Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2009. / Title from screen (viewed on September 30, 2009). Department of Philanthropic Studies, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Frances A Huehls. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-53).

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In May 1987 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Board of Directors, Rotary International v. Rotary Club of Duarte that exclusion of women in large clubs such as Rotary was not protected under their Constitutional right to freedom of expression. The ruling ultimately opened the doors of traditionally-male service clubs to women. Through a case study of the Fargo Lions Club (Fargo, North Dakota), I sought to understand what happened in the first years of women’s membership in the association. These women are almost totally overlooked in the small body of literature that currently exists on service clubs and understanding this redefinition of associational freedom within the nonprofit sector is a unique contribution to philanthropic studies. A retrospective tracer methodology reconstructs the sequence of events and decisions made by the Fargo Lions Club in response to the Supreme Court ruling. How the club accepted and included women is traced through personal interviews with key members, contemporary news reports and archival records.

This thesis examines how the relationships between women, inside and outside the international women's organization for professionally working women – Soroptimist International – is informed by proximity and distance, which orientates the organization in the direction of a multiculturalism informed by imperial feminism. Focus lies on the organizations use of terms such as “sister” and “professional woman”, and the imagined benefits and responsibilities of being a soroptimist. The thesis is centered on interviews with members from Soroptimist International Sweden, which is seen as a microlevel of the international organization. By interviewing members and comparing the statements with some of the official documents produced by the organization, I also examine the relation between policy and practice. Drawing on the affect theories of Sara Ahmed regarding emotions and bodily orientation; postcolonial perspectives on transnational feminism, sisterhood and solidarity; and anthropological perspectives on transnational women's network, I argue that the orientation of Soroptimist International is informed by white middle-class heterosexual women. When working for women's rights as human rights it is furthermore based on a UN discourse, which also orientate the organization in a universally western way. Furthermore, I also show how the network of Soroptimist International is end oriented, which means that its information and knowledge exchange is centered around its members and the expansion of the network, instead of advocacy making on behalf of women that are non-members. This leads to the conclusion that if Soroptimist International wishes to reorient away from its feminist imperialist and multiculturalist elements, it needs to engage with a praxis-oriented solidarity concept. This means obtaining a multifaceted communication between its local and global levels, as well as seizing the many different partial perspectives existing inside as well as outside the organization.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:32:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Consideracoes Finais.pdf: 12626 bytes, checksum: 4ff9fc99c6d66dfba678102aa8698f0d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-07-27 / In this research, the spotlights are aimed on the historical years between 1959 and 1967, with the main purpose of showing the scenic arrangements of the installation, organization and performance of a Rotary Club in a geographical scenery that was in mutation phase. That territory, formerly denominated Promised Earth or Canaan of the Industry, was soon substituted by the nomenclature Steel Valley .The partners founders of that first Rotary Club conceived themselves as foreigners from the Canaan of the State of Minas that emanated "milk and honey". Native from another lands, they met each other and they were met in order to form a service club in the Nacional Valley of Redemption, but with intense institutional entails to an international corporation. Organized under the doctrine of the interest well understood, the associated agents, each one, with his composition and capital volume, of economic, cultural, social, symbolic or political nature, they allowed, through the mechanism of capital convertibility, to concentrate, in the regional community, a power, capable to produce real effects without apparent waste of energy. As a voluntary and oligarchical association, this service club was, in a way, a institutional vehicle, in the local sphere, of appropriation, incorporation, reproduction and diffusion of visions of world of the ideological corpus of International Rotary. / Nesta pesquisa, os holofotes estão apontados sobre os anos históricos, compreendidos entre 1959 e 1967, com a finalidade última de mostrar os arranjos cênicos da instalação, organização e atuação de um Rotary Club num cenário geográfico que se encontrava em fase de mutação. Esse território, outrora denominado Terra Prometida ou Canaã da Indústria, foi logo substituído pela nomenclatura Vale do Aço. Os Sócios fundadores desse primeiro Rotary Club conceberam-se como forasteiros da Canaã do Estado de Minas que emanava leite e mel . Originários de outras terras, encontraram-se e foram encontrados para formarem um clube de serviço no Vale da Redenção Nacional, mas com fortes vínculos institucionais a uma corporação internacional. Organizados sob a doutrina do interesse bem compreendido, os agentes associados, cada qual, com sua composição e volume de capital, sejam eles de natureza econômica, cultural, social, simbólico e/ou político, que permitiu, através do mecanismo de convertibilidade de capital, potencializar, na comunidade regional, um poder capaz de produzir efeitos reais sem dispêndio aparente de energia. Como uma associação voluntária e oligárquica, esse clube de serviço foi, em alguma medida, um veículo institucional, na esfera local, de apropriação, incorporação, reprodução e difusão de visões de mundo do corpus ideológico do Rotary Internacional.