Women's Studies Commons^™

The Continuously Changing Self: The Story Of Surinamese Creole Migration To The Netherlands, Jenise Ogle

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper is the result of a month long study on how the process of migration affects the sense of Self of middle-classed Creole Surinamese migrant women who first migrated to the Netherlands in the 1960’s or 1970’s. All data was obtained from semi-structured oral history interviews analyzed with a historical and theoretical framework focusing on the influence of colonialism upon the three steps of the migration process: before migration, migration, and after migration. It is concluded that colonialism and its legacies have conferred, reconfigured and dismantled migrant women’s sense of Self throughout the entire migration process. Recommendations for future …

Reconstructing The Farm: Life Stories Of Dutch Female Farmers, Marisa Turesky

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My research asks: what are the lived experiences of female farmers within the hegemonic construction of the Dutch farmer and how have their roles shifted through time? Popular culture has implanted stereotypes that most female farmers are uneducated, low-class individuals but the six women whom I interviewed present life stories that complicate this. How did these women come into their roles as farmers? Once they became such entrepreneurs, what were their challenges in a potentially male-dominated profession? While there has been extensive research on rural women’s historical roles in farming, I analyze the personal experiences of a small sample of …

La Revolución Teatral: Las Concientizadas, Las Empoderadas, Las Liberadas En El Teatro Feminista Nicaragüense, Isela Xitlali Gómez

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Since the 1970s, various groups of “oppressed” people have appropriated performance theater, a space that has historically oppressed and excluded everyone outside of the elite ruling class, and have employed it as a social tool. In Nicaragua, as popular theater groups emerged critiquing the government and other institutions, a feminist theater emerged as well during the 1980s in different parts of the country. In this essay, I will examine Nicaraguan feminist theater, its development and its methodology. Simultaneously part of a women’s movement, feminist movement, and a popular theater movement, the Nicaraguan women’s theater proposes a three phase process: concientización, …

The Different Perceptions Of Breast Cancer In Post-Conflict Northern Uganda, Karen Im

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Objective: To assess breast cancer perceptions in Northern Uganda for the purpose of informing necessary cancer initiatives.

Methods: Breast cancer patients and the Gulu District community development officer participated in semi-structured interviews. Interviews were analyzed using qualitative data analysis.

Results: The concept of cancer is relatively new in Northern Uganda. In conjunction with a lack of understanding and competing priorities, many women are often diagnosed in late and advanced stages. Most women go to the hospital when they feel distinctive pain in the body instead of getting regular check-ups.

Conclusions: Educating people on needs for more proactive health-seeking behavior could …

When Mountain Bellies Grow Round: Localized Knowledge And Behaviors Facilitating Pregnancy And Childbirth In Phaphlu, Nepal, Cailin Marsden

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In attempts to gain a level of understanding of a community’s localized experiences, beliefs, practices, and roles around pregnancy and childbirth, ethnographic fieldwork was conducted with the mothers and fathers of Phaphlu in the Solukhumbu district of Nepal. Aimed at the validation of diverse and localized ways of knowing revealed during the fieldwork period, this paper applies anthropologist Bridgette Jordan’s theoretical framework of authoritative knowledge to the emergent themes of subjectively understood childbirth (knowledge acquisition and flow, role of the husband, and protective behavior.)

Nawal Al Saadawi And Hanan Al Shaykh's Authorship: Between Arab And Western Reception, Diana M. Obeid

Institute for the Humanities Theses

When Lebanese author Layla Baalbaki wrote her novel A Space Ship of Tenderness to the Moon in 1964 about a woman's defiance to her husband's wishes and his way of maintaining societal customs and traditions, an avalanche of criticism was directed against her. She was accused of obscenity and was put on trial before a Lebanese Prosecutor. Baalbaki's experiences are symbolic of the paradoxical and contradictory reception many Arab female authors have received in the East and the West. In this thesis, I discuss this discrepancy of reception in the works of Nawal Al Saadawi and Hanan Al Shaykh, two …

Perceptions Of Beauty Among Female Chinese Students In The United States And China, Carly R. Staley, Ginny Qin Zhan

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

This pilot study compared the perceptions of beauty among Chinese women who were exchange students in the United States with Chinese women who were students in their homeland. We interviewed 19 women in China and 19 women in the United States to determine differences in responses. In accordance with the sociocultural approach and the social comparison approach, we expected Chinese women in the United States to have a be more acculturate, more frequently conclude that American women were more beautiful than Chinese women, be more likely than those studying in China to report body dissatisfaction, be more likely to dislike …

Indigent Women And Access To Prenatal Care, Zoe Ann Zelazny

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

One aspect of America's health care system that illustrates the great need for health care reform, but receives little attention, is prenatal care. The United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world. Adequate prenatal care results in healthier babies, more full-term babies delivered, and a decrease in other serious problems related to pregnancy and health care costs. The purpose of this study is to examine the history of prenatal policy and how it has developed into what it is today, to understand why medically indigent women are not receiving adequate prenatal care, and to highlight …

Postmodern Subjects And The Nation: Contemporary Arab Women Writers' Reconfigurations Of Home And Belonging, Ghadir Khalil Zannoun

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A lot has been said about the declining status of national paradigms. Most recently, the forces of change have been located in the transnational and global phenomenon. Contemporary Arabic literature, however, identifies globalism as only one among many factors undermining the existing national formations in the Arab countries. Among these factors is the postcolonial condition, and in the case of Palestine, the struggle against the continuing military occupation of Palestinian lands, wholesale and unsystematized modernization, and complex internal Social, cultural, religious and racial differences exacerbated by neo-colonialism. The contemporary Arab women writers' fiction analyzed in this dissertation posits yet another …

Wait Six Months, Cynthia N. Malone

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ua41 University College Connection, Dennis K. George, Dean, Wendi Kelley

UC Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review: No Stones: Women Redeemed From Sexual Addiction By Marnie C. Ferree (Intervarsity, 2010), Margaret English De Alminana

Selected Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Women’S Participation In Peace Negotiations; 1992 - 2010, Tuohy Ahern

Capstone Collection

This paper will present an analysis of several women’s peacebuilding movements and describe their efforts to participate in formal peace negotiations. This analysis includes the design, development and implementation of the female and community-based initiatives as well as the strategies, tactics and approaches used by these women throughout the peace negotiation process. It is important to consider the central role women’s organizations have played in ensuring women’s involvement when examining peace negotiations. Despite a lack of formal invitations to participate in negotiations, many female community-based initiatives have gained entry through efforts outside the political realm.

To provide a framework on …

Meaning Of Hijab According To Urban Egyptian And Yemeni Muslim Women, Kenneth E. Jackson

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Meanings of hijab held by urban Egyptian and Yemeni Muslim women were the focus of this study. In addition to the meanings held of hijab, the study also explored the relationships between demographic variables and perceptions of hijab. Three null hypotheses led the analyses pertaining to the differences between Egyptian and Yemeni respondents in their perceptions of hijab, demographic differences between those that wore a hijab and those that wore a niqab, and the demographic differences between those that wore a hijab and those that did not wear a hijab. Data analysis was based on the …

"When Love Is Born In A Cage Not Of Lts Own Building ": The New Woman And Fiction Of Kate Chopin, Jennifer Battistoni

All Student Theses and Dissertations

This project explores the New Woman as developed and defined through the literature of Kate Chopin.

Looking Beyond The Medical Model Of Sexuality: Social Factors In Women's Sexual Satisfaction, Cristalle Rae Pronier

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Since the explosive profit of Viagra in 1998, the pharmaceutical giants have been scrambling to develop a similar drug to treat Sexual Dysfunction in women. Female Sexual Dysfunction became an official disorder in 1999 shortly after the release of Viagra. This relatively new disorder has emerged as a prominent example of the medicalization of female sexuality whereby problems are defined, conceptualized, and solved in medical terms.

The inherent problem in medicalization is the denial of social, cultural, and psychological factors in women's sexual issues and concerns. To address this disconnect between the medical and social models of sexuality this study …

The Effects Of Rumination, Hostility, And Distraction On Cardiovascular Reactivity And Recovery From Anger Recall In Healthy Women, Meghan K. Mclain

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Cardiovascular reactivity and recovery following an emotional stressor may play a crucial role in mediating the relation between psychosocial factors (e.g. hostility and anger) and cardiovascular disease. Hostility has been associated with trait rumination. Trait rumination, a tendency to focus attention on negative thoughts and emotions and be prone to feelings of revenge, is not adequately captured in current measures of hostility. The current study examined whether trait rumination, indexed by the Dissipation-Rumination Scale, has an independent effect of increasing cardiovascular reactivity and prolonging cardiovascular recovery from angry events above and beyond hostility as measured by the Cook-Medley Hostility Scale. …

Security Through Solidarity: Honduran Women’S Post-Coup Strategies Of Support And Survival, Christine Gervais, Betsy Estevez

Journal of International Women's Studies

As a follow up to the article “From Discovery to Dissidence: Honduran Women’s Conceptions and Claims of Human Rights,” published in this journal in May 2010 (Vol. 11, #4), this paper examines forty-eight Honduran women’s experiences of state-based insecurity and feminist-based solidarity following the June 2009 coup d’État. The authors reflect on the ethical implications of the participant-centered and solidarity-oriented qualitative methodological approaches constrained by state repression. The women’s testimonies shed light on the potential of a solidarity-security symbiosis.

Oral History And “Girls’ Voices”: The Young Women’S Studies Club As A Site Of Empowerment, Susan Cayleff, Melissann Herron, Chelsea Cormier, Sarah Wheeler, Alicia Chávez-Arteaga, Jessica Spain, Cristina Dominguez

Journal of International Women's Studies

Girls’ Voices is a collaborative research project involving multi-tiered community-and university-based mentorship and a Young Women’s Studies Club (YWSC) at Hoover High School in San Diego, California. Since its inception 15 years ago, the Club meets weekly and engages in activities that address the life circumstances and coming-of-age issues faced by its membership. Thirty-five to 45 students (95% female) attend weekly. They are a widely diverse population: new immigrants from various parts of the globe, and mostly lower-socioeconomic status Southern Californians of color (Mexican, Asian, and African-American). English is not the first language for several of the members.

Girls’ Voices …

Homing Desire, Cultural Citizenship, And Diasporic Imaginings, Anh Hua

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article examines the relationship between homing desire, cultural citizenship and diaspora communities. I begin by examining how citizenship is a deeply gendered concept. From there, I will explore how citizenship practices, although promising enfranchisement and equality, sometimes socially exclude certain gendered and racialized individuals and communities as inauthentic citizens, non-citizens, or denizens. Finally, I will analyze the concept of cultural citizenship and how it is being used in various diaspora communities as ways to imagine multiple modes of belonging within and beyond the coherence of national boundaries. I argue that to fully comprehend the lived experience of migratory and …