Thesis (M.A.(Drama))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-241). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Not available / text

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

The Bund deutscher Madel (BdM), a Nazi youth organization for girls, was sponsored, organized, and promoted by Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party. The BdM instilled values and beliefs of National Socialism in German girls, and encouraged attitudes and behavior in them that harmonized with Party views on womanhood. Political indoctrination for girls often came through music---especially song. Musical repertoire of the BdM strongly interconnects with the organization's development, internal structure and political philosophies. / My thesis analyses the relations between music, the BdM, National Socialism, and gender. Historical perspectives are documented to clarify the function and intention of the BdM, including its politics and philosophy, its activities designed to foster 'natural' gender roles, and its emerging supremacy over other right-wing youth movements in Nazi Germany. My thesis then examines conceptions of 'natural' gender roles for girls and women in Nazi society and how these role expectations are covertly and overtly embedded in the official music book of the BdM, entitled Wir Madel singen! To illustrate this relationship between music, politics, and gender expectations, ten songs from Wir Madel singen! are analyzed in detail.

Gender identity disorder is a disorder that challenges the predominant cultural understanding of gender and sex. A transgender person believes that s/he is of the opposite sex and gender than her/his natal sex. This study aimed to explore and describe transgender people’s experience of the development of their transgender identity, and the critical turning points that they experienced during the development of this transgender identity. Furthermore, the study explored the influence of religion and spirituality on the development of the transgender person’s identity and how their transgender identity in turn influenced their spirituality and spiritual identity. Feminist and queer theories were utilized in this study. A phenomenological approach was used to explore the lived experience of five transgender individuals. The findings suggest that these five transgender people find themselves between the sex categories of male and female and the gender categories of the feminine and the masculine. This finding challenges the Western dichotomous view of gender and sex. It further emerged that religion/spirituality does influence the development of a transgender identity as well as the process of gender reassignment. Key terms: Transgender, gender identity disorder, sex change, transsexual, G/god/dess, self-identity, phenomenology, queer identity, gender queer, queer theology, binary discourse, fluid gender, trans man, trans woman. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

The present study is centered on understanding the gender concepts teachers have, and the form in which their gender perspective is related to the way teachers of a Mexican Montessori elementary school interact with their students according to the child's gender in the early elementary school years. The type of messages teachers are sending to children when they are in the classroom in relation to the concepts of masculinity and feminity are discussed. The analysis is rooted in qualitative research methodology and the gender category. Gender is seen as a social phenomenon. / The paper deals with the work that has been done in gender and schools, especially related to the role teachers have when dealing with gender in the classroom. It discusses how a different method of education, in this case the Montessori method, differs from the traditional system of education when dealing with gender issues. / The way teachers deal with gender issues at school is deeply connected to the viewpoint of gender they have. The narratives of the teachers help us understand this relation. It is hoped that by examining their own practice toward gender issues teachers will take a first step towards a non-sexist education. It is true that the Montessori system breaks from many of the conventional gender-biased practices of traditional schools; even so, a total change cannot be seen until our own perspectives on gender evolve.

his thesis reports on a qualitative study of stakeholders’ constructions of gender in the context of the Free Primary Education policy in three primary schools in Lesotho. Through the lens of the social constructionist paradigm, the thesis examines how parents, teachers and children living in and around these primary schools think, act, and feel in relation to gender in their academic and social worlds. It looks at the ways in which these stakeholders engage with issues of gender in Lesotho communities ravaged by gender inequality. Based on parents’, teachers’ and children’s constructions of gender, the thesis suggests strategies that might help address inequitable gender relations in and around the primary schools. The thesis grounded my personal life experiences, as the researcher, as crucial in the development of methodological strategies and processes of this study. In a flexible and responsive manner, the study utilised informal conversations, semistructured interviews, observations, questionnaires and document analysis, as methods of data collection. It found that, influenced by ‘discursive constructs’ of providence and God’s will, child-adult relations, naturalness of gender differences and attributes as well as the Basotho culture, parents and teachers constructed gender in ways that reinforced existing gender inequality in and around the primary schools. The structural and social organisation of the schools that tended to allocate girls and boys into rigid social categories, and parents’ and teachers’ constructions of gender which reinforced inequitable gender relations, were found to have significant impact on the regulation of children’s experiences and meanings of gender. The study found that children’s experiences of gender informed how they actively engaged with issues of gender and the meanings they attached to being girls and boys. The study traces how Basotho culture and religion have been fundamental to gender inequality and violence in Lesotho. These factors encouraged the schools to use structural/physical identities (such as having biological sex as a boy/girl), as the bases for allocation of girls and boys into rigid and inequitable social categories. The dominant discourses of gender that emanated from these factors, ascribed stereotypic attributes to males (boys and men) and females (girls and women) as means to ground inequitable gendered human aptitudes, which were used to justify gender inequality. The study also identifies ways in which girls defy the insistence on their subordination, and sees fault lines where gender inequality can be confronted without abandoning Basotho culture. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This thesis examines representations of nation, race and gender in three postcolonial texts: Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; Meena Alexander's autobiographical memoirs Fault Lines; and Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi's collection of short stories entitled Imaginary Maps. All three texts reconfigure conventional accounts of nationhood by positing fictions based on what I am calling the poetics of displacement. The diasporic perspective provides Salman Rushdie's novel with the ability to suggest hybrid identities arising from the experience of cultural migration. In Meena Alexander's autobiography, displacement is figured in terms of both a diasporic and feminist vision that allows for the deconstruction of masculinist narratives of identity and nation. Mahasweta Devi's short stories, by contrast, represent displacement in terms of the violences and dislocations suffered by the Indian subaltern as a result of ecological degradation and cultural uprootment. In looking at these differential articulations of displacement, this thesis thus attempts to illustrate that what is often seen as an unified body of postcolonial literature emerges from a heterogeneous set of textual practices which are the products of varying social, cultural, political and economic contexts. In this way, this thesis rethinks the categories of nation, race and gender in order to consider the bases upon which people make claims to identity along with the boundaries of inclusion or exclusion often invoked by such claims.

The current study examined the degree of role violation necessary to produce social rejection and whether penalties for gender role violations are applied equally to male and female violators. Specifically, it was hypothesized that targets described by equal numbers of male- and female-associated characteristics would be most liked and viewed as better adjusted compared to either stereotype congruent gender role targets and stereotype incongruent gender role targets. Presumed status and presumed sexual orientation were considered as explanations for the penalties gender-role violators incur. This effect was expected to be stronger for male targets than for female targets. Although the current results were unable to clarify why role deviance leads to social rejection, results confirmed prior findings indicating that not all role violations are met with equal derogation and that mixed gender roles can be perceived as psychologically healthy. Ratings of likeability and adjustment were not affected by either mediational variable. Finally, results suggested that male role violation is not regarded more harshly than female role violation when the role violation is based on traits. / Department of Psychological Science