<p> This article considers the gendered processes of social change in Nepal. In particular, I examine how young working class women in urban Nepal articulate their modern subjectivities. In the last thirty years women have been making significant inroads into Nepal&rsquo;s public sphere, troubling long-held normative assumptions about women&rsquo;s place in modern Nepal. In particular, historically dominant high-caste Hindu norms that disapprove women&rsquo;s public visibility and mobility are challenged by new opportunity structures for women and an emergent structure of feeling advocating women&rsquo;s equal participation in Nepal&rsquo;s development projects. Rapid democratization of the political sphere, urbanization, and expansion of capitalist markets has precipitated enormous shifts in Nepal&rsquo;s social organization including how women from diverse caste and ethnic backgrounds participate in the newly monetized economy as laborers and consumers. Young working class women have unprecedented access to disposable income. With their wages, they enjoy the pleasures of purchasing power and, through consumptive practices, craft their identity as modern commodity consumers. At the same time, as participants in the public sphere of wage labor, working class women are deeply aware of the social risks they are taking as publicly visible women. These risks include the danger of being labeled &ldquo;over modern&rdquo; and &ldquo;open&rdquo;&ndash;descriptors with undertones of sexual immorality. Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic research conducted with one group of young working class women: female trekking guides, I contextualize my informants&rsquo; experiences of wage earning and consumption. I explore the justifications my informants use to legitimate their public visibility and the pleasure they take in commodity consumption as well as the strategies they deploy to counter negative stereotypes associated with their status as public women. I end with a discussion of anxiety as a productive force in the lives of my informants and show how tensions between the pleasures of purchasing power and the dangers of being labeled &ldquo;over modern&rdquo; bracket their experiences of day-to-day living.</p>

<p> Surveillance and epidemiological studies over the last number of years show that HIV incidence has remained relatively stable, and even increased in some populations. Ironically, some of the most substantial increases have been seen in the very populations that have been most heavily targeted for HIV prevention interventions. This suggests that current prevention models, which primarily emphasize rational thought process, may be neglecting some important mechanisms that influence or cause high-risk sexual behavior. This study examines how non-rational thought processes may relate to high-risk sexual behavior in the face of social stressors. Grounded in Carver&rsquo;s &amp; Scheier&rsquo;s (1996, 1998) Self-Regulatory Failure Model, which suggests that under certain circumstances, individuals may shift from abstract goals to more immediate sensory oriented goals. I explored a model that includes gay-related discrimination, hate crimes, and social stressors as predictors of high-risk sexual behavior, mediated by negative affect. I also explore whether the putative link between negative affect and high-risk sexual behavior is moderated by sensation seeking and avoidant coping personality styles. Lastly, I conducted exploratory analyses on the role alcohol may play in this model. The study employed a two stage purposive sampling procedure: First, 20 different U.S. media markets were selected at random; and next, individuals were recruited from within those media markets to participate in an online survey about these topics. Because the outcome data were counts of sexual behavior with a large proportion of zero responses, I employed Zero Inflated Poisson regression modeling. This modeling procedure allows one to examine if different variables predict initiation of behavior versus frequency of behavior. The results show partial support for the hypothesized model. Interpersonal stressors and discrimination appear to be consistent predictors of high-risk sexual behavior in this sample; however, the relationship to the outcomes differ for initiation of behavior as opposed to frequency of behavior, and further by type of sexual behavior. Hate crime rates showed little ability to predict high-risk sexual behavior outcomes. There is tentative evidence for distancing forms of coping as moderators of the relationship between negative affect and high-risk sexual behavior. Negative affect did not emerge as a mediator in the primary model examined in this study; although, negative affect was independently related to some sexual behavior outcomes. When alcohol use during sex was added as part of the exploratory analyses, negative affect emerged as a mediator for some high-risk sexual behavior outcomes. Exploratory analyses also revealed relationships between alcohol with sex, discrimination, and social stressors that suggest a strong interplay between all four variables and the sexual behavior outcomes. Hate crimes, however, were still mostly unrelated to high-risk sexual behavior in the exploratory analyses. Overall, these results point to a dynamic, complex, and non-linear set of relationships between interpersonal stressors, affect, sexual behavior, and alcohol use. Larger sample sizes, longitudinal study designs, and more granular measures of affect may help to clarify the causal relationships between these constructs. These results have implications for prevention interventions that emphasize emotional self-regulation at the individual level and address discrimination and stigma at a structural level.</p>

<p> The study investigated the impact of ethnicity and gender on sexual orientation disclosure in the workplace. A total sample of 129 African American lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) workers between 20 and 61 years of age completed an online survey on PsychData. Respondents were given several measures to determine their ethnicity, gender conformity, and workplace sexual identity coping strategies. A 2x2 multivariate analysis of variance was used to examine the differences between the independent variables (gender conformity/nonconformity and ethnic identity) and dependent variables (passing, covering, implicitly out, and explicitly out). Based on the minority stress model, the research questions focused more on passing and covering coping strategies among LGB individuals who have dual minority identities (i.e., sexual orientation and African American ethnicity). No significant differences were found in terms of using passing and covering coping strategies among LGB individuals who identified with their African American ethnicity combined with gender-nonconforming behaviors. This may have been due to several factors such as a restricted sample size, change or shift in social stereotyping, or the contradicting feelings or concerns of LGB workers with regard to disclosing their sexual orientation. Although previous researchers posited that LGB individuals have a fear of being discriminated against and rejected in the workplace, there are few laws that prevent sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, leaving the LGB individual to engage the continuum of coping strategies. Methodological implications and limitations of the study are discussed, and suggestions for future research are presented.</p>

<p> Traditional femininity is a construct that impacts women throughout their development and manifests through inauthenticity in relationships, self-objectification and inauthentic sexuality. Traditional femininity has been associated with greater depression, body shame, dissociation, and negative sexual outcomes. Traits of traditionally defined femininity can impede women&rsquo;s ability to assert their sexual wants and needs and can increase the likelihood of negative health outcomes and negative psychological consequences, all of which impact relationship satisfaction and sexual well-being. To date, the majority of research in this area has focused on adolescent and college aged women. The current study addressed the gap in existing research by focusing on women in their 30s (<i>n</i>=146) and women in their 60s (<i> n</i>=81). The study assessed their level of traditional femininity ideology (TFI) and exploring whether their degree of TFI impacted their sexual well-being. The study took a quantitative approach and 230 participants were recruited through the internet to complete the studies survey. Results indicated that there was no significant difference between the two age cohorts on a measure of inauthenticity in relationships. Participants in their 30s were found to engage in greater self-objectification than the 60s cohort, and the study found that women in their 30s enjoyed sexualized attention to a greater degree than did the women in their 60s. Although the study had hypothesized that there would be a relationship between the participants&rsquo; level of TFI and their sexual well-being, no relationship was found. Implications for future research and application for clinical practice are discussed.</p>

“They opened up a whole new world”, or something like it, was a phrase I heard repeatedly when I spoke to women about their memories of magazine reading in the interwar years. How the magazine operated as an imaginative window, a frame, space or mirror for encountering, shaping, negotiating, rethinking, rejecting, mocking, enjoying, the self and others became the central question driving this thesis. The expansion of domestic ‘service’ magazines in the 1920s responded to and developed a new female readership amongst the middle classes and working-class women, preparing the way for high-selling mass-market publications. The multiple models of modern womanhood envisaged in magazines, meanwhile, from the shocking ‘lipstick girl’ of the mid-1920s to the 1930s ‘housewife heroine’, show that what being a woman and modern in the period meant was far from settled, changed over time and differed according to a magazine’s ethos and target readership. In a period that witnessed the introduction of the franchise for women, divorce legislation, birth control, the companionate marriage, cheap mortgages, a marriage bar in the workplace, growth in the number of single women and panic over population decline, amongst other things, magazines helped resolve tensions, set new patterns of behaviour and expectations. This thesis, which examines the magazine as a material artefact produced in a specific historical context, argues that its complex ‘environment’ of coloured pictures, inserts, instructional photographs, escapist fiction, chatty editorial and advertising opened women up to conscious and unconscious desires to be a sports woman, a worker, a mother, a lover, or to look like their favourite film star; a ‘window’, that is, through which women without the benefit of £500 a year and a ‘room of their own’ could gaze and imagine themselves, their lives and those of their families, differently.

<p>Current research has empirically supported that the public school system has an issue with poor social climates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students (LGBT). This has had detrimental effects to the well-being and educational outcomes for LGBT youth (Kosciw, Greytak, Bartkiewicz, Boesen, &amp; Palmer, 2012). Research has not only uncovered the problems (bullying, poor school policies, lack of education) that promote these issues, but they have also found solutions, which include supportive administration, the inclusions of programs like Gay Student Alliances (GSA) and LGBT curriculum. This research study attempted to uncover the effect to students&rsquo; levels of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia when exposed to a LGBT psychology and history lesson. The study found that a simple 45-minute lesson did in fact reduce levels of the sexual minority phobias in students but also provided evidence that more exposure (and a larger sample size) may provide a clearer picture of the actual potential of understanding concepts in LGBT psychology and history. It also validated that the inclusion of a GSA program and supportive educator can also establish a better social climate because all students exhibited low levels of phobia prior to the lesson. </p>

<p> This thesis examined graduate level students' experiences of (mainly gender) diversity in the online classroom. The philosophical framework for this study came from John Rawls' work utilizing the veil of ignorance as a strategy to create more objective determinations free from situational and circumstantial biases. Both critical pedagogy and the theory that individuals construct social and cultural meaning through communication provided the theoretical foundations for the thesis. The study analyzed experiences of the students via their contributions to the online discussion boards. The study also utilized interviews of current and former students to discuss their experiences with diversity in their online classrooms. The study came from an understanding that diversity represents a unique component of the online classroom and rests in the idea that students can all benefit from the diversity of other students' experiences. This work provides a jumping off point of analysis on how best to facilitate discussions of diversity in the online classroom. Facilitating these discussions can become a primary way to break down systemic and institutionalized inequalities that exist for minority groups. Thus, this research, while not the end point, can provide a continued impetus to discover ways to make the online classroom a place of equalized learning to maximize its purpose for all students regardless of their identity. Chief findings in the study indicate the following (not-exhaustive) items: students overwhelmingly report that they value diversity conversations; students do not seem to think that conflicting ideas represent an inherent negative; and student's see the role of the instructor in facilitating, but not inserting personal commentary into the diversity discussions.</p>

<p> The Kingdom of Swaziland is a small African nation with an HIV prevalence rate of 27.4% in adults and up to 39% in pregnant women (Global Health Observatory, 2014). In 2012, life expectancy for a woman in Swaziland was 55-years (World Health Organization, 2014). Health entails more than the absence of disease. Although considered a lower middle-income country, 69% of Swazi citizens live in poverty and nearly one-third live in extremely poor circumstances. The degree to which upstream factors such as social conditions and the cultural environment impact individuals tends to be minimized in Westernized models of health behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the sociocultural factors that impact self-care and health maintenance of women in Swaziland. The goals related to this were to uncover the salient cultural values, beliefs and attitudes that affect the health of Swazi women, and to develop a deeper understanding of how strongly embedded cultural values are a determinant of health outcomes. Using Carspecken&rsquo;s methodology of critical ethnography, which incorporates both observational and narrative methods, this study focused intensively on the life stories of four rural African women. The findings richly illustrate how social issues such as poverty and food insecurity impact the health of women and their children; and how traditional customs and practices both support and threaten the health of women and families. Women in this study experienced a loss of husband or extended family due to death or abandonment that resulted in losses in supports and resources. Additionally, they worried about the health and education of their children before personal health needs. They also reported chronic employment problems and mistrust in existing governmental agencies including the healthcare system. Application of the culturally sensitive Person-Environment-Neighborhood (PEN-3) model highlights areas of resilience, strengths, and resource targets and identifies the community as an appropriate entry level for health interventions.</p>

<p>One of the most discriminated groups of people in the United States are African American men who experience daily individual, institutional, and systemic racism. This research study will explore how several factors may influence the impact of the experience of discrimination on African American males who are over the age of 18 years. More specifically, this study will examine how formation of a sense of identity, personal definition of life satisfaction and an individual's adaptability in stressful situations impact the overall sense of well-being among African American males in the United States. There were 5 self-report research measures used in this study. This study?s correlations showed that if African American men experience stress in one area, they would also experience stress in other ways. An individual having a more developed racial identity and a higher sense of coherence will have a higher sense of well-being and overall satisfaction with life. The findings in this study can benefit the African American male community by providing more information to understand how discrimination and internalized oppression adversely impact their overall quality of life.

<p> Many studies have been conducted on the achievement gap between Caucasian and minority students (Bankston &amp; Caldas, 1998; Brown &amp; Donnor, 2011; Howard, 2008; O&rsquo;Conner, Lewis, &amp; Mueller, 2007; Osborne, 1999), as this gap has been a persistent problem for decades. However, despite more students of color gaining access to institutions of higher education, there is still a severe gap in college graduation rates (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2011), with African American males being the least likely group to be found on college campuses (Dunn, 2012), and thus, possessing the lowest college graduation rate. St. Peter Claver Academy (pseudonym) is a Catholic, male high school located in an inner city, low-income community in the western United States. The demographic composition of the school is 65% Latino and 35% African American. Despite the fact that 100% of seniors are accepted into a college or university, the graduates of St. Peter Claver Academy have very poor college graduation rates. This qualitative study investigated the narratives of seven African-American graduates of the school in order to understand their college experiences, looking closely at attrition, retention, resilience, and persistence. Through the lens of critical bicultural theory, the voices of these former students are central to this study in an effort to seek common threads about their experiences, which can provide educators useful insight on how to improve the college graduation rate for this underrepresented student population group.</p>