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Using a critical feminist approach, and with attention to participants’ broad life experiences, this qualitative study explores seven women’s challenging, transformative decisions to give birth at home with midwives in Ontario, Canada. To make this choice, the women had to draw on their own strength, take responsibility for their decisions, and resist the dominant view of birth as inherently risky, and of women’s birth experiences as unimportant and incompatible with more narrowly defined good outcomes. As participants became informed decision-makers, resisted medicalized birth, and envisioned more woman-centred possibilities, they were empowered as active agents in their births. They were able to trust that with the care of their midwives, and the support of their partners or close family, they could have satisfying and safe births at home.

Le présent mémoire s’intéresse au développement du mouvement social Lesbien, Gai, Bisexuel, Trans, Intersex et Queer (LGBTIQ) depuis la chute de la dictature de Ferdinand Marcos en 1986 jusqu’à aujourd’hui. À partir de 1990, le mouvement est caractérisé par un développement rapide. Il était parmi les premiers en Asie du Sud-est à organiser une marche de la fierté et à créer un parti politique LGBTIQ. Toutefois, malgré le dynamisme inhérent à ce mouvement, les communautés LGBTIQ sont toujours discriminées sur le marché du travail, à l’université ou encore dans le système de santé. De plus, elles sont toujours les victimes de violence et de meurtre commis sur la base de leur orientation sexuelle ou de leur genre. Actuellement, le mouvement LGBTIQ n’a toujours pas été en mesure d’obtenir des gains politiques afin de mieux protéger les droits et la sécurité de ces communautés. Même si ce problème pourrait être attribué au conservatisme de l’élite politique ou encore à l’influence du Catholicisme et de l’homophobie dans la société philippine, l’argumentation de ce mémoire propose plutôt que la fragmentation et le manque de cohérence au sein du mouvement ont compliqué la formulation et l’adoption de politiques pouvant régler ces enjeux. Mon analyse du mouvement pendant les 30 dernières années identifie quatre conflits internes majeurs expliquant ce problème 1. la définition de l’identité collective 2. le cadrage utilisé afin de conceptualiser cet enjeu 3. les différentes idéologies structurant l’action des militant.es et 4. les divergences par rapport aux modes d’organisation et aux stratégies employées. Ainsi, ce mémoire tourne l’attention vers ces conflits internes plutôt que vers les facteurs exogènes. Mon argumentation est basée sur 17 entrevues semi-dirigées réalisées à Manille avec des militant.es du mouvement, de mai à octobre 2015. Dans les deux premiers chapitres de ce mémoire, j’analyse la littérature portant sur la théorie des mouvements sociaux en général pour ensuite aborder la littérature traitant précisément sur les Philippines et l’Asie du Sud-est. Cette revue servira de base théorique afin de comprendre les quatre facteurs identifiés ainsi que leur rôle dans la fragmentation du mouvement. Dans le quatrième chapitre, j’analyse la fragmentation du mouvement selon les échelles d’action des militant.es, leurs cibles ainsi que leur trajectoire de mobilisation. Dans le cinquième chapitre, j’explique cette fragmentation à l’aide des quatre facteurs identifiés dans la littérature. / This Master’s thesis investigates the development of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) movement in the Philippines from the fall of Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship in 1986 to the present moment. Since then, the LGBTIQ movement has developed rapidly. It was among the first in Southeast Asia to organise a Pride March and to constitute an LGBTIQ political party. However, despite this dynamism, LGBTIQ communities are still discriminated in the workspace, schools, and the healthcare system. Moreover, they are still the victims of homophobic crimes. To the present day, the movement has not been able to secure political protection for the rights and the safety of these communities. Although the current situation can be attributed to a certain extent to conservatism in the ruling class or the strong influence of Catholicism and homophobia, this thesis argues that the fragmentation and the lack of coherence of the movement iii has itself complicated the formulation and implementation of concrete policies. My analysis of the movement’s development throughout the last 30 years will highlight four fundamental conflicts resolving around 1. the definition of one collective identity, 2. the framing used to conceptualize these issues, 3. the different ideologies underlying the social activists’ actions, and 4. the divergence in organisational modes and strategies. As such, this thesis shifts attention from external factors to internal conflicts within the LGBTIQ movement of the Philippines. My arguments are based on 17 interviews with social activists, conducted between May and October 2015 in Manila. In the first two chapters of this thesis, I review current scholarship on social movements in general and about the Philippines and South East Asia in particular. This review will provide the theoretical foundation necessary to identify and understand the four identified social factors and their role on the fragmentation of the movement. In chapter four, I analyse the fragmentation of the movement based on the social activists’ scales of action, their targets of mobilization, and their mobilization trajectories. In chapter five, I analyze this fragmentation through the identified factors in the literature.

Ce mémoire propose d’étudier les représentations de la masculinité dans les vidéoclips de musique populaire. Il consiste plus précisément en une analyse textuelle de vidéoclips suivant l’approche sémiologique. La représentation y est entendue comme un processus d’attribution de sens, agissant dans la construction sociale de la masculinité. Selon une méthode qualitative, il est premièrement question de cerner et, ultérieurement, explorer les principaux schémas de la masculinité dans un corpus de 29 vidéoclips sélectionné auprès de la chaîne québécoise Musique Plus. L’observation des codes visuels est centrale à cette entreprise, l’articulation de ces derniers permettant la prolifération d’expressions du genre masculin. Partant du point de vue que des attributs, notamment la force et l’invulnérabilité, apparaissent comme typiquement masculins au sein de certaines représentations, il sera question de confronter cette idée aux trois scénarios majeurs ayant émané du corpus ; l’homme-enfant, l’introspectif et le meneur, indiquant tous trois la récente montée des représentations d’une masculinité vulnérable en musique populaire. Les constats qui résulteront de cette exploration seront finalement recadrés dans l’actuel cadre social, où le masculin et le féminin sont de moins en moins enclos dans les moules traditionnels et tendent à se redéfinir sur une nouvelle matrice. / The following study pursues an analysis of the various images of masculinity represented in popular culture, or more specifically music videos. It consists more precisely of a textual analysis of music videos according to the semiological approach. It is understood that such representations undergo a process of sensory attribution, serving to build the image of masculinity in society. Qualitatively, the method of analysis will first treat, and later explore, the main forms related to masculinity from a body of 29 music videos broadcast by the Québec entertainment station Musique Plus. The observation of visual codes is imperative to this undertaking as the codes provide the means by which various expressions of the masculine type might proliferate. Beginning with the premise that certain attributes, namely force and invulnerability, are typically masculine according to certain representations, we can further the analysis by comparing it to three main scenarios (the homme-enfant, the introspectif and the meneur) resulting from the video evidence under study. In the final analysis, I shall demonstrate how the findings rest within our current social frame where notions of masculine and feminine image tend to submit less and less to traditional models and are redefined in a new matrix.

Girls’ education has been promoted by the international development community for over two decades; however, it has proven harder to promote gender equality through education than it has been to promote gender parity in education. Of significance is the global circulation and co-existence of two competing rationales for the importance of girls’ education: economic efficiency and social justice. The cost of ignoring how and why Southern governments and their development partners choose to promote girls’ education is high: an over-emphasis on economic efficiency can mean that the root causes of gendered inequalities in society remain unchallenged, and more social justice-oriented reforms become marginalized. This thesis uses a critical feminist lens to qualitatively investigate the role and significance of human capital, human rights, and human capabilities policy models in the context of the production and enactment of gender equality in education policy knowledge in The Gambia, a small, aid-dependent Muslim nation in West Africa. The purpose of the study was to assess the scope education policies provide for positive change in the lives of Gambian women and girls. Towards illuminating relations of power in and the politics of gender equality in education policy processes, the study compares and contrasts written texts with the perspectives of state and non-state policy actors. The study is based on data drawn from interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis. The findings suggest that different gender equality in education ideas and practices have been selectively mobilized and incorporated into education policy processes in The Gambia. At the level of policy talk, girls’ education is framed as important for both national economic growth, and “women’s empowerment”. However, the policy solutions designed and implemented, with the support of donors, have tended to work with rather than against the status quo. Power and politics was evident in divergent interpretations and struggles to fix the meaning of key concepts such as gender, gender equality, gender equity, and empowerment. Religious beliefs, anti-feminist politics, and the national feminist movement were identified as important forces shaping gender equality in education knowledge and action in the country.

Girls’ education has been promoted by the international development community for over two decades; however, it has proven harder to promote gender equality through education than it has been to promote gender parity in education. Of significance is the global circulation and co-existence of two competing rationales for the importance of girls’ education: economic efficiency and social justice. The cost of ignoring how and why Southern governments and their development partners choose to promote girls’ education is high: an over-emphasis on economic efficiency can mean that the root causes of gendered inequalities in society remain unchallenged, and more social justice-oriented reforms become marginalized. This thesis uses a critical feminist lens to qualitatively investigate the role and significance of human capital, human rights, and human capabilities policy models in the context of the production and enactment of gender equality in education policy knowledge in The Gambia, a small, aid-dependent Muslim nation in West Africa. The purpose of the study was to assess the scope education policies provide for positive change in the lives of Gambian women and girls. Towards illuminating relations of power in and the politics of gender equality in education policy processes, the study compares and contrasts written texts with the perspectives of state and non-state policy actors. The study is based on data drawn from interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis. The findings suggest that different gender equality in education ideas and practices have been selectively mobilized and incorporated into education policy processes in The Gambia. At the level of policy talk, girls’ education is framed as important for both national economic growth, and “women’s empowerment”. However, the policy solutions designed and implemented, with the support of donors, have tended to work with rather than against the status quo. Power and politics was evident in divergent interpretations and struggles to fix the meaning of key concepts such as gender, gender equality, gender equity, and empowerment. Religious beliefs, anti-feminist politics, and the national feminist movement were identified as important forces shaping gender equality in education knowledge and action in the country.

“The Transgressive Stage: The Culture of Public Entertainment in Late Victorian Toronto,” argues that public entertainment was one of the most important sites for the negotiation of identities in late Victorian Toronto. From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, where theatre is strictly highbrow, it is difficult to appreciate the centrality of public entertainment to everyday life in the nineteenth century. Simply put, the Victorian imagination was populated by melodrama and minstrelsy, Shakespeare and circuses. Studying the responses to these entertainments, greatly expands our understanding of Victorian culture. The central argument of this dissertation is that public entertainment spilled over the threshold of the playhouse and circus tent to influence the wider world. In so doing, it radically altered the urban streetscape, interacted with political ideology, promoted trends in consumption, as well as exposed audiences to new intellectual currents about art and beauty. Specifically, this study examines the moral panic surrounding indecent theatrical advertisements; the use by political playwrights of tropes from public entertainment as a vehicle for political satire; the role of the stage in providing an outlet for Toronto’s racial curiosity; the centrality of commercial amusements in defining the boundaries of gender; and, finally, the importance of the theatre—particularly through the Aesthetic Movement—in attempts to control the city’s working class. When Torontonians took in a play, they were also exposing themselves to one of the most significant transnational forces of the nineteenth century. British and American shows, which made up the bulk of what was on offer in the city, brought with them British and American perspectives. The latest plays from London and New York made their way to the city within months, and sometimes weeks, of their first production. These entertainments introduced audiences to the latest thoughts, fashion, slang and trends. They also confronted playgoers with issues that might, on the surface seem foreign and irrelevant. Nevertheless, they quickly adapted to the environment north of the border. Public entertainment in Toronto came to embody a hybridized culture with a promiscuous co-mingling of high and low and of British and American influences.

Ce mémoire propose d’étudier les représentations de la masculinité dans les vidéoclips de musique populaire. Il consiste plus précisément en une analyse textuelle de vidéoclips suivant l’approche sémiologique. La représentation y est entendue comme un processus d’attribution de sens, agissant dans la construction sociale de la masculinité. Selon une méthode qualitative, il est premièrement question de cerner et, ultérieurement, explorer les principaux schémas de la masculinité dans un corpus de 29 vidéoclips sélectionné auprès de la chaîne québécoise Musique Plus. L’observation des codes visuels est centrale à cette entreprise, l’articulation de ces derniers permettant la prolifération d’expressions du genre masculin. Partant du point de vue que des attributs, notamment la force et l’invulnérabilité, apparaissent comme typiquement masculins au sein de certaines représentations, il sera question de confronter cette idée aux trois scénarios majeurs ayant émané du corpus ; l’homme-enfant, l’introspectif et le meneur, indiquant tous trois la récente montée des représentations d’une masculinité vulnérable en musique populaire. Les constats qui résulteront de cette exploration seront finalement recadrés dans l’actuel cadre social, où le masculin et le féminin sont de moins en moins enclos dans les moules traditionnels et tendent à se redéfinir sur une nouvelle matrice. / The following study pursues an analysis of the various images of masculinity represented in popular culture, or more specifically music videos. It consists more precisely of a textual analysis of music videos according to the semiological approach. It is understood that such representations undergo a process of sensory attribution, serving to build the image of masculinity in society. Qualitatively, the method of analysis will first treat, and later explore, the main forms related to masculinity from a body of 29 music videos broadcast by the Québec entertainment station Musique Plus. The observation of visual codes is imperative to this undertaking as the codes provide the means by which various expressions of the masculine type might proliferate. Beginning with the premise that certain attributes, namely force and invulnerability, are typically masculine according to certain representations, we can further the analysis by comparing it to three main scenarios (the homme-enfant, the introspectif and the meneur) resulting from the video evidence under study. In the final analysis, I shall demonstrate how the findings rest within our current social frame where notions of masculine and feminine image tend to submit less and less to traditional models and are redefined in a new matrix.

Starting from the standpoint of antiracist feminists in Southern Ontario, Canada, I examine the everyday social organization of antiracist feminist activism. Using key concepts from institutional ethnography and other critical research methods, I explore how women of colour activists engage, contest and modify existing social relations within women’s organizations to craft antiracist feminist organizational change. I describe how women of colour negotiate their antiracist, feminist and social justice commitments in ways which both respond to, and are constitutive of, contradictory social relations within women’s organizations. An analysis of in-depth interviews with women of colour activists reveals dialectic processes of accountability in their everyday antiracist feminist practice. Activists are accountable, on the one hand, to hierarchical relations within the daily practices of women’s organizations, and, on the other hand, to other feminist, antiracist and social justice activists. I describe how relations of accountability, named respectively, organizational accountability and activist responsibility, socially organize women of colour’s everyday experience of antiracist feminist activism. In particular, I argue that organizational accountability must be understood as relations of hierarchical answerability within the organization that extend outside the organization, while activist responsibility needs to be seen as the relations by which activists become accountable to other activists in the enactment of an explicitly antiracist feminist praxis. I describe further how women of colour creatively and consciously do antiracist feminist activism by mobilizing and negotiating both sets of relations of accountability to develop antiracist feminist social and organizational change. I highlight the importance of everyday activist work by revealing the ways women of colour seize the potential for crafting antiracist feminist change through relations of accountability. Significantly, this study offers a conceptualization of everyday antiracist feminist activist practice as a negotiation of relations of accountability.