Feminist scholars have demonstrated how 'dominant discourses' and 'master narratives' frequently reflect patriarchal influence, thereby distorting and depoliticizing women's storying of their own lives. In this groundbreaking volume a number of internationally recognized researchers, working across a range of disciplines, provide a detailed examination of women's attempts to counter-story their lives when prevailing discourses are unhelpful or, indeed, harmful. As such, it is an exploration of women's agency and resistance, which highlights the challenges and complexities of such discursive work. The chapters explore women's resistance across a wide range of experiences, including: intimate partner violence, casual sex, depression, premenstrual change, disordered eating, lesbian identity, women's work in male-dominated spaces, rape, and child birth. Each chapter combines theoretical analyses with illuminating first-hand accounts, and elaborates practical implications that provide directions for individual and social change. Providing an incisive and comprehensive exploration of discourse, oppression and resistance, that cuts across domains of women's everyday lives, Women Voicing Resistance will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in the fields of psychology, gender studies, women's studies, sociology, and social work.

Women and Depression: Recovery and Resistance takes a welcome look at women s experiences of living well after depression. Lafrance argues that the social construction of femininity is dangerous for women s health, and ultimately, central to their experiences of depression. Beginning with a critical examination of the ways in which women s depression is a product of the social, political, and interpersonal realities of their everyday lives, the analysis moves on to explore an often ignored aspect of women s experience how women manage to recover and be well after depression.

The book draws on extensive in-depth interviews with women who have been depressed, as well as on previous research and on analyses of representations of women s health practices in the media. In this way Lafrance critically examines how women negotiate and actively resist hegemonic discourses of femininity in their struggles to recover from depression and be well. Threaded throughout the analysis is the exploration of a variety of subjects related to women s distress and health, including:

• negotiating identity
• the medicalization of women s misery
• women s narratives of resistance
• the material and discursive context of women s self-care

In exploring the taken-for-granted aspects of women s experiences, Lafrance sheds light on the powerful but often invisible constraints on women s wellbeing, and the multiple and creative ways in which they resist these constraints in their everyday lives. These insights will be of interest to students and scholars of psychology, sociology, women s studies, social work, counseling, and nursing.

Feminist scholars have demonstrated how 'dominant discourses' and 'master narratives' frequently reflect patriarchal influence, thereby distorting and depoliticizing women's storying of their own lives. In this groundbreaking volume a number of internationally recognized researchers, working across a range of disciplines, provide a detailed examination of women's attempts to counter-story their lives when prevailing discourses are unhelpful or, indeed, harmful. As such, it is an exploration of women's agency and resistance, which highlights the challenges and complexities of such discursive work. The chapters explore women's resistance across a wide range of experiences, including: intimate partner violence, casual sex, depression, premenstrual change, disordered eating, lesbian identity, women's work in male-dominated spaces, rape, and child birth. Each chapter combines theoretical analyses with illuminating first-hand accounts, and elaborates practical implications that provide directions for individual and social change. Providing an incisive and comprehensive exploration of discourse, oppression and resistance, that cuts across domains of women's everyday lives, Women Voicing Resistance will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in the fields of psychology, gender studies, women's studies, sociology, and social work.