Thesis advisor: William A. Gamson / Taking an intersectional approach, I show how news media portrayals of neoliberal welfare reform and welfare rights movements are rooted in culture-specific racial and gendered ideologies. Using critical discourse analysis in combination with frame analysis, I analyze 462 articles published in two central newspapers in Massachusetts (The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald) and in Israel (Haaretz and Yediot Achronot) during the public debates on welfare reform in 1995 and 2003 respectively. I trace the surprising discursive success of the Israeli welfare rights movement in the news media, and compare it with the failure of their American counterparts. At the conclusion of the dissertation, I offer an intersectional cultural explanation for this phenomenon. My findings are twofold: on the one hand, I find that the news media and elite actors used culturally-hegemonic sexist, racist, and classist discourses to stigmatize and silence welfare mothers and to justify neoliberal policies. Both the American and the Israeli news media tapped into readily available gender-specific racial discourses to discredit welfare recipients and welfare activists and to silence them. On the other hand, I demonstrate that the Israeli case is nevertheless quite distinct. The Israeli movement was more successful in discursively challenging the neoliberal welfare discourse than its counterparts in the U.S. I argue that what accounts for this difference are three unique cultural features of Israeli society: First, (1), a nationalist fertility discourse that served as a value system alternative to the neoliberal logic; second, (2), related to this, a strong "heroic mother" ethos that is a part of the Zionist nation-building project, which valorizes Jewish motherhood and thus provided an ambiguous entry point to the public sphere for Jewish mothers; and third, (3), a nationalist tension between Jewish-Israelis and Palestinian-Israelis that stimulates perceptions of Mizrahi women (i.e. Jewish women of North African and Middle Eastern descent) as a part of the imagined national collectivity, thus lessening their stigmatization and exclusion. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

This doctoral research by Jane Whynot explores how Gender-based Analysis/Plus (GBA/+), has been integrated into the Canadian federal government’s evaluation function. This research has been supervised by Dr. Caroline Andrew at the University of Ottawa. Efforts presented in this dissertation have been profoundly influenced by political leadership, and their efforts to reprioritize gender equality and other elements of diversity across the bureaucracy. Presumably, employing this mechanism across the policy cycle will provide information to decision-makers that will ultimately impact diversity, equity, and inclusion (EDI) outcomes. Canada is unique amongst governments worldwide in its efforts to so comprehensively consider personal identity elements in policy discourse. Sadly, however, the federal government’s evaluation function is lagging. Both domestic and international cues prompting the integration of gender and other elements of diversity into evaluation efforts have fallen unheard despite official domestic commitments formalizing these linkages. Theories of intersectionality, and how intersectional analysis is undertaken are at the core of this research. The “+” in GBA was intended to represent all elements of personal identity beyond gender such as but not limited to race, language, sexuality, geographic location, disability, and Aboriginal status. The federal government’s lead agency for gender equality does not explicitly reference details on any of these components in their publicly facing materials. These elements are embedded in this research’s conceptual framework and subsequent lines of evidence. Michie, VanStalen, and West’s (2012) theory of behavioural change provides the foundational structure for this research. These authors suggest that (c)apacity change only occurs when (m)otivations, (o)opportunities, and c(apabilities) are simultaneously present. Mayne (2016, 2017, 2018) was responsible for integrating this model of behavioural change into program theory; it is this COM-B theory of change (ToC) that has been used as the conceptual framework for this research. In Mayne’s COM-B ToC, capacity change outcomes are situated mid-results chain and are accompanied by both precedent and antecedent outcomes. A tailored ToC for integrating GBA+ in the federal government’s evaluation function is presented in the thesis that aligns with the changing state of GBA+ implementation across the policy cycle, honing in on the federal government evaluation function. This research was initiated before the specific articulation of GBA+ as a federal government priority in the Policy on Results (Treasury Board Secretariat, 2016); the conceptual framework serves to capture the dynamic nature of the state of GBA/+ implementation across the federal government’s policy cycle. This research adopted a mixed-methods approach involving qualitative and quantitative lines of evidence as recognized by Greene (2007). Supporting lines of evidence included: • A survey was administered to the Heads of Evaluation (HoE) who are senior level decision-makers responsible for the evaluation function within each federal government organization. Survey questions posed addressed the entire tailored ToC. Responses were intentionally designed to solicit binary responses; • A critical review of all publicly accessible federal government produced resources exploring the linkage between gender mainstreaming, GBA and GBA+ and evaluation; • Key informant interviews comprised of representatives from various federal government organizations including leads from central agencies and those responsible for gender mainstreaming, academics with expertise in feminist evaluation, Equity Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), and • Case studies of federal government evaluation functions exploring the integration of GBA+ in evaluation efforts (n=6). Each case study focused on a different element of GBA+ evaluation integration. Focus areas of each case study included: 1 organization focused on building evaluation function capacity to integrate GBA+, 1 organization focused on building capacity to integrate GBA+ amongst the evaluation and performance measurement and/or results unit, and 4 organizations focused on a single program. Each case study included the following lines of evidence: a literature review, a review of evaluations for GBA+ since 2016, a review of organizational documentation, key informant interviews, and for 3 case studies, a combination of focus groups/information exchange sessions. The COM-B tailored ToC for integrating GBA/+ in the federal government’s evaluation function encompasses a causal outcome pathway represented by a results chain. These pathways map a series of outcomes extending from activities and outputs, stakeholder reach/reaction, capacity change, behaviour change, direct benefits, and improved well-being. Each of these outcomes has multiple accompanying assumptions. Data from the tailored ToC is presented across thesis chapters. Despite widespread recognition of nascent GBA+ policy requirements and the federal government’s GBA+ tool, little GBA+ instrumental evaluation use has resulted. A wide interval exists however between awareness and use. Nestled between building GBA+ capacity and instrumental use within evaluation functions, are multiple examples of GBA+ conceptual and process use. Many organizations are aware of the federal government’s GBA+ tool, but there is inconsistent uptake of related training opportunities to build this capacity. Many federal organizations have undertaken only comparative or additive intersectional analysis and indicated limited intention to progress to interactional or truly intersectional integration analysis. To some extent, evaluation functions must navigate their course in this uncharted territory. Federal government organizations identifying as having established some capacity for GBA+ integration have developed unique GBA+ evaluation tools specific to their organizations in the absence of central agency guidance materials and a lack of evaluation function engagement of Gender Champions (GC) and Gender Focal Points (GFP). This research provided the first examination within the governmental contexts of efforts to integrate intersectional research within evaluation functions. While providing answers to many questions, many more arise – consequently providing the foundation for a potential future research program.

The present thesis explores how people’s gender with its various intersections shape theirexperiences of making friends in adulthood in the Finnish context and presents anintersectional analysis of the processes and challenges of making friends. The intersections Ifocused on were those of gender with ethnicity, race, religion and migrant or non-migrantstatus. Additionally, it discusses how the decolonial concepts of “world”-travelling anddiatopical hermeneutics can be used to explore how making friends could become easier. Thedata was collected through two focus group discussions with participants I recruited at anevent which provides a space for people of various backgrounds to meet people and makefriends. The research shows that making friends requires conscious effort and the challengesfor people who inhabit certain intersections can be bigger than for others. There are manybarriers that need to disappear for friendship formation to become easier, and that can happenby challenging our own prejudice and having an open mind. Making friends requires us to beable to travel to others’ “worlds” and welcome them to our own, which can only becomepossible if we encounter people that are different to us without prejudice. Meeting andlistening to each other is key to making friends, while also education from a young age maybe the key to combat and most importantly prevent discrimination and promote positiverelationships between people of different backgrounds.

Contemporary Western feminist scholarship fails to explore the backdrop to the naturalization of feminine subjugation. By analyzing the structures, histories, and theories of gender relations, this study dislocates femininity from its ascribed Otherness and, in doing so, demonstrates how empowered femininities have been overlooked or rendered invisible within gender studies. Femme, as the failure or refusal to approximate the patriarchal norms of femininity, serves as the conceptual anchor of this study and is used to examine how femmephobic sentiments are constructed and perpetuated in contemporary Western feminist theory. In part, this perpetuation is achieved through the pedagogical and theoretical exclusions from the texts chosen for gender studies courses, revealing a normative feminist body constructed through the privileging of identities and expressions. Privileging of identities is demonstrated through the designation of literary space and in an overview of dominant theories, such as how the feminine subject is maintained as the object of critique and as not able to be “properly” feminist. This assessment of gender studies course texts reveals a limited understanding of femme and femininity that maintains these identities as white, middle-class, normatively bodied, and without agency. Feminist theory demonstrates an embedded normative feminist subject, one marked by whiteness and body privileges. By deconstructing the privileging of theories of the normative feminist subject, this study argues that gender studies has replicated feminist histories in which the politics and concerns of the white socially privileged subject are the first to be addressed. While white femininity is present in hir Otherness and in critiques of hir femininity, the racially marked femme does not exist, even in absence. The femme—as a queer potentiality—offers a way of thinking and re-thinking through the limitations of contemporary Western feminist theory and the paradoxical preoccupations with the absented femme. / Thesis (Master, Gender Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-09 19:36:29.903

This research addresses the concern that Anglophone populations in the predominantly French speaking Gaspé region of eastern Québec are experiencing high rates of social problems such as poverty and unemployment. Anglophones in this region, as in other rural regions of Québec, have identified facing difficulties related to access to social services, an aspect which further complicates existing social problems. Using a narrative methodology and post structural, feminist and intersectional lenses, this research explores the experiences of English speaking service users in accessing and engaging with social services on the Gaspé coast. This study also explores the boundaries and reproduction of linguistic categories and identity and offers insight into resisting dominant discourses pertaining to linguistic difference in Québec, specifically within the context of social services. The results of this research demonstrate that service users’ experiences were characterised by disproportionately negative effects in regards to service access and delivery such as intensified logistical problems and social work practice related weaknesses. The research also concludes that experiences involved multiple, intersecting problems, which were irreducible to the singular dimension of language. The intersections of language and race, language and class, and language and ability were raised as critical concerns in terms of access to social services on the Gaspé coast. Finally, the encounters between Anglophones and Francophones in the context of health and social services in the region were found to be entangled and inseparable from the historical and ongoing political struggles over language on this territory. / Graduate

<p>The main objective of this thesis is to study representations of ‘the immigrant’ in Swedish films during the last 30 years – 1970-2000. The main question is whether the films are to be seen as reproducing the dominant order in society or as subversive practices. Another question is why the representations of ‘immigrants’ in some aspects differ between different historical periods. The films selected are films with ‘immigrants’ in central roles, which are analysed using a discourse analysis. My theoretical framework includes theories about discourse, ideology, myth, gender and ethnicity, in a feminist and postcolonial perspective. The main conclusion is that the films analysed here, reproduce and challenge dominant discourses at the same time; they can be seen as both reproductive and subversive practices. On the one hand ‘the immigrant’ is represented as sympathetic, which I interpret as an anti-racist counter discourse. On the other hand most of the films also, in accordance with the dominant discourse, represent ‘the immigrant’ as fundamentally different. ‘The immigrant’ is used as a tool in different internal and historically specific political debates to embody the solution to the conflicts experienced in society at large. When modern urban society is criticized, ‘the immigrant’s’ role is to represent values belonging to the traditional society. ‘The immigrant’ can thereby be said to represent an utopian desire, insofar as s/he and his/her culture are constructed as the positive opposite of what is seen as negative in Swedish society during a specific historical period.</p>

The main objective of this thesis is to study representations of ‘the immigrant’ in Swedish films during the last 30 years – 1970-2000. The main question is whether the films are to be seen as reproducing the dominant order in society or as subversive practices. Another question is why the representations of ‘immigrants’ in some aspects differ between different historical periods. The films selected are films with ‘immigrants’ in central roles, which are analysed using a discourse analysis. My theoretical framework includes theories about discourse, ideology, myth, gender and ethnicity, in a feminist and postcolonial perspective. The main conclusion is that the films analysed here, reproduce and challenge dominant discourses at the same time; they can be seen as both reproductive and subversive practices. On the one hand ‘the immigrant’ is represented as sympathetic, which I interpret as an anti-racist counter discourse. On the other hand most of the films also, in accordance with the dominant discourse, represent ‘the immigrant’ as fundamentally different. ‘The immigrant’ is used as a tool in different internal and historically specific political debates to embody the solution to the conflicts experienced in society at large. When modern urban society is criticized, ‘the immigrant’s’ role is to represent values belonging to the traditional society. ‘The immigrant’ can thereby be said to represent an utopian desire, insofar as s/he and his/her culture are constructed as the positive opposite of what is seen as negative in Swedish society during a specific historical period.

This essay aims to examine and work as an example for how one can discuss power and intersectionality in the classroom based on Astrid Lindgren’s book Pippi Longstocking. It also aims to examine if teachers could use the book as a starting point for working with other important questions about life and identity in the classroom. Analyses have been performed with an intersectional starting point. Matrixes, based on a system of points and categories of importance for power relations, have been made and used as a method for the analyses. The categories sexuality and ethnicity are often considered important for intersectional analyses, but because the book never really brings up any aspect of them, they were excluded from the analyses in the essay. Instead, many other important categories are discussed. The matrixes show that Pippi, from an intersectional point of view, should be subordinate in many situations. However, further analyses show that she, to the contrary, tends to always make herself more powerful than others. Her powerfulness would not be possible without her so called super powers, but her self confidence and attitude are also of great importance, since they allow her to take power. The essay shows that the complex book could work very well to help touch upon the equally complex subject of power and intersectionality, as well as upon other questions about life and identity, in the classroom.

In the novel, Kärlek i Europa, the main character Birgitta travels to Europe searching for a new approach to life: to her gender, her sexuality and her social class. The places she visits represent two different discourses: the Stockholmean discourse where life is strictly adjusted to gender and class and the European discourse where the frame of life is more open concerning gender, sexuality and social class. The purpose of this essay is to examine what kinds of scope for action the two discourses enables Birgitta in terms of gender, sexuality and social class. By employing a discourse theoretical method combined with intersectional theory focusing on the power axis of gender, sexuality and social class, I hope to reach my goal of investigating what the discourses enables Birgitta. My results show that, in some respects, the ideals for a woman within the European discourse are less strict than the ones within the Stockholmean discourses. My results also show that while Birgitta leaves the Stockholmean discourse regarding her gender and sexuality, she never fully leaves in terms of her social class. Her habitus is so fully developed that it enables her to float between the classes while travelling Europe.

La théorie de l’intersectionnalité issue du « Black feminism » permet de concevoir les expériences vécues de la domination par les personnages métis comme intersectionnelles ; s’y mêlent inextricablement des rapports de pouvoir fondés sur la race, le sexe et la classe. Incarnation de relations interraciales perverties par des relations de pouvoir entre peuples dominants et dominés, le personnage métis est interprété par un entourage qui tente de le subsumer à des catégories- raciales et sexuelles- prédéfinies. C’est à cette crispation de la pensée et à cette cécité partagée que nous nous intéressons.Mots-clés : études postcoloniales, genre/gender ; sexualités ; théorie queer ; métissage ; identité ; approche intersectionnelle. / The theory of intersectionnality - resulting from « Black feminism » - is a precious concept to analyze the domination experienced by the « métis » characters as intersectionnal experiments in which power struggles based on race, sex and class are inextricably mixed. Incarnating interracial relations perceived as essentially violent the mestizo/mulatto characters are interpreted by a society which tries to subsume them into preset racial and sexual categories. This crispation of the thought is what we are interested in.Key words: postcolonial studies; genre/gender; sexualities; queer theory; mestizaje/ miscegenation; identity; intersectional analysis.