Health as Submission and Social Responsibilities: Embodied Experiences of Javanese Women With Type II Diabetes

By examining women’s experiences with type II diabetes, we explore how illness can provide resources to construct meanings of everyday life in Javanese culture. We conducted in-depth interviews with 30 female participants in Central Java, Indonesia, and adopted grounded theory for data analysis. We identified four themes that diabetes serves as resources for women in Indonesia to (a) normalize suffering, (b) resist social control, (c) accept fate, and (d) validate faith. We concluded by noting three unique aspects of Javanese women’s illness management. First, through the performance of submission, our participants demonstrated spirituality and religiosity as essential elements of health. Second, diabetes empowers individuals in everyday suffering through two divergent processes: embracing submission and resisting control. Finally, diabetes provides opportunities for individuals within a social network to (re)negotiate social responsibilities. In summary, diabetes provides unique resources to empower our participants to obtain voices that they otherwise would not have had.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

The direction of research into visual disability and quality of life in glaucoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Glaucoma will undoubtedly impact on a person's ability to function as they go about their day-to-day life. The purpose of this study is to investigate the amount of published knowledge in quality of life (QoL) and visual disability studies for glaucoma, and make comparisons with similar research in other chronic conditions.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A systematic literature search of the Global Health, EMBASE Psychiatry and MEDLINE databases. Title searches for glaucoma and six other example chronic diseases were entered alongside a selection of keywords chosen to capture studies focusing on QoL and everyday task ability. These results were further filtered during a manual search of resulting abstracts. Outcomes were the number of publications per year for each disease, number relating to QoL and type of glaucoma QoL research.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Fifteen years ago there were no published studies relating to the impact of glaucoma on QoL but by 2009 this had risen to 1.2% of all glaucoma articles. The number of papers relating to QoL as a proportion of all papers in glaucoma in the past 10 years (0.6%) is smaller than for AMD and some other disabling chronic diseases. Most QoL studies in glaucoma (82%) involve questionnaires.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>QoL studies in glaucoma are increasing in number but represent a tiny minority of the total publications in glaucoma research. There are fewer QoL articles in glaucoma compared to some other disabling chronic conditions. The majority of QoL articles in glaucoma research use questionnaires; performance-based measures of visual disability may offer an additional method of determining how the disease impacts on QoL.</p

The role of women in food provision and food choice decision-making in Singapore: a case study

As countries develop economically and increasing numbers of women enter the workforce, children are partly being cared for by someone other than their mother. Little is known about the impact of this shift in child-care provider on children’s nutrition. This study presents findings from a case study of Singapore, a small country that has experienced phenomenal economic growth. Focus groups were conducted with 130 women of varying educational levels and ethnicities to learn about food decisions in their families. The findings showed that Singaporean working women cook infrequently, families eat out frequently, and children exert considerable influence on food choices. Implications for work–family policies and child health are discussed

"Sometimes they'll tell me what they want": family and inter-generational food preferences in the food decisions of Singaporean women

This study examines responses to questions regarding food choices and decisions from 18 focus groups of women (n = 130) age 30–55 years living in Singapore. Focusing on the responses to the questions in the interview protocol closely associated with decision making identified several themes. Food choices and eating decisions are composite phenomenon. These composite food decisions reflect flexible, open systems we refer to here as idiosyncratic regimes in which environmental, social, and intra-personal streams of influence are prioritized as individuals generate possible food decisions. Food decisions represent the imagined and actual presence of the “family” and differing inter-generational food preferences. As women attempt to create harmony from the diversity of food preferences they generate idiosyncratic regimes of food and eating reflecting “triadic streams of influence” manifest in the context of everyday contingencies of family and individual life. Recent concern in Singapore on the part of the Health Promotion Board and the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore regarding the increasing prevalence of diet-related diseases and obesity among Singaporeans provided the impetus for conducting this qualitative study of food and eating among Singaporean women