Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-59).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 185-200).

Thesis (M.A.) University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 28, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis looks at how a contemporary notion of successful girlhood is negotiated in the social text of Seventeen magazine. Moreover, it demonstrates the ways in which Seventeen’s representations of successful and ideal girls reflect and mediate timely values of postfeminism and neoliberalism. This thesis will also make visible how race, class, ability, and sexuality are negotiated within Seventeen’s “success” framework, in order to illuminate intersectional issues implicit in conceptualizing ideal girlhood. The method for this research is a semiotic discourse analysis, looking at the visual and linguistic signs within the text in order to connect them with broader ideologies and themes surrounding contemporary ideal girlhood. Drawing on girls’ studies and feminist cultural studies literature, the discourse of ideal girlhood is situated in a so-called “postfeminist” moment, in which girls, as popular, highly visible subjects in contemporary society, are perceived to be poised for achievement and social ascension, all while being closely surveilled. These expectations of postfeminism intersect with current neoliberal principles of individualized success; analysis is therefore connected with and contextualized by discussion of late modern principles of neoliberalism and its economic, social, and political logic.

Published research suggests that cultural practices and institutional structures influence adolescent girls' engagement and achievement in school. This study was an attempt to further investigate that claim by describing the perceptions of agency held by four adolescent girls in high school. Members of the same English class, the girls volunteered to participate in three lunchtime meetings to discuss Evelyn Coleman's (2001) Born In Sin. Analysis of classroom observations, transcripts of audio recordings of the book discussions, and individual interviews yielded a more precise definition of agency than those used in previous research, including a view of agency as dialogic. In addition, four major themes describe these girls' agentic moves: (1) a temporal orientation, which connects the past, present, and future; (2) responsibility for positive and negative events; (3) strategic decision making; (4) negotiating with people in power. Implications of this study inform both teaching decisions and future research related to adolescent girls.

A survey of the physical education programs for high school girls near Denton, Texas to determine the extent of compliance with state law for physical education, the facilities for the program, training of the teachers, type of physical education program, and teaching load of physical education teachers.

This research focuses on unaccompanied or separated adolescent girls who have survived gender-based violence and have sought asylum in Greece. It seeks to explore the interpretations and identities that asylum and psychosocial professionals assign to the girls and to research whether and how the process of the asylum interview may shape the narrative of violence and victimhood of the girls and predefine their self-representation.  The research draws from different theoretical frameworks in exploring the power of the state as reflected in the official discourses on vulnerability and the legal processes of granting asylum; the stereotypical ideations of victimhood and the gendered character it often entails; the intersection of gender, age, migration, and the lived experience of violence.  Two methodological approaches are implemented; semi-structured interviews conducted with five professionals and autoethnography. The data from the interviews were thematically codified and analyzed, while the autoethnographic data fed the construction of two case studies. The recurring themes identified commonly shape a set of concluding remarks and make apparent the need for further research in the field.

Despite the push for universal education, many disadvantaged and poor children in developing countries still do not have access to basic education. This among other reasons is due to poverty where poor families cannot afford the cost of basic education even when it is `free' of tuition (McDonald, 2007). Demand-side financing interventions such as scholarship programs are promising to be viable financing interventions of reaching out to the poor and marginalized children in order for them to access basic education. Although such financing strategies have been praised as having worked in mostly Latin American countries, very little is systematically known about how these interventions would work in poor African countries such as Malawi. This study therefore examines demand-side financing strategy through an evaluation of a scholarship program implemented in Malawi. It uses qualitative mode of inquiry through in-depth interviews of 36 key participants as a primary method of data collection. In addition it reviews program documents and conducts some cohort tracking on beneficiaries in Zomba rural district which is the site of the study. The findings show that community based targeting was used in the program and proved successful in identifying the right beneficiaries in a cost effective manner. It seems to offer a model to be adopted for such interventions in low resource countries. Findings further show that beneficiaries who received scholarships were able to persist however there was a substantial number that dropped out. There were a number of factors that caused this but it seems the internal motivation of beneficiaries to persist was very critical. This puts under the microscope an assumption that once scholarship is received, beneficiaries would persist in school. Last but not least, the findings also show that an assumption that local communities will be able to sustain such programs might be but a mere illusion as communities view themselves too poor to do this. Overall the study praises such programs as effective in targeting the poor and marginalized children however it puts a caution on assumptions about persistence & sustainability. It suggests further scrutiny on these assumptions to improve on the effectiveness of such programs and demand-side financing strategies in general.

Although teen film is littered with tales of young women coming of age, the messages presented in most of these films follow a formula centered on a patriarchal nuclear family ideal, which leads to damaging perceptions regarding gender roles in teenage society. There is the main traditional model of stay at home mother with a father in the role of the breadwinner; the rise of rape culture; and the glass ceiling in the workplace. The young females consuming a mass amount of this media then reflect negatively on themselves. The research following this conundrum was broken into two parts: the production of a film looking to remedy the many problems of female representation in teen media and then monitoring the reaction to said film against its target audience: young females between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one. The purpose of this thesis is to explore what makes females within the teenage demographic react to certain kinds of media. If they react negatively or positively towards a media representation of themselves, to what extent does this affect the participants' activity in their daily lives? Therefore, through a process of screening three short films focused on teen issues - including the one made by myself for this study - and then conducting a survey focusing on questions regarding the participants' feelings towards the subject matter, their hopes for themselves, and teen media in general, there was an ability to gauge how deeply teen media affects the modern teenager.

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