Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Exploring Breast Cancer Patients’ Experiences Of Struggle Against Socio-Economic And Geographical Barriers In Rural Pakistan, Nadia Agha, Maliha Gull Tarar, Rahim Dad Rind

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study offers insights into the barriers experienced by Breast Cancer (BC) patients from less privileged rural areas of Pakistan. We conducted in-depth interviews with 42 BC survivors, from the northern Sindh in southern Pakistan, to explore and analyse knowledge, geographical and financial barriers and how these barriers intersect and complicate BC patients’ lives. Results indicate that most of the women in this study were poor and their families’ health seeking behaviour was influenced by their socio-economic background; their knowledge about the disease was limited and they were unable to appropriately assess the symptoms for months, which caused delay. Based …

Women's Perceptions Of Their Agency And Power In Post-Conflict Timor-Leste, Alexandra T. Da Dalt

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women in Timor-Leste face a variety of obstacles to full political, social, and financial inclusion. The tension between government initiatives to protect women and the reality of lived experiences is apparent in the high gender-based violence rate. Though there is strong scholarship in the quantitative-based reporting and analysis of gender and women's rights in post-conflict Timor-Leste, there is a lack of space for Timorese women's voices to directly narrate how they see these issues affecting their lives. This qualitative study expands on previous findings and attempts to bring Timorese women's voices to the center of the current conversation around gender …

Reframing Gender Complementarity: Dance And Women’S Empowerment In Post-Genocide Rwanda, Carine Plancke

Journal of International Women's Studies

Post-genocide politics in Rwanda aim to construct a new, modern and developed nation. Gender equality is one of the issues highlighted to this end. However, in order to defend current reforms, politicians and feminist lobbyists generally refer to women’s traditional position as wives and mothers, embedded in the sacred value attributed to fertility. This article explores Rwandan dance to examine the evolution of views on feminine specificity and gender complementarity within the socio-political context of the promotion of gender equality. Through examining a government-supported youth troupe, founded by Tutsi returnee students, and contrasting it with a female drum troupe, which …

Gender, Media, And Contraceptive Use In Nigeria: Men Need Help, Not Women, Obasanjo Joseph Oyedele

Journal of International Women's Studies

Nigeria’s annual population growth and fertility rates are fueling the popular postulation that by 2050, the nation will rank after India and China in population size. Increasing population growth amid poor economic and health statistics in Nigeria point to family planning as one of the long-term effective solutions to this issue. After years of raising awareness and knowledge building, there still exists a huge gap between knowledge of contraceptives and the application of the knowledge in Nigerian society. This gap has initiated a myriad of behavior change communication campaigns on the use of contraceptives. This study goes beyond considering the …

Women’S Social Empowerment And Microfinance: A Brief Review Of Literature, Ambreen Khursheed, Ather Azim Khan, Faisal Mustafa

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women’s empowerment is essential for socio-economic development as it is considered as one of the major factors for increasing worldwide development efforts. The influence of microfinance on women's empowerment is a debatable topic, as past studies have documented. Some researchers claim that microfinance facilitates women to increase their earning capacity, leading to greater control to tackle cultural irregularities. Others contend that their spouses mostly control micro-loans provided to women, causing severe demotion of women. In this paper, we examined the findings of past studies through word cloud analysis to determine the influence of microfinance on the decision-making power of women …

The Shadow Pandemic: Violence Against Women In Pakistan During Covid-19 Lockdown, Malik Mamoon Munir, Malik Haroon Munir, Ume Rubaca

Journal of International Women's Studies

The present study documents the vital outcome of COVID-19 lockdown on the lifespan of women in Pakistan. The lockdown has affected the unemployment rate, particularly in the rural region of the country. Passing along the eleven in-depth interviews and one focus group discussion (FGD) conducted in rural parts of the twin cities (Islamabad & Rawalpindi), the survey demonstrated that the ruination of the income level during COVID-19 lockdown has increased partner violence in the country. The information received further revealed that the bread earners of the families are enduring greater levels of stress and anxiety eventually resulting in a substantial …

An Ecofeminism Perspective: A Gendered Approach In Reducing Poverty By Implementing Sustainable Development Practices In Indonesia, Sabarina Husein, Herdis Herdiansyah, Lg Saraswati Putri

Journal of International Women's Studies

Gender mainstreaming is one of the Indonesian central government’s alternative programs to achieve gender equality. Gender inequality is experienced by women, especially in underprivileged conditions. Gender mainstreaming to address environmental concerns and the lagging and oppression of the environment’s development. Moreover, women, as pioneers of their households, must find ways to survive in environments where massive exploitation has drastically reduced the ability to access natural resourses as a daily support system. It is important that equitable development for all genders to provide a sound environment and create a creative economy to improve living standards takes place. This research employs a …

The Factors Involved In The Exit From Sex Trafficking: A Review, Chiara Ferrari

Journal of International Women's Studies

Sexual trafficking and exploitation are a worldwide phenomenon affecting a huge number of women. Many studies have examined the process of sex trafficking entering, but less have analyzed the exit process. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of factors that intervene on the sex trafficking exit, starting from the most common theoretical models in literature. We used the Sociological Abstract and Scopus database to identify articles; further relevant studies have been identified with the snowballing method. We focused on empirical studies, the exit factors, and studies based on victims’ point of view. There was no limitation …

Determinants Of The Patronage Of Available Primary Health Care Services By Rural Women In Osun State, Nigeria, Olalekan Odefadehan, Oladoyin Adereti

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study examined the determinants of the patronage of available primary health care services by rural women in Osun State, Nigeria. The aim of this study is to provide service delivery authorities with information on the barriers to the patronage of health services. Data for the study were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Descriptive statistics like frequencies, percentage, and mean values were used for analysis. Multiple regression was used to identify determinants, and the double-log functional form had the best fit. 45 health workers and 270 rural women were selected through multi-stage sampling. The study revealed that the …

‘Emancipated Women’: The Adis Of Fiji And Their ‘Native Sisters’, Margaret Mishra

Journal of International Women's Studies

In a series of columns published in Australian newspapers in the 1920s, Australian journalist Thomas M’Mahon, declared that Indigenous Fijian women in the upper echelons of society were ‘emancipated’ as a consequence of the good work of the colonial administration and the missions in Fiji (1922a, p. 8). Yet when his rather sensationalized accounts relating to women’s education, modernity, marriage, and motherhood are closely scrutinized, it is clear that M’Mahon’s perception of ‘women’s emancipation’ is synonymous with the attainment of Western, middle-class ideologies of domesticity and not the quest to obtain equal rights for women by removing gender discrimination. The …

Women’S Attitudes Towards Wife Beating And Its Connection With Intimate Partner Violence (Ipv): An Empirical Analysis Of A National Demographic And Health Survey Conducted In Pakistan, Muhammad Saud, Asia Ashfaq, Siti Mas'udah

Journal of International Women's Studies

Wife beating, a form of intimate partner violence that is used as a tool to correct wives’ behavior, is not acceptable in most parts of the world. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a global health problem and is far more than a dilemma; it is a systemic form of abuse that is the third major cause of death around the world. Despite it being unacceptable in most parts of the world, in its different forms, wife beating is still a commonly practiced pattern of behavior that pervades all societies, patriarchal ones in particular. This is a problem in the patriarchal …

Seeing Through Their Eyes: Empowering Grassroots Women In Their Search For Economic And Political Development, Diana Ibarra, Natalia Stengel

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women's empowerment faces different challenges depending on the socio-political context. In Mexico, a country with several gender gaps, grassroots women face more obstacles than women in urban zones. However, instead of assuming the main obstacles that prevent rural women's social and political empowerment in rural zones, we asked them directly. From July until December 2014, we undertook a six-month social research project that included 20 focus groups and 51 interviews in 10 different Mexico municipalities. Our primary purpose as women and researchers was to provide tools for catalyzing women's empowerment in pre-selected Mexican communities. Inserted into the Capabilities Approach, our …

The Gender Question And The Involvement Of Women In Pre-Colonial Igbo Warfare In Equiano’S Interesting Narratives, Uche Uwaezuoke Okonkwo

Journal of International Women's Studies

On the 2nd of November 2018, an unusual gathering took place at the Theatre Hall of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka where Paul Lovejoy, a Professor of History at York University in Canada, was hosted as the guest lecturer. His lecture dwelt on Gustavus Vassa (Olaudah Equiano) and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: Representation, Identity and Reality. The curiosity of faculty members and students at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka around the thought process of this leading Africanist Historian made for a very fruitful event. The various debates raised by the iconoclastic scholar tampered with …

The Escalation Of Gender-Based Violence During Lockdown As A Practical Theological Concern In The South African Context, Me Baloyi

Journal of International Women's Studies

The year 2020 will be remembered as the year in which the coronavirus managed to disturb almost the entire planet from many of its activities. During the lockdown, which saw more than 195 countries in the world trying to combat the virus, gender-based violence in South Africa rose at an alarming rate. The skyrocketing statistics reported to police during this period raises a lot of concern as to why, instead of lockdown uniting families and marriages, reports of violence are on the rise. Aside from other factors that the research will unveil, theologically the church is not innocent of its …

A Comparative Approach On The Relevance Of National Gender Equality Legal Frameworks In Israel, Portugal, And Slovakia To Improve Equality At The Institutional Level, Sara Diogo, Carina Jordão, Teresa Carvalho, Hana Himi, Maya Ashkenazi, Veronika Mešková, Zélia Breda

Journal of International Women's Studies

In the last decades, women’s participation in Higher Education has increased in most Western countries, even if the well-known phenomena of horizontal and vertical segregation still persist (O’Connor, 2017). The reasons for the persistence of these phenomena have been widely studied (Ridgeway, 2011; Pearce, Wald, & Ballakrishnen, 2014; Rhode, 2016), highlighting the importance of defining and implementing affirmative actions to improve women’s situation in Higher Education. In this context, the European Union (EU) has placed the topic of gender equality (GE) in Higher Education with high relevance in the political agenda. As a result, several research projects have been approved …

Female Sexual Autonomy, Virginity, And Honour-Based Violence With Special Focus On The Uk, Mukaddes Gorar

Journal of International Women's Studies

In honour-based patriarchal societies, young girls and women are expected to remain virgins until marriage. If this expectation is not met, the consequences can be very harmful and may even lead to honour killing. Honour killing occurs when a victim (mainly female) is murdered by a relative, due to the perpetrator’s assumption that the victim has brought shame or dishonour upon the family. Having sexual freedom before marriage is considered to be shameful, and it attracts honour related punishment. Chastity of the female members of a family until the wedding night is perceived as a means of safeguarding the family’s …

Intrahousehold Relationships And Decision-Making In Extended Households Of The Luguru Community, Kamille De Backer, Nathalie Holvoet, Mursali Milanzi

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article analyses intrahousehold decision-making in extended households of the matrilinear Luguru community in the Morogoro Region of Tanzania. Our research focuses on the participation of adult “extended” household members, mainly relatives such as in-laws, grandparents, and cousins, in household decision-making. It complements studies that conceptualise household decision-making as a bargaining process between two decision-makers. We explore whether factors such as age, education, life cycle and gender play a role in this process. As decision-making processes often vary depending on the decision-making area, we differentiate between seven broad decision-making fields which are relevant in their respective settings. Our study adopts …

Representing Motherhood And Political Violence In Mexico: A Transnational Feminist Analysis Of Más Allá De La Vanguardia: La Transmaternidad (Beyond The Avant-Garde: Transmaternity), Alberto Mckelligan Hernández

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article analyzes the artistic production of Polvo de Gallina Negra (Black Hen Powder, PGN), a feminist art collective established by Mexican artists Maris Bustamante (b. 1949) and Mónica Mayer (b. 1954) in 1983. Even though scholars have examined the ways in which PGN contributed to the development of feminist art in Mexico, the existing studies have not emphasized how the collective explored political violence. To highlight this aspect of PGN’s artistic practice, this article focuses on a mail art missive produced by Bustamante and Mayer as part of the extensive ¡MADRES! (Mothers!) (1983-1987) project. Mothers! served as a complex …

The Communication Flow In The Protection Of Indonesian Female Migrant Workers Through The Migrant Worker Family Community (Kkbm), Moh Faidol Juddi, Susie Perbawasari, Feliza Zubair

Journal of International Women's Studies

The purpose of this study aimed to explain the flow of communication in Indonesian female migrant workers’ protection by the government through the Migrant Worker Family Community (KKBM). The method used in this study was qualitative with a case study approach. The existence of Indonesian female migrant workers has contributed to state revenues of up to US$ 10.97 billion in 2018. This income is higher than the state income of the mining sector. The amount of income provided by female migrant workers to the country is not proportional to the protection services they receive. Most female migrant workers and families …

Crime Against Women In India: A State Level Analysis, Chandrima Chakraborty, Anam Afreen, Dipyaman Pal

Journal of International Women's Studies

Violence against Indian women is in reality much more than it may appear as there are some violence which are not considered as crime or go unreported or undocumented. The present paper is an attempt to understand Crime against women in the 28 major Indian states on the basis of the data published by National Crime Record Bureau in India over the period 2001-02 to 2014-15. The relative position of the states is determined based on both Year to Year as well as Compound Annual Growth Rate. Along with enforcement and punishment, there can other effective policy mechanisms for controlling …

From Marginal To Mainstream: The Queer History Of Camp Aesthetics & Ethical Analysis Of Camp In High Fashion, Emily Barker

Honors Projects

‘Camp’ has become a buzzword in fashion over the last few years, due to a rise in popularity following the 2019 MET Gala theme, “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” Based on Susan Sontag’s 1964 book “Notes on Camp,” the event highlighted many aesthetic elements of Camp sensibilities, but largely ignores the importance of the LGBTQ+ community in Camp’s development. In this piece, I highlight various intersections of Camp and queerness over the last century and attempt to understand Camp’s place in High Fashion today.

Motherhood, Career Development And Modernization: Experiences Of Early Post-Colonial Tanzanian Women, Samwel Mhajida

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper is about the evolution of early post-colonial women in Tanganyika and the dilemma they encountered in balancing between family obligations and growing up in professional career. To understand such contradicting options, the paper situates the discussion from the perspectives of women’s narratives gathered from the printed media of the early 1960s to mi-1960s. The paper uses interviews gathered during this time by media specialists, newspaper columnists, and fans of women’s life histories who wrote stories and narratives of young women of Tanganyika. Their target groups were middle-class women: teachers, secretaries, wives of renowned politicians, business women and social …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Vocation, Belonging, Courage: Gender Equity In Narratives Of Non-Exempt Women Administrative Assistants In Academic Units At The University Of Dayton, Julio A. Quintero, Heather Ashley

Reports from the Gender Equity Research Fellowship

Gender roles normalize thinking patterns, behaviors, actions, and attitudes. The workplace is not immune to their influence. Gender roles make certain labor invisible, either because it does not typically fit with the expectations of a determined gender group, or because it is deemed normal and therefore expected.

This report condenses the narratives of 11 non-exempt women administrative assistants at the University of Dayton in reference to how vocation, belonging, and courage are affected by gender. Based on the responses, the report proposes several approaches to equity, which is defined as the modifying of structures and practices that have intentionally or …

Faculty Start-Up Negotiations: An Examination Of Gender Differences And Recommendations For Improvement Opportunities At The University Of Dayton, Kathrin Hanek

Reports from the Gender Equity Research Fellowship

Amidst well-documented gender differences in negotiation and gender wage gaps in academia, ensuring gender equity in faculty start-up negotiations is an important part of the University of Dayton’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The current investigation examined the faculty start-up negotiation process at the University of Dayton from the perspective of department chairs and new tenure-track faculty hires with an emphasis on gender differences in the initiation and outcomes of negotiations as well as potential underlying factors that may contribute to gender disparities.

Data collected from surveys and interviews indicated gender differences primarily in the initiation of negotiations, satisfaction …

Addressing The Complexities Of Creating An Inclusive Campus For Transgender People (Presentation), Jason D. Phillips, John Blue, Kerrie Taber

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Making transgender people feel accepted into the campus community goes beyond educational programs to encourage inclusion. The process should also include many institutional facets from IT to housing. This paper examines the changes made or in the process of being addressed at a regional public university in Arkansas.

Ua19/16/1 2021 Wku Track & Field Cross Country Record Book, Wku Athletic Media Relations

WKU Administration Documents

WKU track and field media guide for 2020-21 season.

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me (Double) Consciousness: Literacy, Orality, Print, And The Cultural Formation Of Black American Identity In Harriet Jacobs’S Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl And Octavia Butler’S Kindred, Aisha Matthews

Third Stone

While literacy may have signified the humanity of male slaves in the antebellum South (at least in their own view), the English language and American print culture did not similarly empower female slaves towards positive subject-formation through discourse. This article will examine the tension between oral culture and print culture in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Ultimately, an analysis of Jacobs’s work through the lens of book history and its power to shape cultural formation will suggest a critical imperative for the contemporary neo-slave narrative genre.

Accordingly, the agency of contemporary …

Grounded Roots Applied To Women Presidents In The California Community Colleges System, Penny Shreve

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this explanatory mixed methods study was to identify and describe what exemplary female presidents in California community colleges do to stay grounded and maintain physical, emotional, intellectual, social, vocational, and spiritual health.

Methodology: This mixed methods study identified and described the perceptions of 16 women presidents in the California Community Colleges system regarding strategies they use to remain grounded in their current positions. Respondents were purposively chosen based on specific criteria. Data were gathered through the Stay Grounded survey from 16 participants and interviews with 5 of the participants. Quantitative data were tabulated to determine mean …

Homo Psyche: On Queer Theory And Erotophobia [Chapter 6], Gila Ashtor

Literature

Can queer theory be erotophobic? This book proceeds from the perplexing observation that for all of its political agita, rhetorical virtuosity, and intellectual restlessness, queer theory conforms to a model of erotic life that is psychologically conservative and narrow. Even after several decades of combative, dazzling, irreverent queer critical thought, the field remains far from grasping that sexuality’s radical potential lies in its being understood as “exogenous, intersubjective and intrusive” (Laplanche). In particular, and despite the pervasiveness and popularity of recent calls to deconstruct the ideological foundations of contemporary queer thought, no study has as yet considered or in …