Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

The Myth Of The "Battered Husband Syndrome", Jack C. Straton

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The most recurrent backlash against women's safety is the myth that men are battered as often as women. Suzanne Steinmetz created this myth with her 1977 study of 57 couples, in which four wives were seriously beaten but no husbands were beaten. By a convoluted thought process she concluded that her finding of zero battered husbands implied that men just don't report abuse and therefore 250,000 American husbands are battered each year by their wives, a figure that exploded to 12 million in the subsequent media feeding frenzy.

Men have never before been shy in making their needs known, so …

Monsters Of Antithesis, Melody Leming-Wilson

Anthós Journal (1990-1996)

This paper traces and interrogates the multiple theories of matriarchy that have arisen in recent years and then turns to the Greek myths to show how matriarchies functioned in this literature. The theories of matriarchy often stem from the pre-Hellenic stories of matriarchy shown in Greek myths. In addition, these theories often suggest that the colonizing force of Indo-Europeans changed these myths into patriarchical ones. The Amazonian women can be seen to upset the patriarchal myth in important and interesting ways which suggest a matriarchal underpinning to their society. The question of whether a historical matriarchy actually existed is shown …

Food And Females: The Taming Of The Oregon Palate?, Peggy Ann Lutz

Dissertations and Theses

Food and Females, The Taming of the Oregon Palate? is a study of the variations in the preparation and consumption of food as reflected in the changes in the roles of women during the hundred years between the settlement of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver and 1920, which marks the beginning of modern times.

Most of the data obtained for this topic was in the form of personal testimonies or culinary records, which came from nineteenth and early twentieth century diaries, journals, letters, and cookbooks. Some secondary sources were used, as well, primarily in the research on Fort …

The Relationship Between Internal Organizational Conflict, Authority Structure, And The Social Environment, Mary Ann Barham

Dissertations and Theses

This research seeks to answer the following questions: Do feminist organizations have more internal conflicts than other organizations? And, if so, why?

Intergenerational Relations In The Workplace: Older Women And Their Younger Women Co-Workers, Julie Suzanne Reynolds

Dissertations and Theses

Women aged 55 and older have been participating actively in the American work force and recently have been drawing increased attention from researchers in the social sciences. This study examines the nature of service work performed by older part-time women workers and their younger women co-workers, and the relationship between the two generations in the workplace.

The following research questions guided this exploratory study: Do the older women workers and their younger women co-workers report that there have been changes in the co-workers' work since the older women began working at the job site? What do the older women workers …

Nietzsche's "Woman" : A Metaphor Without Brakes, Kathleen Merrow

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis reconsiders the generally held view that Friedrich Nietzsche's works are misogynist. In doing so it provides an interpretation of Nietzsche's texts with respect to the metaphor "woman," sets this interpretation into an historical context of Nietzsche reception and follows the extension of Nietzsche's metaphor "woman" into French feminist theory. It provides an interpretation that shows that a misogynist reading of Nietzsche is in error because such a reading fails to consider the multiple perspectives that operate in Nietzsche's texts.

On A Women's Language, Tamara Brown

Dissertations and Theses

Assessing the feminist belief that women have a perspective dramatically differing from the patriarchal perspective, and that this viewpoint is, or could be, couched in a language differing from the norm, this researcher addressed the following three questions: (1) is there a definition of a women's language? (2) does a women's language exist? and (3) if a women's language does exist, in what form does it exist? These questions engendered feminist rhetorical criticism on the work of two radical feminists well known for their interest in, and attention to, the issue of a women's language.

Women Of The Tudor Court, 1501-1568, Carol De Witte Bowles

Dissertations and Theses

Writing the history of Tudor women is a difficult task. "Women's lives from the 16th century can rarely be constructed except when these women have had influential connections with notable men.This is no less true for the court women of Tudor England than for other women of the time.

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss some of the more memorable court women of Tudor England who served the queens of Henry VIII, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, 2 and to determine what impact, if any, they had on their contemporary times and to evaluate their roles in Tudor …

Oregon Women In Educational Administration: Profiles And An Analysis Of Upward Career Mobility Factors, Leland D. Chapman

Dissertations and Theses

The first purpose of this study was to determine from the positive and negative factors identified by Jones and Montenegro (1982), which factors Oregon female administrators perceived had influenced upward mobility in their careers. Study of this topic reveals added information and direction to administrators of university administrative programs, school board members and school personnel administrators involved in hiring and providing training or staff development. As a result, the commonalities and differences among female school administrators in Oregon are identified. Identifying the factors that relate to upward mobility of tenured and nontenured female administrators provides insight and hopefully will promote …

Social Construction Of Sexual Equality In Distilled Beverage Advertising, Kathleen Dianne Lecoe-Cannucci

Dissertations and Theses

One aspect of the role of advertising in the process of maintaining and reinforcing or challenging the socially constructed worlds of maleness and femaleness, and especially the portrayal of the "woman's place," was explored in this study.

The Mobilization Of The Gay Liberation Movement, Ramom De Souza Torrecilha

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines the development and evolution of the gay movement. It raises the questions as to why the gay movement was not organized prior to the 1960's. The study starts in the 1940's and ends in 1970. It employs qualitative research methods for the collection and analysis of primary and secondary data sources. Blumer's description of general and specific social movements and Resource Mobilization Theory were used as theoretical frames of reference. The former explained the developmental stages in the career of the movement and the latter focused on the behavior of movement organizations.

Lesbianism In Sport From The Perspective Of The Female Team Sport College Athlete And The Female Team Sport Recreational Player, Tracy Laura Jaynes

Dissertations and Theses

This study was designed to determine the degree of homophobia, expressed lesbian sexual preference behavior, and attitudes toward lesbianism among the female team sport college athlete and the female team sport recreational player. It was hypothesized that the female team sport college athlete would be less homophobic, would express greater lesbian sexual preference behavior, and would possess more positive attitudes toward lesbianism than the female team sport recreational player. There were 32 female team sport college athletes representing four Utah university/college campuses and one Oregon university/college campus; 37 female team sport recreational players representing four Utah recreational team and two …

Femininity And Self-Esteem In Professional Women, Shirley Ellen Harper

Dissertations and Theses

Research in sex-roles has found masculinity and androgyny to be correlated with self-esteem while femininity has a low or negative correlation with self-esteem. Much of the research in this area is based in studies of androgyny. Androgyny is the ability to respond in a feminine or masculine manner, depending on the situation rather than being limited to only feminine or masculine behavior because of sex-role stereotypes. In the research on self-esteem some studies have reported androgynous individuals measure high in self-esteem. Other studies have found that masculine characteristics contribute more to the self-esteem than androgynous characteristics. These results, taken together, …

Women, Welfare, And Work, Norman L. Wyers, Portland State University School Of Social Work

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

There are many popular misconceptions about people on welfare. This study challenges these myths with empirical findings, confirming the results of earlier studies. Four misconceptions contradicted by the findings of this study are as follows:

1. MYTH: She Doesn’t Want to Work
2. MYTH: Welfare Breeds Welfare
3. MYTH: She Rides the Gravy Train
4. MYTH: She Finds Life is Easy on Welfare

An Analysis Of Women's Jobs In The Middle East, 610 A.D.-1982, Malakeh Taleghani

Dissertations and Theses

In this survey, women's roles (jobs) and their participation in the workforce in the Muslim Middle-Eastern countries will be discussed generally; moreover, some of the Middle-Eastern countries, such as Egypt and Iran, will be studied a little more specifically as a sample. The status of women, their education, skills, and profession, will be explained historically from the date of the Islamic period until today. The problems and factors that prohibited women from having outside jobs, social life, and equal rights in past and present times (from 610 A.D. to 1982) will be analyzed. On the other hand, the attempt is …

Following The Drum: British Women In The Peninsular War, Sheila Simonson

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines the lives of British women, soldiers' and officers' wives, for the most part, who followed the British army on campaign in Portugal, Spain, and southern France during the Peninsular War (1808-1814). Because most of the women were of the working class, their major roles, as wives, mothers, widows, workers, and criminals, have been contrasted with those roles as defined in British working-class culture.

No direct female sources exist for this war. Information was therefore gathered from male diarists, letter writers and memoirists of the period, using modern research into working-class behavior in the early industrial period as …

A Construct Validity Study For The Women Workers Scale Questionnaire, Gwen Simpson

Dissertations and Theses

This study attempted to obtain evidence on the construct validity of the Women Workers Scale (WWS), an attitude scale developed to measure male supervisors' attitudes toward women workers. As women enter the work world in increasing numbers, they are usually supervised by men. However, few studies have examined the attitudes of male supervisors toward women workers. At least one author (Bass, 1972) reported that there were significant differences among male managers in their attitudes toward women. Specifically, those male managers who had not worked with women held more favorable attitudes than male managers who had worked with women.

Indications Of Feminist Influence On Contemporary Social Work Practice, Clara Elizabeth Miller

Dissertations and Theses

It is criticism of traditional theory and methods, and the advocacy of new approaches that feminists have tried to present to social workers and to other professionals in mental health and other social services. The feminist goal has been to convince social workers and others to modify their beliefs and practice in order to be more helpful (as the feminists believe) to women. In this study of the beliefs and practice of social workers in Oregon, I attempt to find out to what extent, ten years after the "rebirth of feminism," they have adopted feminist beliefs and recommendations for practice.

Homosexuality Among Women: Historical And Current Views In Psychology, Craig Bracy

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this review is to evaluate the methodology of past and present research with female homosexuals and then to summarize the current state of knowledge in psychology and psychiatry. The data presented in this review have been derived predominantly from material abstracted in the Medicus Index (1900-1976) and Psychology Abstracts (1927-1976).

This reviewer has established specific criteria by which all studies throughout this literature review will be examined. These are: sample size, sampling of experimental control groups, variable controlled (age, education, etc), how sexual orientation was determined, and tests and questionnaires employed, their reliability, validity, administration, and interpretation. …

A Profile Of Women Volunteers, Vana O'Brien

Dissertations and Theses

Volunteerism has been the subject of much controversy in the last few years inasmuch as it is so often identified as a women's issue. Many areas, previously considered the rightful domain of women, have come under scrutiny as women question the value of their participation in “feminine activities.” As stereotypes are examined, fictions are explored and facts determined so that these former stereotypes can be reviewed in a new light. Many persons are becoming familiar via the popular media with these stereotyped roles (i.e., woman as “Good Mother”) , and learn that, for example, “good mothering” is not a monolithic …

Lesbian Marriage, Sandi Parks

Dissertations and Theses

Research findings on marriage as a heterosexual institution were reviewed and research was carried out to determine if certain of them were applicable to lesbian "marriage" as well. Marriage was defined as a relationship in which two people have lived together with strong emotional and sexual involvement for a year or more. Subjects were volunteers from among women age 22 or older, who were childless, and who were involved in the women's movement, as well as their friends, lovers and husbands. There were 14 lesbian couples, 14 lesbians who had never been married and 6 lesbians who had been married …

A Comparison Of Socialization And The Current Attitudes Towards Personal And Feminist Issues Of Women Over 65, Gayle Austin, Anna Belle Sime

Dissertations and Theses

Women, as feminist and as familist, have been in many varied ways the subjects of study. They have been studied as black women, middle-aged women, sexual women, women in poverty, women in prison, women raped, executives, celebrities, lesbians and homemakers. The classifications and combinations approached infinity. Now older women are becoming a more popular research topic, as their numbers increase with medical attainments. With the increasing participation of older “sisters” in such organizations as the National Organization for Women, and the advent of groups such as the gray panthers, it has become apparent that there are no age barriers to …

Meaning Of Work For Women, Susan Ackerman

Dissertations and Theses

In this research practicum we were concerned with the measurement and implications of factors which influence the meaning of work for white American women. The present study was a pilot study for the second part of a research project proposed by the Human Interaction Research Institute (H.I.R.I.). John Marks, Ph.D., was co-director of the first part of the project and is the director of this study.

Part I of the "Meaning of Work" project examined alternative life styles and corresponding career choices made by young men. This study identified values, aspirations, backgrounds, and characteristics of men who were grouped as …

"Women's Liberation Movement", Marlene Dixon

Special Collections: Oregon Public Speakers

No abstract provided.

Die Gestalt Der Frau In Ausgewählten Dramen George Kaisers, Wolfgang H. Justen

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis' focuses on the characterization of the "woman", who occupies a very prominent part in the dramatic works of playwright Georg Kaiser (1878-1945). The purpose of this study is twofold: the first part re-examines the early plays Die judische Witwe (1910) and Europa (1910) and basically re-affirms the findings that Judith and Europa are "elementary beings", driven by only one force, their overpowering sexual desire. It can be pointed out, though, that already in these plays Kaiser turned toward mythology - which includes Old and New Testament for him - in the choice of his protagonists.

The examination of …

"Coexistence, Not Coeducation: Some Aspects Of Moral Education In Comparative Perspective", George Z. F. Bereday

Special Collections: Oregon Public Speakers

No abstract provided.