Women's Studies Commons^™

The Embodiment Of Masculinity Among Trans* Identified Men, Abby Marie Haak

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Within masculinity studies, the majority of the literature focuses on the perspectives of cisgender men. The current research project aimed to explore the concept of masculinity further by including the perspectives of trans* identified men. I conducted in-depth interviews with trans* identified men in order to answer three research questions: How do trans* identified men (FTM, transsexual, transgender, transguys, genderqueer, or gender variant) embody (incorporate and express) and perform masculinity? How do trans* identified men recount their experiences of gender socialization? And finally, how, if at all, do trans* identified men experience transphobic discrimination? I asked the first two questions …

Education And Women Mathematicians In The Middle East, Syeda Tooba Zahra

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Middle Eastern women have made important contributions in the field of Mathematics. The purpose of this thesis is to understand the educational background for women in the Middle East and look at the life and contribution of a sample of women mathematicians in representative Middle Eastern countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, and Pakistan.

Working Mothers' Work And Family Satisfaction : The Influence Of Time Demands And Time-Based Conflict, Lauren Berger

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The present study sought to examine a comprehensive model of work-family conflict and family-work conflict for working mothers. Specifically, the study tested time-based work-family conflict and time-based family-work conflict as mediators of the relations between the predictor variables of work hours, work demands, and family demands, and the outcome variables of work satisfaction and family satisfaction. It was expected that time-based work-family conflict and time-based family-work conflict would fully mediate these relations. A total of 677 working mothers in the United States participated in the study. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the hypothesized fully mediating model, as well …

TodavíA Bailamos La Cueca Sola : From Local Protest Practice Against Chile's Dictatorship To (Trans)National Memory Icon, Karolina Sonja Babic

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation is a multi-sited cultural-historical ethnography about the cueca sola, a dance that was created to denounce the disappearances of citizens during Chile's dictatorship in the 1970s. Some women with missing relatives, who belonged to the music group Conjunto Folclórico of the Association of the Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared (AFDD), created a variation on the Chilean national dance (the cueca - traditionally a courtship dance between a man and a woman) which did not involve a male partner. Instead, they performed it alone. In so doing, these women, who were among the first to denounce the military's …

Undergraduate Women's Self-Reported Body Image After Exposure To Weight-Related Versus Nonweight-Related Media Images, Casey Elizabeth Swick

Honors Projects

The proposed study aims to determine whether there is a relationship between exposure to weight-related media images and self-reported body image. About 60 undergraduate women at Bowling Green State University will participate in the study. Half of these women will view five weight-related media images and the other half will view five nonweight-related media images. After exposure to either the experimental or control condition, the women will be asked to complete the Body Ideals Questionnaire as well as reveal their age, year in school, race/ethnicity, and number of women’s studies courses taken on a survey. Correlational data will be obtained …

Undergraduate Women's Self-Reported Body Image After Exposure To Weight-Related Versus Nonweight-Related Media Images, Casey Elizabeth Swick

Honors Projects

The proposed study aims to determine whether there is a relationship between exposure to weight-related media images and self-reported body image. About 60 undergraduate women at Bowling Green State University will participate in the study. Half of these women will view five weight-related media images and the other half will view five nonweight-related media images. After exposure to either the experimental or control condition, the women will be asked to complete the Body Ideals Questionnaire as well as reveal their age, year in school, race/ethnicity, and number of women’s studies courses taken on a survey. Correlational data will be obtained …

Cycling Historiography, Evidence, And Methods, Lorenz J. Finison

Boston’s Cycling Craze, 1880-1900: A Story of Race, Sport, and Society

My purpose in Boston’s Cycling Craze, 1880-1900, was to unearth a largely hidden social cycling history from the point of view of the ordinary, not the famous. While there were many Boston connections to racing champions like Major Taylor, Eddie McDuffee, and Nat Butler, and there are abundant sources of evidence about them, the research was not just about them, nor just about bicycle racing, nor just about unique or fast bikes. I wanted to write about what bicycling meant to ordinary citizens of Boston and its surrounding towns— and to write about the worsening social climate of the …

Mothering And The Functional Self: A Hermeneutic Exploration Of Texts On Perinatal Mood And Anxiety Disorders, Kathleen M. Pape

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Mothering is a rich and complex experience involving challenging tasks, a developing relationship with one's child, and socially defined roles. How mothering is viewed varies depending on the cultural norms and historical era under consideration. This study is a textual interpretation of three books written about perinatal mental health, especially how those texts describe the challenges and struggles of birthing and mothering. I develop understandings about how clinicians respond to those issues and in the process understand themselves, their practices, and their sociocultural roles. I consider the shape of the current social terrain that brings to light the experiences of …

Happenings 2014, Women's Center, Wright State University

Women’s Center Newsletter

A two page newsletter created by the Wright State Women's Center documenting the current affairs of the Women's Center as well as other happenings on campus.

This issue highlights speaker Geraldine Moriba for the Anita Hill Lecture on Gender Justice, the ACE Women's Network-Ohio Conference, a calendar of events, and more.

The Development Of Personal Status Law In Jordan & Iraq, Kelsey Cherland

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the historical development of personal status law, which governs a person’s marriage, divorce, and custody rights. It is significant because it is part of a framework that has defined women’s rights for centuries. I will argue that personal status law is a patriarchal framework that has been reinforced over time, leading up to the creation of nation-states in the Middle East. As such, this is the “institution” of personal status that will be traced using historical institutionalism theory. In this thesis I will argue that personal status has undergone a critical juncture, or crucial moment of potential …

Moved To Move: Socially Contextualizing Women's Exercise Motivations, Dusti Rae Werner

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Using qualitative data from 11 interviews with women who exercise regularly, this research explores women's motivations to exercise, how they make social comparisons and how they self-evaluate their bodies through the social context of gender, socio-economic status and race. Women with intrinsic motivations to exercise find more positive, long term outcomes than those with extrinsic motivations. Women compare themselves to similar others, such as their peers to form self-evaluations more readily than they do media images. Respondents also indicated the importance of relationships in beginning and maintaining exercise regimes.

Eat It: Sex, Food And Women's Writing [Book Review], Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Simply put, Eat It: Sex, Food and Women's Writing surpasses its rather immodest claims. This is no mean feat, for the editors allow that they have collected short stories, nonfiction shorts and poetry that, as the back claims offers, hinge "on the carnal." More than that, the gathered works purportedly address the ways in which experiencing food entails nothing short of "power, biology, social obligation, experimentation, nourishment, pain and pleasure." The authors treat the topics, ranging from the politics of potatoes to tricks for field dressing deer, with a blend of seriousness and humour befitting the material. What becomes clear …

Review Essay: Engaging Feminist Histories, Elizabeth Groeneveld

Women's & Gender Studies Faculty Publications

This review essay considers three recently published texts that centrally engage with the question of how one writes about feminisms and feminist histories in ways that do justice to their complexity and dynamism.

Gendered Violence: Continuities And Transformation In The Aftermath Of Conflict In Africa, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Jennifer Fish, Tamara Shefer

Women's & Gender Studies Faculty Publications

This thematic cluster of essays, titled “Gendered Violence: Continuities and Transformation in the Aftermath of Conflict in Africa,” focuses on the continuities between regimes of violence during organized political conflict and persisting violence against women in the postconflict era of democratic governance. The genesis for this collection evolved out of an international symposium organized by the first author of this introduction, in August 2011. The aim of the symposium was to explore African women’s experiences in the aftermath of mass violence and genocide—both in terms of their victimhood and their agency—and their positioning in the broader context of their social, …

Female Activism: Reevaluating Traditional Buddhist Patriarchy In Chinese Occupied Tibet, Mikaela Murphy

Undergraduate Research Awards

Examines the role of Buddhist women as activists in Chinese-occupied Tibet. The author's entry essay for the 2014 Undergraduate Research Awards is included.

Gender Disparity Within The Employment Sector In Saudi Arabia, Alyssa Bovell, Libby Durnwald

Joyce Durham Essay Contest in Women's and Gender Studies

The purpose of our research is to examine why an increased access to higher education has not resulted in an expansion of employment opportunities for women in Saudi Arabia, and how this affects the development of the country. We examine this topic through a feminist and cultural relativist lens in order to understand why Saudi Arabian women are living in such a gender-segregated state. The lack of opportunity to enjoy one’s right to employment renders the progressivism of women’s rights as civil society has taken measure to eradicate such a disparity in the employment sector and disrupt the institutional norms …

Managing Rapeability: Women's Perceptions And Negotiations Of The Fear Of Sexual Assault, Jessica Friton

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

For women, the fear of sexual assault and harassment is pervasive. This study examines women's perceptions and negotiations of such fear while emphasizing the gendered social structures within which such fears are learned and experienced. Open ended interviews were conducted with 13 women enrolled in a self-defense undergraduate class. The interviews were transcribed and qualitatively analyzed. Findings provide rich descriptions of women's fears of victimization, how they learn such fears, and how they cognitively and behaviorally managed fear in their everyday lives. The author argues that learning and managing fear of sexual assault and harassment is part of gender socialization …

The Co-Occurrence Of Multiple And Overlapping Demands Among Women Leaving Prison, Jennifer Jo Schweitzer

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The findings presented in this thesis result from an analysis of the experiences over a three-year period of thirteen women recently released from prison, all of whom simultaneously struggled with severe physical and mental health problems, drug and alcohol addiction(s), and histories of trauma. The purpose of this study was to better understand the strategies women with these multiple and overlapping vulnerabilities utilized as they attempted to reintegrate into the community. This group of thirteen women is a subsample of a population of 41 women whose reentry experiences were the focus of a larger, longitudinal research project. The data consist …

In Idi Amin’S Shadow: Women, Gender, And Militarism In Uganda, Alicia C. Decker

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

In Idi Amin’s Shadow is a rich social history examining Ugandan women’s complex and sometimes paradoxical relationship to Amin’s military state. Based on more than one hundred interviews with women who survived the regime, as well as a wide range of primary sources, this book reveals how the violence of Amin’s militarism resulted in both opportunities and challenges for women. Some assumed positions of political power or became successful entrepreneurs, while others endured sexual assault or experienced the trauma of watching their brothers, husbands, or sons “disappeared” by the state’s security forces. In Idi Amin’s Shadow considers the crucial ways …

Victim Blaming, Protests, And Public Space: News Coverage Of The Occupy Wall Street Sexual Assaults, Abigail Barefoot

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Occupy Wall Street was a national protest centered on wealth redistribution and sparked a national dialogue about economic reform. The movement faced internal challenges of crime occurring in the camps including sexual assault; these crimes were covered by news outlets as part of their Occupy Wall Street coverage. This thesis will expand upon previous feminist research on sexual violence news coverage by using a feminist media analysis to examine the coverage of sexual assaults occurring during Occupy Wall Street. Previous feminist research on sexual assault coverage argues that newspapers use myths about rape to discredit the crime and blame the …