookers ascribed sexualised meanings to it. We point out the incommensurability between parents’ goals and aspirations for their daughters’ educational and occupation attainments and the rigid demands for respectable comportment to which they must conform

Transnational Feminisms And Psychologies: Selves, Suffering, And Moral Personhood In Sri Lanka

Drawing from a larger study of non fatal suicidal behavior in Sri Lanka, we examine the narratives of two young women and their mothers following the daughter’s suicide-like act. These accounts offer insights into how the moral person is constructed in Sri Lanka and, particularly, what it means to be a good daughter and a good woman in Sri Lanka. We reflect on the implications that radically different conceptions of the self and personhood have for construing mental health and wellbeing outside a Western psychological framework. We also examine briefly how such conceptions of self and personhood have shaped feminisms in different locales

Magnesium supplementation alleviates premenstrual symptoms of fluid retention

We investigated the effect of a daily supplement of 200 mg of magnesium (as MgO) for two menstrual cycles on the severity of premenstrual symptoms in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. A daily supplement of 200 mg of Mg (as MgO) or placebo was administered for two menstrual cycles to each volunteer, who kept a daily record of her symptoms, using a 4-point scale in a menstrual diary of 22 items. Symptoms were grouped into six categories: PMS-A (anxiety), PMS-C (craving), PMS-D (depression), PMS-H (hydration), PMS-O (other), and PMS-T (total overall symptoms). Urinary Mg output/24 hours was estimated from spot samples using the Mg/creatinine ratio. Analysis of variance for 38 women showed no effect of Mg supplementation compared with placebo in any category in the first month of supplementation. In the second month there was a greater reduction (p = 0.009) of symptoms of PMS-H (weight gain, swelling of extremities, breast tenderness, abdominal bloating) with Mg supplementation compared with placebo. Compliance to supplementation was confirmed by the greater mean estimated 24-hour urinary output of Mg (p = 0.013) during Mg supplementation (100.8 mg) compared with placebo (74.1 mg). A daily supplement of 200 mg of Mg (as MgO) reduced mild premenstrual symptoms of fluid retention in the second cycle of administration