Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

“I Cannot Bring A Child Into This World”: Hearing And Writing I Poems With Birthstrike Testimonials, Leola Meynell

The Qualitative Report

BirthStrike for Climate was a UK-based movement whose members “striked” against having children, to demonstrate the desperate need for political action on climate change. In this article, I engage with the Listening Guide (Gilligan & Eddy, 2017) to hear, trace and construct “I poems” with BirthStrike members’ testimonial statements, which were published online between 2019-2020. My analysis focusses on how BirthStrike stories articulate the psychosocial impacts of climate change, particularly in relation to questions about having (and not having) children in times of environmental and social crises. I provide an iteration of how the Listening Guide can be applied to …

Exploring Women’S Education And Employment Opportunities In India, Syria, And The Philippines, Emma R. Sarcol, Ines Coutinho, Elle Maguire, Helen C. Collins, Patricia A. Jolliffe Dr

The Qualitative Report

The implementation of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 marked a new chapter in global development and laid the foundations for addressing inequalities that hinder holistic progress. However, gender gaps pose a significant threat to achieving these goals. Project DREAM (Developing Resilience, Education, Aspiration, and Motivation) sought to explore women’s sense of aspiration, achievement, and lived experience in India, Syria, and the Philippines, as well as develop pilot interventions to address gender disparities. Semi-structured interviews with 69 young women from India, Syria, and the Philippines informed the development of three interventions, namely an aspiration and job skills workshop …

Narrativas Maternas Y Activismo Digital: Vertientes Políticas De Las Maternidades Contemporáneas A Través De Los Escenarios Digitales, Catalina Echeverri Gallo

The Qualitative Report

En la actualidad, las mujeres han encontrado en los espacios digitales nuevas formas de relacionarse en torno a las maternidades, lo que ha ampliado las posibilidades de significar, transitar y cuestionar sus vivencias como madres. A través de las redes sociales y otros escenarios digitales, se han generado dinámicas relacionales que entrelazan lo íntimo y personal con lo político y público. Estas dinámicas han sido objeto de estudio en mi investigación doctoral, la cual se centra en una etnografía digital con siete blogueras colombianas y sus comunidades digitales. Con el fin de comprender cómo las narrativas e interacciones digitales politizan …

An Interactionist Approach To Btlg Pride, Lain A.B. Mathers, Jason E. Sumerau

The Qualitative Report

Within and beyond Symbolic Interactionism, sociological studies of bisexual, transgender, lesbian, and gay (BTLG) populations have expanded dramatically in the past two decades. Although such studies have invigorated our understanding of many aspects of BTLG life and experience, they have thus far left BTLG Pride relatively unexplored. How do BTLG populations experience Pride, and what insights might such efforts have for sociologically understanding such populations and events? We examine these questions through an interview study of bi+ people (i.e., sexually fluid people who identify as bisexual, pansexual, or otherwise outside of gay/straight binaries; Eisner, 2013). Specifically, we analyze how bi+ …

Coping Strategies For Inner Conflicts Between Gay Bear Identity And Health Concerns, Chichun Lin, Darren D. Moore

The Qualitative Report

Gay bear refers to a burly gay man with a hirsute body and face. Chinese gay bear men are highly homogeneous and strictly emphasize a uniform bear appearance; however, obesity is an obvious health issue in this population. This study aims to explore the Chinese gay bear men's inner conflicts between bear identity and health concerns. Eleven Chinese gay bear men including four Taiwanese, two mainland Chinese, two Hong Kong, two Malaysian, and one Singaporean were interviewed. The study used a thematic analysis approach and found three coping strategies including (a) Eat healthy but maintain a minimal bear standard; (b) …

The Lived Experience Of Waitresses In Hospitality Sector: A Phenomenological Study On Work Related Abuse And Its Coping Mechanisms Among Selected Waitresses In Hospitality Sector In Bahirdar City, Northwestern Ethiopia, Kidus Yenealem Mefteh, Gebremeskel Mesafint Dessie, Wossen Lulie Teshome

The Qualitative Report

A significantly high number of employed women work in vulnerable work environment. Waitresses’ working in the hospitality sector experience different kind of work-related abuse. This study aims to explore waitresses work related abuse and its coping mechanisms in the hospitality sector in Bahirdar city, Ethiopia. A descriptive phenomenological study was conducted to describe the lived experience of waitresses in the work environment. Data were collected through an in-depth interview with waitresses. Participants of the study were selected by non-probability sampling. The collected data were inductively coded and developed into themes. Different kinds of data quality assurance mechanisms were employed to …

Positioning Women's Inclusion In Peace Negotiations: The Landmark Case Of The Philippines, Josephine P. Perez, Mira Alexis P. Ofreneo

Peace and Conflict Studies

Women have historically been excluded in formal peace processes. While structural changes have pushed for women’s participation in peace negotiations, we locate the shift from women’s exclusion to women’s inclusion as enacted in the discursive patterns of talk. Using positioning theory as a discursive lens, we looked at how women’s inclusion was facilitated in the peace negotiations between the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that reached the landmark Philippine peace accord of 2014. Positioning theory argues that every utterance is a speech act that ascribes rights and duties, in this case, the right …

Del Silencio A La Acción Colectiva: Voces De Mujeres Víctimas De Acoso Sexual En Las Instituciones De Educación Superior, Bibiana Catalina Cano-Arango, Luisa Fernanda Duque-Monsalve, Mónica Cecilia Montoya-Escobar, Ana Milena Gaviria-Gómez

The Qualitative Report

En el artículo analizamos las reacciones de las víctimas de acoso sexual en dos universidades de Medellín - Colombia. La investigación tuvo un diseño mixto, con enfoque de género. Implementamos las siguientes técnicas de generación de datos: encuestas, entrevistas en profundidad y talleres reflexivos. Los resultados indican que las mujeres son las principales víctimas de esta problemática y que sus respuestas van desde la evitación (huida del lugar de la agresión), la confrontación (manifestación explícita del rechazo) hasta la denuncia (queja ante superiores, activación de rutas internas o externas, entre otros). Las reacciones más frecuentes son evitativas y no contribuyen …

The Challenges And Issues Faced By Saudi Women When They Are Appointed To New Unconventional Jobs, Ghadah Abdulhadi Alghamdi

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

Advancing awareness of the workforce and job issues faced by women in the KSA will encourage HRM departments to enhance Saudi women's work experience by implementing more gender-friendly work environments, practices, and processes. Therefore, the researcher decided to implement this research to shed light on the role of Saudi women working in community development, to identify the most important challenges and issues facing Saudi women working in new unconventional jobs, and to discuss methods that can be followed to reduce these challenges and issues. To achieve this, the researcher used a descriptive-analytical approach and qualitative research methods (interviews). The interviews …

Kiss Of Love Campaign: Contesting Public Morality To Counter Collective Violence, Sonia Krishna Kurup Miss

Peace and Conflict Studies

The paper studies the immense opposition to a nonviolent campaign against the practice of moral policing in Kerala to understand the dominant spaces, collective identities, and discourses that give shape to the outrage of public morality in India. The campaign through its politics specifically targeted rightwing and political groups as well as socially embedded familial and institutional structures that exercise control over individuals through patriarchal regimes. The adverse reaction to the campaign revealed that collective aggression or violence can be used to impose majoritarian values and exert social control through the authority of public morality and everyday acts of moral …

“Surveilling The Maternal Body”: A Critical Examination Through Foucault’S Panopticon, Sarah Symonds Leblanc

The Qualitative Report

This article analyzes my personal experience of having a maternal body through autoethnographic means. Being pregnant is a time of celebration, but moms experience private and public changes in their bodies. These public changes continue during the postpartum period. Ground in Foucault’s panopticon, this paper explores how the maternal body undergoes self-surveillance as well as surveillance by the proverbial others. I provide vignettes and personal experiences to highlight the panopticon: moms self-surveil but moms are also being surveilled when in the public eye. I make the argument of how the maternal body is a site of surveillance often used to …

Pink And Blue Lenses: Duoethnographic Reflections On Biological Sex In Conservative Christian Education, Phillip A. Olt, Linly Stowe

The Qualitative Report

In this duoethnography, we explored how experiences in conservative Christian high schools were viewed through the different lenses of our binary-constructed, biological sexes. Our perceptions varied along the axes of gendered roles, gendered responsibilities, and romance and sexuality. Through reflecting on our own experiences, we critiqued what we were taught and the lasting repercussions those teachings left on our lives. The approach of indoctrination proved counterproductive in our schools, as graduates left unprepared to enter meaningful romantic relationships or to encounter a world outside their previously sheltered environs.

Contemplating Reflexivity As A Practice Of Authenticity In Autoethnographic Research, Adam Wiesner

The Qualitative Report

This personal narrative shares a perspective of a non-binary trans qualitative writer who engages in the reflexive practice of evolutionary astrology. The author focuses on vulnerable, healing and therapeutic aspects of autoethnographic writing, and his quest for being authentic while dealing with difficult emotions related to his “misfit feeling” when crossing the boundary lines within Slovak academia.

Feminism As An Evolving Culture Of Inclusion And Affirmation: A Review Of Contemporary Feminist Research From Theory To Practice, Alexandra Ch Nowakowski

The Qualitative Report

In Contemporary Feminist Research from Theory to Practice, Dr. Patricia Leavy and Dr. Anne Harris (2019) translate feminist principles into good research practice to offer learners of all career stages a concise and lively blueprint for bringing feminism out of the realm of theory and into that of application. Their constant critical thinking and consistent attention to detail orient readers to feminism as a dynamic, continuously evolving culture of inclusion and affirmation.

A Model For Developing Interdisciplinary Research Theoretical Frameworks, A. S. Cohenmiller, Elizabeth Pate

The Qualitative Report

Embedded in interdisciplinary research, just as in disciplinary research, are statements of purpose, theoretical frameworks, research questions, reviews of literature, methodology, findings, recommendations, and more However, one of the least understood aspects of interdisciplinary research is the interdisciplinary research (IDR) theoretical framework. This article is intended to serve as a platform for dialogue within and across disciplines about interdisciplinary research and interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks. In addition, it provides a model for developing an IDR theoretical framework through an illustrative example of how an IDR theoretical framework was created and used within a dissertation study. We conclude the article noting critical …

Gender Identity And Facebook: Social Conservatism And Saving Face, Nastaran Khoshsabk, Jane Southcott

The Qualitative Report

People increasingly log on to Social Networking Websites to remain updated with the latest News and to share their thoughts and their significant life events. Their perception of their own and others’ identities influences their self-presentation on social media. There is a mental image of the audience on the mind of online users when they share content. The extent to which individuals reveal or conceal aspects of their identities within a socio-cultural context affects the presentation of their digital gender identity. We have explored Internet accessibility and use of social media relating to adult users for both Iranians living in …

Online Blaming And Intimate Partner Violence: A Content Analysis Of Social Media Comments, Jason Whiting, Rachael Dansby Olufowote, Jaclyn D. Cravens-Pickens, Alyssa Banford Witting

The Qualitative Report

Social media has become a ubiquitous form of interacting and sharing information. However, comments on social media sites are often aggressive and contemptuous, especially when topics are controversial or politically charged. For example, discussion of intimate partner violence (IPV) tends to provoke strong reactions from outsiders, who make angry or blaming remarks about those involved. Although IPV is common, it has not been widely discussed in popular media until recent years when high-profile cases of abuse have come to light. In 2016, a celebrity accusation of domestic violence led to thousands of comments on social media, with outsiders weighing in …

Surviving Domestic Violence In An Indian-Australian Household: An Autoethnography Of Resilience, Amar Freya

The Qualitative Report

This study explores how my personal experiences with domestic violence in my family have shaped my identity and my current self as an Indian-Australian woman, teacher, and researcher. Domestic violence touches many children and their families and affects their sense of identity and belonging as individuals and in their social spaces. An autoethnographical method is used to investigate my experiences within a domestically violent family and how it has shaped my identity as an Indian-Australian woman. The study reveals various themes including three themes that were noted to be the most significant: patriarchy in Indian culture, resilience, identity and belonging. …

A Motherwork Challenge To Dominant Discourse: A Review Of Immigration, Motherhood, And Parental Involvement: Narratives Of Communal Agency In The Face Of Power Asymmetry, Katie D. Scott

The Qualitative Report

In Lilian Cibils dissertation-turned-book, Immigration, Motherhood and Parental Involvement: Narratives of Communal Agency in the Face of Power Asymmetry (2017), the stories of seven Mexican immigrant mothers provide insight into what motherhood looks like outside the mainstream ideology of parental involvement. Using a critical feminist lens, Cibils employs the concept of motherwork as an alternative to a cultural deficit approach for understanding Mexican immigrant motherhood.

Collaborative Poetic Processes: Methodological Reflections On Co-Writing With Participants, Susan M. Manning

The Qualitative Report

This article illustrates how the author engaged in a collaborative poetry-making process with two participants, Margaret and Mary, in this feminist qualitative research study exploring women’s experiences of displacement, as loss of sense of place, in Newfoundland, Canada. The author evaluates some of the key successes of this type of process, including credible representation of participants’ experiences and reciprocity in the research process, as well as some of the methodological and philosophical tensions surrounding co-writing with participants that emerged during the poetry process. This article will be of particular interest to researchers and students who are looking for ways to …

Modifying The Qualitative Delphi Technique To Develop The Female Soldier Support Model, Daniel L. Roberts, Joann Kovacich

The Qualitative Report

The U.S. Army chaplaincy did not have a gender specific model for providing emotional and spiritual support to women soldiers. Such a model was needed because women often experience the military differently than men. The Comprehensive Female Soldier Support (CFS²) model was developed using a modified Delphi technique and a feminist theoretical framework. This study altered the Delphi design by using two successive panels of experts. The first panel, consisting of 10 wounded female soldiers, developed a list of pastoral needs experienced by the women. The second panel, composed of 11 female chaplains, provided solutions for those needs. …

Folding Time, Places That Linger And Other “Queer” Modes Of Representing Sense Of Place, Karen A. Lambert

The Qualitative Report

The notion that place and identity are mutually constitutive suggests that attachments to place forge attachments to self that linger over time. In order to consider the ways in which sexual identities and places influence the development of a “queer sense of place” over time I returned to an autoethnographical experience from 2002 to write about it in 2015. Then something unusual happened - time showed itself and folded to reveal the lingering affect of place, loss and identity. By drawing upon insights from then (2002) and now (2015), with sense making in between, I create an assemblage of moments …

Becoming The Change Witnessed: Strategic Use Of Empathy In Morgan Spurlock’S “Straight Man In A Gay World”, Michael W. Tumolo, Jennifer Biedendorf

The Qualitative Report

This essay examines the strategic use of empathic communication that fosters a loving struggle for Existenz in “Straight Man in a Gay World” (2005), an episode of Morgan Spurlock’s documentary-styled television program 30 Days. The show functions as a persuasive discourse designed to influence the heterosexual participant and, by extension, the implied audience. This essay offers an overview of key terms in the study of empathy and analyzes key moments of empathic communication in the episode.

Sexual Attraction In The Therapy Room: An Exploration Of Licensed Marriage And Family Therapists’ Experiences And Training, Rafiah Prince

Department of Family Therapy Dissertations and Applied Clinical Projects

The client-therapist relationship is an essential part of therapy and is central in helping clients achieve therapeutic goals as the joining process facilitates the change process. However, in an effort to create a space for change, there is a possibility that professional boundaries may become blurred wherein a client may express a sexual attraction toward their therapist. To explore this phenomenon, the researcher employed convergent parallel mixed method design to explore the experiences of Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFTs) who have experienced sexual attraction from their clients. The study was conducted online through a secure forum. Implications for clients, …

The Impact Of Islam As A Religion And Muslim Women On Gender Equality: A Phenomenological Research Study, Sonia D. Galloway

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine and explore the meanings, structures and essence of the lived experience of Muslim women via an Islamic theoretical (Kalam) framework. The study's goal was to describe a detailed and comprehensive description of how Muslim women use Islam to promote gender equality and improve treatment within their daily lives. The critical importance of gleaning a better understanding of Islam and the perceived invisibility of Muslim women motivated the researcher to undertake this study.

The research study included a qualitative phenomenology research approach. Data were collected from multiple sources: observations, semi-structured individual interviews and …

Coming Out, Coming Together, Coming Around: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Of Families' Experiences Adjusting To A Young Family Member's Disclosure Of Non-Heterosexuality, Denise M. Fournier Rodriguez

Department of Family Therapy Dissertations and Applied Clinical Projects

Young people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) are disclosing their sexual identity--or coming out--at progressively younger ages, making it more important than ever for the general population to understand, tolerate, and accept diversity in sexual identity. This study was designed to fill the gap in the existing literature about how the coming out process affects LGB young people's families of origin. Three LGB young people participated in the study, along with a member of each of their families. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with each of the participants, as well as a conjoint interview with each of …

Same-Sex Couples' Lived Experiences Of The Repeal Of The Defense Of Marriage Act's (Doma) Section Three, Alicia Anne Bosley

Department of Family Therapy Dissertations and Applied Clinical Projects

Same-sex couples are affected by the social and political climates in which they live, as these create the difference between acceptance and legalization, and discrimination and prohibition, of their relationships. This contingence is made increasingly impactful by the privileges and protections afforded to married couples by the federal government; same-sex couples, along with other couples that choose not to, or cannot, marry, are excluded from these benefits. Following the June 26, 2013 ruling that Section Three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as between a man and a woman, was unconstitutional, same-sex couples were given access …

Women In Transition: Experiences Of Asian Women International Students On U.S. College Campuses, Siva Jeyabalasingam

Department of Family Therapy Dissertations and Applied Clinical Projects

Often referred to as people in transition, international students usually arrive in the U.S. with a clear sense of their academic goals; however, they often have not considered what their lives will be like or how they may change in non-academic ways. In addition to the typical level of university-related stress, international students face additional problems and difficulties generated in part by the cultural differences between the U.S. and their own countries. This is particularly true for Asian students. Of several studies that have investigated the experiences of international students in the U.S., only a handful have examined Asian students' …

Sex Role Identity And Relationship Factors As Correlates Of Abusive Behavior In Lesbian Relationships, Grace A. Telesco

CAHSS Faculty Theses and Dissertations

The recognition of partner abuse between lesbian intimates has gained attention in the literature only within the last few decades. The current research indicates that physical and psychological abuse is occurring between lesbian partners at about the same rate as their heterosexual counterparts. The theoretical explanations for lesbian partner abuse share similarities with the heterosexual paradigm. However, significant differences in gender make-up and the patriarchal issues of power and control do not fit within the lesbian framework and the unique issues of attachment in lesbian relationships and the issue of homophobia are cause for another perspective.

This study shifts the …