Although there is an increasing interest in the economic, educational and developmental roles of small-scale enterprises for women in the Third World, there is relatively little in the literature that provides detailed case descriptions and analysis of how and why some efforts "succeed." This exploratory study was designed to address this need. Based on a review of the literature and three intensive case studies in India, it attempts to discover the kinds of factors that contribute most significantly to the success of such small-scale enterprises from the perspective of the participants as well as to examine the different ways that "success" is or can be defined. Certain factors that supposedly help promote success are identified in the literature. For instance, education and business skills of participants appear to play a critical role in their ability to raise capital for establishing an enterprise. Other factors cited include community control of the enterprise, role of participants in decision making and problem solving, and the acquisition of new skills. The case studies are used here to reassess such assumed factors and to identify new types of factors related to economic success of small-scale enterprises for poor Third World women. In addition to "success" as an increase in income, the most commonly used indicator, the literature seems to suggest that there are important non-economic benefits which participants of small-scale enterprises also include in their definitions of success. Again, the field inquiry into the three cases in India explores the range of non-economic benefits perceived by participants as related to their small-scale enterprise. This provides a basis for an argument for a broader definition of "success" in planning, implementing, or evaluating such efforts. The literature reviewed includes that on small-scale enterprises with particular reference to women, as well as literature on women and economic development in India, to provide a context for the case studies. For the three case studies, ethnographic and qualitative interviewing methods were used. An inductive analysis of the data revealed factors in the following groupings: Factors Deriving from Organizational Design and Structure; Factors Deriving from Management and Administration; and Factors Deriving from Participant Characteristics. The non-economic benefits with implications for definitions of success are grouped under Skill Related Benefits, Benefits Related to Changes in Lifestyle, and Benefits Related to Personal Growth. Since this was an exploratory field study, one of the concluding chapters provides some important hypotheses for further investigation, and the other provides some recommendations for development agencies, educators, and researchers concerned with the topic. A sample questionnaire used in the field study is available in the Appendix, followed by an extensive bibliography.

The purpose of this study is two fold. First, it provides rich descriptive information on how seven women in the position of college president define and construct their work and secondly, it gathers information regarding their perceptions of the power of the presidency. This study incorporates a feminist paradigm throughout the research process. The research study is a collection of indepth interviews with seven female college presidents in New England. The sample was purposeful rather than random and the women were invited to participate based on diverse background, experience, and a willingness to engage in self-reflective dialogue. Participants are from public and independent two and four year institutions. The interview guide was utilized to collect the data and broad generalizations should not be construed from these data. Data analysis was approached with the feminist assumption that women are more likely to integrate the self with work and work with self. The approach that I have taken embraces the idea that it is important to understand not only the restrictive and narrow definitions that have prescribed roles for both men and women, but also women's subordinate position and marginal status in society. The data are organized into two areas, the first being "The Self in the Workplace". This section is designed to give insight into who the women are, what brought them to the position, their aspirations and their dreams for the future. The second section concentrates on "The Work of the President" and includes leadership and vision, management styles, decision making, and managing the job. Within both sections of the study a series of common threads emerge. The women in the study approach the presidency in a relational manner grounded in the context of the environment. The women grant great value to their relationships with the various constituencies in their respective institutions. Thus being relational rather than hierarchical in their interactions in the workplace is paramount. They view the presidency as expansive and inclusionary, and bring a collaborative, integrated approach to the position of president.

Because women's studies programs are a recent phenomenon, dating only from the 1980s, Latin American academicians, researchers and feminists have barely begun to explore the impact of women's studies programs on women students participating in them. This study is an effort to document the importance of women's studies programs in the development of feminism in Latin America and the empowerment of women through higher education. The primary method used in this study is qualitative research and ethnographic interviews to gather the data. I explore the experiences of six women students participating in three of the major women's studies programs in Latin America: El Programa Interdisciplinario de Estudios de la Mujer (The Interdisciplinary Women's Studies Program) of El Colegio de Mexico; El Programa Interdisciplinario de Estudios de la Mujer of La Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica; and the Carrera Interdisciplinaria de Posgrado de Especializacion en Estudios de La Mujer (Interdisciplinary Post-graduate Career Specialization in Women's Studies) of La Universidad de Buenos Aires. A general account of Latin American women's history and a review of the literature on feminist theories, and discussion of women's studies as a social movement are included in this dissertation. My intention is to bring forth new perspectives and interpretations that could contribute to both women's studies programs and to feminism in academe. I also aspire to help fill a gap in feminist scholarship by enabling Latina women to speak for themselves about the impact of women's studies and feminism on their lives.

Women represent less than three percent of engineering faculty and all indications are that the proportion of women in faculty positions is decreasing at a time when there is a critical shortage of engineering faculty. Qualitative interviews with ten women employed as faculty at two research universities were conducted. Findings indicate they were products of enriched environments and were influenced in their career choice by their fathers. All saw themselves as unusual in some way and described their educational experiences as enriched. The deviance theory, one that states women who chose nontraditional careers reject traditional family roles, was not supported. Participants successfully combined careers with family responsibilities and had partners in similar careers. Participants' partners were supportive. Findings indicate that participants enjoyed their academic careers, especially the freedom to conduct research of their own choosing. While adequately prepared for their roles as researchers and grant writers, they lacked needed formal training in teaching. Further findings indicate they exhibited token behaviors. Although they were highly visible, they attempted to diminish their visibility so as not to pose a threat to male colleagues. They were isolated and did not openly align themselves with feminist causes. They did not experience sexual harassment nor feel they had been seriously discriminated against in their careers. Participants suffered from concerns about their self-image and feared others would perceive they were hired because of gender rather than competence. While few had or needed same-sex role models while in school they willingly served as role models for students. It was concluded that comprehensive changes in all levels of education are needed if the numbers of girls interested in engineering careers is to increase. Systemic changes in how girls are treated in the classroom and how women faculty are supported once hired are needed if a critical mass of women faculty is to be achieved and their influence felt.

This dissertation explores the extent to which present day nursing education reflects its tradition-bound subservient roots. The purpose of this study was to identify behavioral phenomena which influence the perpetuation of sex-role socialization from teacher to student in the traditional milieu of nursing education. Using feminist and nursing literature as a theoretical base, the review of the literature revealed a dismal portrait of self perceived inferiority, oppression, and male domination of nurse educators in the academic environment. In contrast, the researcher found nurse educators do not succumb to environmental pressures. They do not conform to the feminine traits as defined in the review of the literature but are enthusiastic, confident, dedicated women who do not perpetuate the monastic military milieu or the rites of initiation in nursing. Nor do they socialize students into the doctor-nurse game or perpetuate the learned feminine traits of submission, passivity, conformity, and dependence. Through in-depth interviews containing 107 open-ended questions, 42 nurse educators in Massachusetts and California described their personal experience with sex-role socialization as a woman, as a student nurse, and as a teacher. Crosstabulation contingency tables compared question responses in cell categories by (1) individual response, (2) state, (3) academic agency, (4) type of nursing program from which they graduated, and (5) type of nursing program within which they are currently teaching. Computation of means, t-tests, and Chi Square demonstrated no significant statistical difference in this nurse educator population for the five categories. The type of school they graduated from or the type of program they are currently teaching do not matter. After maturation, these 42 nurse educators present the same profile of a dynamic, competent, hard-working professional, concerned for the influence she has on students and on the nursing profession. This study has determined that these women are positive role-models and cycle-breakers, encouraging students to be assertive, creative practitioners. This dissertation found that oppressive forces of sex-role socialization are not perpetuated by these 42 nurse educators but by others in the health care system. Implications for further research suggest that other members in the health care system be interviewed to ascertain who is responsible for perpetuating the feminine behaviors encountered in clinical agencies.

In spite of the proclivity to organize educational practices around the concept of gender and the pervasive presence of women in public school teaching, little research exists which focuses on women's experience teaching in a patriarchal school environment. Even less exists on the experience of women student teachers in that same school context. This dissertation describes and develops an understanding of what it means to be a female learning how to teach in public secondary schools during the student teaching phase of preservice education. It focuses on how connecting the individual experiences of these women provides insight into the gender issues embedded in their lives and in the secondary schools where they did their preservice work. The gender issues that emerged from the study center on women's self-esteem and ways of knowing, patriarchal attitudes and other forms of harassment by male students and faculty, and collaborative and non-collaborative relationships between women student teachers and male and female cooperating teachers. I have used in-depth, phenomenological interviewing to ask women to reconstruct their student teaching experience in the context of their life history and inquire how they understand the meaning of that student teaching experience (Seidman, 1991).

In this dissertation, I offer a theoretical concept to guide educational program development during refugee transition. The premise behind the concept is that women, as a category of people, routinely experience wide-ranging, often culturally sanctioned, forms of violence and discrimination. In 1995, one in every 130 people in the world are refugees and displacees. Of these, 80 percent are women and their dependents (Women's Commission, 1993). I suggest that a point of entry to combat female-directed injustice is during the time of greatest cultural disruption in the refugee experience. Three factors build together to create this potential. Most refugees migrate from a "developing" country to a "developing" country. A comparison of the global pattern of refugee migration and the pattern of female illiteracy indicate a marked correspondence. Coupled with the fact that most refugees are female, the first factor is that the typical refugee will be a female with a history of unequal access to education. The second factor is that during refugee transition, which I define as the times of greatest cultural disruption in the refugee experience, traditional norms are in flux. The refugee is propelled into places where traditional patterns of social interaction are ruptured and not yet reestablished. In this environment of basic survival, a woman performs roles shaped by necessity rather than the social norms of her home culture. The third factor is that during refugee transition women cross traditional gender roles. Research indicates that women may actually "gain" from refugee flight. The new environments call upon women to expand beyond traditionally restrictive roles to develop a wider, and more influential, range of public skills and responsibilities. I suggest that the convergence of these factors during refugee transition creates a potentially rich, and unusual, learning environment for women. For further analysis, the concept is applied to a case study of Iranian refugees in Turkey.

Using a feminist poststructuralist framework, "the self," language, gender, writing, and schooling are retheorized in this study. An undergraduate course focused on developing thinking in writing was taught to nine female students. The intent of the study was to learn more about writing as an active socio-cultural site where writers could be found negotiating their ways through networks of power relations. Data were gathered to provide a description of the content and process of the course and the creative space it provided for students to develop their own writing practices; to examine subjectivity in flux and how writing came to influence it; and to consider the students' thinking as conveyed in their writing in terms of its discursive content. Several significant features of the course emerged. Most importantly the course was structured around an array of intertextual layers, including continual opportunity for writers to hear each other's in-class writing and feminist readings. Other aspects that are discussed include the teacher-student relationship and the provocative edge that emerged in the course by setting aside a more traditional disciplinary focus and dramatically increasing polyvocality. The writing of two students across the semester is examined in-depth. Feminist poststructuralist theorists describe subjectivity as pieced together, as in process, and under construction. By looking at the students' writing, these features were found but from the point of view of lived subjectivity. Using Foucault's theory of discourses as a starting point, the following content was discovered in the students' writing and is explored as a function of discourse: struggles within heterosexual relationships; preoccupation with the female body; and New Age Thinking. The intertextual layers of the course together offered these female student writers an alternative version of the social world. The writing did not bring the students to any definitive point, but rather it became a way for each to articulate and follow her own movement in and out of struggle. These writers negotiated their way through these relations of power at the same time that a new subject position--that of female thinker/writer--presented itself through the course structure.

During the past two decades women have entered the workforce in record numbers; they currently comprise nearly 48% of the workforce. Although their presence has been felt in occupations that have been traditionally held by men, their numbers remain concentrated in occupations that have been traditionally held by females. Using a grounded theory approach, this qualitative research looked at women's career decision-making to see to what extent marriage and family issues played a role in their career decisions. Although previous research has focused on such factors as personal characteristics and parent-child relationships as they relate to women's choices of traditional or nontraditional occupations, few studies have explored the relationship of women's career choices and potential marriage and family. Through a comparison of women who are currently working in traditional occupations with women who are working in nontraditional fields, this study explored women's perceptions of balancing future marriage and family roles; the role that sequencing plays in future role balancing; and the impact of women's concerns about future role balancing on their choices of traditional or nontraditional careers. Ten college graduates who chose traditional occupations and ten graduates who chose nontraditional occupations were interviewed. The tape recorded interviews were transcribed, marked, labeled, and grouped in categories. Passages within each category were then reviewed to synthesize the material. The final part of the process involved a review of the interview material in order to identify new learning regarding the impact of potential marriage and family on women's career decisions. The themes identified through the interviews are consistent with the summary of major barriers to and facilitators of women's career choices that are identified by Betz (1994). Those participants who chose to major in fields that are nontraditional for women indicated that they chose those fields based on their skills and interests and believed that they could "fit" family into their careers. All of the participants discussed the need for flexibility of schedules to accommodate roles associated with marriage and family.

The purpose of this study was an exploration of the process(es) of Jewish American Identity Development in Conservative Jewish women. It sought to explore the development of Jewish identity among women of the Conservative sect. Since there were no known studies on the process of Jewish American identity development, this study was considered exploratory research in this area. Therefore, instead of specific hypothesis testing, the present study sought answers to a set of general research questions: How do women describe their Jewish experience? Do or did Jewish women try to hide their Jewishness? How do women resolve the fact that they are Jewish? What precipitated the decision to accept/reject their Jewishness? Are there any specific patterns and/or sequential stages of development that appear with regard to the Jewish identity development process for this sample? Methodology. A qualitative research method was used since this was an exploratory study aimed at generating a theory of the process of Jewish American identity development. As its methodological framework, the study utilized the work of Glaser and Strauss (1968) in The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Twelve Conservative (second or third generation Ashkenazim) Jewish women made up the sample. Results and Conclusions. Findings from this study did not reveal a sequential model of Jewish American identity development within this population. What did emerge was a picture of a continuum of responses related to racial identity development issues. Further analysis also seemed to indicate that exposure to diversity increased the likelihood of a different pattern of responses than if one remains closely and consistently associated and identified with members of one's own group. This pattern of response was typified by a higher degree of acceptance of people who are different, an awareness of the oppression of one's own group, a realization that one's oppression connects with the oppression of other groups and there appeared a certain level of political consciousness.