Bibliography: leaves 91-107. / Commencing with an abbreviated herstorical review of the various strands that comprise feminism's rich tapestry, this study proceeds with an enquiry into the postmodern feminist challenge against patriarchal ideological extravagances that have valorized Enlightenment significations of knowledge. Building on the postmodern feminist insight, that the discourses that constitute women as deficit Other permeate every aspect of the social configuration, language as a social and cultural construct is examined with a view to ascertaining the extent to which it has aided and abetted in the definition, deprecation and exclusion of women and our realities in a male supremacist society. In surveying the sexual/textual pedagogic terrain, the study proceeds from the premise that texts as cultural artifacts are crucial in the transmission of cultural attitudes, values, and the construction of gendered identities. Exploring the Communication, Literacy and Language component of the Outcomes-Based Learning document, and the interim core English second language syllabus, currently at the centre of educational debate, the study attempts to show that despite the documents' rhetoric to promote gender sensitivity and inclusivity, their allegiance to androcentric multilingual and multicultural concerns entrench phallogocentric binarism, thus making them complicit in furthering patriarchal ideology. The study concludes with a few recommendations for further research in the area of feminist pedagogy.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)-- University of Sydney, 2005. / Title from title screen (viewed 30 October 2009). Includes tables and questionnaires. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Education and Social Work. Degree awarded 2005; thesis submitted 2004. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

This study focuses upon the relatively unexplored area of sexual harassment in British universities. In sum, the thesis suggests that although MacKinnon's (2004) aim is to enable women to feel more powerful and less stigmatised, the contribution of feminist harassment discourses may, in part, generate in some women an understanding of powerlessness and vulnerability. In particular, it suggests seemingly prevailing discourses surrounding sexual harassment in higher education and considers if and how the women interviewed define themselves through these discourses. Thus, by exploring the power effects of and resistances to these suggested prevailing discourses, it is possible to infer the degree to which these discourses may have constituted the participants' subjectivities. Further, the thesis argues that feminist harassment discourses may have generated specific effects of power with regard to my participants. That is to say, many of my participants seem to understand sexual harassment as exploitative behaviours rooted in the unequal distribution of ascribed power in higher education. Feminism's understanding of power as a static and gendered appears to have generated for the participants, at least in part, the understanding that sex at work is used to humiliate and degrade women, maintaining and reproducing ascribed notions of power. For this research, twenty-four unstructured interviews were carried out with women who had identified themselves as having experienced sexual harassment within higher education, either as a student or a member of staff, or who had witnessed events they had defined as sexual harassment. This was a passionately interested form of inquiry, recognising the partial nature of knowledge and identifying my political positionings (Gill 1995; Aranda 2006). The analysis is Foucauldian oriented, understanding power as fluid - rather than possessed - and as generating particular ways of being. In addition, although it notes that the participants did resists specific effects of power, this resistance always takes place from a new point of power and does not, therefore, carry us beyond power into a power free space. The prevailing discourses suggested from my data are: the 'grades for sex' discourse; the 'all boys together' discourse; the 'trustworthy lecturer' discourse; the 'knickers in a twist' discourse; and the 'sexual harassment as unwanted sexual behaviour' discourse. Supervisors: Dr. Kristin Aune and Dr. Gordon Riches

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 284-302).

This study provides detailed accounts of the perspectives on teaching and learning experienced by the instructors and participants in three career exploration programs for women. One of the programs was located at a community college, one at a private college, and one was offered through a non-profit agency. The perspectives of the women are represented by each individual's expressed attitudes, feelings, and ideas about how they experienced teaching and learning. I also examine and relate the accounts of the women to the ways in which teaching processes and learning objectives were created, influenced, and/or constrained by the broader social and administrative context in which the programs take place. Therefore, the study addressed the following broad questions: (1) What values and attitudes toward teaching and learning are expressed by instructors and how do they shape the pedagogical interactions that take place in these career education programs? (2) What has been the participants' experience of learning in these programs? And, (3) In what ways does the social, institutional, and political context in which the programs take place affect the teaching/ learning environment? This study originates from my interest as a feminist educator to gain a greater understanding of how critical and feminist pedagogical approaches are manifested in actual practice, in this case, three particular career exploration programs. Information for the study was gathered from program instructors through semi-structured interviews; through an informal focus group in each program with volunteer students; and by reviewing relevant program related materials. After providing detailed accounts of the perspectives of the instructors, participants, and descriptions of each program, the external factors which create, influence, and constrain the nature of the programs, and the voices of the instructors and participants are explored in relation to the literature reviewed for the study. This analysis revealed that the instructors employed teaching approaches which are consistent with the values and aims of critical feminist pedagogy. However, teaching approaches were also applied which appear to reside within traditional educational approaches. Thus, in these particular contexts, the instructors created and acted within a teaching-learning environment which both reproduced and challenged the status quo. The methodological approach utilized in this study illustrated how adult educators concerned with the liberatory possibilities of adult education must invariably operationalize these ideas in complex, constrained, and often contradictory social sites which act to shape the possibilities of instruction. It did so by directing attention to both the social actors and the social and political processes that act to create and organize specific adult education activities.

Knowledge production or research in South Africa, as elsewhere in the world, does not occur within 'innocent' spaces devoid of personal, social, political, economic and cultural contexts. Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences has been largely the domain of white, male academics operating within positivistic, western, or eurocentric paradigms that have consequently cast all differing modes of knowledge production as 'other'. Research has been 'normalised' within particular frames of reference that have often served to marginalize knowledge production emanating from other contexts such as a feminist perspective or a black perspective. This thesis presents a critical analysis of the participation of women academics in research in the Humanities and Social Sciences in South Africa. I argue in this study that the discourses and practices of the academy have traditionally operated to marginalize, and continues to marginalize women effectively excluding them from the arena of research. Whilst there are many studies that have been conducted investigating women in academia, the emphases have been essentially on establishing baseline data such as the numbers and positions women occupy and explanations for the situations that exist. There are, however, very few studies that have extended the analysis to focus on women as researchers and knowledge producers within academia as is the case with this study. I also advance the analyses by arguing for a shift from the widely accepted conceptions that cast women academics as the problem and focus attention instead on the often hostile culture or climate of academia. I argue further that the historical exclusion of women and more especially black women, from the production of knowledge or research has contributed to the exclusion of women from positions of power in the social, cultural, political, economic and academic contexts. My own passion for these issues is directly linked to a conviction that in its public absence, and in the assumption that knowledge about gender is largely irrelevant to the possibility of social justice, lies some of the deep roots of women's complex degradations. This study grew out of my participation in the former Centre for Science Development's (now part of the National Research Foundation) audit of women academics and researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences in South Africa and was carried out in three phases. The first phase entailed a secondary analysis of the audit data, drawing comparisons between the national findings and the findings for the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Besides conducting a general analysis the data was also disaggregated according to the historically designated racial categories to establish how black women, in particular, were faring. Having established a statistical picture, the second phase was concerned with exploring the qualitative understandings of women academics in research, through the eyes of six black women academics from KwaZulu-Natal. The six women in the study were selected from the University of Durban-Westville, the University of Zululand (both historically disadvantaged institutions) and the University of Natal (a historically advantaged institution). Although it is my contention that all research is necessarily autobiographical, the third phase of the study turned my 'subtext' of being the researcher who is simultaneously 'other' into 'text'. In the autobiographical data I author and reflect on my own experiences as an academic and researcher who is 'other'. Conducted in a style that challenges the mainstream or what is described as 'male-stream' conventions and understandings of research practice, I inscribe the personal into the 'scientific' by employing an autobiographical, feminist 'gaze' throughout this study. The narrative style of communicating parts of the study to the audience, and my attempt to blur the divide between researcher and researched, express a significant feminist desire to infuse the generic aspects of feminist theory, feminist methodology, feminist practice and feminist politics into each other. Finally the insights gained from this study about the general participation of women academics in research and more especially, the position and experiences of black women academics, including myself, achieve many objectives. Not only does it provide baseline information for the province of KwaZulu-Natal in relation to the national trends but also serves to unpack this baseline information with respect to the historically designated racial categories and deepens our understandings of the problems through insights into the day-to-day lived experiences of black women in particular. All of which are integral to informing equity and redress initiatives designed to bring about transformation and democratisation in the arena of research in the humanities and social sciences. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Durban-Westville, 2000.

The thesis offers a post hoc account of three pieces of research relating to women's adult education which were camed out by the author over a penod of about fifteen years. In the process the thesis engages with a number of themes and issues in and around feminist theory and practite and adult education theory and practice. Radical traditions in adult education - particularly femimst-inspired traditions - are examined as spaces for the democratic production of "really useful knowledge". Changing meanings of feminist research and radical adult education are explored, as is the relationship between abstract knowledge and everyday knowledge. Developments in feminist epistemology are drawn on and related to a social justice agenda for adult education Through a critique of my own practice. I suggest that feminists and adult educators are well-placed to pursue a democratising project geared to including previously excluded groups in the production of legitimated knowledge. The thesis argues that we need to develop an understanding of our practices which combines historical, contextual understandings with an appreciation of what changed social and cultural conditions mean for the pursuit of any democratic knowledge-producing project.

Zugl.: Bielefeld, Univ., Diss.