Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Expanding A Model Of Female Heterosexual Coercion: Are Sexually Coercive Women Hyperfeminine?, Elizabeth Anne Schatzel-Murphy

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

The present study aimed to replicate a preliminary model of female heterosexual coercion and subsequently expand the model with gender- and race-related variables. The preliminary model, which specified sexual compulsivity, sexual dominance, sociosexuality, and prior sexual abuse, as predictors of female heterosexual coercion, was sufficiently replicated with a racially diverse sample of college women. The model was then successfully expanded by adding rape myth acceptance and hyperfemininity to the model. Hyperfemininity was found to be a core predictor of female heterosexual coercion, challenging the notion that sexual coercion is an inherently "masculine" behavior. Actual minority status, perceived minority status, and …

Empowering And Engaging Teen Girls Through Media From The Perspective Of A Practitioner And Producer, Marie Celestin

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

Mainstream media plays an important part of our lives. For teens today, often labeled the “digital generation,” media sources affect the way they read, understand, and interpret information and are a critical influence on the way they see themselves. I have been a media critic since I was a teenager, but the Critical and Creative Thinking program allowed me to articulate my vision for a fairer representation of women and girls while tapping in my creative toolbox to produce original and bolder images of real girls through the G.I.R.L.S. (Growing Individuals Reacting to Life's Struggles) Project and GIRL TV—in short, …

My Journey To Develop An Innovative Approach To Unplanned Pregnancy, Gina Dillon Podolsky

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This paper is my personal journey in developing the non-profit Pennies for Pause that addresses the issue of unplanned pregnancy in the 18-29 populations through the use of incentives, social media, long-acting reversible contraception and the development of critical and creative thinking skills. The paper begins with an insight into my family, how my own thinking skills developed informally throughout my life, and how my personal experiences lead to the development of the 501 (c)(3) organization Pennies for Pause. It also provides insight into my casual observations that I used to create theories, which I then researched, S.C.A.M.P.E.R.E.D, and then …

Caring For Women: A Profile Of The Midwifery Workforce In Massachusetts, Christa M. Kelleher, Dorothy Brewin

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

This profile of the Commonwealth’s midwifery workforce provides state-level data on the demographic characteristics, employment context, and practice scope of midwives. It also offers a snapshot of populations served by mid-wives and public policy issues that affect midwives and midwifery care in Massachusetts. The report is based on a survey administered to midwives living and/or working in the state supplemented by in-depth interviews with five midwives, one obstetrician, and one state public health official. This report uniquely analyzes data collected from both certified nurse-midwives (CNMs) and directentry midwives (DEMs), including certified professional midwives (CPMs); this summary distinguishes between these two …

Unfinished Business: Building Equality For Women In The Construction Trades, Susan Moir, Meryl Thomson, Christa Kelleher

Labor Resource Center Publications

This review and analysis of over one hundred and twenty published and unpublished sources on the unfinished business of increasing women’s participation in the construction workforce over the past thirty-plus years aims to:

• Provide a definitive assessment of the consistency of evidence on the daunting challenges facing women who seek to enter and advance in the construction workplace and
• Examine the failure of a critical social policy intended to address occupational segregation and ensure access to high-paying jobs to women.

Using the wide array of available sources, this report provides a historical overview of policy efforts to integrate women into …

Demographic Analysis Of Recovery Act Supported Jobs In Massachusetts, Quarters 1 And 2, 2010, David Sparks, Paige Ransford, Carol Hardy-Fanta, Christian Weller, Meryl Thomson, Robert Turner

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Massachusetts policy makers decided to go beyond existing ARRA federal reporting requirements and collect additional data in order to gauge the effectiveness of ARRA’s fiscal policy by counting the number of individuals who have received an ARRA-funded paycheck. In addition, policy makers wanted to look at some of the demographic characteristics of this population. This report provides an in-depth analysis of the data that the MA Recovery Office collected during the first and second quarters of 2010, with a particular focus on job creation and retention by race, ethnicity, gender, disability status, and geographic location.

Highlights of the report include: …

Economic Writing On The Pressing Problems Of The Day: The Roles Of Moral Intuition And Methodological Confusion, Julie A. Nelson

Economics Faculty Publication Series

Economists are often called on to help address pressing problems of the day, yet many economists are uncomfortable about disclosing the values that they bring to this work. This essay explores how an inadequate understanding of the role of methodology, as related to ethics and human emotions of concern, underlies this reluctance and compromises the quality of economic advice. The tension between caring about the problems, on the one hand, and writing within the existing culture of the discipline, on the other, are illustrated with examples from U.S. policymaking, behavioral economics, and the economics of climate change and global poverty. …

Gentility And Gender Roles Within The 18th-Century Merchant Class Of Newport, Rhode Island, Nicki Hise

Graduate Masters Theses

The Capt. Thomas Richardson household rose to prominence in Newport, Rhode Island during the community’s golden age of prosperity in the 18th century when Newport quickly became one of the leading seaports in the New World. However, all prosperity halted due to the hardships and damage Newport suffered during the American Revolutionary War. Much of the city’s property and economic success was destroyed at the hands of occupying British troops, and the Rhode Island community was never able to fully recover. Like others in colonial Newport, Capt. Thomas Richardson achieved genteel status as a merchant, distiller, and slave ship owner …

Facing Up: Managing Diversity In Challenging Times, Carol Hardy-Fanta, Paige Ransford

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Since its launch in 2008, Commonwealth Compact has grown steadily, employing several strategies to promote diversity statewide. The Benchmarks initiative has collected data, analyzed in this report, on a significant portion of the state workforce. Guided by Stephen Crosby, dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at UMass Boston, Commonwealth Compact has conducted newsmaking surveys of public opinion and of boards of directors statewide. In addition, it has convened ongoing coalitions with its higher education partners, and established a collaborative of local business schools aimed specifically at increasing faculty diversity. The Compact has sponsored or co-sponsored …

Sociology, Economics, And Gender: Can Knowledge Of The Past Contribute To A Better Future?, Julie A. Nelson

Economics Faculty Publication Series

This essay explores the profoundly gendered nature of the split between the disciplines of economics and sociology which took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emphasizing implications for the relatively new field of economic sociology. Drawing on historical documents and feminist studies of science, it investigates the gendered processes underlying the divergence of the disciplines in definition, method, and degree of engagement with social problems. Economic sociology has the potential to heal this disciplinary split, but only if the field is broadened, deepened, and made wiser and more self-reflective through the use of feminist analysis.

Women’S Health Disparities And Midwifery Care: Spotlight On Massachusetts, Dorothy Hiersteiner

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

As a result of Massachusetts’ 2006 health insurance coverage law, there has been a significant decrease in the uninsurance rate for women of color. Access to and use of health care for all women in the Commonwealth has also increased. Despite these coverage and access gains, major racial/ethnic disparities in health conditions and outcomes still exist among women, especially in the use and quality of prenatal care, the occurrence of preterm and low birth weight births, and infant mortality rates. The proportion of Massachusetts births that were cesarean deliveries in 2007 was 8% higher than the national rate. Compared to …

Women’S Health Disparities And Midwifery Care, Adeola Oni-Orisan, Dorothy Hiersteiner, Althea Swett

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

This fact sheet was developed for the roundtables project “Midwifery Care in New England: Addressing the Needs of Underserved and Diverse Communities of Women.” Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office on Women’s Health (Region I), this initiative addresses the challenges and opportunities related to the provision of midwifery care to underserved and vulnerable populations of women. The project aims to increase our understanding of regional midwifery workforce needs in the context of ensuring that all women living in New England have access to timely, affordable, and high-quality health care.

The September 2010 roundtables were …

Women’S Health Disparities And Midwifery Care: Spotlight On Connecticut, Dorothy Hiersteiner, Kaye Inandan

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Although Connecticut’s Medicaid programs, Husky A and B, are essential providers of coverage for maternity care, there are still major racial and ethnic disparities in access to, use of, and quality of prenatal care in Connecticut. The cesarean birth rate in the state is almost 9% higher than the US average. African American/black and Hispanic mothers experience comparatively high rates of low birth weight births. Furthermore, Connecticut is home to a substantial rural population which experiences unique challenges to accessing adequate health care. While 75% of the Connecticut population is non-Hispanic white, 9% is African American/black, 12% is Hispanic and …

Women’S Health Disparities And Midwifery Care: Spotlight On New Hampshire, Dorothy Hiersteiner

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

New Hampshire faces significant obstacles to serving the nearly 6% of the population living in medically underserved areas. In addition, many residents of New Hampshire are uninsured, limiting their access to vital medical care. According to 2007-8 data, the racial/ethnic breakdown of New Hampshire residents is: 1% African American/black, 2% Hispanic, 94% non-Hispanic white and 3% Other. In 2005, 5.9% of the total New Hampshire population was foreign born.1 Since 1996, New Hampshire has seen increases in low birth weight births, cesarean births2, and infant mortality with racial/ethnic disparities reflected in most maternal and infant indicators.

Women’S Health Disparities And Midwifery Care: Spotlight On Maine, Dorothy Hiersteiner

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

With a large percentage of its population living in rural areas, Maine faces obstacles to providing adequate prenatal and maternity care to many women. The vast majority (96.2%) of Maine residents are non-Hispanic white, 1.2% are African American/black, 1.4% are Hispanic and 1.2% have other racial/ethnic backgrounds.

Women’S Health Disparities And Midwifery Care: Spotlight On Vermont, Dorothy Hiersteiner

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

In Vermont, racial and ethnic dispariti es in low birth weight and preterm birth rates exist alongside racial and ethnic disparities in health insurance coverage and use of preventative care. As of 2005, the percentage of racial and ethnic minorities in Vermont was approximately 3.3%, compared to 25% for the nation as a whole. In 2005, 3.4% of the Vermont population was foreign born.

Women’S Health Disparities And Midwifery Care: Spotlight On Rhode Island, Dorothy Hiersteiner

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Rhode Islanders face unique health disparities based on race, ethnicity and location. Just over six percent (6.3%) of the Rhode Island population is living in Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs), according to 2008 data. Native American and African American/black communities face particular health disparities, specifically in the areas of reproductive and infant health. In 2008, 79% of the Rhode Island population was non-Hispanic white, while 5% was African-American/black, 11% was Hispanic and 5% had other racial/ethnic backgrounds. In 2005, 12.4% of the total Rhode Island population was foreign born.

Women In The Down Economy: Impacts Of The Recession And The Stimulus In Massachusetts, Randy Albelda, Christa Kelleher

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

The “Great Recession” is affecting everyone in one way or another, but not everyone is affected in the same way. Women’s and men’s work (both in and out of the labor force) still differs, so we can expect that the economic crisis has had a distinct impact on women as well as their families. This policy brief discusses how the down economy has differentially impacted women and men in Massachusetts and the gendered implications of federal stimulus spending. It also identifies potential opportunities to promote gender equality as the United States, and Massachusetts in particular, attempt to move beyond the …

Judy Holliday's Urban Working Girl Characters In 1950s Hollywood Film, Judith E. Smith

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

A Jewish-created urban and cosmopolitan working girl feminism persisted in the 1950s as a cultural alternative to the suburban, domestic consumerism critiqued so eloquently by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique. The film persona of Jewish, Academy Award-winning actress Judy Holliday embodied this working girl feminism. Audiences viewed her portrayals of popular front working girl heroines in three films written by the Jewish writer and director Garson Kanin, sometimes in association with his wife, the actress Ruth Gordon, and directed by the Jewish director George Cukor in the early 1950s: Born Yesterday (1950), The Marrying Kind (1952), and It …

Poverty In The Lesbian, Gay, And Bisexual Community, Randy Albelda, M.V. Lee Badgett, Alyssa Schneebaum, Gary J. Gates

Center for Social Policy Publications

In 2007, 12.5% of Americans were officially counted as poor by the United States Census Bureau. People from every region, race, age, and sex are counted among our nation’s poor, where ―poor‖ is defined as living in a family with an income below the federal poverty level. In contrast, lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people are invisible in these poverty statistics. This report undertakes the first analysis of the poor and low-income lesbian, gay, and bisexual population. The social and policy context of LGB life provides many reasons to think that LGB people are at least as likely—and perhaps more …

Stepping Up: Managing Diversity In Challenging Times, Carol Hardy-Fanta

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Since its launch in 2008, Commonwealth Compact has grown steadily, employing several strategies to promote diversity statewide. The Benchmarks initiative has collected data, analyzed in this report, on a significant portion of the state workforce. Guided by Stephen Crosby, dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at UMass Boston, Commonwealth Compact has conducted newsmaking surveys of public opinion and of boards of directors statewide. In addition, it has convened ongoing coalitions with its higher education partners, and established a collaborative of local business schools aimed specifically at increasing faculty diversity. The Compact has sponsored or co-sponsored …

Parenting From Prison: Family Relationships Of Incarcerated Women In Massachusetts, Erika Kates, Sylvia Mignon, Paige Ransford

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Historically in the United States, there has been little concern about the needs of incarcerated women and their family members, especially children. This began to change with the tremendous increase in the number of incarcerated women. The rate of women’s incarceration increased dramatically during the 1980s and today the number of female inmates continues to rise faster than the number of male inmates. In 1986, 19,812 women were incarcerated in the United States and this number rose in 1991 to 38,796. Today, over 112,000 women are incarcerated in state or federal facilities (Sabol et al., 2007; Snell 1994). While in …

Call To Action: A Pay Equity Resource Guide, Kacie Kelly

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Women continue to enter the workforce at record levels and laws on the state and federal levels prohibit gender discrimination in the workplace. Yet employment discrimination persists and women’s wages remain lower than men’s wages for comparable positions and occupations. With the 2005 publication of GETTING EVEN: Why Women Don’t Get Paid as Much as Men and What To Do About It by Economist and former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Murphy, the issue of wage equity is finally receiving the widespread and sustained attention it deserves.

This resource guide provides an overview of the issues related to the wage gap …

Women’S Municipal Leadership In Massachusetts, Paige Ransford, Miriam Lazewatsky

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

The Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy (CWPPP) at UMass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies has been tracking the election of women at the municipal level in Massachusetts since 1996. In 2003, the Project expanded to include all New England states. CWPPP remains the only research center in the United States that regularly tracks women’s political representation at the local level.

Women Of Talent: Gender And Government Appointments In Massachusetts, 2002–2007, Carol Hardy-Fanta, Kacie Kelly

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Despite the high educational and occupational attainment—and considerable talent—of women in Massachusetts, the state ranks just 22nd in the nation on women's overall share of top executive, legislative, and judicial posts, compared to their share of the population. The goals of this study were to (1) calculate the percentage of women holding senior-level positions in state government at these four points in time; (2) analyze the distribution of appointments by type of position and executive office; (3) provide possible explanations for the status of women’s representation in these positions; and (4) offer recommendations that will serve to promote the appointment …

Race In Feminism: Critiques Of Bodily Self-Determination In Ida B. Wells And Anna Julia Cooper, Stephanie Athey

Trotter Review

If, as Angela Davis has argued, "the last decade of the nineteenth century was a critical moment in the development of modern racism," the same can be said of the development of modern feminism. Late nineteenth-century feminism, like institutional racism, saw "major institutional supports and ideological justifications" take shape across this period. Organizations of American women, both black and white, were shaping political arguments and crafting activist agendas in a post-Reconstruction America increasingly enamored of hereditary science, prone to lynching, and possessed of a virulent nationalism. This essay takes a historical view of "womanhood," bodily self-determination and well-being, concepts now …

The Voting Rights Act And The Election Of Nonwhite Officials, Pei-Te Lien, Dianne M. Pinderhughes, Carol Hardy-Fanta, Christine M. Sierra

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Voting Rights Act (VRA) is one of the most important—if not the most important—public policies developed over the last half century to increase access to the U.S. political system for people of color. The VRA also provides an important context for understanding the ascension of nonwhite groups into the elected leadership of the nation (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984; Davidson and Grofman 1994; Menifield 2001; Mc-Clain and Stewart 2002; Segura and Bowler 2005; Bositis 2006). This essay assesses the present-day significance of the VRA for the political representation of communities of color by examining the implications of majority-minority districts and …

A Seat At The Table? Racial/Ethnic & Gender Diversity On Corporate, Hospital, Education, Cultural & State Boards, Carol Hardy-Fanta Phd, Donna Stewartson

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

As part of its larger Diversity Initiative, the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at UMass Boston has undertaken a number of projects. The first was a public opinion survey conducted around the time of the November 2006 elections. The report, Transformation and Taking Stock: A Summary of Selected Findings from the McCormack Graduate School Diversity Survey, included a comprehensive look at race relations in the Commonwealth at a time of significant transition—demographically and politically. This report was followed by A Benchmark Report on Diversity in State and Local Government, which focused on the percentage of positions filled …

Low-Income Women's Access To Education? A Case Study Of Welfare Recipients In Boston, Erika Kates

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

In 2003 and 2004, the Massachusetts legislature dramatically changed state law to allow welfare recipients to engage in education and training to fulfill their mandatory work requirements. The research reported here had as its goal to document whether women who received welfare benefits between 2003 and 2006 knew about, and took advantage of, these historic changes. A fundamental supposition of the research described here is that low-income women should have access to substantive educational opportunities to improve their employment and earnings; raise children with educational aspirations and achievements; enhance their civic participation; and contribute to the state’s human capital resources.

A Benchmark Report On Diversity In State And Local Government, Carol Hardy-Fanta Phd

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

The Pipeline to Public Service Initiative asked the McCormack Graduate School’s Center for Women in Politics & Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston to ascertain the racial diversity in state and local government. The project had the following three goals:

--To identify the race (and gender) of those holding top-level positions filled through gubernatorial appointments, e.g., secretaries, commissioners, directors, deputy commissioners/directors, and undersecretaries, in the Commonwealth’s executive offices and major departments.

--To compile the same information for members of the most influential boards and commissions in the Commonwealth filled through gubernatorial appointments.

--To assess the diversity of elected …