Matangini Samanta

Bio: Matangini Samanta is an academic researcher from University of Calcutta. The author has contributed to research in topics: Subjective well-being & Mental health. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 1 citations.

Gender and Mental Health: Masculinity, Femininity, Modernity and Daily Hassles as Predictors of Subjective Well-Being

Abstract: Gender asymmetry in psychiatric illness is attributed to gender role stereotypes and differences in stressors. However, less emphasis is placed on the contribution of gender role stereotypes and stressors in relation to wellness, especially in India. The present article reports two studies in this context. Study 1 attempted to determine the role of Masculinity, Femininity, Gender Role Attitude and Daily Hassles as predictors of Subjective Well-being in 400 college students of Kolkata. They were administered the GHQ-28, Presumptive Stressful Life Events Scale, Subjective Well-being Scale, Indian Gender Role Identity Scale, Sex Role Attitude Scale and a Daily Hassles Scale. Step-wise Regression Analysis revealed that Masculinity and Daily Hassle were the best predictors of Subjective Well-being for both sexes. In Study 2, in addition to the above scales, Beck Depression Inventory and State Trait Anxiety Inventory were administered on 100 female and male psychiatric patients suffering from dysthymia, anxiety disorders and somatoform disorders, and 100 healthy counterparts. Step-wise Regression Analysis revealed that for the patient sample only Masculinity was a predictor of wellness. For the healthy counterpart, Masculinity and Hassle were the strongest predictors, thereby supporting Study 1. Women and men within the patient and the healthy groups revealed similar predictors. Thus, not sex per se, but masculinity in identity emerged as the common crucial factor determining wellness. The findings are explained in terms of Masculinity hypothesis within the Indian cultural context.

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics