Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Guide For The Everyday Woman Surfer: How Surf Culture's Patriarchy Marginalizes Ocean Lovers, Alexis S. Di Stefano

Women's, Gender and Queer Studies

Humans are naturally drawn to the water by wind and tide. It is a place of solace that we have a desire to know deeply, yet we have kept one another from experiencing it through biases that perpetuate inequality. White-supremacist hegemony has historically kept communities of color from coastlines, women from lineups, and queer communities from participating in surf culture. As more people from all social groups return to the water through surfing in the 20th century, surf culture needs to adapt to become more inclusive. This paper outlines surf culture's historical transition into whiteness and how female beauty standards …

Transforming Trees, Transcending Binaries: Gender In Augustan Poetry, Kendall Swanson

College Honors Program

Humans have been inextricably linked to nature since before the rule of Emperor Augustus in Ancient Rome. Nature feeds humans, it gives people the tools to build a society. Because of this relationship, it is no surprise that authors, both ancient and modern, incorporate various themes of the natural world into their works. Additionally, nature appears linked to human conceptions of gender, as seen in literature and real-world experience. According to the United Nations, one goal to accomplish in order to achieve sustainable development is gender equality in all countries. Gender and nature work together: when inequality exists, environmental degradation …

'Indirect Pathways Into Practice': Philippine Internationally Educated Nurses And Their Entry Into Ontario's Nursing Profession, Lualhati Marcelino

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

While there are several studies that highlight the quantitative and statistical profiles of internationally educated nurses (IENs) from the Philippines who migrate to countries throughout Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the United States and Canada, there is little research that delves deeply into the qualitative review and analysis of their experiences in their own words. This study addresses that gap by applying the transnational feminist concept of “global care chains” in a single case study design that explores the experience of nurses who migrated to Ontario through permanent and temporary immigration streams and were interviewed in 2011 to 2012 to …

Care Work In Chile’S Segregated Cities, Manuel Garcia

Doctoral Dissertations

This project combines diverse theoretical and methodological tools to examine the relationship between space and care work in Chile. The chapters are stand-alone articles that come together to tell a single story. The social production of urban space has marginalized thousands of female caregivers from the labor market as Chile’s care system unravels. I argue that community caregiving could simultaneously improve the conditions of caregivers and dependents. Chapter 1 examines the role of residential segregation in reproducing Chile’s meager female labor market participation rates. I use spatial and econometric analysis to show that the social forces that segregate Santiago create …

Hybrid Ethnobotanical Practices: Afro And Indigenous Place-Making In The Contemporary Colombia Andean Pacific, Rafael A. Mutis Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an ethnography of Indigenous and AfroIndigenous ethnobotanical practices in four communities in Cauca, in the Andean Pacific region in the Western Amazon of Colombia. Through collaborative field work, including interviews and active participant observation, I document the use of herbs and food as medicine, and agricultural and land tenure practices that depart significantly from those of racial-capitalist agribusiness. These ethnobotanical practices recuperate precolonial and ancestral knowledge as one of many efforts to build community autonomy and self-determination in Colombia as it fitfully enters the post conflict period.

Through an intersectional and topographic analysis, I show both the …

Women, Water, And Well-Being: Gendered Experiences Of Household Water Contamination In Parkersburg, West Virginia, Emily Brooke Tingler

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

DuPont Washington Works chemical plant knowingly pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic C8 waste into local waterways, water tables, and landfills for over 40 years, contaminating the drinking water for more than 100,000 residents in and around Parkersburg, West Virginia. Drawing on feminist political ecology and the political ecology of water with literature on perceptions of risk in contaminated communities, environmental reproductive justice, modern water, and hydrosocial waterscapes, I examine, through a qualitative case study, the lived experiences of women who have an intimate understanding of C8 water contamination from the DuPont Washington Works chemical plant. Specifically, I …

Equity Considerations In Active School Travel Interventions, Alina Medeiros

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Active school travel has benefits for children’s physical and mental health, academic achievement, and the environment. Underscoring active school travel is children’s independent mobility, defined as their ability to travel around their community without adult supervision. Interventions have shown some success in reversing declining trends in active school travel and independent mobility. However, little is known about how interventions have varying impacts on different subgroups of children. This thesis identifies ways to increase equity in active school travel interventions by investigating how equity is currently considered in interventions and gendered disparities in children’s ability to engage in independent mobility. This …

Situating Worker Cooperatives: The Urban, Racial And Gendered Geographies Of Cooperative Development In New York City’S Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative, Rebecca Wolfe

Theses and Dissertations

Worker cooperatives are gaining increased traction as an urban economic development strategy aimed to better support low-income women, immigrants and communities of color. Worker cooperatives are businesses that are owned and managed by its workers, and their supporters see them as a more equitable form of development that facilitates enhanced economic agency and access to ownership and wealth building. Reflecting and reinforcing growing cooperative momentum, New York City developed the nation’s first municipal-sponsored cooperative development initiative in 2014. The Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative (WCBDI) brings together policy makers, city administrators and nonprofit community-based organizations to provide educational programming, cooperative …

Resilience In The Mountains: Exploring The Labor And Motives Of Food-Caregiver Women Repairing Broken Food Systems In West Virginia Communities, Heidi Lynn Gum

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Over the past four years the Food Justice Lab, now housed within the Center for Resilient Communities at West Virginia University, hosted a series of food access planning workshops across the state of West Virginia. Mobilizing more than 200 participants, the Nourishing Networks workshop training program was designed to build grassroots capacity for food system change. Eighty-percent of workshop participants were women and dialogues recorded at these events revealed how women are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity and disproportionately labor to repair a broken food system. Women in West Virginia are not only growing food, feeding their families, selling it …

Fanm Pa Chita: Mobilities, Intimate Labour, And Political Subjectivities Among Haitian Women On The Move, Masaya Llavaneras Blanco

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation asks: how does intimate labour interact with the mobility and political subjectivities of Haitian migrant women and women of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic (DR)? It answers this question in three specific ways. First, it explains the relationship between intimate labour and the spatial trajectories of women of Haitian ancestry who work as domestic workers. Second, it examines how the interaction between intimate labour and human mobility plays out in the Dominican border regime. Third, it explains how these subaltern women act politically in the midst of the intersections between borders, mobilities, and intimacy.

The dissertation proposes …

Still Sitting On Men: Understanding The Continuities Of Indirect Rule Through Pre-Colonial Forms Of Female Resistance, Ethnic Power Politics And Economic Violence In Southeast Nigeria, Evan Richardson

Senior Projects Spring 2019

This project exposes that Indirect Rule in Southeastern Nigeria has had direct, significant ramifications on the Political Economic Development of Nigeria through the present day.

Gendered Recreational Fisheries Management And North American Natural Resource Policy, Erin Burkett

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation applies feminist theory to investigate women’s participation in wildlife-based recreation and how natural resource management organizations conduct stakeholder engagement in a North American context. Gendered social processes, including norms and expectations, as well as gendered cultures, can constrain women’s participation in recreation through social sanctions and disenfranchisement. Gender and leisure scholars have studied these dynamics in sport and leisure contexts, but how individuals negotiate these constraints is understudied in a wildlife-based recreation context. Social constructions of gender also contribute to imbalances of power within formal natural resource management organizations and influence how stakeholder engagement policies and programs are …

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 …

From Prison To Homeless Shelter: Camp Laguardia And The Political Economy Of An Urban Infrastructure, Christian D. Siener

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At this time of increasing housing insecurity, recent reforms in homeless shelter policy have attracted the attention of scholars and activists. This research sheds light on these changes by placing them in historical and political-geographic perspective, focusing on the role of homeless shelters in stabilizing social displacement by destabilizing solidarity. It demonstrates historical continuity between prisons and homeless shelters in New York City through a case study of conditions surrounding the transition of Camp LaGuardia, a prison that slowly transformed into the city’s largest, and longest lasting, homeless shelter. The case study is an empirical demonstration of some of the …

Income Shocks And The Acceptance Of Intimate Partner Violence In Indonesia, Matthew N. Krupoff

Master's Theses

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive issue affecting 1 in 3 women worldwide. Despite the negative welfare impacts, it is still seen as acceptable in some parts of the world, even amongst women. This paper examines how elastic these accepting attitudes towards IPV are to changing economic conditions. Specifically, this paper focuses on changes in intra-household resources from negative shocks to male-sourced income. The setting and context takes place in coastal communities in Indonesia, where fishing is a main source ofincome generated primarily by men. This paper uses satellite-derived fishing conditions to measure how women's attitudes towards IPV change …

Guns, Gender, Geography: Exploring Reasons For Gun Ownership, Lauren N. Kadet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was aimed to depict patterns of gun ownership in the United States and to outline the reasons for gun ownership and the influential variables associated with people’s reasons for owning handguns and long guns. This study used data derived from the 2004 National Firearm Survey to examine how respondents’ geographic region of residency, gender, race, age, rural location and education level influenced the likelihood of, and reasons for owning a firearm. The findings from this study suggest that being a male, living in the south and participants’ age was significant in determining the likelihood of participants owning a …

Women Workin’ It In Gis: A Mixed Methods Study Of Underrepresentation And The Gendered Experience Among Female Gis Practitioners, Livia M. Betancourt Mazur

Theses and Dissertations

Through novel empirical research, this thesis explores the experience of women working in the professional field of geographic information systems (GIS), adding to GIS literature, as well as to academic geography and wider science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) discourses, addressing gaps in these bodies of knowledge.

Women's Navigation Of Maternal Health Services In Ghana's Upper West Region In The Context Of The National Health Insurance Scheme, Andrea C. Rishworth

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 2008 the sub Saharan African country of Ghana implemented a Maternal Exemption Policy (MEP) within its National Health Insurance Scheme. This policy provides coverage for free antenatal, postnatal, and facility delivery to all pregnant women for a one year period. By removing the fees associated with maternal health services, the MEP was intended to reduce maternal mortality and provide equitable health care for pregnant women. While the MEP is generally regarded as beneficial to the women of Ghana, challenges remain, especially in the poor, marginalized and rural communities of the Upper West Region. Given that access to a skilled …

Determinants Of Health Insurance Enrolment In Ghana's Upper West Region, Jenna Dixon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis aims to explore the determinants of enrolment in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in Ghana’s Upper West Region (UWR). While studies on the theoretically “pro-poor” NHIS have thus far focused on wealth as driver of enrolment, the high rates of enrolment in the poorest and most deprived region of the country (the UWR) suggest that other factors underpin health insurance acquisition and maintenance. This study uses mixed methods that combine quantitative and qualitative techniques in order to better understand patterned differences between enrolled, never enrolled and dropped out members of the scheme.

Results of a quantitative analysis …

We Work, We Eat Together: Anti-Authoritarian Mutual Aid Politics In New York City, 2004-2013, David Spataro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New York City's neoliberal restructuring has fundamentally transformed the city's labor market and privatized many important aspects of a once robust municipal welfare system. In this research I examine one radical response to these changes: anti-authoritarian mutual aid groups that blend Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture with direct action politics. These are projects where activists attempt to build strong communities of resistance by organizing collective forms of social reproduction. I find that these projects are a threat to neoliberal urbanization because they reorganize reproduction beyond the household scale while simultaneously criticizing the social relations of capitalism as the root of household insecurity. …

Climate Change And Human Rights: A Case Study Of Vulnerability And Adaptation In Coastal Communities In Lagos, Nigeria., Idowu M. Ajibade

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Lagos, Nigeria is one the world’s megacities at risk from climate change. Communities along the coast have been hit hard by floods, storm surges, and rising seas, due to the city’s geographic location, inadequate infrastructures, and poor urban governance. These factors together with social inequality have been known to shape vulnerability to climatic hazards but less understood is the role of human rights.

The objective of this thesis is to develop a grounded understanding of the links between human rights and the vulnerability of people to climate change impacts (i.e. floods and storm surges). The study combined qualitative and quantitative …

Colorful Colorado: The Relationship Between Demographics And The Changing Political Color Of Colorado, Leslie Forbes

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This research will address the individual relationships between five demographic variables and the changing political color of Colorado (from a “red” state to a “blue” state). The variables addressed are age, education, income, gender, and the Hispanic[1] population growth. Building on recent literature reviews for Colorado’s political trends, I will attempt to show the relationships of the five variables and voting behavior. This data will then be statistically analyzed through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to determine what relationship strength, weak or strong, exists between the demographic variables. My goal for this research is to determine which of the five …