My thesis proposes a feminist-queer reading of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene in response to Julian Wolfreys’ “The ‘Endlesse Worke’ of Transgression”. I examine the challenges to male authority that the low-born poet, Spenser, faced when he presented his manual for the formation of new English subjects to his sovereign queen, Elizabeth I. The Prefatory Letter to Raleigh and passages from the 1590 version of the epic provide evidence to support the view that traditional hierarchical male/female binaries may have been destabilized by the presence of an unmarried queen. My thesis also supplements Wolfreys’ essay with historical information regarding Mary Tudor and Mary Stuart in order to underscore the ethnocentric aspect of the process of “othering” that takes place in The Faerie Queene.

My thesis is a call for the need of an intersectional awareness in the field of the commons, or the common or commoning. For that reason, I focus on a rather undertheorized subfield, the feminist commons because I deem that it promotes a more intersectional perspective than the male-dominated commons. My main effort concentrates to argue for the potentialities of an intersection between the commons and (feminist) decolonial project. Notions such as coloniality of power, the principle of intersectionality and the ethos of decoloniality help me to build my argument step by step. The thesis does not provide answers rather it poses questions and tries to open space for a fruitful experimentation.

Widows in Nigeria endure adverse and traumatic practices that affect their health, well-being, and rights as women. After decades of struggle and resistance against persistent widowhood practices, this study sought to portray in Nigerian widows, hidden strengths, resilience, and agency rather than their vulnerability and powerlessness. Analysis of secondary scholarship, interviews, and survey questionnaires reveal that some Nigerian widows are able to cope even as they navigate through the challenges and trauma of demeaning and stressful practices. The results also demonstrate that the ability to cope and thrive under stress and adversity links not only to an individual’s personal growth and well-being, but also to their ability to develop agency and empower themselves. This study has implications for female empowerment and sociocultural change. Additionally, the results suggest a need for future research and interventions that further develop the concept of resilience in Nigerian widows.

Of all human identity categories such as race, religion, culture, class and gender that a person might belong to, race and gender are arguably two of the most contentious in the world. This study takes gender as its main focus, exploring how gender, gender oppression, patriarchy and resistance are negotiated in selected dramatic literary works emanating from Africa’s two literary giants, Nigeria and South Africa. It thus aims to bring two distinct literary traditions into dialogue with one another in order to clarify our understanding of how gender is articulated and inscribed across different contexts. Selected works from Nigeria include Aetu (2006), Little Drops (2011), Abobaku (2015) all by a single playwright, Ahmed Yerima, who has been described as one of the most outspoken feminist playwrights in the country. Other plays from South African context include So What’s New? (1993) by Fatima Dike, Weemen (1996) by Mthali Thulani, Flight from the Mahabarath (1998) by Muthal Naidoo and At Her Feet by Nadia Davids (2006). Of particular interest in this study is the question of how these plays explore the specific forms of gender discrimination which arise in the context of religious, traditional and cultural practices such as domestic violence against women, child marriage, wife inheritance, polygamy and property-sharing after the death of a husband or father. These texts, all written from a feminist perspective, foreground different understandings of what a woman and a mother is in the African context. They also offer differing articulations of gender-based resistance. The study employs an eclectic blend of western and African feminist/womanist frameworks in order to decipher how these plays comment, and reflect, on the issue of gender inequality. In so doing, the aim is to bring these distinct theoretical and ideological traditions into dialogue with one another. A further aim is to assess to what extent these plays draw on, or are aligned with, various strands of western and African feminist theorizing whilst also offering an understanding of literary texts as sites of theory-making in their own right. The study further explores the echoes, conjunctions, entanglements and disparities that are revealed by bringing these texts from different contexts into dialogue with one another. In this process, the chapter also explores the extent to which these plays can be aligned with the often polarized discourses of western and African feminist theories, thus contributing to a broader understanding of gender, gendered societies and gender-based oppression in African contexts. Finally, this study seeks to arrive at a new theoretical feminist framework for reading these texts: what I have called ‘Consequentialist feminism’ is an approach which seeks to transcend the binaries between western and African feminist theorizing by focusing on the consequences of women’s choices in particular contexts of engagement and response. / Thesis (DLitt (English))--University of Pretoria, 2019. / English / DLitt (English) / Unrestricted

Abstract WHY WOMEN GIVE TO WOMEN: A PORTRAIT OF GENDER-BASED PHILANTHROPY AT A PUBLIC COLLEGE IN VIRGINIA By Amy Gray Beck, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2019 Chair: Katherine Cumings Mansfield, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations, School of Education, UNC Greensboro The cost of public higher education is steadily increasing, with state and federal government cutting its support year after year. Students are having to pay more out of pocket for classes and tuition, and institutions rely on private funding support to provide educational opportunities to students in need. Historically, fundraising operations in higher education have focused on a traditional solicitation model, focusing on fundraising from men in households, but savvy institutions have begun to focus on philanthropy from specific populations, including women, to increase dollars raised. Research shows women are more philanthropically generous than their male counterparts, especially when giving to education. The main purpose of this qualitative case study was to highlight the successes of a women and philanthropy program at William and Mary, a public college in Virginia, as it is the first and only women and philanthropy program in the country where the funds donated are given back to benefit women, as well as add to the growing body of literature on women and philanthropy, and the lack of literature that exists on women giving to women in higher education. The alumnae initiatives endowment funded by the Society of 1918 offers alumnae leadership development, networking opportunities, continuing education, empowerment, and more. Private funding in this case is enabling a social justice program to exist that otherwise would not be funded through tuition and state and federal funding. Interviews, observations, and document analysis were utilized to examine contextual factors contributing to the development of the Society of 1918 and motivations for members joining the Society at a $10,000 level. A feminist standpoint theoretical framework helped to develop meaning-making of alumnae’s motivations for joining the Society of 1918. Utilizing portraiture as a qualitative method, findings showed how gender and timely social justice movements played a role in influencing alumnae motivations to join the Society of 1918. Finally, best practices are shared for institutions considering a comprehensive women and philanthropy program whose private gifts benefit women.

This essay explores how the novel The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell depicts and criticises behaviours derived from deeply rooted patriarchal ideologies, traditional gender roles and sexist oppression. It aims to determine whether the novel encourages feminist values by examining the three main characters, Kitty, Esme and Iris, and how they relate to each other as well as to patriarchal structures and sexist oppression. Using feminist theory, the essay discusses what behaviours depicted in the novel are harmful towards or among women and what behaviours should be, and are, encouraged to strengthen sisterhood. It also discusses how the novel demonstrates how destructive patriarchy has been towards women through history and how acknowledging sexist and patriarchal structures can improve understanding of and solidarity between women. Essential findings include how Kitty assists in the oppression of her own sister in favour of patriarchy, and that the granddaughter Iris represents a liberated woman exhibiting positive solidary acts that reinforce feminist values. The essay concludes that O’Farrell’s The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is a feminist novel that depicts what is at cause when women harm other women and provides hope to its readers that change is in process.

Friendship is one of the pillars that supports satisfying, long-term, romantic relationships and marriage. Yet little is known about how romantic friendship is contextually experienced. This lack of knowledge limits the options of researchers and therapists. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to further substantiate a romantic friendship construct. The research question asked how friendship is experienced in heterosexual romantic relationships. Participants in two West Coast metropolitan areas, ages 18 to 29, were selected by convenience sampling. As per Giorgi's phenomenological method, themes were abstracted from the transcripts of focus group and individual interviews. The themes were then shortened and entered into an Atlas.ti software environment. Finally, they were coded into psychological language and analyzed. A romantic friendship affiliation was shown to be the ideal style of relationship for future long-term partnering. Yet the participants' actual lived experiences in serious romantic-friendship relationships were quite limited. Instead, their focus was on establishing economic independence and a full sense of adult identity, as well as improving their communication skills. Therefore, individual cases could not be contrasted, and substantive conclusions were not reached regarding the actual behavioral expression of heterosexual romantic friendship affiliations. A contrast study in Birmingham, Alabama, with participants with high IQs, had similar results. Both studies were supported by psychoneuroendocrine, attachment, social constructionist, and system theories. An important implication for social change was that researchers must account for the participants' ambivalence concerning long-term partnering, their alternative life-course choices, and their desires for economic independence, when studying young, urban, mobile, single-adult romantic relationships.

Educational access, achievement and opportunity for students and educators in U.S. educational institutions is influenced and often limited by gender. Although the U.S. Glass Ceiling Commission reports that the gender equity values, beliefs and commitments of institutional leaders are a key factor in reducing institutional gender inequities (U.S. Dept of Labor, 1995), very little is known about the current preparation or evaluation of educational leadership values, especially at the doctoral level (Hess & Kelly, 2007, Grogan & Andrews, 2002; Levine, 2005; Murphy & Vriesenga, 2004). This study utilized feminist content analysis as a conceptual framework and research methodology to examine the collective gender equity values, beliefs and commitments of educational leaders represented in a key textual artifact of doctoral study, the Educational Doctorate (Ed.D.) dissertation. This sequential mixed method content analysis examines 15,014 dissertation titles of Ed.D dissertations completed from 112 U.S. public doctoral granting institutions between 1998-2007 to identify 1185 dissertations indicating gender in their title. A purposeful sample of 177 abstracts was selected from emergent themes for further analysis. The final research phase examined a purposeful sample of 9 complete dissertation texts selected from the analysis of the abstracts. The research focused on two questions, 1.) How prevalent is gender focused inquiry in recent Ed.D. dissertation scholarship, from 1998-2007? 2.) What are the cultural gender beliefs and gender conceptualizations represented in Ed.D. dissertation scholarship from 1998-2007? The findings indicate gender focused inquiry is not prevalent in Ed.D. dissertation titles, in public doctoral granting institutions from 1998-2007; only 7.4 % indicated any mention of gender. The findings also revealed great institutional variation in the prevalence of gender focused dissertations in the 112 institutions examined. Three themes also emerged from patterns of representations illuminating problematic gender cultural beliefs, 1,) male leadership and intellectual authority is privileged, 2.) Black males are "othered", 3.) Latinas are silenced. Three additional problematic themes of gender bias are revealed because of scanty representation in the sample, 1.) LGTBIQ issues silenced, 2.) Title IX trivialized and 3.) Feminism marginalized. Each of these three gender focused categories represented less than 1% of the Ed.D. dissertations completed in U.S. public doctoral granting universities between 1998-2007. The findings have implications for program planning of doctoral Ed. D. programs for the development of gender equity dispositions. The findings also contribute to the discipline by adding to the knowledge of Ed. D. dissertation content. This report includes recommendation for future research and practice.

The aim of this essay is to analyse gender representations in Wuthering Heights byusing French literary criticism. French literary critics thought that the language ofliterature was predominantly phallocentric as male authors, who helped shape thatlanguage, dominated it. For female authors to be published, or have any kind ofrecognition for their work, they would therefore use male pseudonyms, as was the casewith Emily Brontë who was initially published as Ellis Bell. Hélène Cixous added to theliterary criticism by noting that the constructed language at the time depended on binaryoppositions such as, passive/active, weak/strong, and intuitive/theoretical, amongstothers. She suggested that these oppositions were applied to represent femininity andmasculinity where feminine attributes were negative and the masculine attributes beingpositive. In effect, the characters in literature having feminine attributes, although somebelonging to the male gender, would automatically mark them as the weaker sex and putthem in the negative category. This, she suggested, determined the outcome from theonset, as those characteristics that was deemed negative would eventually be eliminated,as the binary opposition were not able to co-exist. Kristeva who has theorised the notionof “abject” in her thesis Power of Horror, describes abject as something foul andgrotesque which is always applied to the feminine maternal figure, that also gives creditto Cixous’s theory about the feminine being seen as the negative.

This study is based on Swedish feminist foreign policy and how ideas about feminist peacebuilding have found their place in international peace and conflict studies. Since World War II, traditional security policy has been dominated by liberal explanatory models and strategies to achieve a more peaceful world order, and the main elements of liberal peace include democracy, international cooperation and free trade. Feminist theory criticizes the liberal view of peace by pointing out the meaning of human security rather than national security. The purpose of the study is to depict the type of peace that the Swedish government has worked for in Colombia and intends to answer the questions, what has the Swedish government's work for peace in Colombia looked like and what type of peace, feminist peace or liberal peace, can the work describe best? By using a qualitative content analysis as a method with an analysis tool that is built based on the theoretical framework, the study aims to more deeply examine the empirical material to depict what the government’s worked looked like during the peace process. The study shows that Sweden has worked for a feminist peace in the negotiations and statements that were directly linked to the peace process, but that the traditional liberal perspective still dominates in certain areas such as trade policy. The study contributes to an increased understanding of the development of Swedish feminist politics.