Women's Studies Commons^™

Getting Dressed And Being Dressed: A Constructed Autobiography Of Identity, Jana Jarosz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This written and visual capstone project examines how feminist theories surrounding the construction of a gendered subject are related and situational to the narrative of a lived body experience within a layered context of clothing. It opens up a discussion concerning the negotiated space between an individually-empowered, subject-in-process and the boundaries of social expectations outlining gender and cultural identities. The thesis introduces the concept of using an automediality framework to connect the material culture of clothing to still and motion imagery with text as a way to encapsulate and illustrate the fluid nature of becoming. It concludes by suggesting that …

Divided Loyalties: Family And Consent To Marriage In Late Middle English Literature, 1300–1500, Jennifer R. Alberghini

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Studies of marriage and family can help us learn how medieval women lived. This dissertation focuses on “consent theory,” which explains the medieval definition of marriage. According to the Church, a marriage was made valid by the couple’s consent, not outside pressures. This theory, as we might expect, conflicted with practice: children—daughters especially—were expected to be obedient to their parents and marry approved partners.

Medieval England’s legal system came down on both sides of the issue. Rape accusations were made by parents who disapproved of their daughter’s choices, and court cases evaluated the validity of a marriage made without parental …

Bat Meets Girl: Adapting The Dark Knight’S Love Life To The Big Screen, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

It is no secret that Hollywood loves a good romance. What is perhaps sometimes overlooked however is how important romance and female characters are to male-dominated action films. Esma Kartal argues women and romance are deliberately placed into action films to create “romantic relief” and attract female viewers for greater crossover appeal.¹ In addition to romance, Yvonne Tasker observes how women in action films serve as a witness for “the hero’s suffering” and humanity in action films.² Finally, a classic use of women and romance in action films is that of the damsel-indistress, which continues to this day …

Gender East And West: Transnational Gender Theory And Global Marketing Research, Katherine Sredl

School of Business: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Much of the prior scholarly research on global gender and marketing tends to focus on development. The post-socialist space does not fit neatly into this paradigm, given the diversity of its legacy of ideology, industrialization, feminist thought, and the post-socialist experience of privatization, democratization, European Union expansion, and, in some cases, war. This chapter uses the history of feminist thought in Yugoslavia and Croatia to highlight the contribution the post-socialist space brings to global gender and marketing research: questioning the role of the state in securing rights and questioning assumptions about individualism in a neoliberal era. I argue for an …

Beauty Or The Beast? University Academics’ Perceptions Of Women’S Physical Appearance And Academic Achievements, Ladan Rahbari

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article explores perceptions of Iranian academics of the relationship between women’s physical appearance and academic achievements. The research is conducted using interviews with academics working in different universities in the field of social sciences. Results included individual and structural explanations of the relationship between women’s physical appearance and academic achievements. Data showed a significant emphasis by the participants on the importance of beauty for women. Gender differences were observed in participants’ responses as well as in emotional reactions to the interview questions. Most male participants viewed beauty as the primary resource and an asset for marriage marketing for women. …

“Is It Wrong To Want To Help Build Up God’S Kingdom?”: An Examination Of The Gendered Experience Of Early Brigham Young Academy Students

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Turning Passion Into Profit: When Leisure Becomes Work In Modern Roller Derby, Amanda Nicole Draft

Wayne State University Dissertations

Modern roller derby operates as a “by the skater, for the skater” business model, where participants are not paid but must devote a certain amount of time, effort, and money to sustaining their sport and respective organizations. At the same time, while derby is grounded in anti-corporate values, a growing industry has sprouted to support the sport, the larger share of which consists of small business retailers selling gear, apparel, and other accessories. I use the context of modern roller derby to examine the changing natures of work and leisure, specifically how they operate as greedy institutions and emphasizing the …

Volume 8: Gender, Governance And Islam, Deniz Kandiyoti, Nadje Al-Ali, Kathryn Spellman Poots

Exploring Muslim Contexts

Analyses the links between gender and governance in contemporary Muslim majority countries and diaspora contexts.

Following a period of rapid political change, both globally and in relation to the Middle East and South Asia, this collection sets new terms of reference for an analysis of the intersections between global, state, non-state and popular actors and their contradictory effects on the politics of gender.

The volume charts the shifts in academic discourse and global development practice that shape our understanding of gender both as an object of policy and as a terrain for activism. Nine individual case studies systematically explore how …

The Most Beautiful Of All: A Quantitative Approach To Fairy-Tale Femininity, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Feminist folklorists have long asserted that women’s bodies are represented in fairy tales differently than men’s bodies, in normative and sexist ways. By using computational approaches to analyze a corpus of canonical fairy tales, I assess these claims and establish that women’s bodies are depicted in distinctive ways in fairy tales. This finding is important for scholars interested in fairy-tale studies, gender studies, and computational approaches to folklore studies.

Human Monsters: Examining The Relationship Between The Posthuman Gothic And Gender In American Gothic Fiction, Alexandra Rivera

Scripps Senior Theses

According to Michael Sean Bolton, the posthuman Gothic involves a fear of internal monsters that won't destroy humanity apocalyptically, but will instead redefine what it means to be human overall. These internal monsters reflect societal anxieties about the "other" gaining power and overtaking the current groups in power. The posthuman Gothic shows psychological horrors and transformations. Traditionally this genre has been used to theorize postmodern media and literary work by focusing on cyborgs and transhumanist medical advancements. However, the internal and psychological nature of posthumanism is fascinating and can more clearly manifest in a different Gothic setting, 1800s American Gothic …

"Must Be Heavyset": Casting Women, Fat Stigma, And Broadway Bodies, Ryan Donovan

Publications and Research

This article surveys how contemporary Broadway musicals cast fat women and focuses on Hairspray. The use of fat suits and contractual weight clauses figure into the discussion of fat stigma and casting practices. Seemingly body-positive musicals both celebrate and undermine the identities staged in them.

Cultivating Chingona Power: A Study On The Chingona Identity, Celia Orosco Haro

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Mujeres across the country are claiming the Chingona identity and using it to cultivate their Chingona strength, feel empowered, and live for their own approval. A Chingona in this newly reclaimed use means a woman who embodies confidence, acceptance of self, reclamation of sexuality, siguiendo le adelante por su propio camino sin importarle lo que digan los demás, rejects social and cultural norms/expectations of women, and uses her strengths to empower and uplift others. Through the reclamation of this identity, these mujeres are moving beyond being hijas de la chingada to being Chingonas. This research highlights the Chingona identity …

A Qualitative Study Of Changes In The Traditional Roles Of Housewives In Ibadan, Southwest Nigeria, Rowland Edet, Julianah Babajide, Oluwayimika Ekundina

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Although hinged on the principles of patriarchy, the Nigerian society has witnessed appreciable changes in the roles of women. This change is noticed in marriage particularly among married women or housewives. Thus, the phenomenon of full housewife is gradually fading away due to the joint influence of westernization, globalization, and modernization. Thus, this study delved into interrogating the various changes that have taken place in the traditional roles of housewives in selected locations in Ibadan. This study utilized a purely qualitative method of research because the subject matter focuses on making sense of meanings people attach to gender, gender roles, …

Women, Blood, And Dreams: Gender, Dream Spaces, And Monstrosities In A Nightmare On Elm Street And Bloodborne, Amber Appleby

Theses and Dissertations from 2018

Video games exploded in popularity in the 80s and have been a staple in many people’s lives since. Because video games are popular and different, critics tend to ignore them beyond simple analysis like the sexist portrayal of women. Video games, like films, can be read and analyzed using different methods of theory. This is evident in the similarities in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street and FromSoftware’s Bloodborne. Both media feature overtly gendered imagery and spaces, the monstrousness of women, the blurring of dreams and reality, and Gothic elements that tie them together. Though Bloodborne also manages to …

En Sus Propias Palabras: Testimonios Of Latinas In Elected And Appointed Office, Andrea Guajardo

Theses & Dissertations

Governance in the United States has been the domain of men since the idea of democracy and independence from England was in its infancy. The systematic oppression and exclusion of persons of color and women was the backdrop upon which the United States was founded. Many continue to experience conflict and struggle in their efforts to gain and maintain civil rights and seek personal and professional experiences free from marginalization and oppression. This purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the lived experiences group of Latinas who have been elected or appointed to public office with an emphasis critical …

Imagining Intersectional Anti-Rape Messaging At An Organization In Cape Town, South Africa: Visible And Invisible Subjects, Maslen Bode Ward

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Less than one month ago, South Africa held the first ever Summit on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide to assess the most effective ways to approach solving the country’s high rates of gender-based violence. My study aims to consider anti-rape messaging and advocacy under an intersectional framework, using one organization in Cape Town as a case study. I examine how anti-rape messaging in South Africa has failed to consider intersectional identities in their imagined conceptions of survivors and perpetrators. I explore the potential for intersectional anti-rape messaging and the role of race, class, gender, culture, and language in the distribution, audience, …

Influencing Gender Specific Perceptions Of The Factors Affecting Women’S Career Advancement Opportunities In The United States, Kevin C. Taliaferro

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates the sociological, psychological, and physiological factors known to affect women’s career advancement opportunities. It examines how awareness and knowledge shared through the #MeToo (hashtag Me Too) movement influenced gender specific perceptions about the factors affecting women’s workplace opportunities. Finally, it recommends measures to alter the divergent gender perceptions that remain an obstacle to gender equality in the workplace.

This study was conducted because gender inequalities continue in the U.S. workplace in 2018. Currently women fail to advance in careers at the same rate as men, and they are paid 21% less for similar work with equal skills …

5.2 Sources Of Women Empowerment Information And The Role Of Language Policy And Practice In The Process: The Case Of The Sidama Zone, Ethiopia, Mekdes Tegegnework

International Conference on African Development

The population in Ethiopia consists of more than 50% women. Gender equality and women empowerment have been a fashion in Ethiopia’s governance discourse and by most of the NGOs functioning in the country for decades. Even though efforts by national and international agencies and the government have brought some changes in women empowerment to the country, significant numbers of women are still suffering from gender inequality. The fact that women empowerment is one of the key priorities in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda; calls have come for the importance of revisiting the subject from different angles. Women empowerment is a …

Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari

Theses and Dissertations

In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.

'Playing It Right?’: Gendered Performances Of Professional Respectability And ‘Authenticity’ In Greek Academia, Maria Tsouroufli

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper draws on the career narrative interviews with 15 female academics to unravel the performative politics of gender in Greek Medical Schools. I explore the gender positioning and embodied performances of Greek women as they relate to the contingencies of participation, recognition, and esteem in academic medicine and framed within the wider gendered discourses and structures of the increasingly neo-liberal Greek academia and society. Drawing on Butler’s notion of performativity, I illustrate the possibilities of making the successful Greek female academic subject through subjection to normative, gendered discourses of respectability, encompassing integrity, respectable aesthetics, and affective work and scripted …

The Forbidden Zone Writers: Femininity And Anglophone Women War Writers Of The Great War, Sareene Proodian

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation examines the texts of Anglophone women writers from the First World War. Women’s roles in the war—volunteer nurses, ambulance driver, munitions workers, and land girls—gave them the opportunity to leave the protection of their homes and enter the masculine dominated public sphere. In this dissertation, I examine different genres of women’s writing from the war and trace three aspects of simultaneity as these writings explore the new freedoms, and new and old constraints, that the war brought to women. The three principles of simultaneity explain the conflicting emotions women feel over what the war means for them in …

Bushler Bay And Hood View, 40 Years On: Gender, Forests And Change In The Global North, Carol Jean Pierce Colfer

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

In 2017, Carol Colfer revisited the communities of Bushler Bay and Hood View on the Olympic Peninsula, where she had spent three years doing ethnographic research in the 1970s. The purposes were two-fold: to test several rapid rural appraisal techniques and, as emphasized here, to assess the changes that had taken place in the interim. The ultimate goal was to contribute to USFS efforts to collaborate more effectively with women and men in forest communities. Her findings suggest that changes occurred in three (or more) spheres: livelihoods, demography, and gender relations, each of which is discussed below for each time …

A Theoretical Perspective On Women And Poverty In Botswana, Gwen N. Lesetedi

Journal of International Women's Studies

Botswana has made remarkable progress in terms of economic and social development. The position of the government is that policies and programmes should benefit all citizens equally. More specifically, the government of Botswana has recognised women’s role in economic development and efforts have been made to integrate gender in the development process. Access to economic opportunities for everyone to development is an overall goal clearly stated in the various national development plans, policies and programmes. Gender plays a major role in the formulation and implementation of these intervention strategies. For instance, the National Gender Programme Framework implemented and monitored by …

Defying The Odds, Not The Abuse: South African Women’S Agency And Rotating Saving Schemes, 1994-2017, Mark Nyandoro

Journal of International Women's Studies

Employing a feminist lens that places emphasis on women’s agency South African feminists have challenged the dominant narrative of hapless women who need external saviours to climb out of poverty. In particular, black South African feminists have drawn attention to the appropriation and deployment of both indigenous and other concepts and practices by women to fight poverty. This article employs these perspectives to interpret the importance of rotating saving schemes in South Africa. It explores the debate about women’s economic, community-participation and entrepreneurship strategies with reference to the Stokvel and other rotating saving-schemes (e.g. mashonisa) to improve the status of …

Gender Differences In Water Access And Household Welfare Among Smallholder Irrigators In Msinga Local Municipality, South Africa, Sithembile A. Sinyolo, Sikhulumile Sinyolo, Maxwell Mudhara, Catherine Ndinda

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study investigates the gender differences in water access and its welfare effects using a sample of 291 irrigators from two irrigation schemes in the Msinga Local Municipality, South Africa. The data were analysed using the Blinder Oaxaca (BO) decomposition method and the instrumental variable (IV) regression approach. The study findings highlight unequal access to irrigation water between male and female farmers, with women accessing irrigation water more frequently than women. The results also indicate a positive and significant effect of water access on incomes per capita, and that men had higher welfare than women. The results suggest that women …

The ‘Stigma’ Of Paid Work: Capital, State, Patriarchy And Women Fish Workers In South India, P. Aswathy, K. Kalpana

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper explores the changing dynamics of women’s labor in a Muslim fishing village in the South Indian state of Kerala in the back drop of two global processes viz., state-initiated capitalist modernization of the fisheries sector and state-sponsored livelihood promotion programs. It traces the shifting contexts in which Muslim fisherwomen, alternately, engaged in and disengaged from, paid work outside the household and shows how women experienced different kinds of paid work, as self-employed fish vendors and wage earners of employment guarantee schemes. Changes in women’s labor force participation were mediated by the social institutions of family and religion, community …

Gender, Poverty And Inequality In The Aftermath Of Zimbabwe’S Land Reform: A Transformative Social Policy Perspective, Newman Tekwa, Jimi Adesina

Journal of International Women's Studies

Gender equality is re-emerging as an important global and national agenda with emphasis placed on closing the gender gap in terms of women’s representation in public and private decision-making bodies. Though unrelatedly, the period had coincided with the elevation of social protection in the form of cash transfers as the magic bullet in tackling gendered poverty and inequality. Adopting a Transformative Social Policy Framework and land reform as a social policy instrument, the paper questions the efficacy of the current approaches in transforming gendered poverty and inequalities. Land reform is hardly ever assessed as a policy instrument for its redistributive, …

Gender Dimensions Of Food Security, The Right To Food And Food Sovereignty In Nepal, Yamuna Ghale, Kailash Nath Pyakuryal, Durga Devkota, Krishna Prasad Pant, Netra Prasad Timsina

Journal of International Women's Studies

The right to food is the right to life. Ensuring food security for all the citizens and their food sovereignty is the responsibility of the State. Currently, the need for food security, especially for marginalized and oppressed sections of society, including women in Nepal, is inadequately addressed. In this context, the main objective of this paper is to examine the gender dimensions in food policies and programs in Nepal. The paper explores five dimensions of food security, the right to food and food sovereignty, and analyzes gender inclusivity in food policies and governance in particular, since the advent of the …

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …

Emerging Discourses Of Gender And Women In The National Park Service: An Ecofeminist Analysis Of Ranger Newsletter From 1979 To 1999, Emily Sapp

Honors Projects

The key focus of this research is based in ecofeminism, the worldview that the oppression of women is connected to the oppression of nature. This research studies the National Park Service, through the Association of National Park Ranger’s newsletter/magazine Ranger. The study attempts to answer the questions how do issues about gender equality emerge throughout the history of the National Park Service, as looking through the newsletter Ranger? How do ideas of femininity and masculinity emerge and are represented in Ranger throughout time? The study is significant in that it is representative of the NPS, and by revealing …