The purpose of this research was to explore the perceptions of employers, teachers and graduates of the Oregon Carl Perkins Single Parent/Displaced Homemaker Programs regarding non-technical employment qualities. The Luft "Non-Technical Employment Qualities Survey Instrument" and open-ended questions were used to elicit personal responses from members of each group for the purpose of comparing the results. The research questions addressed the perceived rankings of non-technical employment qualities, the extent to which programs were perceived to have addressed these nontechnical employment qualities, the extent to which graduates were perceived to possess these non-technical employment qualities, the extent to which graduates were perceived to seek and receive feedback regarding these non-technical employment qualities, the specific non-technical employment qualities that were perceived as essential prior to entering the workforce, the perceptions as to why employees were terminated and the perceived reasons why graduates left employment. The findings concluded that the respondent populations were in general agreement as to their perceptions. Employers and teachers agreed more frequently regarding their perceptions as to the extent graduates possessed these non-technical employment qualities and the extent to which graduates sought and received feedback. Graduates agreed more frequently with the employers as to their rankings of the qualities needed, but there was great disagreement between graduates, and their employers as to the number of qualities possessed and the amount of feedback sought. Employers and teachers disagreed more frequently in their rankings as to which qualities were the most important. The principle implication of this research for education with regard to these populations is that a close relationship between employers and the instructors preparing graduates for employment is imperative. The principle research recommendation entails further inquiry into the specific behaviors that demonstrate the possession of these skills and that would prevent employment termination. / Graduation date: 1996

There were two primary purposes of this study. The first purpose was to describe and compare the sex role identical and vocational interests of enrollees in traditional and nontraditional displaced homemaker proqrams. The second purpose was to deteraine if sex ro1e identity and vocational interests changed from the beginning to the end of the program cycle. The secondary purposes of this study included (a) a description of the sex role identity of instructors in displaced homemaker programs and a determination of change of sex role identity from the beginning to the end of the program cycle, as well as (b) the establishment of demographic profiles of enrollees and instructors. The sample consisted of 35 enrollees and 10 instructors in four displaced homemaker programs in Virginia. The instruments used in this study were the BEM Inventory and Self-Directed Search. Program information and demographic information on enrollees and instructors was also collected. Descriptive analysis was used for the study. It can be concluded that there was a significant difference in the sex role identity of enrollees in traditional and nontraditional displaced homemaker programs both before and after program activities. Therefore, sex role identity was a significant variable for these selected displaced homemaker programs enrollees. However, due to the small sample, generalizability to the population of displaced homemakers is only speculative. In addition, the data suggested that while most enrollees did not change in their sex role identity from the beginning to the end of the program cycle, those enrollees who did change were enrolled in nontraditional programs and tended to move toward more sex-type roles. As indicated in the literature, strongly sex-typed attitudes may impair the enrollees’ ability to perform in nontraditional occupational settings where flexibility is desirable if not necessary. No significant difference was found in the sex role identity of instructors in traditional and nontraditional programs at either the pre- or posttest stage. Therefore, sex role identity was not a variable determining instructor involvement with a traditional or nontraditional displaced homemaker program. Sex role identity of 40 percent of the instructors moved toward less sex-typed roles form the beginning to the end of the program cycle suggesting an increased flexibility in role. The androgynous role of these instructors could provide a role model which may encourage enrollees to consider a wider range of behavioral and career options. The data suggested that a significant difference in vocational interests existed only at the posttest stage. Thus, it may be concluded that program enrollment may not be contingent upon vocational interest but rather may be dependent upon program availability. In addition, the data suggested that while most enrollees did not change in their vocational interests from the beginning to the end of the program cycle, those enrollees who did change were in traditional displaced homemaker programs. Change in category of vocational interests remained within those occupational areas typically considered feminine. Data on all enrollees indicated a wider distribution of vocational interests at the posttest stage. The career exploration component included in all programs may have attributed to the increased range of vocational interests expressed by enrollees. / Ed. D.

No description available.

My dissertation demonstrates how housewives manipulated and redefined the image and identity of the housewife in the U.S. during the second half of the twentieth century. From the eras of June Cleaver to Gloria Steinem and Phyllis Schlafly, women invoked motherhood and domesticity for both progressive and traditionalist ends. They did so amid shifting expectations of homemakers. In the decades following World War II, the legalization of contraceptives and abortion transformed understandings of the connections among womanhood, marriage, and maternity; legislation offered limited opportunities for women to acquire education and participate in new sectors of the workforce; and the decline of the family wage and the introduction of no-fault divorce increasingly curbed men's and women's ability to keep mother at home. Whereas in 1962 more than fifty-five percent of women aged twenty-five to fifty-four were engaged in full-time homemaking, by 1985 housewives made up just over twenty-six percent of the same population. Amid this change, the word housewife served as a lingua franca in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s that helped people to organize under the banner of domesticity. The arbiters defining the American housewife included not only members of the conservative Silent Majority, but also members of the feminist National Organization for Women (NOW); not only white television stars like Donna Reed who spearheaded protest against the Vietnam War by the group Another Mother for Peace, but also African American and Catholic and Jewish women working together to promote cross-racial understanding; not only women who earned wages outside of the home, but also non-wage-earning househusbands. I investigate how women's groups in the 1960s and early 1970s turned the dismissals that frequently accompanied the phrase "just a housewife" into an asset. Some groups deployed the housewife as the antithesis of the expert: Housewives' opinions about racism could be trusted as an authentic voice of the people because they did not rely on statistics calculated to fit into theories or models. Others relied on biologically determinist arguments: Motherhood made housewives into specialized experts on specific topics such as peace. Domesticity generally made these women less politically threatening and so better able to enact their agendas. While these housewife activists certainly grew and benefitted from their participation in these groups, the main purpose of their work was never to aid housewives exclusively. Beginning in the mid-1970s, women finally capitalized on the authority of the housewife image to improve the lives of homemakers. The efforts of housewife groups in the 1970s and early 1980s who opposed and supported the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution underscores the flexible definition of "housewife." While they initially organized to lend the authority of the housewife name to a particular cause, these groups ultimately became political organizations that represented and mobilized housewives as a constituency. Despite many differences, traditionalists and feminists could find common ground in recognizing the problems homemakers faced. Both were troubled by the realities of second shifts in which women juggled wage-earning and family obligations. They were concerned by the feminization of poverty, especially among older women. Whereas many traditionalists advocated a performed femininity meant to produce starkly gendered male protector-breadwinner and female dependent-homemaker roles, feminists looked to legislative and social equality solutions to provide both men and women the opportunity to succeed at home and at work. Yet some traditionalists united with feminists to critique the vulnerabilities of displaced homemakers - women who had engaged in years of unwaged homemaking only to be displaced from their vocations by widowhood or divorce. These women drew on previous experience in maternalist, racial equality, and anti-poverty movements. They sought solutions that included transferring the skills of homemaking into well-paid jobs in traditionally-male fields. They accomplished this by simultaneously praising the work of homemaking even as they criticized homemaking as a vocation that put women in a vulnerable economic position. The formation of a movement by and for homemakers crystallized, however, at the same time as the erosion of housewife as a crucial identity for women. Finally, I analyze the extent to which gender is caught up in the potentials and limitations of the housewife role by tracing the ways that Americans have envisioned the housewife as male. So long as the male homemaker was cast as exotic, role models and new precedents could be transformed into freak shows and warnings. Men who made the unusual choice to take on the role of family homemaker were further marginalized. Despite a sometimes overt emphasis on men's domesticity as a means of achieving social equality, the real efforts and the imagined experiences of the male housewife often ran counter to feminist goals. Varying from farcical to feminist, the successes and failures of these visions of male homemaking demonstrate the extent to which domesticity, economic dependency, and gender have been entangled in the American imagination. My dissertation underscores how women (and some men) adopted flexible definitions of homemaking to create complicated and sometimes fleeting alliances through which housewives organized. My research complicates the dichotomous stereotypes of the feminist and the antifeminist by exploring how both progressive and traditionalist women organized as housewives. Although my project considers media and pop culture, I rely primarily on archival research and published primary sources to examine the way that women claiming to be homemakers and mothers actively manipulated cultural understandings of those roles. The definitions they employed demonstrate how perceptions of homemaking are laden with multiple and complex meanings about sex, gender, class, race, citizenship, labor, religion, and identity.

Widowhood is an experience that typically brings about many changes in the lives of surviving spouses, and the resources available for coping may be limited, particularly for elderly persons. Specific variables which influence the ability of men and women to cope with the changes brought about by widowhood have not been identified completely. No one has examined the extent to which widowed persons are able to manage resources so they can continue performing personal and household functions. It is reasonable to assume that this type of continuity is a necessary foundation for overall adjustment to widowhood. Empirical data used in this study are from a larger project entitled "Continuity of Household Task Performance During Widowhood", supported by the AARP-Andrus Foundation. The Household Task Performance model was applied to examine gender differences in household task performance before and during widowhood and variables associated with strategy choice for maintenance of continuity of household task performance during widowhood. Respondents to the personal interviews were 173 household heads (38 males and 135 females), aged 60 to 91 years, who had been widowed 5 years or less and lived in Southwest Virginia. Respondents were located using public records and personal referrals. Widowers received more help than widows. Widowers widowed for longer time periods assumed personal responsibility for fewer tasks than their more recently widowed counterparts. Women widowed for shorter periods performed more of their own tasks than women widowed for a longer time. Both widows and widowers were maintaining continuity despite the generally lower skill level in household tasks for males Two strategies for maintaining this continuity were identified: (1) use and/or development of the widowed person's own resources, and (2) substitution of the labor of others for the performance of household tasks. Multiple regression analysis identified 5 predictors of household task performance strategy choice: health status, household task performance resources and resource demands, household task performance skills and knowledge, normative expectations for gender role, and initial adjustment difficulty. / Ph. D.

No description available.

PHD (African Studies) / Center for African Studies / The challenges facing divorcees when it comes to pastoral care and counselling are among the toughest to face members of the Reformed Churches South Africa (RCSA) in the Vhembe District today. There are many people in South Africa who are experiencing the pain of being divorced. The RCSA in the Vhembe District are also faced with this challenge and it affects their doctrines and their practical ministries. These challenges also affect the pastors of the RCSA. The aim of this research is to investigate the challenges that divorcees face regarding pastoral care and counselling in the RCSA in the Vhembe District, Limpopo, South Africa in order to develop an approach to pastoral care and counselling to support divorcees so that they may learn to cope with their challenges. Caring and counselling for the divorcees is the primary mission of the church. The study utilised a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive, and contextual design to obtain data from the participants within the RCSA in the Vhembe District. A sample of 30 participants (divorcees) from the RCSA in the Vhembe District was used. Data were collected on an individual basis by means of unstructured interviews. The qualitative data were collected and analysed using the six steps of open coding proposed by Tesch in an effort to understand personal experiences of divorcees. The research used Graham Redding’s approach to establish trustworthiness. The study adhered to four criteria to assess the value of the findings of qualitative research, namely credibility, applicability, consistency, and conformability. The ethical considerations were taken into account. The findings of this study show that divorcees experience many challenges, and that Reformed pastors are not equipped and not doing enough to address those challenges. This research helps to enhance the quality of pastoral care and counselling to the divorcees within the RCSA in the Vhembe District. The findings and recommendations of the study are useful in guiding all Reformed pastors in providing pastoral care and counselling to divorcees.