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Culture In Computing: The Importance Of Developing Gender-Inclusive Software, Creighton France

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The field of computing as we know it today exists because of the contributions of numerous female mathematicians, computer scientists, and programmers. While working with hardware was viewed as “a man’s job” during the mid-20th century, computing and programming was viewed as a noble and high-paying field for women to occupy. However, as time has progressed, the U.S. has seen a decrease in the number of women pursuing computer science. The idea that computing is a masculine discipline is common in the U.S. today for reasons such as male-centered marketing of electronics and gadgets, an inaccurate representation of what it …

Comparative Career-Path Growth Of Campus Leaders By Gender, Madison Foster

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

Promotions and growth in one’s own field of work are highly sought after by those who wish to see greater achievement, wealth, and personal satisfaction in the workplace. Opinion is divided as to whether or not men and women are paid equally in the United States. One issue less spoken of is the differences in the time and rate of promotions women and men see in their careers. Many studies seek to prove women are receiving less promotions than men, and posit their own hypotheses.

Influence Of Jesuit Linguistic Manipulation On Guaraní Gender Norms In Colonial Paraguay, Anna Rumpz

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Language was just one of the ways that colonizers and natives had to interact in unfamiliar ways post-Columbus. Histories of colonization often emphasize the physically brutal aspects, such as disease, slavery, or warfare, but colonization is a holistically violent process that adversely impacts societies on multiple levels. In particular, this thesis focuses on the link between culture and language, with respect to Jesuit Spanish-Guaraní lexicons, as a framework to understand changes to gender roles and sexuality within the Jesuit missions of the early seventeenth century.

Gender Neutral Parenting: Raising A Generation Outside The Gender Binary, Toni Noelle Martinez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the United States, the social and cultural reality remains organized around the gender binary. The binary legitimizes itself on the widely held belief that gender is determined by biology and, therefore, is “natural.” By exploring and firmly placing gender as a cultural construct, this thesis looks at the possibilities of fracturing the binary. Borrowing from Stephan Hirschauer (1994) and Judith Butler’s (2004), this thesis theorizes what a gender neutral world could look like and examines how Gender Neutral Parents contribute toward a gender revolution. Gender Neutral Parents, a community that is mostly found online, represent a small group that …

Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion: Three Essays In The Educational Context, James D. Paul

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many universities and K-12 public school systems express a significant, formal commitment to the ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Relative to the emphasis on DEI in America’s educational institutions, however, there has been little research describing DEI trends and evaluating the efficacy of DEI bureaucracies. This three-chapter dissertation examines DEI trends that have been the subject of much discussion—but rarely studied empirically.

For example, chapter one analyzes how universities promote DEI when hiring new faculty. I audit a subset of academic job postings and present the first evidence on how many require DEI statements, as well as the …

Closing The Gender Gap In Entrepreneurship Education, Carolyn J. Rodeffer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Entrepreneurship education in higher education has been cited as a key strategy in filling the entrepreneurship talent pool, preparing students with the skills and confidence needed to start new ventures (Westhead & Solesvik, 2016). However, outcomes of entrepreneurship education for female students are less positive than for their male counterparts (Shinnar et al., 2012; Westhead & Solesvik, 2016; Wilson et al., 2007). Working within the frameworks of Bandura’s self-efficacy theory (1977), Azjen’s theory of planned behavior (1991), and Steele and Aronson’s stereotype threat theory (1995), this quantitative study utilized an experimental research design to assess the impact of role model …

Evaluating Impacts Of Development Programs On Female Education In Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Mobariz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation evaluates the effects of three development interventions on female education in Afghanistan: 1) effects of foreign military withdrawal on females’ demand for higher education; 2) impacts of PEZAK, a community-driven university entrance preparation, on student enrollment and performance in tertiary education; and 3) long-term effects of National Solidarity Program (NSP), that established gender-balanced local development councils, on female enrollment. Foreign military withdrawal increased female participation in higher education by 0.3 percentage points from a base value of 0.05 percent participation per capita. The PEZAK increased test scores by 0.17 standard deviations and had a positiveeffect on enrollment in …

Disparities In Response, Motivations, And Self-Efficacy To Entrepreneurially Minded Learning Within Underrepresented Students' Groups, Kaitlin Hall

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Systemic racism in the United States is embedded within the policies that have created oppression for certain groups. Women, people of color, and those from low-income families have less access to entrepreneurial knowledge due to the education gap. It has been determined that less than 20 percent of US patents entail a female inventor. Black and Hispanic college graduates also lack this access as fewer than half as many individuals hold patents. Ensuring that these populations are educated in inventor knowledge can facilitate greater inclusion. The historical Brown vs the Board of Education intended to end unequal public schooling. It …

Wonders In The Deep: Faith And Religious Practice In The Shipboard Writings Of American Sailors, 1810-1859, Valerie Sallis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While stereotypes of sailors as immoral, godless ne’er-do-wells flourish in mainland historical accounts, little attention has been paid to the records left by sailors that document their own faith and religious practices. This thesis examines the logbooks, journals, and diaries written by American sailors while at sea, sounding the depth of sailors’ religious beliefs through their own words. While American seamen certainly drank, swore, and caroused, sailors also frequently captured in their writing a much more religious nature than the mainland expected of them. Sailors’ position as highly mobile laborers on the ultimate borderlands—the sea itself—impacted their religious practice and …

Perceived Covid-19 Threat Across The Intersections Of Age, Race/Ethnicity, And Gender, Christina Varghese

Sociology and Criminology Undergraduate Honors Theses

Studying how perceived threat of the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) differs across intersections of age and race/ethnicity as well as age and gender will create a basis for identifying subgroups at greater risk of negative mental health outcomes. I analyzed nationally representative survey data collected in February 2021 from the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (N=9,069). To measure perceived threat, the respondents were asked whether COVID-19 is considered 0) no threat, minor threat, or 1) major threat for personal and population health. Race/ethnicity, gender, and age categories are used as independent variables. Results from logistic regression models indicate that …

Pay Negotiations Differences In Men And Women How Gender’S Effect On Self-Advocacy Contributes To Sex Discrimination In Corporations, Laurel Mccabe

Information Systems Undergraduate Honors Theses

Sex discrimination comes in many shapes and colors, such as not wanting to hire pregnant women, passing women up for promotions because of their status of motherhood, women being more likely to be removed from their upper management positions when things go wrong compared to their male counterparts, and economic differences in negotiated outcomes based on gender. Sex discrimination is something organizations should be concerned with their participation in and facilitation of and examine, internally, how to diminish its effect on female employees. Organizations need to clarify that wages are negotiable and increase visibility into compensation plans, hiring, and promotions. …

Possession: The Struggle For Female Bodily Agency In Exorcism Cinema, Michelle Lynne Pribbernow

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A dominant trope of the possession genre of horror cinema is the spectacle of the white female body that extends beyond narrowly-proscribed boundaries as being too active, too loud, too sexual, and too uncontrolled. This excess is depicted as monstrous, revolting to patriarchal ideology and in need of containment. In this dissertation, I argue that the long-standing horror genre of possession narratives reveals social anxieties about a loss of control over the productive and reproductive capabilities of the undisciplined female body in U.S. patriarchal, white supremacist, late capitalist culture. This study critically examines three sets of possession films: the Paranormal …

The Role Of Sex: An Analysis Of U.S. Attitudes Toward Climate Change, Chloe Riggs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes the intersection of sex, environmental risk perception of climate change, and feminism. More specifically, with a sample size of 8,280 respondents from the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2020 Times Series Study, this research examines the relationship between pro-environmental attitudes and sympathy for feminism, controlling for sex, as well as if a measure of sympathy for feminism influences pro-environmental attitudes, controlling for demographic (age, education, race, sex, and income) and political preference (political ideology and party affiliation) variables. Previous literature strongly supports a sex gap in risk perception, a pattern known as the White Male Effect (WME) …

Screening For Our Fathers: Representations Of Native American Masculinity In American Film, Jeromy Duane Miller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this work, I examine representation of Native American masculinity in the American film industry. The American film industry began just over a century ago, and one of its earliest subjects was the Native American. Throughout its history, the American film industry has maintained a steady trajectory of exploitation and erasure of Native American men and their subsequent masculine qualities. While there are notable historical outliers and critical exceptions in the 21st century, Native American men in film have been continually reduced to corpses, devoid of significant social presence, and denied meaningful explorations of their sexuality and interpersonal identity. The …

Adapting Animals: Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Science, And Media, Kristen Layne Figgins

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin and other proponents of evolutionary theory provided a theoretical framework for discussing the question of humanity’s place in the world. These nascent theories emphasized the shared animal nature of humans and the nonhuman creatures who had once occupied a distinctly lower place on the chain of being. My dissertation addresses the question of how nineteenth-century scientific attitudes about animals were reflected in the literature of the period. By examining culture-texts from the nineteenth century, it is clear that literature was an active participant in extending scientific knowledge, often by playing with the blending categorical …

Effects Of Gatekeeper Course Modality, Age, Gender And High School Gpa On Kaplan Subject Area Exam Scores, Vernon Hoffman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The question of equivalency regarding course modality has plagued and intrigued educators for as long as multiple modalities have existed. In the modern world of academia, the two prevailing modalities are face-to-face or traditional courses and online courses. A multitude of factors have contributed to the increase in online course offerings, including increasingly dependable technology and fiscal pressures on institutions of higher learning.

A great deal of scholarly research has compared modalities using within-course measures such as course grades and comprehensive final exams. Most of these studies have found the two modalities equivalent. However, a dearth of research exists which …

Glut And Guzzle, Ashley Kay Gardner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In Glut and Guzzle I explore my relationship with my partner, our sexualities and how to navigate these outside of the LDS faith of my childhood, and their struggles with gender, sexual expression and mental illness. This exploration landed on seductive and repulsive imagery of food and body. I use color, texture and size as a tool similar to visual tools of advertising to seduce my viewer. This is an exploration of how gender norms and the visual language of advertising that infiltrates daily lives and through media and religion can shape identity and gender roles. I utilize advanced 3D …

Representations Of Domestic Workers In Modern Arabic Fiction, Samaher Aldhamen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I have examined the representations of domestic workers in a number of Arabic mid-century and contemporary novels, using feminism and intersectionality as my overarching framework. I employed several scholarships of feminism such as Marxist and postcolonial feminism to examine the discourse on working-class women. The initial assumption of this study is that there is a noticeable invisibility of domestic workers in Arabic novels. If these characters manage to find their way into a text, they are typically ahistorical figures whose subjectivity is not centered.

Among the Arabic novels I have examined, I found that the tradition of …

Designing A Human-Centric Rigid Body Armor For Female Police Officers: The Implications Of Fit On Performance And Gender Inclusivity, Sarah West

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The lack of availability of female plates for police officers is an issue that has not been analyzed. Female anthropometry is uniformly different from male anthropometry. Currently available hard plates are flat. These plates may decrease coverage while increasing feelings of poor fit, discomfort, and poor mobility for both male and female officers. The plates designed for males offer the possibility of female officers experiencing feelings of gender exclusion. This research project explored the current perceptions of male and female police officers in Arkansas across the dimensions of fit, comfort, and mobility in the context of hard plate body armor. …

How Gender Norms Impact Women's Access To Financial Inclusion, Caitlyn Goodman

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this paper is to determine if there is a relationship between gender norms and women's access to financial resources. Using data from the World Bank and the World Values Survey, I use a linear regression model to assess how attitudes toward education, jobs, and over-all equal rights impact women's account ownership.

Mumbai Macbeth: Gender And Identity In Bollywood Adaptations, Rashmila Maiti

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project analyzes adaptation in the Hindi film industry and how the concepts of gender and identity have changed from the original text to the contemporary adaptation. The original texts include religious epics, Shakespeare’s plays, Bengali novels which were written pre-independence, and Hollywood films. This venture uses adaptation theory as well as postmodernist and postcolonial theories to examine how women and men are represented in the adaptations as well as how contemporary audience expectations help to create the identity of the characters in the films. Ultimately, this project hopes to fulfil the gap in scholarship on adaptations in Bollywood.

Queer Arab Writing Across Borders: Sexual Citizenship And Acts Of Belonging, Nicole Fares

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study provides a comparative analysis of various representations of sexuality in seven transnational Arab cultural productions: Salim Haddad's Guapa (2016), Rabih Alameddine's The Angel of History (2016), Ahmed Dany Ramadan's The Clothesline Swing (2017), Hasan Namir's God in Pink (2015), Fadia Abboud's I Luv U But (2016), Alissar Gazal's Lesbanese (2008), and Ayse Toprak's Mr. Gay Syria (2017). These productions demonstrate a range of experiences of discrimination and trauma experienced by queer Arab immigrants and refugees in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, as their national identities continue to be regarded as obstacles preventing them from fully integrating into the …

The Influence Of Social Determinants Of Health On High School Students’ Health Literacy, Rebecca Welch

The Eleanor Mann School of Nursing Undergraduate Honors Theses

The broad topic of health literacy has been assessed in a variety of studies. The most extensive research has been completed on how a lack of health literacy contributes to specific disease progressions. However, there is a deficit of research on how general health literacy contributes to overall individual health in high school students. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the health literacy scores of Northwest Arkansas high school students and examine the impact that age, gender, and ethnicity have on their health literacy. Health literacy was assessed using the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ). A cross-sectional research design …

From Feminist Activist To Abortion Barbie: A Rhetorical History Of Abortion Discourse From 2013-2016, Skye De Saint Felix

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a rhetorical history of abortion discourse with an emphasis on the rhetorical moment from 2013-2016. To uncover the rhetorical strategies used to shape consensus on abortion, I highlight three major events—Senator Wendy Davis’s (D-Fort Worth) notorious 13-hour filibuster against Texas’s HB2, the conservative capture of Davis as Abortion Barbie, and the Supreme Court case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016). Because of these key rhetorical moments, pro-choice and anti-choice publics cultivated a period of heightened tension that reinvigorated abortion debates. While pro-choice groups employed narrative to centralize women as rhetorical agents and open spaces to discuss abortion, …

Wayward Women, Macho Men: Linguistic Construction Of Gender Binaries In Yxta Maya Murray's Locas And Denise Chavez's Loving Pedro Infante, Stephanie Tangman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Language labels and defines in order to enhance meaning and communication, but through these labels and definitions speakers are also conditioned to associate certain connotations with words and, therefore, their referents. While often harmless, linguistic conditioning can at times create unsavory associations with these referents. One of these instances occurs in gendered labels and conceptions of male and female bodies and purpose. Both Yxta Maya Murray’s Locas and Denise Chavez’s Loving Pedro Infante can be read through a lens that applies linguistic conditioning with gender theory in order to examine the reinterpretation of female archetypes in the Chicana imagination. It …

Indigenous Resistance: Settler-Colonialism, Nation Building, And Colonial Patriarchy, Megan E. Vallowe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Indigenous Resistance: Settler-Colonialism, Nation Building, and Colonial Patriarchy,” interrogates the Western Hemisphere’s spatial construction by settler-states, Indigenous nations, and activists groups. In this project, I assert that Indigenous/Settler contact zones are significantly more convoluted than current scholarship’s use of contact zones in that the distinctions between Indigenous actors and settler-colonial ones are often blurred. These hybrid contact zones sometimes contain negative outcomes for all participants and often include undercurrents of insidious power dynamics within and across settler-states and Indigenous peoples alike. Using critical cartographic theory and deconstruction methods, this project first illustrates how empires ascribed a racialized patriarchy onto the …

"That's Empowering!": The Influence Of Community Activism Curriculum On Gifted Adolescents' Self-Concepts, Ashley D. Beason-Manes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The first of the following manuscripts addresses the experiences of a group of gifted middle school students as they engaged in community action projects that provided them opportunity to become activists in their school, neighborhood, and larger community. This study pays special attention to participants’ self-concepts as measured by the Harter Self-Perception Profile for Children (2012) and through participant interviews. The study finds evidence of students’ co-cognitive components of giftedness when themes of courage, sensitivity to human concerns, and sense of destiny are applied. Main themes from Harter’s scale are also applied, and participant interviews reveal evidence of academic and …

Verbing History: A Textualist Approach To Gendered Politics In U.S. History Curriculum, Ginney Patricia Norton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using three curricular interventions from World War II, I employ an alternative rhetorical history to understand how Social studies curriculum has become a space for the simultaneous deliberation of both national identity and gender politics. In working through the propaganda of Rosie the Riveter, the stories of the women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the experiences of gay men and women in the military during the war, I suggest that Social studies curriculum normalizes and reifies gendered, racial, and queer citizenship in relationship to white, masculine, and heteronormative citizenship. It also utilizes epideictic rhetoric to rhetorically and historically construct problematic …

Gender Representation And Occupational Portrayals In Primetime Television, Brittany Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examined gender representation and occupational portrayals on primetime television, in order to determine if gender-role stereotypes are still present throughout programming, and what progress, if any, has been made in comparison to previous studies. A content analysis was done on primetime programming airing during the fall of 2013 on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and the CW, and analyzed gender, major and minor character, genre, occupation, and marital status. The findings of this study reveal that women are still underrepresented on-screen, as well as in prestigious occupations, especially when compared to their real world representation. This study also examined …

The Spectacle Of Orphanhood: Reimagining Orphans In Postbellum Fiction, Afrin Zeenat

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Orphan iconography has always been deployed in American literature and culture, but nineteenth-century American literature, fiction in particular, abounds in orphans, both real and imaginary. The orphan’s amphibious nature is hailed and demonized as the epitome of individualism and unbridled freedom, and also as the location of society’s anxiety. This complicated and conflicted construction of orphans animates the Social and cultural realm in postbellum America, foregrounding issues of class, race, and gender.