Digital Commons Network^™

Modern Day Mary Poppins : Uncovering The Work Of Nannies And The Expectations Of Employers, Laura Ann Bunyan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Throughout the past few decades the number of parents relying on child care has risen. Most research on parental use of child care focuses on relationships between employers and employees of differing racial-ethnic, social class, and educational status. This dissertation was designed to examine the experiences of those who perform nanny work, the process of selecting care, and understand the experiences of those who do not seek to maximize social space between employee and employer.

Rights In Flux: The Rights Of Afghan Women In Different Eras, Kelly Anne Drevitch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Have the lives of Afghan women improved since the U.S. invasion of October of 2001? Historically, the George W. Bush Administration followed past foreign governments, Afghan political parties, and Afghan regimes who also promised to "liberate Afghan women" when making the case for war or violence. Using case study methodology and feminist theory, the research compares the status of Afghan women in three eras: before the Taliban (1973 to 1995), during the Taliban (1996 to October 2001), and since the U.S. invasion (October 2001 to December 2009). By applying gender and cultural essentialism, the research concludes that these theories offer …

Gender Dimorphism In The Exercise-Naïve Murine Skeletal Muscle Proteome, Lauren Ann Metskas, Mohini Kulp, Stylianos P. Scordilis

Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Skeletal muscle is a plastic tissue with known gender dimorphism, especially at the metabolic level. A proteomic comparison of male and female murine biceps brachii was undertaken, resolving an average of 600 protein spots of MW 15-150 kDa and pI 5-8. Twenty-six unique full-length proteins spanning 11 KOG groups demonstrated statistically significant (p< 0.05) abundance differences between genders; the majority of these proteins have metabolic functions. Identified glycolytic enzymes demonstrated decreased abundance in females, while abundance differences in identified oxidative phosphorylation enzymes were specific to the proteins rather than to the functional group as a whole. Certain cytoskeletal and stress proteins showed specific expression differences, and all three phosphorylation states of creatine kinase showed significant decreased abundance in females. Expression differences were significant but many were subtle (≤ 2-fold), and known hormonally-regulated proteins were not identified. We conclude that while gender dimorphism is present in non-exercised murine skeletal muscle, the proteome comparison of male and female biceps brachii in exercise-naive mice indicates subtle differences rather than a large or obviously hormonal dimorphism.

Single Mothers, Single Fathers: Gender Differences In Fertility After A Nonmarital Birth, Karen Guzzo, Sarah Hayford

Sociology Faculty Publications

Research on nonmarital fertility has focused almost exclusively on unmarried mothers, due in part to a lack of fertility information for men. Cycle 6 of the National Survey of Family Growth allows exploration of nonmarital fertility for both genders. We compare the characteristics of unmarried first-time mothers (n = 2,455) and fathers (n = 797), use event history techniques to model second birth hazards, and examine the distribution of men’s and women’s second births across types of relationships. Our analysis is motivated by questions about how selection into nonmarital fertility relates to subsequent fertility behavior and by theories …

In Search Of The Reasonable Woman: Anti-Discrimination Rhetoric In The United States, Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

This article emerged from my participation in a Symposium addressing global perspectives on the topic, "Anti-Discrimination Discourse and Practices," sponsored by The Jean Monnet Chair of European Law at Cagliari University, Sardinia. The article examines the rhetorical development of the "reasonable woman" standard of hostile work environment sexual harassment under Title VII. I argue that the rhetorical framing of the standard has unnecessarily limited its impact, perhaps to the point of undermining its potential to radically revise our understanding of gender discrimination. I suggest how the rhetorical power of the standard might be recovered.

Ricci V. Destefano: A Masculinities Theory Analysis, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This Article applies masculinity theory to explore the aspects Ricci v. Destefano and its political reverberations. Empirical evidence showed that virtually all written tests have a disparate impact on minorities, that a neighboring city had reached less discriminatory results using a different weighting system, and that other fire departments used assessment centers to judge firefighters' qualifications for promotions. While the black male and all female firefighters were made invisible by the case and the testimony, the fact that Ricci's and Vargas' testimony lionized a particularly traditional form of heterosexual masculinity was also invisible. While the command presence required of a …

Reflections: On Judicial Diversity And Judicial Independence, Sonia Lawrence

Articles & Book Chapters

In the Canadian context, judicial independence - the “cornerstone of democracy” - is described as dependent on a wide variety of conditions, including judicial remuneration, court budgets, the discipline of judges, politics and the appointments process, but these do not usually include a diverse judiciary. There is also a significant, but almost completely separate, Canadian literature about diversity on the bench. Why the separation? Part of the reason is that judicial independence (like any concept worth its salt) is not particularly well defined. Attempts at definition are often cabined by jurisdiction or limited to the world of theory. Furthermore, judicial …

Recreating The Image Of Women In Mexico: A Genealogy Of Resistance In Mexican Narrative Set During The Revolution, Julia Maria Schneider

LSU Master's Theses

Traditionally, women have been relegated to the margins of society, history, and culture in male-dominated environments. Patriarchal systems have long denied women to play an appropriate role in nation building and to enter the public sphere, as is the case in Mexico. The female participation during one of the country’s most critical periods, the Mexican Revolution, has largely been ignored. Through situating their narratives into the context of the Revolution and describing the obstacles and limiting conditions that women experience, Mexican writers such as Elena Poniatowska and Laura Esquivel criticize the status quo of social and gender politics in Mexico …

The Role Of Old-Fashioned Racism: Disaggregating Symbolic Racism In The United States, Leslie Curtis Cox

LSU Master's Theses

Old-fashioned, biological, or "Jim Crow" racism is viewed by many in the political science and psychology literature to be largely a relic of the past. In the post-segregation era it has been replaced as a political force by symbolic racism, although its residual effect still operates within symbolic racism as negative racial affect. Symbolic racism is thought of as a coherent belief system that describes whites‘ attitudes not only in the United States, but in some European democracies as well. This conceptualization of symbolic racism ignores the differences in the historical legacy of racism across different regional and demographic contexts. …

Misconceptions On Force And Gravity Among High School Students, Jane Ragasa Pablico

LSU Master's Theses

The goal of this study is to determine prevalent or dominant misconceptions on force and gravity among high school students. A survey instrument consisting of 12 qualitative questions requiring both answers and written explanations was used to gather students’ ideas and beliefs in situations involving force and gravity. Furthermore, it examined whether the proportion of students having misconceptions per question are correlated with gender and the type of school Physics background. The results show that the respondents have misconceptions that are similar to the misconceptions found in previous research. The number of misconceptions and the proportion of students having misconceptions …

From Graceful Adaptations To Jarring Collisions: Oberlin Students’ Experiences Integrating Divergent Conceptions Of Gender, Rebecca Elizabeth Witheridge

Honors Papers

This thesis explores the ways in which straight, cisgender Oberlin College students conceive of gender, and is based upon ethnographic data collected from interviews the author conducted with fifteen informants. Oberlin College is known for its acceptance of gay and transgender students, and the ways in which Oberlin College students self-actively challenge gender norms is visible everywhere, from the gender identity oriented course offerings to the all-gender bathrooms common across campus. The overarching conception of gender at Oberlin College that is prevalent and dominant challenges traditional ideas of gender and gender identity as being fixed to the body, biological, and …

Impossible Whiteness: Race, Gender, And American Identity In Early Twentieth-Century American Literature, Tarah Demant

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In Impossible Whiteness, I reveal whiteness--though oftentimes still an implicit critical assumption of normalcy--as a complex, shifting category in the literature of early twentieth-century America, and show how gender, particularly, disrupts American whiteness. I deconstruct the various ways in which whiteness is defined legally, culturally, and in the marketplace, and demonstrate how Edith Wharton, Anzia Yezierska, and F. Scott Fitzgerald trace these standards of whiteness and the inevitable failure of such racial: and implicitly gendered) refinement. Though critical literature has been slow to consider the role of race for these authors, I reveal them as actively participating in contemporary dialogues …

It's The Hard Luck Life: Women's Moral Luck And Eucatastrophe In Child Custody Allocation, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

No abstract provided.

Preparing The Workplace For Transition: A Solution To Employment Discrimination Based On Gender Identity, Brittany Ems

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Jonson And Women; Or How One Man's Insistence On His Own Artistic Theory Challenges Dramatic Practices And Views Of His Own Gender Representations On The Elizabethan Stage, Tara Jean Hayes

Wayne State University Dissertations

Literary scholars consider Jonson's treatment of women "uninspiring" and "misogynistic." Surprisingly enough, however, there are no studies of Jonson's women to verify this categorization. This dissertation addresses the oversight, analyzing the female characters in the plays Jonson wrote during the Elizabethan period and revealing what prevailing scholarship has missed in Jonson's work: his individuated and layered characterizations of women, his playful use of gender and use of playful gender, his destabilization of gender as an identity category. With each play and each female character Jonson created as guides, I dismantle the standard consensus on Jonson and women and challenge the …

Bending Gen(Re)Der: A Negotiation Of Identity Through Language In Helene Cixous And The Self, Marley Mckenna

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Bending Gen(re)der: The Negotiation of Identity through Language in Hélène Cixous and the Self analyses the French author Hélène Cixous and her most recently published book, Love Itself in the Letterbox. The book cannot be said to fit into a specific genre but moves through a series of musings surrounding her personal history with France, New York, authors she has been influenced by, her relationship with mother, and most often the contemplation of her lover. Cixous’ use of ecriture feminine (women’s writing) layers the writing to create a playful, confusing, incongruent body of work in an attempt to subvert the …

Race, Sex And Genes At Work: Uncovering The Lessons Of Norman-Bloodsaw, Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (“GINA”) is the first federal, uniform protection against the use of genetic information in both the workplace and health insurance. Signed into law on May 21, 2008, GINA prohibits an employer or health insurer from acquiring or using an individual’s genetic information, with some exceptions. One of the goals of GINA is to eradicate actual, or perceived, discrimination based on genetic information in the workplace and in health insurance. Although the threat of genetic discrimination is often discussed in universal terms - as something that could happen to any of us - the …

La Mujer Se Va Pa’Bajo: Women’S Health At The Intersections Of Nationality, Class, And Gender, Mary Alice Scott

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This research utilizes an intersectionality framework to examine the complexity of social location and its effects on women's health. By examining connections among the state, processes of globalization, and the production of health inequalities for poor women in a rural community in southern Veracruz, Mexico, the research highlights the nexus of nationality, class, and gender. Four interconnected contexts are explored: (1) women's increasing paid and unpaid labor in the context of a poverty of resources brought on by sustained economic crisis; (2) the maintenance of reproductive labor as the responsibility of women; (3) the development of migrant "illegality" and its …

My Name And My Face, Stuart Ewen

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Women Leaders Resolving Conflict In Higher Education: A Feminist Epistemological Perspective, Maureen C. Silva

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In an American postsecondary context, conflict is inherent (Gianneschi & Yanagiura, 2006; Valian, 1999). Successful navigation of conflict in the academy is vital for those who aspire to leadership positions (Nadler & Nadler, 1987; Walters, Stuhlmacher, & Meyer, 1998). Presently, however, women face significant barriers to achieving success in higher education administration, including gender expectations for conflict resolution behavior (Bartunek, 1992; Bowles, Babcock, & McGinn, 2005; Gayle, Preiss, & Allen, 2002).

While a considerable body of literature exists for understanding gender negotiation, it remains rooted in a masculine paradigm (Kolb & Putnam, 2006; Shuter & Turner, 1997), and, as such, …

Pregnant Man: A Conversation, Darren Rosenblum, Noa Ben-Asher, Mary Anne Case, Elizabeth Emens, Berta E. Hernandez-Truyol,, Vivian M. Gutierrez, Lisa C. Ikemoto, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, Kimberly Mutcherson, Peter Siegelman, Beth Jones

Faculty Scholarship

I'm a law professor who works on gender, sexuality, and culture in the international and comparative context. That's my head working. In "real" life, my partner, Howard, and I have been engaged in having a baby together for several years, a project that came to fruition with the birth of our daughter Melina. Of course, such a project evokes intensely complex feelings and thoughts. Beyond a simple transposition of the personal onto the political, I feel so fortunate to have engaged in myriad conversations with a variety of friends and colleagues who think much more carefully about the family and …

All In The Family, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi

Faculty Scholarship

Your essay “Pregnant Man?” highlights many significant issues concerning the intersection of law, gender, sexuality, race, class, and family. In an earlier article A House Divided: The Invisibility of the Multiracial Family, we explored many of these issues as they relate to multiracial families, including our own. Specifically, we, a black female-white male married couple, analyzed the language in housing discrimination statutes to demonstrate how law and society function together to frame the normative ideal of family as heterosexual and monoracial. Our article examined the daily social privileges of monoracial, heterosexual couples as a means of revealing the invisibility of …

Understanding The Female Conceptualization Of Sexual Addiction And The Role Of Addiction Treatment, Megan Douglass

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Beginning with the diagnosis of nymphomania in the 19th Century, there has been widespread and continued interest across the mental health and bio-medical realm of what constitutes normality of female sexual behavior, and of the boundary at which sexual desire is deemed to be excessive, and thus abnormal. However, research questions that specifically investigate the subjective female voice and perspective in considerations of so-called hypersexuality or sex addiction remain understudied. This research project proposes to examine the cultural pathways and systemic foundations which have historically in the West problematized female sexuality by investigating women's own perceptions of sexual addiction and …

Masculine Domesticity In The Mining West: An Archaeological Investigation At Coloma Ghost Town, Margaret Anne Thurlo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The recovery of a scorifier, or roasting dish, at Feature 131 in Coloma, Montana led to the theory that the feature represented an assayer’s household. Historical documentation, in the form of a personal diary, revealed that the assayer at Coloma, Chester Pray, shared a cabin with another man. This revelation led to a particular question: what would the material record of an all-male household look like? The majority of previous engendered investigations into 19th century households focused on the role of women. Gender is often equated with women in historical and archaeological studies, and it became necessary to integrate literature …

Traditionalism And Temporal Variance In Predictors Of Gendered Homicide, 1970-2000, Julia Maria D'Antonio-Del Rio

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

During the second half of the 20th century, changes in gender relations and equality have led to substantial shifts in many aspects of American life. As one feature of society, the relationship between social structure and crime has also changed with the shift from traditional to nontraditional views of gendered interaction. In particular, what were once thought to be invariant structural predictors of homicide may, in fact, have varying explanatory power over time; in particular, measurements of disadvantage and population structure may not equally affect men and women between 1970 and 2000. Therefore, the present study posits a transformation in …

The Complexities Of Attachment, Peer Rejection And Gender Within A Middle School Dynamic - A Glimpse At Early Adolescents And Their Significant Relationships, Barbara Ann Mestling

Dissertations

This was a mixed method two phase explanatory study of attachment, peer rejection and gender in a non-clinical middle school population. The purpose of the study was to illustrate the relationship between these variables with the assumption that there would be differences in attachment style between rejected and non-rejected students and further differences by gender. The Behavioral Systems Questionnaire (BSQ) and the Children's Self-Experience Questionnaire-Self-Report (CSEQ-SR) were utilized to determine interview subjects. A Parent Demographic Form provided background, life experience and social functioning information. There were challenges in the use of both instruments for this study's purposes. Although there were …

The Impact Of Person-Centered Communications On Political Candidate Evaluation: An Experimental Investigation, Randall A. Renstrom

Dissertations

"Person-centeredness" refers to how empathetic and warm a person's communication style is. Although the role of person-centeredness has been documented in various areas concerning interpersonal relations, person-centeredness has not been explored in the political realm. This project investigated how person-centered communications can influence impressions and evaluations of political candidates. In the first study, person-centered (PC) messages were shown to impact candidate trait ratings. Candidates using low PC messages were associated with more instrumental traits but fewer socio-emotional traits, while high PC candidates were assumed to have more socio-emotional traits but fewer instrumental traits. Similar results were found when participants rated …

Sex Representation On The Bench: Legitimacy And International Criminal Courts, Nienke Grossman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the relationship between legitimacy and the presence of both male and female judges on international criminal court benches. It argues that sex representation – an approximate reflection of the ratio of the sexes in the general population – on the bench is an important contributor to legitimacy of international criminal courts. First, it proposes that sex representation affects normative legitimacy because men and women bring different perspectives to judging. Consequently, without both sexes, adjudication is inherently biased. Second, even if one rejects the proposition that men and women "think differently", sex representation affects sociological legitimacy because sex …

Cross-Race Relationships As Sites Of Transformation: Navigating The Protective Shell And The Insular Bubble, Karen Audrey Geiger

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The context of leadership has evolved to incorporate greater social identity differences. Therefore, learning ways to navigate differences in social identity becomes important work leaders must now do. Because these differences surface in relationship with others, examining a relational framework helps us understand the nature of what happens between people (Ely & Roberts, 2008). This study explored the processes by which Black African American and White European American women enact leadership by creating and sustaining cross-race relationships as they work to change unjust systems around them. Using grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2006; Strauss & Corbin, 1990), a model was developed …

Pregnant Man?: A Conversation, Darren Rosenblum, Noa Ben-Asher, Mary Anne Case, Elizabeth F. Emens, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol, Vivian M. Gutierrez, Lisa C. Ikemoto, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, Kimberly Mutcherson, Peter Siegelman, Beth Jones

Faculty Scholarship

I'm a law professor who works on gender, sexuality, and culture in the international and comparative context. That's my head working. In "real" life, my partner, Howard, and I have been engaged in having a baby together for several years, a project that came to fruition with the birth of our daughter Melina. Of course, such a project evokes intensely complex feelings and thoughts. Beyond a simple transposition of the personal onto the political, I feel so fortunate to have engaged in myriad conversations with a variety of friends and colleagues who think much more carefully about the family and …