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.

Book Summary: Essential Breakthroughs: Conversations About Men, Mothers, and Mothering thinks from the nexus of gender, essentialism, and care. The authors creatively blend the philosophical and the personal to collectively argue that while gender is essential to our social and theoretical definitions of care, it is dangerously co-opted into naturalized discourses, which limit particular identities and negate certain forms of care. The perspectives curated in Essential Breakthroughs illuminate how care, as a respected and productive cultural ethic, is neither inherent nor instinctual for any human, but is learned and fostered. The chapters are informed by feminist, queer, and trans politics, wielding post-structuralist methodologies of unlearning and deconstruction, while maintaining the maternal lens as a credible feminist analytical tool and not as a gender-essentialist practice.

Fanfiction provides the unique opportunity to explore disruptions of heteronormativity through tropes. By exploring different fanfictions in the Soulmate AU, ABO Dynamics, and Mpreg tropes, the disruptions indicate a desire to explore gender, identity, and sexuality through queered characters. Male slash fanfiction provides the chance to examine the disruption of the heteronormative through the queering of male characters and placing them into situations that may embrace the feminine or a female-gendered experience. The situating of heterosexual male characters into queered roles allows an examination of how this disrupts canonical ideas of gender, identity, and sexuality. By reviewing the male slash relationships in these tropes, the narratives may explain why the disruption of heteronormativity seems so appealing to fanfiction authors and readers. Heteronormativity restricts exploration of new dynamics and experiences that fanfiction authors and readers may crave to investigate. Disrupting that heteronormativity presents new opportunities for experiences in areas that may receive underrepresentation.

Female trombonists are underrepresented throughout the United States especially in collegiate teaching positions. Is the underrepresentation of female trombonists as professional musicians and teachers causing less females to pursue playing the trombone? After discussing the expected roles of females and acceptable instruments for women to play during the 1800’s, this document mentions many women who were able to surpass the norms of female musicians and make their own musical choices. The purpose of this study is to discover if there is any relevance of gender bias towards female trombonists in society today and potentially determine how these biases affect their musical opportunities. This study and the survey questions were inspired by Melissa Ewing’s dissertation, Examining the Under-Representation of Female Euphonium Players in the USA, which examined the lack of female euphonium players in the United States. In order to create a trombone-centered survey, I used questions from Ewing’s survey as a guide while adding other questions to help gain useful information from trombone professors and female-identifying trombone students in the USA. The names of college trombone professors in the United States were collected from the College Music Society directory and this determined the professors who were surveyed and asked to provide their studio gender ratio and questions about identifying as female when applicable. In addition, the professors forwarded the student survey invitation to female-identifying students in their studios to provide their individual experiences as female trombonists in college. This document will serve as a resource for future studies on female-identifying trombonists and gender studies in general regarding music education and performance.

Women’s subjugation to the objectification of men is a traced theme throughout the history of Western culture. In this thesis, the attributes of the male gaze will be explored via the patriarchal pioneers of literature: Dante to Petrarch to Shakespeare. The solidification of the male gaze takes place during the late middle ages as Dante Alighieri writes an infatuated love for Beatrice throughout La Vita Nuova and Inferno, demonstrating the virgin-whore dichotomy with Francesca. Similarly, Francesco Petrarch’s poetry of Rime Sparse describes the objectification and dismantling of woman for erotic pleasure and patriarchal power. The shift from early to late renaissance displays William Shakespeare’s presentation of women in Titus Andronicus, Othello, and Hamlet as a denunciation of women through the male gaze. These themes of patriarchy developed throughout historic literature will help us analyze media advertisements today as women are silenced, dismembered, and exhibited through the male gaze.

This qualitative study investigated the personal descriptions and experiences of women in chief financial officer roles for Fortune 1000 companies, educational institutions, and private entities. Research on women in senior leadership roles is typically reflective of those in chief executive officer positions rather than chief financial officer positions. The literature is also limited on the ascension of women into chief financial officer roles and the influences of mentoring on career progression. The purpose of the study was to capture individual points of view from participants' lived experiences of leadership advancement, gender inequality, and mentoring in chief financial officer roles in order to discover meaning and understanding of the phenomenon. The interview questions for this study examined (a) the effect of the glass ceiling on career ascension, (b) the influence of mentoring as either a mentee or mentor, (c) the possibility of token management roles, (d) the impact of pay disparities, (e) the implications of leadership style, (f) the influence of gender discrimination, and (g) the organizational culture in limiting or promoting women in leadership roles. The theoretical framework of the study included social learning theory, feminist theory, role congruity theory, and relational-cultural theory. Data were collected via personal interviews with 10 participants, which were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded for themes. The results showed that although gender inequalities exist, there has been progress with the mentoring and promotion of women into chief financial officer positions. The study has the potential to effect social change by emphasizing the importance of mentoring programs for women that not only address professional aspirations and goals, but also create balance for personal accomplishments.

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.

Men are underrepresented among nursing faculty, providing few role models for male students who might benefit from interaction with male faculty. Male nursing faculty may face barriers similar to those faced by women in male-dominated professions. Diehl and Dzubinski's model of gender-based barriers served as the framework for this quantitative study conducted to identify disparities between male and female nursing faculty that may prevent men from entering, continuing, and advancing in nursing education. The association between the percentage of male nursing faculty with geographic region; institution type (i.e., public, private secular, or private religious); and 4 career variables (i.e., education level, rank, tenure, and administrative position) were investigated in this study. Data were obtained from 20,953 faculty from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing 2017 Annual Survey of Baccalaureate and Graduate Nursing Programs. Chi square analyses indicated significant associations between the percentage of male nursing faculty with both the 4 geographic regions and with institution type as well as with several career variables. Post hoc tests revealed a lower percentage of male nursing faculty in religious institutions in the North Atlantic region; significant associations between the percentage of male nursing faculty and faculty education level, specifically in public institutions in the South and private secular institutions in the West; academic rank in public institutions in the South and West; and tenure status in private secular institutions in the North Atlantic and in public institutions in the South and West. Uncovering these discrepancies could lead to an increase in male nursing faculty which, in turn, would provide more role models for male students and may aid in attenuating the shortage of nurses.

The existing quantitative literature on toxic leadership in the military has primarily explored negative outcomes, gendered military experience, and toxic leadership separately; however, relatively few studies have included all 3. The unidentified connection was critical in determining how toxic leadership varied and left a gap for further research to be conducted from a qualitative, phenomenological perspective. Therefore, this study addressed the manner in which encounters with toxic leadership differed across gender and military rank according to those experiencing it. Using a convenience sampling method, data were gathered through semi structured interviews with 12 Army veterans. Thematic analysis of the data revealed 63 meaningful statements and 3 emergent themes. Results affirmed that for both men and women, the higher the rank the more exposure to toxic leadership they encountered. Results also introduced race as a key factor for both genders because it was reported as the leading cause of participants' toxic encounters across rank and gender. The findings of this study also suggested that females were more susceptible to negative mental health outcomes after toxic leadership exposure versus their male counterparts. The results of this study contribute to positive social change by providing a thorough understanding of the qualities characteristic of experiences with toxic leadership to clarify the specific ways in which toxic leadership leads to negative outcomes. Results from this study will be useful for practitioners, military officials, and researchers seeking to better understand the leadership needs of contemporary military personnel.

Researchers have conducted several studies of spirituality as it relates to individuals' coping strategies and resilience when facing life trauma. There is less research, however, on spirituality as it relates to adults' resiliency to daily non-traumatic stressors. The purposes of the current study were to examine the relationship between spirituality and adults' resilience to daily, non-traumatic stressors and assess whether gender has a moderating effect on this relationship. A quantitative correlational study based on Lazarus's transactional model of stress and coping using convenience sampling, an online survey (N= 94) was administered. Of the 94 participants ages 19 to 68, 66 were females. Almost half of the sample was African American (58.5%), single (43.6%), and (50%) living in urban areas. Data were collected through demographic questions, Reed's (1986) Spiritual Perspective Scale, Neill's (2006) Resilience Scale and Kanner et al. (1981) Daily Hassles Scale. Hypotheses were tested using bivariate correlations and multiple regression analysis measuring spirituality, resilience and daily stress. Spirituality did not significantly correlate with daily non-traumatic stress (p=0.07). However, the correlation between resiliency and daily non-traumatic stress significantly correlated negatively (p < 0.01). Gender positively influenced resiliency levels (p < 0.01) showing that females and males cope differently with daily non-traumatic stressors. Specifically, the negative relationship between resiliency and daily non-traumatic stressor is stronger for females (p=0.03) than for males (p < 0.001). Using study findings, mental health providers may be able to develop programs to improve adults' resilience to non-traumatic stressors, particularly utilizing the effects of gender on adults' coping skills.