Digital Commons Network^™

Issues Of Engendered Entitlement: Who Owns The Classroom? Who Owns Knowledge?, Dorothy Radius Kasik

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ways in which first year female college students have been prepared by educational systems in our culture to handle knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge during the first year of college experience. It is the contention of the author that women are not actively encouraged in our culture to take ownership of educational concepts in the same way as men. This happens for two reasons, first that because women's methods of interaction in the classroom might differ from men's those methods might not be perceived as acceptable or taken seriously; and second that a woman's discomfort …

Silent Partners: The Economic Life Of Women On The Frontier Of Colonial New York, Aileen Button Agnew

Doctoral Dissertations

The Hudson-Mohawk frontier of eighteenth-century New York made both a boundary and a meeting place for several cultures. The shops and retail spaces of this borderland provided a common space for the convergence of women and their work with the more visible male-dominated economy. As recorded in local account books, black, white, and Indian women took part in many aspects of local commerce. As retailers, as producers, and as consumers, women participated in the world of business and accounts.

Settled in the seventeenth-century by the Dutch, this part of New York had long been occupied by Iroquoian tribes. Trade between …

Factors That Influence The Decision Regarding Hormone Replacement Therapy In Postmenopausal Women, Ruth A Rogers Reilly

Doctoral Dissertations

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women in the United States today. Prior to menopause women have lower rates of heart disease than men; however, after menopause a woman's risk for heart disease rises dramatically. This is thought to be due the ovaries' decreased production of estradiol, but the mechanisms for this effect have not been fully elucidated. The need exists to investigate the impact of healthy lifestyles on attenuating the risk of cardiovascular disease in women as they age.

The majority of research on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has focused on the biomedical model suggesting that …

The Sexual Harassment Paradox In Graduate School: Experiences And Answers, Kimberly Ann Smirles

Doctoral Dissertations

Sexual harassment is a pervasive problem in higher education (Truax, 1996). Graduate students occupy a unique power position in academia as both students and teachers. As such, they are potentially victims and perpetrators of sexual harassment. The purpose of the current research was to (a) understand the dynamics of sexual harassment by examining the experiences and perceptions of graduate students and (b) assess whether a commonly utilized education program was effective in raising awareness and changing the attitudes of graduate students. Graduate students from both the University of New Hampshire (Study 1) and around the country (Study 2) were asked …

The Social Construction Of Feminine Sexualities In Women's Popular Periodicals: 1920-1996, Judith Jackson Pomeroy

Doctoral Dissertations

Some of the most significant changes in women's statuses and roles have occurred over the last eight decades. These changes in women's lives have been precipitated by social, economic, political, and cultural arrangements and technological developments. In varying degrees, some of the most significant of these events have had the effect of transforming women's lives in this century. Since these events have also led to shifts in perceptions of feminine status, roles, and sexuality that mirror and reinforce women's changing reality, we might anticipate a parallel transformation in cultural representations of feminine sexuality.

This study relies on two popular women's …

Skillful Women And Jurymen: Gender And Authority In Seventeenth-Century Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Edith Murphy

Doctoral Dissertations

Through analysis of about one thousand cases that appeared before the Middlesex County, Massachusetts, court between 1649 and 1679, this dissertation asks how authority, derived from patriarchal power, operated on the day-to-day level in colonial New England society. It argues that women were integral to colonial communities and to the effective maintenance of social order. While gender determined the roles people played in colonial society, and women were subordinate to their husbands and fathers, women and men shared agency in efforts to maintain social order.

The dissertation begins by tracing the process by which cases came to the county court, …

The Field Of Meanings Of Childlessness In Contemporary Film Culture, Susan Marie Ross

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine contemporary cultural meanings of female childlessness and come to understand these meanings in relation to historical meanings of childlessness. The contemporary shifts in the meaning of childlessness reflect America's struggle with women's changing social roles, particularly since the mid-1960s. As more women are stepping outside of the domestic sphere and forging new nondomestic pathways, the meaning of childlessness is undergoing changes and reflects our culture's ambiguity about women's new roles.

In order to examine the shifts in themes regarding childlessness, this study focuses on the thematic analysis of 67 films released by …