Ethnic minority female physical education (PE) teachers who work in predominantly white schools may face multiple forms of marginalization and oppression due to the embodiment of a racialized and gendered identity which is positioned as “other” within PE contexts. A significant gap exists between diversifying teacher and student populations, thus warranting an examination of how sociocultural factors impact a teacher’s identity. Purpose: To explore how race and gender intersect in the embodied identities of ethnic minority female PE teachers in predominantly white schools in the United States. Methods: This study used narrative and visual research methods from a constructivist paradigmatic lens and followed guidelines for narrative-based, semi-structured, and conversational interviews coupled with photo elicitation. Results: The pilot study demonstrated how participants often felt isolated and uncomfortable in their schools, actively seeking out other ethnic minorities to make meaningful connections and validate their embodied identities. The full study indicated that participants enacted colorblind discourses in order to assimilate into their school settings yet also experienced internal conflict over their super-visibility as minority members within white majoritarian schools. Finally, the full study illustrated participants’ self-affirming strategies and resilience in working for social justice within their predominantly white school contexts, and how notions of transformational resistance sustained their commitment to furthering the field of PE towards more inclusive and critical pedagogies. Discussion: This research demonstrated how schools are often sites of continued racialized marginalization for ethnic minority community members and served as an important reminder that future research should avoid enacting a “deficit” or “savior” position when examining issues of racial inequality. Instead, it is imperative that scholarship in the field employ an agentic perspective which recognizes the autonomy of its subjects in reframing their experiences towards empowerment. The agency of “othered” school community members should be centered within the notion of schools as sites of marginalizing pedagogies for research that aims to destabilize dominant discourses and disrupt the resulting oppression embedded within the educational system in the United States.

Given their potential to negatively impact men's goal of staying in office, can gender quotas be aligned with the preferences of male legislators who adopt the policy? In other words, does the rapid spread of gender quotas worldwide challenge notions of the rationality of legislators as career-driven individuals? These are the main questions that drive this thesis. To answer these questions, I develop a prospect theory-based framework that accounts for how electoral security and political ambition impact legislators' behaviour in influencing the strength of gender quota designs. I argue that, faced with growing pressures to adopt gender quotas, male parliamentarians engage in the risk-taking process of assenting with gender quotas, meanwhile seeking to minimize the potential costs of the policy to their future careers by actively weakening quota designs. To evaluate the plausibility of my theory, I employ a series of multi-method and multi-level analyses presented across five substantive chapters, each of which is respectively based on: 1) a cross-sectional analysis of Latin America countries; 2) an elite survey experiment with Brazilian state legislators; and, in-depth process tracing of the cases of gender quota adoption in 3) Costa Rica; 4) Brazil; and, 5) Chile. The work makes three main contributions. Firstly, although previously identified, the resistance of male legislators towards gender quotas had never been systematically analysed in a comparative manner; focusing on the behaviour of male incumbents is thus a relevant contribution. Secondly, although various authors have provided explanations for the origins of gender quota adoptions, no work had ever comparatively assessed sources of the variation in gender quota designs. Thus, I move the study of gender quotas beyond the binary choice of adoption. Thirdly, I show that the static assumptions of endogenous institutionalism need to be modified by the introduction of risk, which can only be achieved by integrating the insights of prospect theory.

This dissertation examines the ways intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors' experiences of poverty, mental illness, social isolation, and gender inequality shape their opportunities to protect themselves and their children before, during, and after separating from abusive partners. Ethnographic research was conducted in three communities in the United States over two years. In each site I observed and interviewed women about their experiences of abuse and their attempts to achieve long-term security. I also observed and interviewed practitioners across a range of disciplines about their work with IPV survivors. The results of this study demonstrate that when women ended abusive relationships they often sustained a variety of losses related to their economic stability, social support, and access to their children. After leaving their batterers, many survivors faced debt, trauma, and protracted custody disputes that continued to disrupt their lives. However, the IPV interventions studied were routinely designed as though the collateral damage to an IPV survivor's life ended when she left her abuser. Interventions rarely accommodated survivors' post-separation social, economic, and parenting needs, and indeed, often placed additional strain on women's lives. As a result, the most disadvantaged survivors often found institutional resources in the domestic violence service system inaccessible, irrelevant, and at times counterproductive. This dissertation demonstrates that IPV is more than a series of isolated acts by individual people: it is the cause of many women's diminished agency and heightened suffering long after their abuse has ended.

Prior research has demonstrated that CEO behavior influences how people perceive corporations and that CEOs associated with controversy can damage corporate reputations. Research also illustrates that attitudes based on prescribed racial and gender characteristics render Black and female CEOs as incongruent with leadership positions. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of two different corporate errors as justification factors leading to prejudicial evaluations of leaders with stigmatized identities (e.g., race and gender), with a particular emphasis on the intersection of race and gender on leader- and organization-based evaluations. Participants were randomly assigned to one of 12 corporate conditions ([CEO race: white v. black] x [CEO gender: male v. female] x [Corporate error: no error v. diversity error v. non-diversity error]) and assessed to provide responses via an online experiment. Although results revealed a significant main effect of corporate error on leader and organization perceptions, there was no evidence of an interactive effect of CEO race and gender on leader and organization perceptions. Furthermore, the non-significant interaction of race and gender was not impacted by the context of the corporate error. I discuss theoretical and practical implications, study limitations, and avenues for future research.

Much recent scholarship is devoted to projecting Japan’s future and analyzing its prospects as a global power. After two decades of economic stagnation, alarming demographic trends, and the 3/11 triple disaster, some scholars argue that Japan is grappling with an era of precarity, marked with instability and anxiety. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned to office in 2012, promoting his economic reform policy, “Abenomics” and within the third “arrow" of this approach targeting structural reforms, he promoted “womenomics”, a term coined by Kathy Matsui of Goldman-Sachs. Prime Minister Abe’s objective is to create a society where "women can shine” and women can participate in the labor market more equitably. However, it is unclear if equality can be achieved when Japanese women still encounter persistent workplace sex discrimination. While labor laws, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, have attempted to tackle workplace sex discrimination, many scholars and critics believe the laws have not done enough. One way Japanese women have attempted to combat workplace sex discrimination is with litigation. Starting in the 1960s, women have resorted to judicial relief to address discriminatory treatment in the workplace. However, while litigation is a powerful tool for social change in Japan, the literature suggests that Japanese women are reluctant to litigate, consistent with the larger consensus that Japan is a low-litigious society. If Japanese women have engaged in “litigation campaigns" and litigation rates are rising, yet Japanese women are reluctant to litigate, this creates an interesting paradox worth exploring. While these two conditions are not unique in and of themselves, what is curious in this nexus is how Japanese women actually relate to the law. This study analyzes how Japanese women relate to the law. Through semi-structured interviews with Japanese working women about their experiences, thoughts, and opinions, this study illustrates how Japanese women “do" law and deepens our understanding of their relationship with the law. In addition to this, this study proposes a new model for measuring litigiousness. Rather than measuring litigiousness in terms of aggregate litigation rates, this study operationalizes litigiousness in terms of personal intent. By applying this model to qualitative data, this study demonstrates that Japanese women actually do demonstrate a moderate degree of litigiousness as it relates to workplace sex discrimination. That is, the nail that sticks up isn't always hammered down.

Thesis (LLM. (Labour Law)) -- University of Limpopo, 2013 / Like other forms of prohibited discriminations, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has become an area of concern in the workplace. The law prohibits discrimination in whatever form and declares it unlawful to discriminate people on the basis of sexual orientation. In this work, South African anti- discrimination provisions on the basis of sexual orientation will be emphasized, whereas foreign countries will only be referred to for the sake of comparative analysis. Discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and homosexual people (LGBTH) in the workplace is manifested by harassment and constructive dismissal through homophobia. Homophobia is a psychological concept which refers to the hatred of people after declaring their gay, lesbian or homosexual identities. This study reveals homophobic practices towards homosexuals as if they are not beneficiaries of contemporary democratic laws and dividends of democracy enshrined in Chapter 2 of the RSA Constitution of 1996 and Chapter 2 of the Employment Equity Act (EEA) 55 of 1998. To this, the research revealed an interesting corroboration in section 9(4) of the RSA Constitution of 1996, and section 6(1) of the EEA 55 of 1998, which provide that no person may unfairly discriminate another on the grounds of sexual orientation. The study has also revealed that among others, employment rights of people in South Africa and in foreign countries are being violated on the basis of sexual orientation. In most case laws, people who disclosed to their employers, that their gender identities are different to what was expected as straight genders and those who informed their employers about their intentions to undergo sex change surgeries are being hired and fired. The study also proved a point that when it comes to sexual orientation exclusion and discrimination, the same vulnerable groups of gays and lesbians are as well caught up in practices of sodomy and sexual harassments. Therefore, the remedies suggested by this research will also apply to everyone including gays and lesbians. To avoid controversy and issues, statutes and decided court cases have been stated as they are, in chapter 4 of this research, for the sake of comparative analysis in order to unravel the existing state of affairs through approaches from different jurisdictions.

Since the beginning of time, men and women have been separated by the "division of labor." Men were hunters and defenders and the women nurturers, bearing the responsibility of the raising of the children and homemaking. By the time of the Greeks, women were afforded great respect and treated with great dignity. They were looked upon as the pillars of morality and tradition. In 1765, women had been legally declared non-persons in William Blackstone’s Commentaries on English Law. Further reinforcement of this belief was put forth by Max Weber and Sigmund Freud who both felt women had no place in organizations and business. Women wanted recognition of their "personhood" and from the first women’s rights convention in 1848, demanding and finally obtaining the vote in 1920, through to the Civil Rights Movement in the 60's and the women’s movement which grew out of it, women have been making strong statements for equality and job opportunities. Just how successful women have been in their demands for acceptance in the business world is examined in this dissertation.

This dissertation is a social and legal history of one of Iowa's most controversial sex discrimination cases. The study examines the 1979 civil rights complaint of Linda Eaton, Iowa City's first woman firefighter--a white, working-class, single mother who did not consider herself a feminist. Eaton made national news and became the focus of an intense local debate when she was threatened with dismissal for breastfeeding her baby at the fire station. The president of La Leche League spoke out on her behalf, while the local chapter of NOW established a legal defense fund and spearheaded a year-long campaign of support. Mining the personal documents of community members, and using oral history interviews, manuscript collections, and legal documents, this study elevates the importance of grassroots action by demonstrating that local women's sex discrimination complaints and lawsuits were central to the dramatic transformation of workplace policies that began across the U.S. during the 1970s. This study foregrounds the relationship of Eaton's case to Iowa City's vibrant 1970s feminist community, and to national politics. The controversy over Iowa's breastfeeding firefighter reflected and contributed to national struggles over the meaning of gender equality, particularly the complex debates about affirmative action and the Equal Rights Amendment. Because she drew support from both the feminists of NOW and the maternalists of LLL, Eaton's case highlights the problematic intersection of paid and domestic labor in women's lives, especially those of working-class women. Eaton's case critiques the masculine ideal worker standard and makes a bid for working conditions that accommodate women's biosocial role in reproductive labor. This project draws upon previously unavailable records to offer an historical account of the first career women firefighters in the U.S. that identifies the resistance these women met as they encountered the masculine culture of firefighting in the 1970s. It highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of using law to eliminate sex discrimination in the workplace by constructing a vivid portrait of women's slow and painful struggle for full economic citizenship.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the distribution and function of talk in workplace meetings contributes to differential outcomes for women and men in Australian organisations. This study explores how patterns of male advantage and female disadvantage are reproduced in workplace meetings through the different communication styles which tend to be employed by men and women, and through the way that these different performances are judged. Workplace meetings emerge as a critical site where leadership potential is identified yet, it is argued, men and women do not meet as equals when they meet at work. The thesis includes an evaluation of the current literature on women's and men's communication styles, and the findings of the present study are discussed in terms of the extent to which they correlate with or diverge from existing views. The implications for social change are explored and recommendations provided for the consideration of organisations seeking to broaden the pool of talent from which future leaders are drawn. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.