This ethno-historical undertaking captures the story of the implementation of one major US city's first and only single-sex public school and the consequent shaping of the school culture according to its unique context. A comprehensive literature review demonstrates race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, and other contextual factors are important considerations when probing educational access and achievement and the development of school cultures. Moreover, principals -- their individual attributes and the cultures they create -- are key to understanding and interrogating equitable practices in schools. Findings substantiate the complex interface between historical, political, and socio-cultural contexts, stakeholder decision making in the ethnographic present, and the enactment and negotiation school culture vis-à-vis the intersectionalities of student identities. Findings suggest the conditions that facilitated the high achievement of the students in this study might be transferred under the right conditions including: a balance of strong leadership and principal and teacher autonomy; the enduring belief that any student can and will learn; a rigorous, non-segregated, college prep program, and; an informal curriculum that prepares students for academic and professional cultures. Findings also bring to the fore important considerations that must be addressed by practitioners and policymakers alike; specifically, students' difficulties concerning the "burden of acting white" and the "burden of acting straight." Finally, findings from this study suggest single-sex public options can be done legitimately and effectively but additional safeguards must be implemented by the US Department of Education to ensure both male and female students' civil rights are protected. Additionally, while some magnet schools such as the one studied are local sites of resistance that play a liberatory role for those distinctively involved, one cannot surmise that such local efforts -- which may be viewed by some as a site of relative privilege -- can alone overcome the serious striations that exist in the greater society. / text

In general, immigrants face various problems as they adjust to their new surroundings and begin a new life. The educated, employed Arabic immigrant Muslim women, (EEAIMW), live between two worlds: a Swedish world at work and an Arabic world at home. In this East-West dichotomy, they keep trying to find who they are and where they belong. This thesis helps to understand the influence of the intersection of religion, ethnicity, and gender serving as the primary disadvantage due to cultural expectations, socio-political considerations, and unfavourable stereotypes and stigmatization. This disadvantage affects not only their employment and career advancement, but also the agency and performed identities of EEAIMW in their Swedish workplace, (SWP). The purpose is to give voice to 17 EEAIMW narrating their journey in re-evaluating and developing their religious, ethnic, and gender identities to adapt to the environment of their SWP. Furthermore, to challenge the stereotyping and the stigmatization that position them as the “Other,” impeding their sense of belonging. Comprehensive data concerning the phenomena was gathered through a qualitative research approach and from in-depth semi-structured interviews with the study participants, joined with a literature review on immigrants, Islam, and employed Muslim women, covering topics about identity theories and organizational behaviour. According to the study’s findings, EEAIMW create a place for themselves in their SWP through their diverse agency and identity performing adaptation strategies, and that relationships rather than the place, create a sense of belonging. It is also found that the different sociocultural contexts do not destroy EEAIMW’s religious beliefs but add value to their existence outside their religious aspect. And when representing Swedish society, they remain linked to their homelands.