0 Abstract The use of educational interventions to increase female educational attainment in developing countries has the potential to both provide women with more advantageous economic opportunities and contribute to economic growth. Achieving gender equality in education is an important first step towards achieving gender equality in the labor market. This thesis examines educational intervention programs that promote female education in rural Cambodia, and focuses in particular on conditional cash transfers. One such conditional cash transfer program in Cambodia is examined in more detail to determine its effectiveness. A qualitative evaluation was conducted in the form of focus groups and interviews with students, parents, and community members in the villages where the program was implemented. While the results of the study confirm the effectiveness of conditional cash transfers in increasing female attendance in school, the evaluation also revealed other factors that influence girls to stay in school. The study concluded that increasing the number of university-educated females in a girl's life through a mentoring program could have a positive effect on female educational attainment. Though further quantitative study is needed to investigate the effectiveness of such an intervention, this approach...

The purpose of this study was to compare indicators of female empowerment gathered in the Demographic Health Survey, conducted in India as the National Family Health Survey. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is a country-wide, nationally representative survey that collects important information on household characteristics, health information, and other topics, such as family planning. Two different years, NFHS-2 in 1999 and NFHS-3 in 2006, of the NFHS were compared to examine areas of progress, change, or lack of change in the selected indicators of female empowerment. Specifically, the level of decision-making and autonomy was assessed through the questions located in the Women’s Questionnaire of the NFHS. These data sets from NFHS-2 and NFHS-3 were used in this research. Two specific questions were selected as indicators of the level of independent decision-making for currently married women who participated in the survey. These questions pertained to the decision on personal healthcare and the ability to choose independently to stay with relatives. The logistical regression model revealed a positive change in the level of decision-making between the two survey years, with the range of odds ratios being 0.90 to 1.36. The largest difference occurred in the rural residents. In both measures, the youngest women had the smallest percentage of individuals with high autonomy and mobility. Overall, the study revealed an increase in the decision-making power of women but the majority of women still lack a high degree of freedom and autonomy.

My dissertation examines the unacknowledged role of negative female models from traditional literature in constructing the modern woman in China. It draws upon literary and historical sources to examine how modern cultural figures resuscitated and even redeemed qualities associated with traditional shrews in their perceptions and constructions of the new woman across the first half of the twentieth century. By linking the literary trope of the shrew, associated with imperial China, with the twentieth-century figure of the new woman, my work bridges the transition from the late-imperial to the modern era and foregrounds the late-imperial roots of Chinese modernization. The scope of my dissertation includes depictions of shrews/new women in literary texts, the press, theater, and public discourses from the Republican to the Socialist period. Although there exists a rich body of work on both traditional shrew literature and the new woman narrative, no one has addressed the confluence of the two in Chinese modernity. Scholars of late imperial Chinese literature have claimed that shrew literature disappeared when China entered the modern age. Studies on the new woman focus on specific social and cultural contexts during the different periods of modernizing China; few scholars have traced the effects that previous female types had on the new woman. My research reveals the importance of the traditional shrew in contributing to the construction and reception of the new woman, despite the radically changing ideologies of the twentieth century. As I argue, the feisty, rebellious modern women in her many guises as suffragette, sexual independent, and gender radical are female types grafted onto the violent, sexualized, and transgressive typologies of the traditional shrew. My research contributes to the studies of Chinese modernity and the representations of Chinese women. First, it bridges the artificial divide between modern and traditional studies of China and expands the debates about the nature of Chinese modernity. Second, it brings to light the underexamined constructions of the new woman as an empowered social actor through her genealogical connections to the traditional shrew. Third, it provides a methodology for rethinking the contested depiction of women in Chinese modernity.

This thesis investigates the impacts and determinants of unequal gender relations within households in Uganda. The first topic addressed is the impacts of intrahousehold bargaining power on female agricultural labour supply in Uganda. There have been relatively few studies in Africa and Uganda in particular on this very important issue—mainly due to lack of appropriate data. I have accessed and used a unique merged cross-section dataset that combines individual women’s information and household level indicators of agricultural production. The 2005/06 Uganda National Household Survey (UNHS) and Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS) merged cross-sectional dataset for the first time captured indicators of women’s status within households and at the same time captured detailed agricultural data—especially relating to: labour allocation, types of agricultural activities, and nature of crop production—whether cash crops or food crops. Our results indicate that women with greater bargaining power contribute more to agricultural production and any continued gender discriminations is bound to affect agricultural production negatively. With regard to coffee production—Uganda’s leading cash crop, we find that increasing household coffee crop activities are also associated with reducing female labour allocation to agricultural production. The second topic adopts an ordinary least squares and marginal probit approaches in examining the impacts of female bargaining power on multi dimensional indicators of household health in the context of a country with very poor indicators of health status like Uganda. We use a sample of 6,600 children aged less than 5 years and 4,700 married women from two cross sectional surveys in 2000/1 and 2006 to examine how female bargaining power impacts on children’s anthropometric outcomes; children’s use of vaccination services; a woman’s nutritional status; and woman’s use of reproductive health services. We find that bargaining power as measured by an index for a couple’s relational indicators has minimal impacts on either children’s or women’s health status. Instead, it is mainly indicators of household welfare status that matter most—despite the presence of free public health care in Uganda. The third topic of the thesis examines female empowerment, as captured by participation in decision-making in the context of a country with strong patriarchal gender norms, such as Uganda. We use a sample of 9,800 married women from two cross-sectional surveys in 2000/1 and 2006, who were asked, “Who has the final say?” with respect to four major household decisions: the woman’s own health; large household purchases; and daily household purchases; and visiting family or relatives. These data allow us to shed light on whether the characteristics for empowerment are similar across different domains of decision-making and the extent to which cultural norms, as captured by ethnicity, constrain female empowerment in Uganda. We find that graduating from secondary school and ethnicity proxies are significantly related to empowerment in different domains. Furthermore, our results are a robust to choice of empowerment indicator used.

<p>The aim of this study is to investigate the role of female empowerment and NGOs in HIV-prevention. A case study from Babati, northern Tanzania, is presented as part of my investigation and will affiliate theory with reality. Further the study is based on feminist and postcolonial theory as well as gender perspectives on HIV and AIDS.</p><p>A persons gender determines how vulnerable that person is to HIV and related consequences; I will claim that HIV and AIDS threaten women to a greater extent then men and that women’s abilities to empowerment are negatively affected as well. I will also claim that female empowerment is a necessary mean to prevent HIV and that this involves a more profound change than solely equal distribution of resources.</p><p>My study will show how female subordination permeates all societal structures and how this is perceived by NGOs and others in Babati when addressing the HIV- pandemic and its effect on women. I will describe the grass-root actions taken by the NGOs to deal with this and what obstacles they encounter.</p>

This study analyzes female friendship in four novels written by black diasporic women and examines the impact of race, class and gender on women’s relationships. The novels emphasize how women face the challenges of patriarchal institutions and other attempts to subjugate then through polygamy, neo-colonialism, constraints of tradition, caste prejudice, political instability and the Biafra war. This dissertation uses characterization and plot analysis to explore the different stories and messages the novels portray. As findings this study foregrounds the healing powers of female bonding, which allows women to overcome prejudice and survive, to enjoy female empowerment, and to extend female friendship into female solidarity that participates in nation building. However, another conclusion focuses on the power of patriarchy which constitutes a threat to female bonding and usually causes women’s estrangement.

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of female empowerment and NGOs in HIV-prevention. A case study from Babati, northern Tanzania, is presented as part of my investigation and will affiliate theory with reality. Further the study is based on feminist and postcolonial theory as well as gender perspectives on HIV and AIDS. A persons gender determines how vulnerable that person is to HIV and related consequences; I will claim that HIV and AIDS threaten women to a greater extent then men and that women’s abilities to empowerment are negatively affected as well. I will also claim that female empowerment is a necessary mean to prevent HIV and that this involves a more profound change than solely equal distribution of resources. My study will show how female subordination permeates all societal structures and how this is perceived by NGOs and others in Babati when addressing the HIV- pandemic and its effect on women. I will describe the grass-root actions taken by the NGOs to deal with this and what obstacles they encounter.

In this paper, I analyze the impact of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) on female empowerment in India. In defining female empowerment, I consider the three dimensions of agency: social autonomy, economic autonomy, and mobility. Using nationally-representative data of 2012 from the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS), I find that these information communication technologies, measured by ownership and use, have positive and significant impacts on female agency and decision-making abilities. I extend my analysis to two types of media: computers and mobile phones. These results persist even after accounting for the effects of education, income, and age of women.

The study investigates female empowerment through online entrepreneurship on Taobao in Chinese society, from female entrepreneurs’ individual perspectives. Thus, the study is positioned in the dynamic e-commerce landscape of China.   This small-scale case study has been conducted, which involves 14 female online storeowners on Taobao. Online female entrepreneurs constitute the base of this study, and share their accounts of the dramatic changes in their lives after they initiated their online businesses. The entire study departs from their actual experiences and opinions, which provide multiple perspectives, so as to garner further insights into the dominant research of female empowerment within the context of e-commerce. Their actual experiences and accounts are interpreted and examined, based primarily on Sen’s capability approach, while their actual capabilities and functionings are evaluated, based on the selected aspects of their situations.   This study claims that even though the female online storeowners believe they have a higher autonomy in managing their time and household duties, and an ability to act according to their will to achieve what they desire, the female online storeowners still do not regard themselves as entrepreneurs. The enhancements in the capabilities of the female online storeowners and their achieved functionings do not necessarily go beyond the online environment. This study aims to provide a solid departure for any further investigations into women’s empowerment through e-commerce on a societal level.

My thesis proposes a female community and maternal health care center, run by the local Kablas themselves, that is linked to the Tangier hospital in order to provide all necessary medical supplies and offer prosperous opportunities to the local commnunities traditional birth attendants and girls.Linked to this, my thesis proposes a maintained “garden of health”, where all local medicinal species of plants are grown and nurtured and the knowledge around their healing properties is shared, in order to conserve both knowledge and species around the local realm of ethnopharmacy regarding female health.As this project is dedicated to a Muslim community, that is economically and socially lacking hope in their futures. As it is part of their spiritual practice to surround yourself with holy writings, and symbols, I dedicated the methodology of my design around the theme of Islamic pattering. By using the pattern’s infrastructure to inform the design of this building, additional meaning and profound recognition is put on to a group of people that is so far often forgotten or mistreated.