Digital Commons Network^™

Building Bridges For Women Through Service-Learning: Bringing Students And Communities Together To Combat Domestic Violence In Honduras, Darlene Metcalf-Bergeron

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis defines service-learning and domestic violence, while describing how bringing students and communities together through service-learning courses can build and has already built bridges for victims of violence against women. Collaboration is essential in the quest to raise awareness about domestic violence through education. This thesis will demonstrate through data and photojournalism this collaboration between students of SPA/MLC Service-Learning Classes of UMaine from 2006 through to and including 2011.

As the themes in this thesis develop the reader will also begin to question what lies just beyond our borders and behind closed doors for women of the twenty-first century. …

Women, Feminism, And Aging In Appalachia, Sherry Kaye Ms.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aging has become a problem for men and women in Western societies where youth is touted and revered as a standard of success by which individual value is measured and esteemed. Older women in particular find that as they age they face discrimination in the form of ageism and social diminution. The purpose of the study is to remedy a lack of scholarship on aging in Appalachia and to establish a precedent for future studies. A liberal, feminist approach is used to analyze the results of recorded interviews and to interpret transcripts of relevant data. The results of the analysis …

"Wee Women's Work": Women And Peacebuilding In Northern Ireland, Amanda E. Donahoe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

International norms on intrastate conflicts, such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, call for women to participate in peace processes in countries emerging from conflict and civil strife, including those divided by identity-based conflict. However, scholars of post-war recovery in international relations and comparative politics have raised questions about the extent and effect of women’s participation in peace processes, and in politics more generally, in divided societies given underlying social, economic, and political barriers that impeded access to decisive or authoritative political decision-making. A critical question in the literature on women’s participation in post-conflict reconciliation-related dialogue and joint action …

The Organic Beauty Industry: A Gendered Economic Review, Brianna D. Connelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Organic beauty has grown to a $6 billion dollar industry supplying consumers with products that align with unique social consumption preferences. This thesis explores the historical economic perspective of the traditional beauty industry and the development of the organic beauty industry. Capitalism influenced the traditional beauty industry during the pursuit for profits that lead to jeopardizing customer and environmental safety. Consumers responded to this behavior by founding an organic beauty industry that not only considered social issues, but negated gendered beauty standards in the process. Organic product efficacy has emerged as an issue that must be dealt with by regulation …

The New Man: Evolving Masculinity In F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side Of Paradise, "Winter Dreams," And "The Swimmers", Adrian Nicole Coursey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The evolving culture and ethos of American capitalist modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was marked by a nervousness, or neurasthenia. Strongly gendered, it was characterized among men by effeminacy and an anxiety about masculinity. Confronted by the eroding ideals of Victorian American self-reliance and independence, a stout-hearted willingness to labor to establish one's masculinity seemed an increasingly doubtful prospect for men in the new modern age. Under the twin influences of industrial capitalism and a market economy and a fledgling women's movement, affecting, especially, the work place, the American male felt nervous, anxious, and emasculated. In …

The Role Of Social Physique Anxiety, Social Support, And Perceived Benefits And Barrier To Exercise In All-Female Fitness Camp Intervention, Lauren Elizabeth Easton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Only 3.2% of Americans ages 20-59 years meet the minimum recommended volume of exercise suggestions. In addition to the substantial percentage of people who fail to meet exercise requirements, only 15% of American adults engage in exercise on a regular basis, i.e. exercising for twenty minutes at least three times per week to improve health. (Schrop, Pendleton, McCord, Gil, Stockton, McNatt, & Gilchrist, 2006). Although the small proportion of those who reach the suggested physical activity levels is a topic of concern for adults, the CDC reports that physical inactivity levels are even higher for females than those of males. …

The Caustic Pen Is Mightiest: A Tradition Of Female Satire In The Novels Of Jane Austen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, And Muriel Spark, Jaclyn Andrea Reed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Female satirists have long been treated by critics as anomalies within an androcentric genre because of the reticence to acknowledge women's right to express aggression through their writing. In Pride and Prejudice (1813), A House and Its Head (1935), and The Girls of Slender Means (1963), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969), and Muriel Spark (1918-2006) all combine elements of realism and satire within the vehicle of the domestic novel to target institutions of their patriarchal societies, including marriage and family dynamics, as well as the evolving conceptions of domesticity and femininity, with a subtle feminism. These female satirists illuminate …

Les Mutilations Genitales Feminines Dans La Litterature Et Le Film Francophones, Oluwafeyisike Ajibola Odeniyi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to the U.N, no fewer than five girls undergo genital mutilation every minute. They are cut, told that it is the price to be paid for womanhood, to be accepted by the society and fully integrated into it. However, they are never told about the dangerous aspects and the fact that this act may lead to bacterial infections, may cause sterility, increases their risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases as well as developing complications during childbirth, distorting their perceptions of their sexuality. They bleed just to be called "women", because tradition stipulates it. All it does is harm women …

A Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Testimonies Of Black Women's Experience Of Desegregation In The South, Marketa Bullard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is an inquiry into school desegregation, Black Women, and spirituality with the focus on three young Black Women who desegregated a small rural high school in the South. Theoretically drawing upon the works of Alice Walker (1983, 1997, 2006), Audre Lorde (2007), Emilie Townes (1995, 1996, 1997), Toni Morrison (1988, 1993, 1998), James Anderson (1988), and William Watkins (1993, 2003, 2001, 2005, 2006), I gather testimonies of key events that help understand desegregation in Queensburg, Alabama, a fictional town that represents many rural Southern towns during the era of school desegregation. Methodologically drawing upon oral history (Brown, 1988; Haley, …