Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Climate-Smart Agriculture: Building Resilience For Women Farmers In Kalchebeshi, Nepal, Annika Ruben

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This case study outlines women’s involvement in climate-smart agriculture and key climate adaptation strategies which are being implemented in the town of Kalchebeshi, Nepal. Kalchebeshi is considered a Resilient Mountain Village because of the town’s integrated approach to addressing climate change and building resilience for farmers. Key findings examined gender differences in farming responsibilities and the significance of farmers’ groups in women’s overall decision making and community involvement. Additionally, changes in water management and pesticide use have been shown to have a positive impact on the lives of women farmers in Kalchebeshi. This paper reinforces the importance of involving vulnerable …

Sweeter With Age: The Enigmatic Miss Jane Mccotter In The Colonial Services Of The Egba Native Administration In Abeokuta, Nigeria, 1929-1955, O.O. Thompson, S. A. Afolabi, O.G.F. Nwaorgu

Journal of International Women's Studies

In spite of the significant roles European women played in the administration of colonial Nigeria, only a handful of them have been given adequate attention. Against this backdrop, the contributions of Miss Jane McCotter to the development of the Egba Healthcare delivery system, were examined. Relying and critically evaluating extant literature, newspapers, interviews and archival records, the authors demonstrate that she made her marks, not only on the quality work she put into the field of nursing and midwifery, but also, on how she commanded attention as the proprietress of a midwifery school and a proficient Structural Engineer, who supervised …

Gender Inequality Identified As An Underlying Cause Of Depression In Thai Women, Somporn Rungreangkulkij, Ingkata Kotnara, Nilubol Rujiraprasert, Napaphat Khuandee

Journal of International Women's Studies

Depression is increasing worldwide and is the fourth leading cause of global burden of disease. It is one of the most common disorders affecting women worldwide, highlighting the fact that gender is a critical determinant of mental health and illness. This qualitative research employs a gender lens to discover the causes of depression in women in Thailand. In-depth interviews were conducted with 18 women who currently experience depression. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, then evaluated using gender analysis. The findings revealed two themes relating to gender inequality, namely that women encountered chronic stress as a result of having …

Community Radio, Women And Family Development Issues In South Africa: An Experiential Study, Choja Oduaran, Okorie Nelson

Journal of International Women's Studies

In South Africa, community radio outlets have adopted the use of indigenous languages to address local issues affecting women and familydevelopment. This study examined how community radio give attention to the perspectives of women on family development issues in South Africa. Furthermore, this study examined the types and direction of radio frames, in the area of indigenous language usage and community radio broadcasting. This study was anchored in framing theory to understand how community radio promotes women’s rights and family development issues. The method adopted for this study was content analysis, which examined the manifest content of radio messages on …

Empowerment, Resistance And The Birth Control Pill: A Feminist Analysis Of Contraception In The Developing World, Abigail S. Trombley

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Economics and World Affairs

The vast majority of literature on the use of contraception focuses on its frequently documented connection to socioeconomic development. Thus, contraception has become a favored programmatic element of western organizations that deliver it to women in the developing world. I analyze discourse from transnational organizations that advocate for women’s use of birth control in the developing world, as well as deliver contraceptive services themselves, in order to uncover the dominance of liberal, capitalist assumptions therein. A primary consequence of this discourse is the reconstruction of colonial relations between the global north and global south. My alternative analysis, informed by a …

In Her Own Hands: How Girls And Women Used The Piano To Chart Their Futures, Expand Women's Roles, And Shape Music In America, 1880–1920, Sarah F. Litvin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American girls and women used the parlor piano to reshape their lives between 1880 and 1920, the years when the instrument reached the height of its commercial and cultural popularity. Newspapers, memoirs, biographies, women’s magazines, personal papers, and trade publications show that female pianists engaged in public-facing piano play and work in pursuit of artistic expression, economic gain, self-actualization, social mobility, and social change. These motivations drove many to use their piano skills to play beyond the parlor, by studying in conservatory, working as classical and popular music performers and composers, founding and teaching at schools, working as department store …

Same-Sex Sexual Coercion Among Women: The Impact Of Minority Stress On Perpetration And Victimization Experiences Of Women Of Diverse Sexual Identities, Allison Kirschbaum

Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to investigate women’s experiences with same-sex sexual coercion perpetration and victimization. Specifically, I sought to explore the role that the stress of living as a sexual minority plays in these experiences as well as to determine whether the psychological variables of perceived powerlessness, psychological distress, social support, and alcohol use mediate the relationship between minority stress and perpetration and victimization experiences. Data were collected online from self-identified women and individuals assigned female at birth who reported experiencing genital sexual contact with another woman (N=339). Of the cisgender women in the sample, 31.6% reported …

Factors Of Women-Founded High-Growth Technology Startup, Renee Gillard

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to identify and describe critical startup factors of high-growth technology startups as identified by women founders in Seattle, Washington.

Methodology: This mixed-method study identified and described 15 women founders of high-growth technology startups in Seattle. Participants were chosen based on specific criteria and recommendations of a sponsor and expert panel. Interviews were conducted with the participants and they completed an online survey.

Findings: Ten major findings emerged from the data. Founders fostered a strong network of professional and personal relationships to help develop and solidify their identity; they also …

Testing The Tripartite Influence Model Among Heterosexual, Bisexual, And Lesbian Women, Vivienne M. Hazzard, Lauren M. Schaefer, Katherine Schaumberg, Anna M. Bardone-Cone, David A. Frederick, Kelly L. Klump, Drew A. Anderson, J. Kevin Thompson

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

This cross-sectional study explored similarities and differences between heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian women in levels of, and relationships between, the following constructs using a Tripartite Influence Model framework: family, peer, and media appearance pressures, thin- and muscular-ideal internalization, and eating disorder (ED) pathology. Self-identified heterosexual (n = 1,528), bisexual (n = 89), and lesbian (n = 278) undergraduate women completed the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-4 and the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire. Sexual orientation differences in appearance pressures, appearance-ideal internalization, and ED pathology were examined via analysis of variance tests. Relationships between these variables were examined with multi-group …

"Roll" Models: Fat Sexuality And Its Representations In Pornographic Imagery, Leah Marie Turner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to use specific fat pornographic imagery as a means to help us understand fat tropes and fetishization. The goal is to use our understandings of masculinity and race within fatness to create a possible launching point for further study within the field of fat sexuality studies. My rationale for writing such a paper is because fat sexuality studies is a field which has very little content, but potential for incredible scholarship which can impact not only our understandings of fat bodies, but of all bodies. The method for this thesis involves looking at specific …

Comadre Work: Grassroots Feminism In A Kaqchikel Maya Town, Joyce Bennett

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay analyzes indigenous women’s collective action that improves indigenous women’s lives and increases their agency in a Kaqchikel Maya town. The women whose work I consider come together under the structures of a patriarchal organization, the Principe de Paz evangelical church. I extend Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of motherwork and Nancy Naples’ concept of activist mothering to what I call comadre work, or care work that women enact for each other through creative kin networks. Women practice comadre work as they pool physical and financial resources, teach each other to read and write in Spanish, and speak for themselves …

"A Bias Steam-Ironed Into Women's Lives": A Conversation With Author Phyllis Chesler About Women And Madness, 47 Years After Publication, Jody Raphael

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

A conversation with Phyllis Chesler about Women and Madness, 47 years after publication, conducted by Jody Raphael. Chesler discusses her motive for writing Women and Madness and its early reception. She reflects on changes and lack of changes in views and treatment of women by society and the mental health system in the years since its publication. Her feminist analysis now includes Islamic fundamentalism, prostitution, and surrogacy, which are not always politically correct views among feminists today.

Volunteer Women: Militarized Femininity In The 1916 Easter Rising, Sasha Conaway

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Women were an integral part to the Easter Rising, yet until recently, their contributions have been forgotten. Those who have been remembered are often women who bucked conservative Irish society’s notions of femininity and chose to actively participate in combat, which has led to a skewed narrative that favors their contributions over the contributions of other women. Historians and scholars favor these narratives because they are empowering and act as clear foils to the heroic narratives of the male leaders in the Easter Rising. In reality, however, most of the women who joined Cumann na mBan or worked for the …

Women Artists' Salon Of Chicago (1937-1953): Cultivating Careers And Art Collectors, Joanna P. Gardner-Huggett

Artl@s Bulletin

This article reconstructs the history of the Women Artists’ Salon of Chicago, which was founded as an exhibition society in Chicago in 1937, and argues that the Board of Directors turned to the 19^th century precedents of the Palette Club and the Woman’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exhibition as models for their organization. The essay also traces how members of the Women Artists’ Salon deliberately exhibited traditional artworks associated with the feminine and domestic and coordinated social events in order to cultivate greater sales and a new generation of female art collectors.

An Exhibition Of One’S Own: The Salón Femenino De Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires, 1930s-1940s), Georgina G. Gluzman

Artl@s Bulletin

From the late 1920s on, Buenos Aires witnessed the emergence of exhibition spaces of a separatist character for women artists. In spite of their importance, these regular shows have not received any attention from art history literature. Their vast development, the extensive coverage by the press, and their links to feminist institutions have gone completely unnoticed. Focusing on the Salón Femenino organized by the Club Argentino de Mujeres, the purpose of this article is to reconstruct the organization of these events, to examine their reception by art critics, and to analyze the careers of some of the participating women …

A Study On The Reflections Of Women And Men On A Women’S Empowerment Project: A Case Study Of Sindhuli, Nepal, Shreyasha Khadka

Sustainability and Social Justice

Women empowerment and gender equality are considered key aspects of achieving sustainable development goals. At the same time, the empowerment of women is also a process of change that enables women to build capacity in order to make life choices and act on them. Central to women empowerment is incorporating men into the process. Men should be included to deliver effective empowerment through collaboration and interdependence and to understand how women empowerment works in a patriarchal setting. Women’s economic empowerment such as Rural Economic Empowerment Project (RWEE) strives to empower and improve the status of rural women in Nepal. This …

Black Feminism: Switching The Script On Traditional Feminist Narratives, Monee Reis

Senior Honors Projects

MONEE REIS (Gender and Women’s Studies, Africana Studies) Black Feminism: Switching the Script on Traditional Feminist Narratives

Sponsor: Kathleen McIntyre (Gender and Women’s Studies, Honors Program)

I developed a 300-level undergraduate course aimed at exploring the history of Black feminism. This idea came to me after reading Audre Lorde’s 1984 article “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” Lorde detailed the various ways Black women’s contributions to feminism are underrepresented in the overarching historical narrative. Lorde’s 1980s activism and feminist scholarship ultimately influenced legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw to coin the term intersectionality in 1989. Intersectionality, the multiple ways that …

Beyond Suffrage: Intermarriage, Land, And Meanings Of Citizenship And Marital Naturalization/Expatriation In The United States, Shiori Yamamoto

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation investigates how the laws of marital naturalization/expatriation, namely the Citizenship Act of 1855, the Expatriation Act of 1907, and the Cable Act of 1922 and its amendments throughout the 1930s, impacted the lives of women who married foreigners, especially in the American West, and demonstrates how women directly and indirectly challenged the practice of marital naturalization/expatriation. Those laws demanded women who married foreigners take the nationality of their husbands depending on the race of women and their husbands, making married women’s citizenship dependent on that of their husbands. Particularly under the Expatriation Act of 1907, all American women …

Politics, Protest And Patience: Gendered Rights And Human Security In India And South Korea, Anika Backelin-Harrison

Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Honors Papers

National security measures are often framed from a masculinist, hegemonic viewpoint, determining that the wellbeing of a state and its citizens is dependent on protection by a patriarchal government. This paper argues that the health and strength of a country and its citizens are better promoted through a focus on human security, defined by the United Nations as the right of all people to live in freedom and dignity, free from poverty and despair. Moreover, a gendered approach to human security is necessary to advance economic development, personal security and freedom from violence. Nonetheless, women all over the world are …

An Analysis Of Major Issues For Culturally-Minded Professionals In Women's Health Care, Victoria Clark

Senior Honors Theses

Women's health care professionals, such as general physicians, obstetricians and gynecologists, midwives, nurses, and doulas, in the US need to be aware of cultural issues and disparities. Minorities and migrant women experience cultural challenges and disparities when receiving health care in the US. Without cultural sensitivity, patient care is compromised. Pregnancy and childbirth practices vary widely by culture, and potential differences in perspectives, beliefs, and treatment of these are critical issues for women’s health care professionals to study. Female genital cutting (FGC), obstetric fistulas (OF), and female cancer are also discussed in this paper.

Zoë Charlton: The Domestic, Shannon Egan

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Zoë Charlton’s grandmother, Everlena Bates, was a domestic worker in Northern Florida. Charlton pays homage not only to her grandmother in her recent body of work, but also to the long history of African-American women’s labor in white families’ homes throughout the South. Although her grandmother did not speak often or directly about the conditions of her employment, Charlton nonetheless is keenly aware of the injustices, possible abuses, and intimate labor endured by black maids, housekeepers, and nannies who worked endlessly long hours and with little pay through the twentieth century. The collages and large-scale installation in Charlton’s exhibition The …

Opposing Abortion To Protect Women: Transnational Strategy Since The 1990s, Carol Mason

Gender and Women's Studies Faculty Publications

This article examines the transnational work that since the 1990s has increasingly opposed abortion in terms of protecting women. It therefore explores how pro-woman rhetoric is used to foster right-wing politics by way of, and beyond, the fight over abortion. Narratives depicting white women as dupes of a sordid, satanic system of abortion provision ignore the fact that most women report feeling relief—not grief, regret, or trauma—after terminating an unwanted pregnancy. To get a sense of the political and cultural influence that right-wing movements gain when they play the woman card, we must trace antiabortion collaborations transnationally. Reading representations of …

Mind Over (What Doesn’T) Matter: De-Stigmatizing Mental Health From Senegalese Women’S Perspectives, Jenna Marks

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As a matrilocal and collectivist society, Dakar is an urban space where the woman is at the center. With this in mind, it is possible to understand all the pressures women in urban Senegalese society face. Women are the center of the household, thus being responsible for the family, finances, and the social aspect of welcoming visitors. In addition to these factors, women in Senegal also deal with community expectations and responsibilities since there is larger emphasis on the community, rather than the nuclear family in Senegalese society. This paper examines how these two aspects of Senegalese society (matrilocality and …

An Insight To Women In Construction For Fostering Female Careers In Sri Lankan Construction Industry, Srivishagan Vijayaragunathan, Thalpage Rasanthi

Journal of International Women's Studies

The construction industry is one of the largest sectors in Sri Lanka. Since, there is rapid growth of new technologies in today’s global market, there is a need to foster human skills and knowledge related to employment in the sector. However, the Sri Lankan construction industry is facing technical and managerial skill shortages as well as worker capacity issues. Further, the industry is facing industrial issues such as delivering timely project completion, within budget and for desired quality. ‘Women in construction’ has been a topic of concern by many nations, for many years. Given the rapid growth and demand in …

Sins Against Our Soles: The Morality And Hygiene Of Nineteenth-Century Women's Shoes, Nicole Rudolph

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Our understanding of the Victorian woman has long centered around the idea of the “Angel in the House,” made famous by Coventry Patmore’s 1854 poem. This mythical ideal to which a middle-class woman should endeavor can be found in endless numbers of nineteenth-century texts and has become an oft-referenced concept in modern historiography. Representations of the attributes of the ideal woman circulated widely in society, pictured in etiquette books, medical journals, and especially advertisements. They were an ever-present reminder to women of the social norms governing their roles and life trajectories. As consumers, women were responsible for the presentation of …

Leaking Women: A Genealogy Of Gendered And Racialized Flow, Michelle Fine

Publications and Research

Through a feminist and critical race analytic, this paper theorizes the disruptions evoked by leaky women—actually doubly leaky women—those whose nipples, peri-menopausal uterus’ and mouths have “leaked” in ways that rupture/stain/expose the white-patriarchal-capitalist enclosure of work, home and the streets and then dared to leak again by suing for justice in court. In a closing coda, I address the race/class policing dynamics between she who leaks and the “respectable” [usually white] women recruited to plaster up the hole and cauterize the leaker.

Attitudes Toward Women In Palestine: A Quantitative Survey, Erni Gustafsson, Nabil Alawi, Per Normann Andersen

Journal of International Women's Studies

The survey’s aim is to address whether or not the practice placement of Norwegian social work students over six consecutive years in the Balata Refugee Camp in Nablus, Palestine, has had any impact on the attitudes toward women among the population in the Camp. To achieve this, two groups, one experimental and one control, of a total 261 respondents, have been exposed to the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS) that is translated from English to Arabic for this purpose. Another research was to see if there are statistical differences between male and female respondents, and if there is an association …

Gcc Labor Market, Education And Generation Y Females: A Match Or Mismatch?, Cameron Mirza, Magdalena Karolak

Journal of International Women's Studies

The aim of this paper is to analyze the convergence between the current state of education, labor markets’’ preparedness, and expectations of Generation Y females taking Bahrain as a case study. Generation Y is defined as the group of people aged 30 years and under. Although Generation Y is a worldwide phenomenon and members of this generational group share certain characteristics globally, in Gulf Cooperation Council countries [GCC] they display strong pressure to succeed, a need of gaining a high salary but also to acquire knowledge and expertise; and a preference for a strong work-life balance. In addition, in the …

Sexism And Gender Profiling: Two Decades Of Stereotypical Portrayal Of Women In Nollywood Films, Kevin Uwaecheghi Onyenankeya, Oluwayemisi Mary Onyenankeya, Oluyinka Osunkunle

Journal of International Women's Studies

Critics of Nollywood especially gender activists, have challenged its predominant, if not exclusive portrayal of women for its narrowly traditional occupational and domestic roles and images. This paper seeks to examine various ways women are depicted in Nollywood films, including physical appearance, domestic and family life, occupational life and interpersonal relationships over a 20 year period spanning the video film era. The research employed a quantitative content method to analyse 10 films while the coding sheet that contained established content categories served as the data gathering instrument. A multistage sampling technique was used to draw the sample. The findings revealed …

Finding Aid For Bonnie Deal Packer Papers, (1918-1920), Abilene Christian University Special Collections And Archives

Bonnie Deal Packer Papers

Finding aid for Bonnie Deal Packer Papers, (1918-1920).