Digital Commons Network^™

Women, Blood, And Dreams: Gender, Dream Spaces, And Monstrosities In A Nightmare On Elm Street And Bloodborne, Amber Appleby

Theses and Dissertations from 2018

Video games exploded in popularity in the 80s and have been a staple in many people’s lives since. Because video games are popular and different, critics tend to ignore them beyond simple analysis like the sexist portrayal of women. Video games, like films, can be read and analyzed using different methods of theory. This is evident in the similarities in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street and FromSoftware’s Bloodborne. Both media feature overtly gendered imagery and spaces, the monstrousness of women, the blurring of dreams and reality, and Gothic elements that tie them together. Though Bloodborne also manages to …

En Sus Propias Palabras: Testimonios Of Latinas In Elected And Appointed Office, Andrea Guajardo

Theses & Dissertations

Governance in the United States has been the domain of men since the idea of democracy and independence from England was in its infancy. The systematic oppression and exclusion of persons of color and women was the backdrop upon which the United States was founded. Many continue to experience conflict and struggle in their efforts to gain and maintain civil rights and seek personal and professional experiences free from marginalization and oppression. This purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the lived experiences group of Latinas who have been elected or appointed to public office with an emphasis critical …

The Differentiation Of Smallholder Farming And Household Food Responsibilities In Northern Ghana, Siera Vercillo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One of the most urgent problems facing sub-Saharan Africa is that many people lack access to safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food, particularly in semi-arid regions such as northern Ghana. An important indication of this problem within Ghana is that stunting rates due to prolonged undernourishment are significantly higher in the northern regions than in other parts of the country, despite claims of an overall increase in the availability of food. Broadly, this dissertation employs qualitative case study research in the Northern Region (interviews N=109 and 12 focus groups) to describe the changes in access to resources, roles and …

Imagining Intersectional Anti-Rape Messaging At An Organization In Cape Town, South Africa: Visible And Invisible Subjects, Maslen Bode Ward

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Less than one month ago, South Africa held the first ever Summit on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide to assess the most effective ways to approach solving the country’s high rates of gender-based violence. My study aims to consider anti-rape messaging and advocacy under an intersectional framework, using one organization in Cape Town as a case study. I examine how anti-rape messaging in South Africa has failed to consider intersectional identities in their imagined conceptions of survivors and perpetrators. I explore the potential for intersectional anti-rape messaging and the role of race, class, gender, culture, and language in the distribution, audience, …

Influencing Gender Specific Perceptions Of The Factors Affecting Women’S Career Advancement Opportunities In The United States, Kevin C. Taliaferro

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates the sociological, psychological, and physiological factors known to affect women’s career advancement opportunities. It examines how awareness and knowledge shared through the #MeToo (hashtag Me Too) movement influenced gender specific perceptions about the factors affecting women’s workplace opportunities. Finally, it recommends measures to alter the divergent gender perceptions that remain an obstacle to gender equality in the workplace.

This study was conducted because gender inequalities continue in the U.S. workplace in 2018. Currently women fail to advance in careers at the same rate as men, and they are paid 21% less for similar work with equal skills …

5.2 Sources Of Women Empowerment Information And The Role Of Language Policy And Practice In The Process: The Case Of The Sidama Zone, Ethiopia, Mekdes Tegegnework

International Conference on African Development

The population in Ethiopia consists of more than 50% women. Gender equality and women empowerment have been a fashion in Ethiopia’s governance discourse and by most of the NGOs functioning in the country for decades. Even though efforts by national and international agencies and the government have brought some changes in women empowerment to the country, significant numbers of women are still suffering from gender inequality. The fact that women empowerment is one of the key priorities in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda; calls have come for the importance of revisiting the subject from different angles. Women empowerment is a …

Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari

Theses and Dissertations

In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.

'Playing It Right?’: Gendered Performances Of Professional Respectability And ‘Authenticity’ In Greek Academia, Maria Tsouroufli

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper draws on the career narrative interviews with 15 female academics to unravel the performative politics of gender in Greek Medical Schools. I explore the gender positioning and embodied performances of Greek women as they relate to the contingencies of participation, recognition, and esteem in academic medicine and framed within the wider gendered discourses and structures of the increasingly neo-liberal Greek academia and society. Drawing on Butler’s notion of performativity, I illustrate the possibilities of making the successful Greek female academic subject through subjection to normative, gendered discourses of respectability, encompassing integrity, respectable aesthetics, and affective work and scripted …

Addressing Diversity And Difference In Contemporary Spanish Lesbian Literature: Reading Illy Nes’S El Lago Rosa And Cristina Cuesta’S “Zoe Y Haydee”, Megan Sheldon

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Illy Nes’s novel El lago rosa (The Pink Lake, 2004) and Cristina Cuesta’s short story “Zoe y Haydee” (Zoe and Haydee, 2007) depict travel and cross-cultural queer relationships that call attention to racial and class differences as well as ethnic and cultural divides. Both narratives raise questions concerning the representation of queer women of color in Spanish fiction of the new millennium. This article focuses on the diverse cultural, political and personal struggles that surround the formation and negotiation of sexual identity, emphasizing the fact that LGBTQ identity is not necessarily cross-culturally or universally constructed around identical interests, desires, or …

The Forbidden Zone Writers: Femininity And Anglophone Women War Writers Of The Great War, Sareene Proodian

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation examines the texts of Anglophone women writers from the First World War. Women’s roles in the war—volunteer nurses, ambulance driver, munitions workers, and land girls—gave them the opportunity to leave the protection of their homes and enter the masculine dominated public sphere. In this dissertation, I examine different genres of women’s writing from the war and trace three aspects of simultaneity as these writings explore the new freedoms, and new and old constraints, that the war brought to women. The three principles of simultaneity explain the conflicting emotions women feel over what the war means for them in …

Bushler Bay And Hood View, 40 Years On: Gender, Forests And Change In The Global North, Carol Jean Pierce Colfer

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

In 2017, Carol Colfer revisited the communities of Bushler Bay and Hood View on the Olympic Peninsula, where she had spent three years doing ethnographic research in the 1970s. The purposes were two-fold: to test several rapid rural appraisal techniques and, as emphasized here, to assess the changes that had taken place in the interim. The ultimate goal was to contribute to USFS efforts to collaborate more effectively with women and men in forest communities. Her findings suggest that changes occurred in three (or more) spheres: livelihoods, demography, and gender relations, each of which is discussed below for each time …

A Theoretical Perspective On Women And Poverty In Botswana, Gwen N. Lesetedi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Botswana has made remarkable progress in terms of economic and social development. The position of the government is that policies and programmes should benefit all citizens equally. More specifically, the government of Botswana has recognised women’s role in economic development and efforts have been made to integrate gender in the development process. Access to economic opportunities for everyone to development is an overall goal clearly stated in the various national development plans, policies and programmes. Gender plays a major role in the formulation and implementation of these intervention strategies. For instance, the National Gender Programme Framework implemented and monitored by …

Defying The Odds, Not The Abuse: South African Women’S Agency And Rotating Saving Schemes, 1994-2017, Mark Nyandoro

Journal of International Women's Studies

Employing a feminist lens that places emphasis on women’s agency South African feminists have challenged the dominant narrative of hapless women who need external saviours to climb out of poverty. In particular, black South African feminists have drawn attention to the appropriation and deployment of both indigenous and other concepts and practices by women to fight poverty. This article employs these perspectives to interpret the importance of rotating saving schemes in South Africa. It explores the debate about women’s economic, community-participation and entrepreneurship strategies with reference to the Stokvel and other rotating saving-schemes (e.g. mashonisa) to improve the status of …

Gender Differences In Water Access And Household Welfare Among Smallholder Irrigators In Msinga Local Municipality, South Africa, Sithembile A. Sinyolo, Sikhulumile Sinyolo, Maxwell Mudhara, Catherine Ndinda

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study investigates the gender differences in water access and its welfare effects using a sample of 291 irrigators from two irrigation schemes in the Msinga Local Municipality, South Africa. The data were analysed using the Blinder Oaxaca (BO) decomposition method and the instrumental variable (IV) regression approach. The study findings highlight unequal access to irrigation water between male and female farmers, with women accessing irrigation water more frequently than women. The results also indicate a positive and significant effect of water access on incomes per capita, and that men had higher welfare than women. The results suggest that women …

The ‘Stigma’ Of Paid Work: Capital, State, Patriarchy And Women Fish Workers In South India, P. Aswathy, K. Kalpana

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper explores the changing dynamics of women’s labor in a Muslim fishing village in the South Indian state of Kerala in the back drop of two global processes viz., state-initiated capitalist modernization of the fisheries sector and state-sponsored livelihood promotion programs. It traces the shifting contexts in which Muslim fisherwomen, alternately, engaged in and disengaged from, paid work outside the household and shows how women experienced different kinds of paid work, as self-employed fish vendors and wage earners of employment guarantee schemes. Changes in women’s labor force participation were mediated by the social institutions of family and religion, community …

Gender, Poverty And Inequality In The Aftermath Of Zimbabwe’S Land Reform: A Transformative Social Policy Perspective, Newman Tekwa, Jimi Adesina

Journal of International Women's Studies

Gender equality is re-emerging as an important global and national agenda with emphasis placed on closing the gender gap in terms of women’s representation in public and private decision-making bodies. Though unrelatedly, the period had coincided with the elevation of social protection in the form of cash transfers as the magic bullet in tackling gendered poverty and inequality. Adopting a Transformative Social Policy Framework and land reform as a social policy instrument, the paper questions the efficacy of the current approaches in transforming gendered poverty and inequalities. Land reform is hardly ever assessed as a policy instrument for its redistributive, …

The Gendered Image Of Sun Bu’Er In Yuan Hagiographies, Tali D. Hershkovitz

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the gendered image of the Song dynasty (960-1279) Daoist matriarch Sun Bu’er (1119-1182) based on four hagiographies dedicated to her in four different anthologies from the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). Building on Sun’s representation in these hagiographies, previous scholarship argued that Sun Bu’er’s Daoist identity is more significant than her gender identity. However, a close study of these hagiographic narratives reveals that as the only female disciple among the Seven Perfected Sun Bu’er was chronicled differently than the six male disciples, with emphasis on her gender. This is evident in the Daoist designation given to her by the …

Gender Dimensions Of Food Security, The Right To Food And Food Sovereignty In Nepal, Yamuna Ghale, Kailash Nath Pyakuryal, Durga Devkota, Krishna Prasad Pant, Netra Prasad Timsina

Journal of International Women's Studies

The right to food is the right to life. Ensuring food security for all the citizens and their food sovereignty is the responsibility of the State. Currently, the need for food security, especially for marginalized and oppressed sections of society, including women in Nepal, is inadequately addressed. In this context, the main objective of this paper is to examine the gender dimensions in food policies and programs in Nepal. The paper explores five dimensions of food security, the right to food and food sovereignty, and analyzes gender inclusivity in food policies and governance in particular, since the advent of the …

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …

The Power Of Wine Language - Critics, Labels And Sexism, Diarmuid Cawley

Conference papers

Within the accepted daily language used to describe wine is a type of social exclusion, an absence of meaning for those lacking the cultural capital to engage with it and Watson (2013, p.16) underpins this by stating that “the language of wine has its own rhetoric”. Today’s wine writers and critics have become “powerful actors…involved in the public discourse about wine” (Rössel et al., 2016. p.16; Hommerberg, 2011) and often assume the role of quality assessor. Wine language too has evolved from a more technical and economic format to one which focuses on authenticity and cultural capital. To Rössel et …

Behind Closed Doors: Unpacking College Students’ Complex Relationships With Pornography Consumption, Samantha K. Saucier

Honors College

This thesis is a quantitative and qualitative study of University of Maine students attitudes and consumption habits of pornography. It contains a literature review of anti-pornography feminism from the Second Wave, as well as an overview of sex-positive and sex-critical theories of pornography from more recent years. The goal of the thesis is to understand how sex-negative and/or sex-positive ideas have or have not permeated college student’s understanding of pornography. Over 800 students were surveyed about pornography consumption through the Psychology Department’s Fall prescreen. 4 students from the survey, who all happened to be women, were interviewed about their relationships …

Reconstructing The African And African Diasporic Woman: Gender, Race, Class And The Making Of A Constructive Radical African Feminist, Patchani E. Patabadi

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation analyzes the story of the African woman migration from a generational perspective. It discusses Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter (1979) as the foundation of the African woman’s migration story and the evolvement in the female identity construction. It then uses Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah as a new, yet different and more contemporary approach to the same subject. In other words, this dissertation explores how the contemporary approach to storytelling and identity construction has changed the African woman’s migration story and her identity construction since Mariama Bâ dealt with them nearly forty (40) years ago. It analyzes the …

Emerging Discourses Of Gender And Women In The National Park Service: An Ecofeminist Analysis Of Ranger Newsletter From 1979 To 1999, Emily Sapp

Honors Projects

The key focus of this research is based in ecofeminism, the worldview that the oppression of women is connected to the oppression of nature. This research studies the National Park Service, through the Association of National Park Ranger’s newsletter/magazine Ranger. The study attempts to answer the questions how do issues about gender equality emerge throughout the history of the National Park Service, as looking through the newsletter Ranger? How do ideas of femininity and masculinity emerge and are represented in Ranger throughout time? The study is significant in that it is representative of the NPS, and by revealing …

“Neither East Nor West”: Shia Women Negotiating Gender Norms In America, Raheleh Dayerizadeh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With growing hostilities towards the Ummah (Muslim global community and Diaspora) in Western countries and the fear of Sharia laws, the socialization of international human rights norms within religious institutions, makes for a timely case study. Specifically, this dissertation project aims to capture the process of norm transformation at the grassroots level by investigating the religious, cultural, and social encounter between Islam and the West by interviewing Shia women at a local mosque in Florida. Critical constructivism, post-colonial feminism, and qualitative interpretive methods, are used to address the following: how practicing Shia women are navigating between competing liberal gender equality …

Seeing Shadows: Fbi Surveillance, Gender, And Black Women Activists, Kiara Sample

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

This project, “Seeing Shadows: The Gendered Surveillance of Black Women,” explores the ways gender and race influenced the FBI’s surveillance of Black women activists. Previous scholarship has covered the role of surveillance in repressing revolutionary movements and neutralizing radical organizations. Male leaders such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Huey Newton have been the overwhelming focus of surveillance research in social movements. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the ways the FBI monitored the lives of Black women. Historically, within many social movements, Black women have been marginalized, silenced, or reduced to only their gender because of …

Ezidi Women’S Forced Migration To Germany, Seyedehbehnaz Hosseini

Journal of International Women's Studies

Sinjar became the center of the world’s attention when one of the most horrifying cases of genocide took place, and also due to women who suffered from acts of violence, psychological trauma, and torture. A year after the Ezidi genocide in Iraq, many women to fleed from ISIS. Each of the women who managed to escape has a different history of persecution. This research was conducted to examine the problems which these women faced on a daily basis—problems occurring after experiencing sexual violence, persecution, and forced migration to Europe. The costs of forced migration, which is the consequence of the …

Feminist Voice In The Works Of Indonesian Early Woman Writers: Reading Novels And Short Stories By Suwarsih Djojopuspito, Aquarini Priyatna

Journal of International Women's Studies

Suwarsih Djojopuspito is among the most important early Indonesian women/feminist writers. This research intends to emphasize her rightful position among the first Indonesian feminist writers. Focusing on her very important novel Manusia Bebas (published originally in Dutch as Buiten het Gareelin 1940), one collection of short stories, Empat Serangkai (1954), and a novel written in Sundanese, Marjanah (1959), I argue that feminist spirits and ideas have actually been existing and elaborated in works by women writers in the era prior to the Indonesian New Order (1966-1998) as exemplified by Suwarsih’s works. What is important in these works is that …

Of Struggles, Truces And Persistence: Everyday Experiences Of Women Engineers In Sri Lanka, Deborah Menezes

Journal of International Women's Studies

There are more women engineers in road development today then there were two decades ago. This recognition, however, does not necessarily translate into palpable qualitative experiences for women engineers in the sector. Additionally, any problem of discrimination and sexism is hardly acknowledged in the face of numerical justifications. In this paper, the author writes a story about women in road planning and building by developing the importance of their everyday lived experiences. This paper takes as its focus women engineers involved in road development in Sri Lanka. Data used in this paper was gathered through field observations and in-depth interviews …

Study Of Gender As Social Practice And Tokenism In An Indian It Company, Geetanjali Kaushik, Alison Pullen

Journal of International Women's Studies

This systematic study is focused on examining the women’s gendered identity work in an Indian IT company. The research builds a body of work that explores female tokenism at senior positions and highlights tension in practicing gender. Research was conducted through semi-structured interviews with twenty two women employees utilizing the case study approach. A patriarchal Indian society and social construction of IT as feminine and rewarding for women is responsible for an increase of women participation in it. However, there is evidence of exclusion at all levels of hierarchy in the firm on accounts of gendering and social practices. There …

Race, Sexuality, And Masculinity On The Down Low, Stephen Kochenash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a so-called post-racial America, a new gay identity has flourished and come into the limelight. However, in recent years, researchers have concluded that not all men who have sex with other men (MSM) self-identify as gay, most noticeably a large population of Black men. It is possible that a tainted history of Black enslavement in this country that is inextricably linked with ideas of space, surveillance, subversion, and survival inform a Black male’s self-identification as being “on the down low” (DL). This begs the question: What does mainstream society view as gay-ness and how is the DL constructed …