This thesis argues for the consideration of child care accessibility and costs as one factor in the success and wellbeing of farmers in the United States. There is a long tradition in rural studies of recognizing that farms are not just economic enterprises but are family-based social enterprises as well, with household level issues and family roles that are both acknowledged and contested. However, child care is missing from virtually all scholarly and public discussions of agricultural workforce development - even more so than other social services and family supports. Additionally, the agricultural sector, considered as a portion of U.S. businesses and as a locus of U.S. family life, is missing from most discussions of child care services. Although child care has been shown to be crucial to workforce development, and the need for workforce development in the agricultural sector is vital in light of an aging farm population, the agricultural sector has remained largely absent from child care policy discussions. This two-article thesis seeks to inform scholarship and public policy in both of these areas. Using data from a national survey of 186 farm families at the Rural-Urban Interface, Article One examines child care challenges faced by farm families and the influence community networks have on these challenges. This article focuses specifically on two groupings of farmers: multi-generation (MG) and first generation (FG) farmers, as part of a larger effort to support beginning farmers; and men and women farmers, as challenges related to child care are of particular concern for the increasing numbers of women farmers, who may have multiple roles including primary child caregiver, wage-earner through off-farm employment, and farmer. Findings establish that child care is an issue that influences farm business decisions for farmers, that FG and women farmers are farming populations that are more likely to have challenges with child care, and that family networks are an influencing factor in child care problems for MG and FG farmers. Through analysis of interviews and focus groups with 43 farmers in the Northeastern United States, a geographic region chosen for its high concentration of female farmers, Article Two seeks to understand child care in farm families by examining patterns in farmers' experiences with child care and the ways child care affects both the farm family and the farm business. Findings reveal child care as an issue in the wellbeing of both farm family and farm business: child care has economic effects on the farm business, influencing decisions about labor, growth, and financial resources; child care also has social effects on the farm family, including shifts in gender roles, stress, and reduced quality of life. Recommendations include child care subsidies specifically for farm families and the creation of formal child care networks that could allow for collaboration and use of already-existing networks of agricultural organizations: Extension, food policy councils, and producer groups. Additionally, state level departments of family and youth services, local child care organizations, and community development corporations are urged to tailor their resources specifically to farm families.

Using a feminist, autoethnographic methodology and in depth interviews with twenty-three participants, I sought to better understand the meaning of family memory keeping for women and their families through this research, paying particular attention to the ways that dominant gender ideologies shape family memory and the act of preserving family memory. This research also endeavoured to explore those instances wherein families lose that memory keeper due to memory loss, absence, or death. Interviews revealed that, despite its absence from the literature, women’s family memory keeping is a valuable form of gendered labour – and leisure – that makes significant individual, familial, and social contributions, while simultaneously reproducing dominant gender ideologies and gendered constructions of fatherhood, motherhood, and the family. Through an exploration of the loss of a mother’s memory due to illness, death, or absence, this study also demonstrated the loss of a mother’s memory is both deeply felt, and deeply gendered. However, this study illustrated participants challenging these dominant gender ideologies, as well, and using family memory keeping as a way to resist, critique, and cope. As such, this study speaks to the absence of women’s family memory keeping from the gendered work, leisure studies, social construction, and loss literature, contributing a better understanding of both the activity itself and the gendered ideologies that shape the activity, as well. Not only does this study speak to gaps in existing literature, but findings make fresh theoretical contributions to this literature through three new concepts: the notion of the good mother as the “remembering mother”, the concept of “compliance leisure”, and the re-envisioning of women’s unpaid labour as contributing to “the homing of the home”. And with these contributions to the literature, this research also provides valuable insight for professionals working to improve policy and services surrounding postpartum care, individual and family therapy, caregiving, extended care, and palliative care.

This qualitative study explores six child care teachers’ perceptions of their work as gendered work. The purpose of the study is to understand how the experiences of women child care teachers are connected to the larger issue of gendered teaching embedded in culturally pervasive beliefs about child care teaching. This study answers the following questions: 1) What do child care teachers perceive about their work? 2) How do they conceptualize child care teaching as women’s work? 3) How do they describe the practice of their perceived work as women’s work? Data were collected through in-depth interviews and, following Corbin and Strauss’s (2008) grounded theory methodology, analyzed to find emergent themes. Six themes emerged from the analysis of interview data: 1) child care teaching is not gendered work, 2) child care work is an identification of self, 3) child care teaching is a way of relating to one another, 4) vulnerabilities of child care work, 5) child care is hard work, and 6) contradictions and paradoxes. These themes answer the three research questions. First, these teachers perceive their work to be gender-neutral work, self-identification, mutuality, vulnerabilities, and labor profession. Second, the teachers conceptualize child care work both as gender-neutral and gendered, as creating women’s culture, and as women’s culture being stigmatized. Third, the teachers show paradoxical and inconsistent attitudes about the practice of their perceived child care work as gendered work. The categories about the participants’ conceptions of their work are interrelated and interwoven. They reflect a complexity in the participants’ understandings. The inconsistencies of the teachers’ perceptions reflect the complexity of child care teachers’ reality and their negotiations between dominant beliefs about what child care work means and the elements of their individual and collective experiences that they bring to their profession (Biklen, 1995; Dillabough, 1999, 2005; Murray, 2006; Ryan & Grieshaber, 2005). The findings of this study provide implications for teacher educators. The implications involve the need to utilize contemporary theories and feminist perspectives to better understand the nature of child care teachers’ work and to help teachers develop a critical and more realistic understanding of the nature of their work. / text

Using a feminist, autoethnographic methodology and in depth interviews with twenty-three participants, I sought to better understand the meaning of family memory keeping for women and their families through this research, paying particular attention to the ways that dominant gender ideologies shape family memory and the act of preserving family memory. This research also endeavoured to explore those instances wherein families lose that memory keeper due to memory loss, absence, or death. Interviews revealed that, despite its absence from the literature, women’s family memory keeping is a valuable form of gendered labour – and leisure – that makes significant individual, familial, and social contributions, while simultaneously reproducing dominant gender ideologies and gendered constructions of fatherhood, motherhood, and the family. Through an exploration of the loss of a mother’s memory due to illness, death, or absence, this study also demonstrated the loss of a mother’s memory is both deeply felt, and deeply gendered. However, this study illustrated participants challenging these dominant gender ideologies, as well, and using family memory keeping as a way to resist, critique, and cope. As such, this study speaks to the absence of women’s family memory keeping from the gendered work, leisure studies, social construction, and loss literature, contributing a better understanding of both the activity itself and the gendered ideologies that shape the activity, as well. Not only does this study speak to gaps in existing literature, but findings make fresh theoretical contributions to this literature through three new concepts: the notion of the good mother as the “remembering mother”, the concept of “compliance leisure”, and the re-envisioning of women’s unpaid labour as contributing to “the homing of the home”. And with these contributions to the literature, this research also provides valuable insight for professionals working to improve policy and services surrounding postpartum care, individual and family therapy, caregiving, extended care, and palliative care.

In her 2007 essay “Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency),” Lauren Berlant asserts that “in the scene of slow death, a condition of being worn out by the activity of reproducing life, agency can be an activity of maintenance” (759). This concept emphasizes the difficulty of maintaining one’s agency while experiencing chronic exhaustion, or what can be referred to as the “wearied state.” Utilizing Berlant’s theoretical framework, this thesis investigates the concept of weariness in two dystopic texts: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and Oryx and Crake (2003). The respective protagonists of The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake, Offred and Oryx, each struggle to maintain their agency in the dystopic societies that work to oppress them. Offred, by utilizing wordplay, locates a way to successfully navigate her weariness while simultaneously subverting these who hold power over her. Oryx, oppositely, fails to recognize the sexual power dynamics of her position as a sex slave. Oryx fails to locate her agency, which causes her to normalize her sexually traumatic past. Overall, this thesis argues that weariness need not be final if one makes no attempt to normalize traumatic experiences, remains privy to oppressive ideologies, and retains the ability to cope.

This is a study about how the 16 different municipalities in Värmland county are representing ​diversity and equality on their websites by use of content analysis. I analysed diversity and equality in photos of people, ​first in a general context on the municipality homepages and then on their pages related to business and work. I found that there was a substantial knowledge gap in this area (of analysing official messages through photos displayed in the municipal context), although much research has been done previously on commercial imagery, for instance in advertising. From my analysis I concluded that nearly all of the municipalities in Värmland county could and should improve on representing diversity in their photos, both on their homepages and on their pages related to business and work. Looking at representations of gender only, the county of Värmland as a whole is closing in on a almost equal representation of women and men. But with some municipalities sprawling representing only one gender, there is definitely room for improvement here as well.

A surge of "masculinity in crisis" discourse suggests that men are primarily responsible for lawlessness, social mayhem, violence and other forms of psycho- and socio-pathology. This crisis is attributed, in part, to hegemonic models of masculinity which restrict men to certain modes of behaviour and specific roles in society. This study investigates the content of a group of South African adolescent males' cognitive schemata for masculinity and gender roles. A qualitative mode of enquiry was used to identify the beliefs held by participants about manhood and gender roles. The findings of this study affirm that a hegemonic model of masculinity exists is the sub-culture of South African society represented by the participants and suggests that hegemonic masculinity in South African is both restrictive and damaging to men and society. / Psychology / M. A. (Psychology)

A surge of "masculinity in crisis" discourse suggests that men are primarily responsible for lawlessness, social mayhem, violence and other forms of psycho- and socio-pathology. This crisis is attributed, in part, to hegemonic models of masculinity which restrict men to certain modes of behaviour and specific roles in society. This study investigates the content of a group of South African adolescent males' cognitive schemata for masculinity and gender roles. A qualitative mode of enquiry was used to identify the beliefs held by participants about manhood and gender roles. The findings of this study affirm that a hegemonic model of masculinity exists is the sub-culture of South African society represented by the participants and suggests that hegemonic masculinity in South African is both restrictive and damaging to men and society. / Psychology / M. A. (Psychology)