Research has demonstrated that male central characters outnumber female central characters. In a series of studies, I demonstrate that this imbalance is even more acute in the books that children read, that it is far worse for boys than for girls, and that teachers do not act to expose children to a wider range of central characters.

Karl Barth is frequently named as the poster-child for modern patriarchal and heteronormative theologies. In Church Dogmatics he secures a binary, hierarchically-ordered, marital relationship between a man and woman as the norm for conceptualizing not only sexual difference but all inter-subjective relationships among human beings. Human beings find in the opposite sex their paradigmatic human “other,” and marriage to someone of the opposite sex provides the occasion in which one is able to most fully realize the sort of being-in-encounter that conforms to the self-giving, self-revealing, aid-lending relationship that Christ has established with the Christian community. The asymmetry of the relationship between Christ and his community translates into the super-/subordering of the relationship between the sexes, wherein women are lead, directed, and inspired by men. Barth applies this “ordering” beyond marriage to all interactions between the sexes. Many critics have argued that Barth’s ordering of the sexes exposes a systemic structure of domination and submission instantiated in the many relationships that comprise his theology. Others have sought a corrective to his ordering in his doctrine of the Trinity, but a corrective that demands a reconstruction of his innovative reformulation of the doctrine of election along with his christocentric theological anthropology. Until recently little critical attention has been given to his heteronormative framework. This dissertation advances a fresh approach by shifting focus from the question of the function of “order” in Barth’s theology to Barth’s christocentric understanding of human agency itself. Through contextualized close readings in Barth’s ethics, doctrine of creation, and theological anthropology, I argue that his methodological, dogmatic, and ethical commitments lead to an account of the human agent that is carefully detached from naturalizing and scientific discourses and crafted after the aid-lending, self-revelatory activity of the incarnate Christ. Constituted as a response to the divine address, human beings are called into existence as morally responsible actors and set on the path toward lending aid to and receiving aid from their human neighbors. I mobilize this account of agency to resist, unsettle, and reconfigure Barth’s androcentric and heteronormative construal of sexual difference for the purpose of securing Barth’s Church Dogmatics as a resource for theologies that resist the reduction of all inter-human differences to one overarching hierarchical model of difference. First, I argue that when Barth attempts to order the relationship between the sexes, he turns his christocentric model of agency, along with its ethical impulse, into a male prerogative, and he leaves a truncated and unlivable version for women to appropriate. By foregrounding the self-revealing and critically corrective features of the human agent’s encounter with the other, I argue that Barth’s model of agency, if fully appropriated by women, secures a site for the sort of feminist critique that Barth attempts to quash: a critique that challenges the prerogatives and positions of power that Barth presumes are proper to men alone. Second, I show that Barth’s effort to integrate the Gospels’ figure of the unmarried Christ into his heteronormative framework exposes the tenuous grounds on which he attempts to secure the centrality of sexual difference within his broader christocentric project. As a corrective, I turn to Barth’s discussions of Christ’s relationship to ethnically differentiated others. Here I locate a far more open, fluid, and flexible way of thinking about the self’s relationship to other human beings, which is inclusive of a wide variety of relationships and communal organizations. Finally, while Barth configures sexual difference as an oppositional division that must be carefully policed and maintained, Barth calls for a critical and performative appropriation of the norms, customs, and social mores through which the sexes are differentiated. This appropriation opens up space within Barth’s heteronormative framework for performances that unsettle, subvert, and transgress the reputedly unambiguous dividing line between the sexes that such norms instantiate.

<p> This dissertation seeks to examine the schooling experiences of African American males attending predominately White independent schools in California. Using Critical Race Theory as a theoretical framework and the factors contributing to schooling experiences, this qualitative research explores the role of student self-perception, teacher expectations, and parent involvement as contributing factors to participants overall schooling experiences. Utilizing counterstorytelling as a means of capturing the rich narratives shared by the participants, data analysis included holistic content coding based on themes that emerged from narrative examination. Findings indicate how parent involvement became the overarching critical component that was most significant in positive schooling experiences for Black males. These findings also support the need to continue to examine the shortage of literature examining the schooling experiences of Black males in predominately White independent schools.</p><p>

<p>This study examines sex differences on the baseline Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Test (ImPACT), as well as the relationship between ImPACT measures and sex roles in a high school sample. Previous literature has shown that males tend to outperform females in the scope of reaction time and visuospatial performance. Likewise, females tend to outperform males on cognitive tasks, such as those pertaining to verbal and visual memory. There is limited research regarding sex roles and neurocognitive testing, while the present study examined this relationship. Participants were obtained from E.D. White Catholic High School in Thibodaux, LA. The 57 participants were administered the Bem Sex Role Inventory, as well as the ImPACT baseline neurocognitive assessment. A comparison of the means was analyzed using a t-test, while a Pearson Correlation was used to examine the relationship between sex roles and ImPACT measures. There were no statistically significant results. Coaches, trainers, and test administrators should not make assumptions based on sex or sex roles. The ImPACT system is a tool that has been used for the purpose of diagnosis and management of concussions, and will continue to be the most widely used assessment. Future directions should continue to focus on neurocognitive baseline testing for concussions for athletes at the high school level, being that there is limited research in this area.

The purpose with this thesis was to, through a gender perspective, get an insight in equality between genders at the electronic music stage is in Ecuador, with the renowed club Lost Beach Club as a sample for this study. The thesis is based on an observation study made in November 2016 at three different events, marketing materials and correspondence with a producer. The result was adopted through some different approaches of feministic theory and showed that on the electronic music stage at Lost Beach Club gender equality was not presented, and no consciousness about the subject existed. Men was more represented than women but they all got the same response and respect from the audience. The women was excluded unconsciously since they did not have the same opportunities to reach the big stages as men because of the masculine norms in the field.

This dissertation addresses gendered vulnerabilities after the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda. It consists of three essays, each focusing on the experience of women in a particular aspect of post-conflict development. The first essay analyzes trends in poverty and inequality in Rwanda from 2000 to 2005. The chapter identifies four important correlates of consumption income: gender, human capital, assets, and geography, and examines their salience in determining the poverty of a household and its position in the income distribution. The second essay is an econometric examination of an important health insurance scheme initiated in post-conflict Rwanda. Employing logistic regression techniques, I find systematically lower membership among female-headed households in the community-based health insurance scheme in Rwanda. This finding contravenes other empirical studies on community-based health insurance in Africa that found higher uptake by female-headed households. Female-headed households are just as likely to access health care, implying greater out-of-pocket expenditures on health. They report worse health status compared to their male counterparts. The third essay examines the prevalence and correlates of intimate partner violence, based on household-level data from the Demographic and Health Survey conducted in Rwanda in 2005. Three results stand out. First, there are significant differences in the prevalence of three different types of gendered violence: physical, emotional and sexual violence. Second, women who are employed but whose husbands are not experience more sexual violence, not less, as would be expected in conventional household bargaining models. This can be interpreted as reflecting ‘male backlash’ as gender norms are destabilized. Finally, there is a strong inter-district correlation between the post-conflict prevalence of sexual violence and the intensity of political violence during the genocide. The findings of the dissertation support its underlying premise: that looking at economic processes through a gendered lens, and recognizing that women face social, historical and institutional constraints that are ignored in much standard economic theorizing, affords important insights into social processes and development outcomes.

The contemporary homeschooling movement sits at the intersection of several important social trends: widespread concern about the effectiveness and safety of public schools, feminist challenges to the patriarchal family structure, anxiety about the state of the family as an institution, and challenging economic conditions. The central concern of this dissertation is to make sense of homeschooling within this broader context. Data were gathered through interviews with forty-five homeschooling parents, approximately half of whom are religious and half of whom are secular. The interviews were organized around three central questions: (1) What are the frames that parents use to justify homeschooling? (2) What are their particular tactics or methods for homeschooling? (3) What are the components of homeschoolers' collective identity? I argue that homeschooling bears the imprint of broader changes regarding the gender system and contemporary family life, as well as other economic and cultural changes. Both religious and secular parents come to homeschooling out of shared concerns about schools being ineffective and incapable of catering to their children.s individual needs. They also share concerns about the state of the family and the general moral decline of society. Religious and secular parents differ in their actual practice of homeschooling, depending on their particular conceptions of childhood, but they are alike in the fact that it is women who do most of the homeschooling work. These parents are also different in their collective identities. Religious parents regard homeschooling as just something they do. However, secular parents characterize homeschooling as part of who they are as moral people and this compels them to employ various strategies of identity work. In the end, I argue that this movement is unlikely to contribute to meaningful social change. I base this conclusion on the fact that the homeschooling movement contains two major contradictions: (1) This movement is simultaneously resisting one alleged failing institution – schools - while reproducing another highly criticized institution – the patriarchal nuclear family. (2) This movement offers individual solutions to social problems. While the participants have many concerns about social institutions, their answer is to withdraw their participation and retreat into their own families.

Drawing on two and a half years of participant observation (n=280 hours) and extended life history interviews with incarcerated fathers (n=49), this dissertation examines the relationship between masculinity, fatherhood, and the organization of the prison system. This dissertation examines the ways assumptions and practices centered in the dangerous masculinity of prisoners draw on larger historical and cultural patterns to reinforce the ways that the prison system contributes to the social control project of the criminal justice system as a whole. In particular, I focus on the raced and classed underpinnings of dangerous masculinity of the prisoner. This dissertation also considers the ways incarcerated men struggle to balance their understandings of masculinity and fatherhood within the confines of the prison. Focusing on incarcerated men’s understanding of the ways manhood and fatherhood support and undermine one another as a set of practices within prison contributes both to research in prisons and also to the larger conversation about masculinity and fatherhood.

On September 30, 2012, Jonathan Torres stabbed his wife, Miguelina Martinez, fifty-two times in a beauty salon in Santiago, Dominican Republic. Ms. Martinez, 33 years-old, went to the district attorney's office eighteen times in the two weeks prior to her murder to report that because of her husband's violent threats she left her home. He killed her because she no longer wanted to be with him; the knife he used was hidden in a bouquet of roses. This three-essay style dissertation interrogates the state of development and gender violence in the Dominican Republic. The first chapter examines the implications of racial, gender, and class stratification on the economic and social opportunities of low-income women, predominantly of African descent, working in the export processing zones and as domestic workers. The second chapter explores the correlation between women's economic, political, and social characteristics and the incidence domestic violence using data from the Demographic and Health Survey. Further, I test which model--the household bargaining model (HBM) or the male backlash model (MBM)--best explains gender violence. I find that the HBM better predicts physical violence, while the MBM better predicts sexual violence. However, when I disaggregate asset-poor women and asset-rich women, I find that the HBM is more adept at explaining gender violence for asset-rich women and the MBM for asset-poor women The third chapter explores the role of women's and men's endogenous preferences on the justifications of gender violence. In both the female and male specifications, there is a positive correlation between men making more decisions and the justification of gender violence. Women that support gender equity are less likely to justify gender violence; while husbands that are less gender progressive are more likely to justify gender violence. Based on my findings, I conclude that the Dominican government's economic policies of the last thirty years are the knife hidden in the government's roses or rhetoric of human development and women's rights. To promote human development and foster women's rights, the Dominican government must embark on a new trajectory focused on human capital formation and a more equitable distribution of income, wealth, and power.

Despite considerable evidence on aging, as it relates to African elders, little is known on what and how it is like when drawn from their experiences and perceptions. This follows since it is often studied indirectly, as the emphasis is put on people with whom the elders are in relationships, obligatory or otherwise, and not necessarily on them. This also happens when aging is examined in relation to societal realities that shape how they experience the process of aging. In that, when societal realities in which they are embedded are examined, little to no effort is made to understand how they experience growing old in relation to or because of them. This dissertation explores perceptions of aging and what growing older is like. Using qualitative research methods in an old age home in KwaZulu Natal, the data to this dissertation was collected between June-July 2017 and December 2017-January 2018. Findings demonstrate that aging is a process of becoming estranged from oneself, from one's body, and from others. They reveal that, due to the collisions between physiological aging and aging in social terms, elders are simultaneously understood as people who must be respected and yet who can be estranged. Against this backdrop, from the vantage of the aged, they further show how death, living, and life are understood.