Papers by Britta Wigginton
In this case study, we explore the challenges associated with researching a stigmatized topic (wo... more In this case study, we explore the challenges associated with researching a stigmatized topic (women's experiences of smoking during pregnancy) and in doing so trace "behind-the-scenes" of our research journey. This case study is based on a collaboration between the two authors and formed part of the first author's PhD research. We start by describing the project and how the problems of recruitment and data collection arose. We then focus on three methodological strategies that offered more creative options for us to fully explore women's experiences of stigma: (1) moving to online spaces; (2) utilizing multiple sources of data for qualitative analysis; and (3) changing the frame of the study through discourse analysis. We show how together these strategies allowed us to consider how initial "problems" in the research (e.g., slow recruitment) could be seen as stigma in action.
Introduction: Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use, or vaping, is increasing against a backdrop... more Introduction: Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use, or vaping, is increasing against a backdrop of declining smoking rates. E-cigarettes contain fewer toxicants than cigarettes but their appearance and mode of use has the potential to satisfy the habitual aspects of smoking. To date, we know little about lay perceptions of the safety of using e-cigarettes in pregnancy.
Methods: We conducted a thematic discourse analysis of 13 online discussion forum threads that discussed e-cigarette use during pregnancy. We focussed on the major discursive strategies that forum posters used to debate the safety of e-cigarette use during pregnancy.
Results: We identified three distinct ways in which forum posters debated the safety of using e-cigarettes during pregnancy: (1) Quitting (nicotine) cold-turkey is unsafe; (2) vaping is the lesser of two evils; (3) vaping is not worth the risk.
Conclusion: Discussions about the safety of e-cigarettes drew on the premise that (1) immediate cessation of nicotine was potentially harmful and unsafe, (2) e-cigarettes were a harm reduction tool, or (3) vaping could be dangerous and should be avoided. While these arguments are not necessarily specific to pregnancy (beside mentions of foetal-specific risks), this analysis points to the need to educate and support women about harm reduction options.
Implications: Health professionals should be aware that some women may be currently using or considering using e-cigarettes in an effort to quit or reduce smoking. It is important health professionals are equipped to educate women with accurate up-to-date and balanced information about the risks and benefits of e-cigarette use during pregnancy.
Mealtime duration in problem and non-problem eaters
Appetite, 2015
Young children commonly encounter difficulties at mealtimes, which are important to address early... more Young children commonly encounter difficulties at mealtimes, which are important to address early to avoid the maintenance of problematic eating behaviour. Amongst these are drawn-out meals, which some research has associated with more mealtime problems. However, research on meal duration, and therefore guidelines for appropriate meal length, is lacking. This research aimed to compare the meal duration of problem-eaters and controls, and to examine changes to meal length amongst problem-eaters following a parenting intervention. The mealtimes of 96 problem-eaters and 105 controls were examined via parent-report and in-home observations; meal length was also compared amongst problem-eaters who had received intervention and a waitlist control. Meal duration was similar across groups, though problem-eaters engaged in more aversive behaviour and less eating than controls. Observed eating and mealtime behaviour altered following intervention but not duration. Parents who reported meal length as a specific concern had longer meals and reported less successful feeding than those who did not. These results suggest that what is happening during the meal may better distinguish problem-eaters than duration alone.
Recruiting young women for health surveys: traditional random sampling methods are not cost-effective
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 2014
New developments in female contraceptives allow women increased options for preventing pregnancy,... more New developments in female contraceptives allow women increased options for preventing pregnancy, while men’s options for reversible contraception have not advanced beyond the condom. There has been little discursive exploration of how neoliberal and postfeminist discourses shape women’s accounts of choosing whether or not to use contraception. Our thematic discourse analysis of 760 free-text responses to a question about contraceptive choice considers the social and political climate which promotes the self-governed woman who freely chooses contraception. We examine the ways in which women formulated and defended their accounts of choice, focusing on the theme of free contraceptive choice that constructed women’s choices as unconstrained by material, social and political forces. We identify two discursive strategies that underpinned this theme: a woman’s body, a woman’s choice and planning parenthood, and explore the ways in which choice was understood as a gendered entitlement and how contraceptive choices were shaped (and constrained) by women’s plans for parenthood. We discuss the implications of these discursive strategies, and neoliberal and postfeminist discourses, in terms of the disallowance of any contextual, social and structural factors, including the absence of men in the ‘contraceptive economy’.
Drawing on public and private accounts of smoking during pregnancy (interviews, survey responses,... more Drawing on public and private accounts of smoking during pregnancy (interviews, survey responses, and a public media article), we examine how women discursively manage the ‘spoiled’ identity associated with inhabiting the body of a ‘pregnant smoker’. We focus on two salient identities ‘the silenced smoker’ and ‘the bad mother’ and explore the discursive and material consequences of these identities. We found that references to smoker and maternal identities were largely absent in women's accounts, and discuss how these absences enabled women to evade stigma and the rhetorical harm of these identities. Further, we discuss the material consequences of stigma including women's need to conceal their ‘pregnant smoker’ body in the face of heightened surveillance. We propose ‘discursive silencing’ to explain how dominant motherhood and anti-smoking discourses serve to render women's experiences as ‘untellable’ and therefore reduce women's capacity to seek help or support to quit smoking.
Tracy Morison (PhD) is a Senior Researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council and an honorary... more Tracy Morison (PhD) is a Senior Researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council and an honorary Research Associate at Rhodes University in South Africa. Her research interests include sexual and reproductive justice, families, qualitative methodologies and feminist theories.
The oral contraceptive pill remains the most widely used contraceptive method. We consider The Pi... more The oral contraceptive pill remains the most widely used contraceptive method. We consider The Pill’s depiction as variously revolutionary and liberating, oppressive for women, and more recently, a ‘lifestyle drug’. Drawing on discourses of (hetero)sex, heterosexuality and gender performance, we discuss how contraceptive use has been feminised and consider the current gap in understanding how women negotiate their positioning as responsible for contraception. To begin to fill this gap, we conducted a thematic discourse analysis using 75 free-text responses (to a general question in a wider contraceptive survey) to explore how women account for their agency and responsibility in discussions of accessing contraception. We identified two themes: responsibility for education and information and ‘finding contraceptive fit’. Women’s discussions of responsibility for education and information highlight the need for transparency from educational bodies, which are positioned as lacking in their delivery of contraceptive information. Women describe ‘finding contraceptive fit’ as an embodied process of experimentation with contraception to ultimately find one with minimal negative side effects. We situate our findings within critiques of the gendered nature and production of health, conceptualising contraceptive use as a distinctly feminine practice, which promotes self-surveillance and embodied awareness.
A substantial minority of Western women smoke during pregnancy. Understanding smoking from these ... more A substantial minority of Western women smoke during pregnancy. Understanding smoking from these women’s point of view may provide a richer understanding of experiences that are very often silenced, and provide some explanation for why pregnant women smoke despite widely disseminated public health campaigns urging them to stop. Strong social pressures directed at women to stop, justified mainly by arguments of protecting the foetus, are reinforced through the policing of women’s bodies, which is particularly powerful during pregnancy. This emerges in the form of criticism, confrontation and judgement, irrespective of individual women’s contexts and social backgrounds. Interviews with 11 Australian women who had smoked during recent pregnancies were conducted to explore their smoking-related experience of stigma. Thematic analysis examined their perceptions of stigma and surveillance, in the strong anti-smoking climate of Australia. Women’s talk constructed medical and social pressures as two separate dimensions of stigma, which they accepted or resisted, or – at times – did both. They also used discursive strategies to negotiate their position as ‘good mothers’ despite stigma, and spoke about the need to manage the contexts in which they smoked. The women’s talk suggests that directive, critical public health campaigns, and the associated social stigma, may actually make it harder for some to stop smoking. More supportive approaches that move away from a focus on individual responsibility, and from the assumption that pregnant women need to be coerced into healthy decision-making, might better assist some pregnant smokers to seek cessation support.
Despite women’s awareness of the risks of smoking in pregnancy to the developing foetus, a signif... more Despite women’s awareness of the risks of smoking in pregnancy to the developing foetus, a significant minority continue to smoke during pregnancy. In this article, we use a discourse analytic approach to analyse interviews with 12 Australian women who smoked during a recent pregnancy. We used these data to examine how women accounted for their smoking and identities in the light of the implicit but ever-present discourse that smoking in pregnancy harms babies. We found that the women in our study deployed two rhetorical devices in their talk, ‘stacking the facts’ and ‘smoking for health’, allowing them to situate their smoking within a discourse of risk or as a potential benefit to their health. Women ‘stacked the facts’ by citing personal observable evidence (such as birthweight) to draw conclusions about the risks of smoking in pregnancy to the baby. ‘Stacking the facts’ allowed women to show how they had evaded the risks and their babies were healthy. This device also allowed women to deny or cast doubt over the risks of smoking in pregnancy. Women’s accounts of ‘smoking for health’ involved positioning quitting as stressful and, as a result, more harmful than continuing to smoke a reduced amount. We found complex and counter-intuitive ways in which women dealt with the discourse that smoking in pregnancy harms babies and how these ways of accounting served to protect their identities. We argue that health promotion messages conveying the risks of smoking in pregnancy would benefit from contextualising these messages within women’s personal accounts (e.g. by ‘stacking the facts’ or ‘smoking for health’) and hence providing more ‘realistic’ health risk messages.
Qualitative methodologies offer various approaches to interpreting qualitative data. Here, we con... more Qualitative methodologies offer various approaches to interpreting qualitative data. Here, we consider how different approaches to interpreting the same data can be useful in learning about the scope and utility of qualitative methods, as well as exploring the role of reflexivity in analytic decision-making and interpretation. We apply both thematic and discourse analysis to university students’ responses to an open-ended question about ‘women who smoke while pregnant’. We show how our interpretations differ when analytic attention is paid to the content (thematic analysis) versus the rhetorical function (discourse analysis) of participants’ responses. We also show how reflexivity, compatible with our discursive analysis, allowed us to identify the local discursive context in which the data were produced and therefore how participants oriented to this context. We use our learning experience as a way of showcasing the value of dynamic and reflexive approaches to qualitative data.
Australia is at the forefront of tobacco control, yet 17% of Australian women smoke during pregna... more Australia is at the forefront of tobacco control, yet 17% of Australian women smoke during pregnancy. Negative attitudes to smoking are intensified when the smoker is pregnant, consistent with a discourse that encourages surveillance of pregnant women. Such overt anti-smoking attitudes create a context which may make it difficult for pregnant smokers to seek assistance to stop. However, there is little evidence on the extent to which pregnant smokers are stigmatised by community members. We used vignettes to examine the degree of smoking-related stigma expressed by 595 Australian university students who rated a woman, described as a mother who was smoking or not, and pregnant or not. Further, we examined whether provision of individuating information reduced the degree of stigma. Mothers described as smokers were rated more negatively than those not, particularly if they were pregnant: smokers were perceived as unhealthy, and also as bad mothers. Provision of individuating information slightly reduced these effects. These findings support the view that smokers--particularly if pregnant--are subject to negative moral judgement. Our findings contribute to the ethical debate about stigma-inducing tobacco control efforts, and suggest that anti-smoking campaigns that contextualise smoking in pregnancy might reduce stigma and assist cessation.
Book Reviews by Britta Wigginton
Reports by Britta Wigginton
Talks by Britta Wigginton
Despite strong social sanctions against smoking during pregnancy, the prevalence of this practice... more Despite strong social sanctions against smoking during pregnancy, the prevalence of this practice in Western societies remains substantial. Considering this practice from women’s point of view is critical, in order to capture a richer understanding of experiences that are very often silenced. Strong social pressures, which are directed at women to quit, are justified by arguments around protecting the foetus and are reinforced through the social policing of women’s bodies. This emerges in the form of social criticism, confrontation, and judgment, against women who are located in various contexts and social backgrounds. With this in mind, interviews were conducted with 11 Australian women who smoked during their recent pregnancy. Thematic analysis was utilised to explore the impact of stigma and social policing on these women. Attention was also paid to how women both regulated themselves and at times resisted social pressure. Through this, a deeper understanding of this social and moral issue can contribute to the promotion of supportive and non-judgmental cessation advice and programmes.
Anti-smoking campaigns targeting smoking in pregnancy are laced with foetal imagery urging women ... more Anti-smoking campaigns targeting smoking in pregnancy are laced with foetal imagery urging women to quit smoking for their baby. This creates a climate in which women’s actions are highly stigmatised and public surveillance is normalised. There is little empirical evidence surrounding the consequences of smoking-related stigma that has resulted from anti-smoking campaigns, which reproduce neoliberal discourses of personal responsibility and self-control in relation to quitting smoking. We were interested in the extent to which university students expressed stereotypical representations of women who smoke in pregnancy.
In this presentation we draw on work we have published in Psychology and Health.
Using vignettes we explored the extent to which 595 Australian university students reproduced dominant understandings of women who smoke in pregnancy by manipulating the amount of ‘individuating information’ (simple or elaborate) – in hope of contextualising smoking and reducing blame – as well as the ‘smoking status’ (smoking or non-smoking), and ‘motherhood status’ (mother, or pregnant) of the woman in the vignette.
We identified highly negative stereotypes for women who smoke in pregnancy. Individuating and contextualising women’s smoking only slightly reduced these effects, still producing negative responses compared to mothers who smoke.
Our findings identify the entrenched nature of smoking-related stigma and the discourses surrounding such stigma. Further, our findings contribute to ongoing dialogue about the ethical appropriateness of stigma-induced tobacco control efforts. We argue that more sensitive and non-judgemental approaches to promoting cessation are important to challenge existing representations of women who smoke in pregnancy and therefore genuinely support their cessation endeavours.
Developments in contraceptive technologies have targeted women, while male options are sparse. Co... more Developments in contraceptive technologies have targeted women, while male options are sparse. Contraception is often viewed unproblematically as ‘empowering’, allowing women to have control over their family planning; however, this ultimately positions women as (solely) responsible for contraception. There is limited understanding of how a female contraceptive culture influences women’s experiences of accessing and using contraception. This talk draws on a discursive analysis of women’s accounts of accessing contraception, based on 75 free-text responses from the CUPID (Contraceptive Use Pregnancy Intentions and Decisions) survey. The aim of this talk is to discuss how women articulated their own agency for accessing contraception, in light of cultural expectations that women should use, and take responsibility for, contraception. In particular, two discursive themes will be explored: finding the ‘right’ contraception and negotiating gendered expectations of contraceptive use. This talk will conclude with a discussion about the implications of a female contraceptive culture in terms of how responsibility might be re-negotiated to include heterosexual men.
What counts as a ‘good mother’ receives much attention in popular and academic writing. By defini... more What counts as a ‘good mother’ receives much attention in popular and academic writing. By definition, a good mother is often portrayed as white, middle-class, heterosexual and the biological mother of the child. More specifically, good mothers are considered self-disciplined, protective of their child and self-sacrificing, where they provide limitless care and attention towards fulfilling the child’s needs and desires, above their own. For women who don’t fit the stringent criteria of a good mother, either by no fault of their own or because their ‘choices’ are deemed inappropriate, their experiences may not be considered ‘hearable’ in this specific discursive context. Motherhood is one example of how certain discourses are taken-for-granted as ‘normal’ ‘common-sense’ experiences, and consequently marginalise or silence the experiences or identities of women who do not fit within this discursive space. Drawing on interviews with Australian women who smoked in pregnancy, a public account in the media of smoking in pregnancy, and online forum discussions, we explore the ways in which the good mother discourse was negotiated, or absent, in accounts of smoking in pregnancy. Our concern is that by silencing women’s experiences of smoking in pregnancy, we are reinforcing narrow ideals of good mothering and encouraging a zero-tolerance approach to smoking in pregnancy. Such an approach is problematic as it overlooks women’s harm reduction efforts, prioritises the health of the baby over the woman, and ultimately presents smoking as an individual choice, overlooking the socio-cultural context which compromises women’s cessation efforts.
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Papers by Britta Wigginton
Methods: We conducted a thematic discourse analysis of 13 online discussion forum threads that discussed e-cigarette use during pregnancy. We focussed on the major discursive strategies that forum posters used to debate the safety of e-cigarette use during pregnancy.
Results: We identified three distinct ways in which forum posters debated the safety of using e-cigarettes during pregnancy: (1) Quitting (nicotine) cold-turkey is unsafe; (2) vaping is the lesser of two evils; (3) vaping is not worth the risk.
Conclusion: Discussions about the safety of e-cigarettes drew on the premise that (1) immediate cessation of nicotine was potentially harmful and unsafe, (2) e-cigarettes were a harm reduction tool, or (3) vaping could be dangerous and should be avoided. While these arguments are not necessarily specific to pregnancy (beside mentions of foetal-specific risks), this analysis points to the need to educate and support women about harm reduction options.
Implications: Health professionals should be aware that some women may be currently using or considering using e-cigarettes in an effort to quit or reduce smoking. It is important health professionals are equipped to educate women with accurate up-to-date and balanced information about the risks and benefits of e-cigarette use during pregnancy.
Book Reviews by Britta Wigginton
Reports by Britta Wigginton
Talks by Britta Wigginton
In this presentation we draw on work we have published in Psychology and Health.
Using vignettes we explored the extent to which 595 Australian university students reproduced dominant understandings of women who smoke in pregnancy by manipulating the amount of ‘individuating information’ (simple or elaborate) – in hope of contextualising smoking and reducing blame – as well as the ‘smoking status’ (smoking or non-smoking), and ‘motherhood status’ (mother, or pregnant) of the woman in the vignette.
We identified highly negative stereotypes for women who smoke in pregnancy. Individuating and contextualising women’s smoking only slightly reduced these effects, still producing negative responses compared to mothers who smoke.
Our findings identify the entrenched nature of smoking-related stigma and the discourses surrounding such stigma. Further, our findings contribute to ongoing dialogue about the ethical appropriateness of stigma-induced tobacco control efforts. We argue that more sensitive and non-judgemental approaches to promoting cessation are important to challenge existing representations of women who smoke in pregnancy and therefore genuinely support their cessation endeavours.