published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

Ernest Hemingway wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald that “The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other” (305). With that, I created a collection of short stories that analyzes my generation of women’s struggles. Framing the thesis are two stories involving three women, Lindsey, Jenny, and Sarah, “The Generation of Discontent” and “Revisions,” with the characters attempting to sort through love, success, and happiness in society. The piece “The Bachelor” has Amanda torn between her currently successful life and the glamour and sometimes infamy of being on ABC’s reality show The Bachelor. In “Eggs Kennedy Style,” the fine line between delusion and dreams becomes defined in both Nan and Kelley of being one of America’s royal Kennedy family. “Cops and Robbers” shows the inner turmoil of women who do not aspire to be mothers and feel guilty for their aspirations as well asthe resulting resentment when they have to give up their dreams. The ideas of taking your loved one for granted and life goals become the driving aspect of “Flat Tire” where story picks up in the middle of major fight between Nicole and Tommy stemming from him dropping the garter the night before at their friend’s wedding. “Almond Blossoms” between a flashback to Amsterdam with Sam’s Dutch fling Andric and present time suburban Ohio with her finance Kevin showing the conflict of being single compared to being settled. As Fitzgerald said, “An author ought to write for his generation” (ix) and I wrote based on my personal experiences as well as my friends’ tales and tribulations that tell of our generation’s struggle. Giving a voice to the high hopes and resulting discontent I feel is important which models the Modern writers like Fitzgerald’s Gatsby’s green lighted hope for Daisy. I hope to revive a bit of that Modern era in my time though our green light just might be the glow of The Bachelor from the television.

The purpose of this study is to fill the gap in research about women in Venezuela by investigating the determinants of their labor force participation between 1995 and 1998. The Central Office of Statistics and Information in Venezuela provides cross-sectional data collected semiannually about individual, demographic, socio-economic and geographical characteristics of individuals living in Venezuela during this period. This study uses binomial and multinomial logit models to test a number of hypotheses. First, the full sample of women between 15 and 60 years old is used to investigate the importance of individual, demographic, socioeconomic, and geographical characteristics in the labor force participation decision, also controlling for a time trend. The same decision is also analyzed for three subsamples: married women, single women, and women heads of household. Comparisons are made between each subsample and the full sample, and also among the different subsamples. Next, multinomial regressions using the same explanatory variables are performed to examine labor market behavior when there is a three-way choice: whether to participate in the formal sector, the informal sector or not to participate in the labor market at all. The multinomial regressions are also performed on the three subsamples as well as on the full sample. Again comparisons are made between each subsample and the full sample and also among the three subsamples. The results of these analyses show considerable differences in motivating factors among the three groups. The conclusion that must be drawn from this research is that one cannot generalize about the women's labor force participation just by studying the behavior of women in the aggregate. The relative importance of motivating factors depends strongly on the specific subsample to which a woman belongs, a fact unrevealed by previous empirical work. The more detailed analyses produced by this dissertation provide deeper understanding of the labor force participation of Venezuelan women. This information will make a valuable contribution to policy-makers who seek to encourage the important economic contribution of women to this previously under-studied labor market.

published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Master / Master of Philosophy

Over the past five years an often emotive and controversial public debate has emerged in Australia over access to reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation and donor insemination. The debate was in part prompted by a policy announcement made by the Federal Government who aimed to effectively bar single and lesbian women from accessing these technologies on the basis of marital status. The resulting public debate has centred around questions concerning which ‘types’ of women should be allowed to access reproductive technologies and therefore reproduce. The debate was a highly salient one and the issues have been widely discussed amongst the public, within parliament and through the media, thereby creating a forum where ideas of just what constitutes ‘valid’ motherhood are publicly and privately contested. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the discursive construction of categories of motherhood identity, using the public policy debate around access to reproductive technologies in Australia as a research site. I specifically investigate the designation of particular identities of motherhood as ‘good’ and therefore acceptable, and others as deviant and therefore undeserving of access to the full range of social services available. The research is situated within the field of critical social policy and utilises theories of governmentality, feminism, sexuality and motherhood. The use of theories of governmentality, as developed by Michel Foucault [1979] and implemented by Mitchell Dean (1999), is primary within the research because they enable a consideration of the techniques and discourses through which the identity of the mother is governed and through which individual women act upon and construct their own identities. The analysis engendered by the use of governmentality is educated by an understanding of the socially constituted and inscribed body highlighted within feminist and postmodern approaches. The use of a critical social policy approach situates the research within an epistemological paradigm which offers an analysis that is able to conceptualise the operations of power and the marginalisation and manipulation of particular identities. Theories of sexuality and motherhood are utilised in order to critique these central aspects of women’s experiences which have been largely disregarded in much ‘traditional’ social policy analysis. file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/uqlclayt/Desktop/01front.txt (4 of 17)23/03/2006 1:16:06 PM file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/uqlclayt/Desktop/01front.txt The methodology employed in this research is influenced by an understanding of the functioning of discourse as a device through which social processes and identities are questioned and transformed. I therefore utilise discourse analysis in order to investigate the construction of motherhood identities within the debate around access to reproductive technologies. The specific methodology that I use is critical discourse analysis as developed by Norman Fairclough (1992, 1995, 2003) and Ruth Wodak (2001). In order to investigate the construction of motherhood identities within the study site I conduct a critical discourse analysis of the media texts from two major newspapers which relate to the debate. I also analyse the parliamentary debate which considered the introduction of legislation aimed at allowing individual Australian State governments to restrict access to reproductive technologies. I compare and contrast this analysis with an examination of the mother identities expressed in the narratives of individual single and lesbian women who engage with the reproductive technologies discussed in the debate. In essence this thesis identifies, in the public policy debate around reproductive technologies, a moment of problematisation where the practices of governing involved in the production of motherhood identities are made apparent. I use an analysis of this moment in order to identify and question the construction of motherhood which takes place within policy debates and how individual women construct their own identities as mothers both in relation to and separate from this. The newspaper and parliamentary texts are found to govern women’s behaviour through the identification and promulgation of narrow ‘good’ mother and ‘good’ citizen identities which constrain the range of mother identities deemed to be acceptable. The women’s narratives are found to reject the negative characterisation of their identities within popular discourses and construct a mothering persona for themselves which paradoxically also serves to highlight and enforce many of the characteristics of the idealised ‘good’ mother identity.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Ashland Theological Seminary, 1996. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 162-167). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1986. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-56). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

In a cultural web of myth, sexualisation and prejudice, how do older, British singletons gain access to health-giving, non-sexual touch? This study takes interview material from five single women and three single men (all cisgender, white, heterosexual, British, between 37-76 years) and interlaces it with autoethnographic commentary, poems and artworks to explore negotiations around touch. Drawing on Haraway and Barad’s theoretical concept of “entanglements” (2008; 2007), cross-disciplinary connections are woven across feminist new materialism and social sciences, the body and discourse, the conscious and subconscious. Findings, which are partial, provisional, messy and complex (Haraway 1988), include powerful narratives of shame, denial and cauterisation of touch-needs. These co-exist with corporeal tales of the richness and variety of touch-opportunities, the tactile importance of cats and a “turn” by the oldest, female participants away from a romantic, heterosexual partner towards bonding with the landscape.