This thesis analyses the attempt by the British government and a US corporation, Cisco Systems Inc., to address the low participation of women in ICT fields. It draws from government documentation on women's inclusion and contextualises this policy within a wider analysis of socio-economic exclusion. Three related cultures of inclusion emerge which are linked to improving the nation's access to the new economy, and central to each is the reconfiguration of democratic citizenship for people classified as socially excluded. Incorporating Cisco's and academic perspectives on gender and technology relations, a phenomenological perspective is used to unravel the reality of this present day snapshot of social and ICT exclusion and inclusion, with the Heideggerian concept of 'Gestell' reformulated to include a neo-Marxist framework and a gender analysis. Adopting the methodological approach of narrative and feminist critical theory, the thesis describes three key backgrounds to the related ICT policies and strategies and matches each with the experiences of students and staff engaged in the case study of the Cisco Certified Network Associate, a network engineer training programme. In contrasting these macro and micro accounts, the thesis seeks to explore underlying sites of tension to show how policy and practice are often in opposition to one another. Motivated by the research question of whether ontological security arises from the equity model of inclusion for a subset of the socially excluded, lone women parents, it is suggested that it does not. With the appearance of social control and not personal empowerment, greater insecurity is argued to accrue. In providing this analytical and empirical approach, the thesis seeks to contribute to current research on gender and technology by widening its remit of investigation, and provide an innovative, multidisciplinary and critical perspective to IS research.

This thesis studies the Spanish social protection system from a gender perspective. The period investigated is between 1978 and 1996. Two primary research questions were found relevant for the investigation. First, to what extent- and in which way- does the social protection system in Spain affect gender differently in terms of outcomes for men and women. Second, what are the potential factors that explain that degree of gender difference. Two main issues were set up as hypotheses for the analysis of this second research question: the extent to which gender equality issues are targeted as objectives in the social protection policy process; and, whether women are represented as social actors in the policy-making process. Using secondary statistical data and legislative documents on entitlement rules, the first question is analysed by assessing men and women's access to benefits in cash administered by the public social security system. Additional consideration is given to social services in kind and the income tax system as complementary sources of social provision. Elite interviews and documentary material are undertaken as primary research material for the second part of the investigation. The focus has been on patterns of neo-corporatism, policy access of women's policy machinery, gender equality strategies and the discourses and ideologies that embrace social actors' intervention in the policy process. The thesis starts with an overview of the existing literature. The first chapters concentrate on theoretical issues and background of the country under study. Chapter 4 locates several ways in which gender stratification is sustained in the social protection system. It will be shown how labour market segregation and specific configuration of benefits through entitlement rules explain two-track access to social security for men and women. Chapter 5, chapter 6, and chapter 7 have identified internal and external factors conditioning the inclusion of gender equality as a relevant issue in the policy process and the intervention of women's policy machinery in policy-making. Bringing together the findings from the previous chapters, chapter 8 identifies a distinctive gender and welfare model common to the countries of southern Europe, outlining challenges for the future of their social protection systems.

Early in January 2013, whilst I was at home in the middle of the day writing this thesis, I was subjected to an armed burglary. The experience resonates with themes that preoccupy this re-reading of Audre Lorde, specifically with regards to: the timing, place and impact of ‘epistemic violence’ (Spivak, 1988:280) visited on Black feminisms; the theft of thinking; and the disregard for, and appropriation of, the temporal and spatial dimensions of historical and socio-economic contexts that constitute Black women’s lives. Armed with weapons of authenticity, historical amnesia, hierarchies of oppression, the ‘always already’ (Althusser, 1971) and categories of identity designed to suppress Black feminism, the violations of Black women are unannounced and uninvited. My starting point is that ‘[t]he shadow obscuring this complex Black women’s intellectual tradition is neither accidental nor benign’ (Hill Collins, 2000:3). This thesis picks up on the idea of the impossibility of hospitality (Derrida, 2000) and the ‘critic as host’ (Hillis Miller, 1979) to frame a critical analysis of the occupation and location of Black feminist praxis. This thesis negotiates ‘…a channel between the “high theoretical” and the “suspicious of all theories”’ (Boyce Davies, 1994:43). The challenge of ‘Re-Reading Audre Lorde: Declaring the Activism of Black Feminist Theory’ is to maintain a persistent, hypervigilant sensitivity towards the hostility of ‘epistemic violence’ (Spivak, 1988:280). I think it is possible to re-read Spivak’s (1988) question, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in terms of, ‘Can Black feminist theory speak?’ The question of what is read and utilised and what is not, particularly when the ‘what is not’ refers to Black feminist scholarship in general, and to the work of Lorde in particular, is fundamental to this thesis. This thesis produces new re-readings of Lorde’s work that go beyond a literary textual analysis. The Kristevan idea of intertextuality as intersubjectivity (Kristeva, 1969:37) is used to show that the space and place between the words in ‘Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface’ (Lorde, 1979a:60) function as the space and place between Black and white feminisms. The predicaments of positionality reiterated throughout this thesis mirror the predicaments within feminism. How can feminist theory present authoritative, metanarrative claims (and they need to be authoritative in the face of a racist, homophobic patriarchy that denies the legitimacy of Black women) whilst being implicated? The quandary is that of how to establish and communicate any sense of a comprehensible, coherent re-reading of Lorde when each re-reading destabilises and contests any notion of an ‘established.’ The quandary takes on particular significance in relation to Black feminist political writings and communication of political imperatives. In other words, is there a possibility of ‘the transformation of silence into language and action’ (Lorde, 1977a:40) in the condition of the impossibility of language? Re-reading Lorde is both to occupy the margin and to make use of the margin so that the impossible, the unavailable, and the fissures of re-reading Black feminist theoretical communications are the conditions of the activism of Black feminist theory. Three principles of Black feminist methodology that underpin the work of this thesis include: 1. Lorde’s Black feminist ‘uses of the erotic’ (Lorde, 1978a); 2. The dialogical and dialectical relationship between experience, practice and scholarship (Hill Collins, 2000:30); 3. That methodology is contingent upon, and constituted through, Black feminist activism. Throughout this thesis, I make a concerted effort to transfer the text of Black feminist critical theory from the page to the day-to-day struggles of Black feminist activism. For example, I demonstrate the relevance of Lorde in terms of constructing Black women-only reflective spaces and service provision, interventions to confront sexual violence against Black women and the ‘…psychological toll…’ (The Combahee River Collective, 1977:266) of ‘…learn[ing] to lie down with the different parts of ourselves…’ (Abod, 1987:158). This thesis is a work of re-membering; it is a deliberate transgression of fixed, theoretical and disciplinary borders, which reinvigorates the activism of theory.

The aim of this thesis is to explore women's experiences and understandings of home. Two very different perspectives are evident in existing feminist literature on women and home. The first emphasises connections between home, the distinction between public and private, and the perpetuation of constraining gendered roles and expectations. The second emphasises the symbolic, emotional and personal expressivity of home spaces for women. This thesis seeks to examine the interface between these perspectives as it is played out in women's lives. I show how women make and re-make their self-identities partly through and in relation to home spaces. I explore the relationship between constructions of gender and of home through women's personal accounts of their home spaces. The accounts were collected through repeat, in-depth interviews with six women aged between twenty seven and thirty four, who own their homes, and who, at the start of the interviews, were living with partners and had no children. The interviews take the form of narratives in which the women tell of both the everyday nature of the homes in which they live, and their experiences - including memories and expectations - of home. Chapter Four, the first of three substantive chapters, examines the interweaving of homeownership and adulthood in stories of complex transitions. I suggest that the process of homeownership can usefully be understood as a 'rite of passage' which, while potentially creating spaces in which the women feel grown up, is problematically gendered. These problems are articulated through women's discussion of the difficulties they encounter in balancing their needs for privacy with ideas and expectations of intimacy and care. Chapter Five focuses on stories about mothers, mothering and mother-daughter relationships. Considering women's memories of their mothers in relation to their stories about their current homes, I highlight ways in which narratives of home are infused with construction of 'woman' as 'mother'. The dense interweaving of'woman', 'mother' and 'home' generates fusions and confusions that are manifest in socio-spatial limitations and frustrations the interviewees describe. In Chapter Six, I consider the idea of home as a space within which family relations are rooted, returned to and relived. Thrown into sharp relief by the loss of past home spaces, the transcripts suggest a sense of home as an emotional journey of relationships embedded within identifiable and accessible spaces. There is also a tension in these stories between a desire for continuity and the pressure of change. The thesis concludes by examining the metaphor of a web or collage in which the experiences of home and self are woven together, arguing that this is a useful way to represent and analyse the multiple and fractured strands of experience and expectation that make up women's relationship with home spaces.

This research analyses the conservative resistance to women's women's bodily integrity, specifically women's sexual and reproductive rights in Chile, responding to the questions (1) How are policies on sexual and reproductive rights contested and blocked in Chile? and (2) What drives this resistance? Using empirical analysis and qualitative research, it explores the historical legacies of the dictatorship (1973 - 1989) and its implications for current policy making and the history, strategies and influence of the Catholic Church. It also looks in detail at three current policy processes: sexuality education, access to emergency contraception and decriminalization of therapeutic abortion. It concludes that women's sexual and reproductive rights challenge core conservative principles and generate fear of social change. They are contested by principles institutionalized by the dictatorship, based on conservative ideas about naturalized gender roles and the roles of institutions within a perceived organic and natural society. Institutional legacies include the political and economic system, the subsidiary role assigned to the state limiting its reach and giving space to conservative private businesses to influence policy making. Progress is slow because political institutions and political parties are vulnerable to conservative in uence, evidenced by the role of the Catholic Church in the transition to democracy, and in the shift to a conservative agenda in the 1990s. The political power and influence of the Chilean conservative elite has also been key. The resistance is driven by committed conservatives using a range of strategies, convinced of the need to maintain a natural order in the family and gender relations, where reproductive rights challenge this order. The resistance is also facilitated by politicians and authorities at local level.

This thesis explores major trends at work in international women's organisations and co-operation between the First World War and the Second World War. It analyses the changing compositions and aims of the International Council of Women, the International Alliance of Women, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and the International Federation of University Women, and explores how far these shifts were demonstrated at their conferences and reflected in their journals. In particular it focuses on the experience of the women involved in these organisations, what "international sisterhood" meant to them (and there were differences in the ways that they interpreted this depending on factors relating to time and place), and, importantly, how notions of "sisterhood" were played out, and contested, within these organisations at this time. The first section establishes the historical framework and examines the evolution of these organisations in the interwar period. It places the development of these organisations within its broader context, in particular outlining the substructure of international Christian women's organisations formed earlier on which later developments were built. It then examines the unprecedented expansion of international women's organisations in the 1920s, and assesses the challenges experienced by them during the troubled 1930s. The second section is thematic, exploring themes of education, travel and regionalisation. It first highlights the significance of higher education for women's international co-operation in the interwar period and the role of the IFUW in particular. It then evaluates the importance of international travel for the expansion of international women's organisations, drawing attention to the changing function of travel during the first half of the twentieth century. Finally it addresses the increased regionalisation that had emerged by the end of the 1930s, comparing and contrasting the involvement of especially non-western women in, and their experience of, regional and international organisations.

The aim of this research is to investigate whether and how women's financial contributions to household resources might lead to changes in gender relations. It feeds directly into current concerns about women's empowerment and gender equality which are on the agenda of international and national bodies, scholars and development practitioners and is anchored in the debate about the importance of women's income-earning activities for achieving gender equality. The research focuses on relationships between women and men in a poor rural settlement in northeastern Mexico. The thesis details the negotiating and bargaining processes between women and men in 23 households and examines how these relationships and the identities of the women and men involved are influenced by the context in which they are embedded. This context includes the community itself as well as government policy as experienced through income generating projects, and wider Mexican cultural norms. The research findings support the argument that incomeearning activities alone will not result in the changes often sought by development practitioners and feminists, and now also by governments worldwide. Wider changes in the cultural and economic environment are also needed to change the perceptions of self and others that individuals bring to their gender relations. These changes in perception are central to maintaining or reinforcing changes in gendered power relations. The research findings pointed to no significant changes in women's and men's identities, and motherhood continues to be the only source of power for rural women whose economic contributions are under-valued. The structures of power within which poor rural women, with a limited resource base and limited social networks, carry out their income-earning activities do not create an enabling environment for transformatory changes to occur in their gender relations

The late 1990s and the early part of the new millennium witnessed the emergence of "DIY feminism" across a range of cultural practices in multiple local and transnational contexts. Despite evidence of a thriving DIY feminist culture in the UK, DIY feminist voices, practices and politics are largely absent from the scholarly literature in British feminist media and cultural studies which is predominantly focused on the analysis of feminist discourse in the commercial popular media. In my view, this focus has marginalized grassroots feminist voices, practices and politics rendering them invisible within the broader landscape of contemporary feminism. Research that engages with the voices, knowledges, practices and politics of DIY feminism is vital in order to develop our knowledge and understanding of contemporary feminism; provide a more complex view of the contemporary feminist landscape; and create opportunities for the dialogic encounter of academic, popular and DIY feminisms. My research is located in the context of scholarship on postfeminism, third wave feminism and DIY feminism. The concept of DIY feminism has been utilised by scholars to describe and define the ways in which women and grrrls create culture through the appropriation of technologies and/or discourse which resist mainstream representations. In a number of accounts technologies are defined as inherently democratic and intimate and the process of appropriating discourse is described as a practice of resistance to "the mainstream". In response to these claims, I propose a dialogic ethnography which maps the ideological, emotional and affective contexts through which DIY feminism takes shape. Interpreted from this perspective, technologies are not understood as inherently democratic but are a matter of social and cultural definition. Furthermore DIY feminism is not understood as inherently resistant to the mainstream but takes shape in the context of particular understandings of and responses to "the mainstream", in combination with other themes. Accounts of DIY feminism to date have focused primarily on the music and zines of riot grrrl while the DIY practices and politics of crafting and Ladyfests are relatively unexplored. I address this gap in the literature by providing an account of these two significant aspects of DIY feminism. I also propose a new approach to the analysis of feminist and grrrl zines. Drawing on Bakhtinian concepts of speech genre and discourse combined with concepts of feeling, emotion and affect, I map the multiple purposes of zines and the ways in which they express a particular structure of feeling. Through a dialogical approach, I map the multiple ways in which DIY feminists are reevaluating the "f' word to formulate a macro politics and a micropolitics to suit their own interests and concerns. I respond to claims that the DIY and third wave feminism represent a generation of feminism produced in a relation of conflict or disidentification with second wave feminism and I contribute qualitative empirical detail to the study of DIY feminism.

This thesis presents an analysis of the dynamic relationship between mobility, feminism and belonging. Drawing on data collected through (cyber)ethnographic on the International Women's University 'Technology and Culture' (ifu), held in Germany in 2000, and its online extension, virtual ifu (vifu), it explores how attachments are constructed and enacted in contemporary feminist networks. I present findings of participant observation, face-to-face interviews and online research (mailing list analysis and online questionnaires conducted on the platforms of vifu).

The focus of this thesis is the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) placed within the wider context of Indian women's movements. Its purpose is to understand and assess the functioning of AIDWA as an all-India, left-oriented and party-affiliated women's organisation with particular reference to its national and state level operation.