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This thesis traces the history and development of Ms. magazine, in its three incarnations, between 1972 and 1992. Since its inception as a distinctly feminist monthly, Ms. has drifted between two categories of popular cultural artifacts (mainstream consumer culture and feminist counterculture) while distingishing itself as the only national feminist monthly in the United States, a key economic and symbolic feminist institution. The author compares the economic bases, ideological orientations and readerships of Ms. three incarnations in order to examine and the ways in which an ideological vehicle negotiates a consumer setting like the women's magazine industry. While serving to highlight debates surrounding the limitations of liberal feminist ideology, the history and development of Ms. magazine also raises questions concerning the validity of categories like "mainstream consumer culture/feminist counterculture" where contemporary women's media are concerned.

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This study examined gender portrayals in the rhetoric of Beverly LaHaye. As the president of America's largest women's organization (Concerned Women for America), LaHaye has generated an enormous pool of rhetoric which is steeped in traditional gender expectations and conservative values. The thrust of LaHaye's perception of appropriate gender roles conceives of females as submissive and males as dominant. Despite her seemingly derogatory stance toward females, LaHaye's rhetoric and organization have proven remarkably popular and satisfying among American women.This analysis explored the schism between the feminist movement and antifeminist movement (as led by LaHaye) to determine how to best serve women. This study found that LaHaye holds a predominantly male worldview. This examination also found that LaHaye blends typically male and female communication styles to render an effective method of conveying her ideas.LaHaye's formula for helping women provides insight into the need for expansion of both the feminist perspective and feminist criticism as a method of rhetorical analysis. Further, this analysis presents the feminist movement with a challenge to offer women more choices about how to best conduct their lives in a manner that is personally fulfilling. This study maintains that among those choices should be the equally-respected option of being a "traditional" wife and mother. / Department of Speech Communication

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-155). / Microfiche. / x, 155 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

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Feminist critiques have demonstrated the problematic nature of marital and family life for women. Feminism has deconstructed traditional marriage and made apparent the potential overwhelming cost to women in financial, emotional, and physical dimensions. However, the experience of feminists who choose heterosexual marriage has not been addressed through research. What is not known is the extent to which such feminists are transforming marriage into a relationship that values both spouses. This study examined the influence feminism had on the marriage of heterosexual partners who were both self-identified feminists at the time of the study and prior to marriage. The guiding focus of the research asked what happens when feminists, dedicated to equality and the valuing of both spouses, choose to marry. Thus, the following research questions were posed: How do couples describe the impact of their feminist beliefs on their marriages? To what extent do couples talk about having a double consciousness of marriage, i.e., a realization of choosing a relationship that can lead to the devaluation of the woman? How do couples describe and interpret equality and inequality in their marriages? How does gender organize the couples' marriages and lives? The conceptual framework informing this study was a combination of feminist and general systems perspectives, A general systems perspective provided concepts such as system, process, and context while a feminist perspective elaborated on these concepts to illuminate the sociohistorical and cultural contexts in which women and men live and the power differentials within marriages. A feminist postmodern perspective highlighted the social construction of relationships and gender and the diversity of women's experience while also proposing a political agenda, i.e., criteria of what is liberating for women and a critique of the gendered nature of power differentials. Qualitative interviewing was the main method of data collection. Participants were recruited through referrals and advertisements placed in regional newspapers and regional and state newsletters of the National Organization for Women. Ten couples participated in the study. Criteria for inclusion in the study included the following: both the woman and the man assumed the label feminist prior to marriage; they believed women had historically and culturally been devalued and they worked against that devaluation in their own relationship; they were married for at least 5 years; and they were willing to be interviewed jointly and individually. The 20 participants (10 couples) were white, highly educated, and middle- to upper middle-class. They ranged in age from 30 to 77 years old. Length of marriage ranged from 5 to 22 years; the average was 11 and 1/2 years. A mixture of being raised by parents exhibiting behaviors typically associated with the other gender, the impact of the second wave of feminism as it hit college campuses in the late 1960s and 1970s, and the observation or direct experience of discrimination either in the classroom or in the workplace created a fertile soil in which the origins of feminist beliefs were encouraged to take root. Sharing similar world views was crucial in the couples' development of a relationship in which the woman felt safe to critique direct and observed instances of gender injustice. Men also initiated and participated in this criticism, thereby indicating their support of feminism. The blend of traditional and feminist ideological roots produced a reclamation of marriage. Couples described feminism as influencing their beliefs about equality within marriage by providing standards for interaction and motivating women to demand appropriate treatment and men to demand more from themselves in terms of relationship work. They discussed the double consciousness of married heterosexual feminists by relating their strategies for interacting with one another and the larger society. Through the process of communication, the couples built equality, but at times, i.e. through discourse, they also concealed inequality. Participants’ lives were organized by the gendered experiences of feminism as life-saving for women and life-enhancing for men. Moments of subordination and moments of empowerment were present in these marriages. The women described their attempts at going beyond the false dichotomy of children or career and the stereotype of the super woman to a form of marriage that required a second adult in the home who was willing to take on parenting and household responsibilities. These attempts were easy for some couples and more of a struggle for others. However, in all of these marriages, evidence existed of women's and men's dedication to equality and choices for women, awareness of the privileged status of men in society, and arrangement of their relationships to benefit women as well as men. Feminism provided the ideological and practical guidance to couples for this reclamation of marriage. / Ph. D.

This dissertation reveals that the American reception of evolution often hinged on the theory's implications for gender and that Darwinian ideas significantly shaped feminist thought in the U.S. While the impact of evolution on American culture has been widely studied, few scholars have done so using gender as a category of analysis. Similarly, evolutionary theory is largely absent from histories of American feminist thought. Yet, Darwin's ideas, specifically those in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), had profound ramifications for gender and sex. Nineteenth century scientists and laypeople alike eagerly applied Darwin's theories to the "woman question," generally to the detriment of women. At the same time, key female activists embraced evolution as an appealing alternative to biblical gender strictures (namely the story of Adam and Eve) and enthusiastically incorporated it into their speeches and writings. My work describes how women including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman utilized Darwinian principles to challenge traditional justifications for female subordination and bolster their arguments for women's rights. Furthermore, my research demonstrates that gender roles, particularly those pertaining to courtship, marriage, and reproduction, were reformulated in accordance with Darwin's theory of sexual selection, altering popular ideas about motherhood and paving the way for eugenics and birth control. My interdisciplinary project draws on scientific and mainstream publications, the feminist press, prescriptive literature, fiction, popular culture, and archival materials, and it explores both intellectual developments and their impact on people's daily lives. I argue that evolution shifted the terms of debate from women's souls to women's bodies, encouraged feminists to claim "equivalence" rather than "equality," inspired opponents and proponents of women's rights to ground their arguments in science (most frequently biology and zoology), destigmatized sex as a topic of scientific inquiry, and galvanized support for greater female autonomy in reproductive decisions. Looking at gender, religion, and evolutionary theory in concert not only helps us more fully comprehend the construction of gender and the development of American feminism, especially its troubled relationships with religion and science, it also enriches our understanding of the American reception of Darwin. / text

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 R69 / Master of Science

The premise of this dissertation is that the political literature and rhetoric of the two opposing sides (femininism and anti-femininism) in the struggle over the recognition and advancement of the rights of women in America illuminate the existence of at least two traditions of American political thought and practice. These two traditions are based on distinct epistemological premises about how an object or person is considered to be known. The epistemological categories explicated by F. S. C. Northrop ("concepts by postulation" and "concepts by intuition") and two of the categories of legal and ethical views developed by Northrop ("abstract contractual" and "natural history") provide the framework within which feminist and antifeminist political literature and rhetoric are examined. It is argued that feminism is informed by an abstract contractual legal and ethical view based on a postulational epistemology which considers the truly known individual to be an instance of deductively postulated universal laws. Anti-feminism is argued to be informed by a natural history legal and ethical view based on an intuitional epistemology which considers the truly known individual to be as given by the senses (which are informed in what is directly observed by customs and tradition). The distinct epistemological premises of feminists and anti-feminists and their divergent legal and ethical views are shown to inform and structure their positions on the issues of political authority and political membership, equality of rights before the law, and of the status of woman as a distinct and individual person. It is demonstrated that feminists define women as autonomous individual persons who are, for political and legal purposes, essentially similar to men. Thus, political authority relations, political membership, and rights before the law must recognize the equality, individuality, and autonomy of each person. Anti-feminists are shown to define women by their reproductive difference from men and to argue that men and women are, thus, essentially dissimilar. Woman, by nature, belongs in a family headed by man, which family is the unit of society and polity. Woman's rights and her relation to the polity are directly linked to her nature as mother-wife.