Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Microfinance: A Tool For Financial Access, Poverty Alleviation Or Gender Empowerment ? - Empirical Findings From Pakistan, Ghazal Mir Zulfiqar

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

In just 30 years microfinance has transformed from a credit-based rural development scheme that has claimed to reduce poverty and empower poor women, to a $70 billion financial industry. In the process, the traditional NGO-led model has given way to commercialized institutions, resulting in an increased emphasis on profitmaking. This has also led to confusion in the sector around its mission: is it to alleviate poverty and empower poor women or simply to provide the "unbanked" with access to formal sources of finance? This research considers the main debates in microfinance with regard to its mission and presents empirical evidence …

Gender And Party Stereotypes In The Evaluation Of U.S. Senate Candidates, Rebecca Madelyn Shafer

Doctoral Dissertations

In the United States, there has been a gradual increase of women elected to office, yet women are still drastically underrepresented at every level. One potential obstacle to the electoral success of women is the propensity of voters to stereotype candidates based on their gender. However, voters also stereotype political candidates based on their party affiliation. Therefore, it is important to understand how stereotypes regarding the Republican and Democratic Parties may interact with stereotypes concerning men and women.

While experimental research has been utilized extensively to test the effect of gender stereotypes on candidate evaluations; almost all of this research …

The Construction Of Gender Occupations In Mexico: Government Issued Elementary Textbooks, Anna V. Haro

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Historically, gender occupational stereotyping has mainly affected women across numerous social areas. Given that political socialization plays a key role in the classroom, analyzing the gendered language and images in textbooks can help determine social expectations and the efficacy of gendered policies. Previous works suggest that elementary textbooks (through gendered words and images) structure children's perceptions of women's and men's occupations. In addition, much work remains with respect to exploring how such depictions may contribute to the gendered stereotyping that continues to permeate across certain Mexican communities, specifically in the private and public sphere. To fill this gap, I conduct …