Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Lynn C. Miller. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Oct. 22, 2007). Directed by Kenneth Allan; submitted to the Dept. of Sociology. Includes bibliographical references (p. 141-144).

Over the last twenty years, international environmental law has attempted to address the global threats to the health of our planet including ozone layer depletion, climate change, global deforestation, the pollution of freshwater resources and the oceans and species extinction. Unfortunately, the state of the environment is not improving as fast as environmental conventions come forth. The premise for this thesis is therefore that international environmental law is not effective in protecting the natural environment. Responsible for the survival of their families and communities, women in developing countries are the most vulnerable to environmental degradation as dwindling natural and freshwater resources and soil erosion threaten their survival base. Unfortunately, international environmental law does little to acknowledge this vulnerability and even less to assist women in developing countries cope with environmental degradation. The vast knowledge of ecosystems held by women in developing countries is also largely ignored, thus marginalizing their way of knowing and disregarding potential solutions to environmental problems. This thesis therefore takes a critical look from an ecofeminist standpoint at the traditional characteristics of international environmental law such as states' sovereign right to exploit their natural resources, states' right to development and the emphasis of international environmental law on science and technology. The thesis also examines emerging principles of international environmental law such as sustainable development, intergenerational equity, common concern of humankind, and the precautionary principle, which attempt to address some of the concerns raised by the more traditional approach. However, the thesis concludes that despite these new developments, international environmental law is still premised on an androcentric perspective of the natural environment which impedes it from achieving true environmental protection and which serves to continue the marginalization of women. In this thesis, I argue that a new conceptualization of the relationship between humankind and the natural environment is necessary in order to save our planet from ecological disaster and that ecofeminism can offer such an alternative view. Finally, the conclusion will suggest a few concrete ways of including women's perspectives and ways of knowing into the negotiation of environmental conventions and in their implementation. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

The experiences of those with difficult to diagnose conditions, chronic illnesses, and disability lack intelligibility in an able-bodied world. Much of this originates in the disjuncture between first- and third- person experience as accounted for between patients and their doctors, caregivers, and the greater public. Utilizing the insights of feminist philosophy and disability studies, I will explore how these marginalized identities face consequences in the real world for their embodiment. I propose that the best methodology to examine the experiences of chronically ill, hard to diagnose, and disabled individuals’ experiences is through the phenomenological perspective. Through utilizing case studies, I will demonstrate the importance of first- to third- person encounters in medicine and receiving adequate treatment. By examining such experiences, as well as my own, through such a perspective, I argue we can work towards creating a more equitable world for the chronically ill, hard to diagnose, and disabled. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Cissie Gool was an extraordinary presence on Cape Town's political and social scene in the first half of the twentieth century. She was the first black woman to preside over a national liberatory organisation, the National Liberation League (1935), and the Non-European United Front (1938). She was the only black woman to be elected to the Cape Town City Council before 1994, where she served for 25 years. She was the first black woman to obtain a Master's Degree in Psychology at the University of Cape Town, where she studied on and off from 1918 to the year of her death, 1963. In 1962 she graduated with a BA (LLB), and was the first black woman to be invited to the Cape Bar. This thesis explores the childhood and early life of Cissie Gool. I examine influences on her political development before she became the leader of the National Liberation League in 1935. This period of her life has left few material traces. Methodologically, this thesis confronts a challenge facing those who wish to discover hidden lives in the South African past. I argue that it is possible to trace influences on such a life if one shifts the lens through which one conducts historical research. Working with a paucity of sources, where most of the people who knew Cissie Gool as a young person are deceased, this thesis searches for and highlights key influences on Gool's early personal-political development. The thesis rests on a number of premises rooted in feminist theory. I begin from the position that 'the personal is political' and take seriously the argument that the family is a key engine of historical process. I take issue with the statement in much of the secondary literature that Cissie Gool was (merely) 'the younger daughter of Dr Abdurahman', which obscures the fact that this relationship was embedded in a family, in which Cissie's mother was at least as important as her father, and where being a younger daughter with an older sister was significant too. While recognising the significance of the fact that Cissie Gool was fathered by Dr Abdurahman, I underline the centrality of women in a patriarchal society where early socialisation is the specific task of women, and where women and girls experience some degree of social segregation from men and boys. In addition to focusing the lens on family dynamics, I trace sometimes tenuous but nevertheless, real threads linking Cissie Gool to particular political circles on the left in Cape Town in the 1920s and 1930s. I suggest that the leftist heterodoxy which characterised the mature Cissie Gool may be linked to a kindred political spirit among some of her early acquaintances, specifically those at the University of Cape Town, counterposed with the more rigid orthodoxies of friends of the Communist Party on the one hand, and on the other, the so-called Trotskyite purists with whom she was linked by marriage. Cissie Gool, may have been unique in her involvement in all three circles, which intersected at socials hosted by herself and her husband, Dr A H Gool. The androcentricity of both the secondary literature and contemporary documentary sources obscures the specifics of Cissie Gool's political development in this period. Nevertheless, this thesis is based on the premise that, in the absence of more concrete sources, an exploration of the various political circles with which Cissie Gool was associated, in the wider political and socio-economic context of 1920s and 1930s Cape Town, permits one to gain insight into key influences on the political development of Cissie Gool.

This paper seeks to explore the way the print news media reported on issues related to domestic violence (DV) in the Greater Toronto/Hamilton Ontario area in the context of Covid-19 from March 2020 to March 2021. Specifically, I drew on three newspapers to include the Hamilton Spectator, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail. This research is primarily concerned with the discourses that emerged about gender-based violence in the newsprint media during a time when people were required to stay in their homes and when access to community-based services that support women experiencing DV became increasing challenging. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) that was grounded in a feminist theoretical framework, three themes emerged as particularly dominant. These included: a) the media’s use of “victim” and “survivor” discourses, b) women’s experiences of DV and access to resources, and c) public health discourses that centered on responses to DV in light of Covid-19. This paper concluded that reinforcement of dominant narratives about the socio political and gendered landscape in which DV is reported on via newsprint media sources, depict DV as an individual rather than structural issue that shifts the blame away from historical and current day social, economic, and political forces that create the conditions in which DV occurs. Importantly, the newsprint media promote a homogenous definition of ‘woman’ thus elevating dominant DV discourses that tend to centre the experiences of white, heterosexual women and that result in silencing the voices of gender diverse and racialized women. Consequently, my research suggests that there is an ongoing need to build on existing feminist literature to critically examine DV as a systemic issue that requires a response that is inclusive of the diversity of women who experience DV, the needs for services to support a diversity of women, and to do so in ways that move away from individual solutions toward shifts in practice and policy. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

In this thesis, I analyze responses to the 1994 Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule (DGCDAR), the policy that until January 24, 2013 formally barred women from serving in combat. Specifically, I use feminist theories of embodiment, equality, and difference to interpret how interlocutors represent female service members in the "Letters" section of the Marine Corps Gazette and interviews I collected from members of the military community. I find that the most common arguments against women in combat locate gender difference in the physically sexed body, centering primarily on female nature, sexuality, and strength. Throughout this project, I demonstrate how these arguments are persuasive because the discourse understands equality as sameness to a male norm. This equality as sameness paradigm perpetuates gender-based barriers to parity by expecting women to function just like men. Ultimately, I argue for a more inclusive conception of equality that acknowledges difference. / Master of Arts

This study examines secular mommy bloggers, a group of women who blog about the difficulties of being a nonbeliever parent in a predominantly religious society. In this study, I explore the rhetorical dimensions of four separate blogs by investigating how each mother builds identity within her personal blog and how her sense of identity enables her to construct individual ethos. Furthermore, I illustrate how the individual ethos of each blogger contributes to a group ethos representing the entire secular parenting community. Ultimately, I show how these mothers rhetorically set themselves apart from other nonbeliever/secular groups. / Master of Arts

No description available.

This dissertation argues that numerous parallels exist between Native American literature, especially that by women, and contemporary feminist literary and cultural theories, as both seek to undermine the hierarchy of voice: who can speak? what can be said? when? how? under what conditions? After the ideas find voice, what action is permitted to women? All of these factors influence what African American cultural theorist bell hooks terms the revolutionary gesture of "coming to voice." These essays explore the ways Native American women have voiced their lives through the oral tradition and through writing. For Native American women of mixed blood, the crucial search for identity and voice must frequently be conducted in the language of the colonizer, English, and in concert with a concern for community and landscape. Among the topics addressed in the study are (1) the negotiation of identity of those who must act in more than one culture; (2) ethnocentrism in ethnographic reports of tribal women's lives; (3) misogyny in a "canonical" Native American text; (4) the ethics of intercultural literary collaboration; (5) commonality in inter-cultural texts; and (6) transformation through rejection of Western privileging of opposition, polarity, and hierarchy.