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Abstract Not Available.

The purpose of the current study was to describe how eight female national athletes of one team sport experienced the activity of a six-week centralized training camp. Specifically, the following research questions guided the study: (a) what was the process of the experience for each of these athletes and what strategies do they use to progress through the centralized camp; (b) how did the athletes experience the various contexts of their lives during the centralized camp and what strategies did they use to progress through them; and (c) how did athletes come to understand and take into account their experience? What did athletes learn from the experience? This inquiry was guided by a social constructivist perspective informed by feminist theory in sport. The eight participants were interviewed using an in-depth phenomenological approach. Each participant was taken through a series of three in-depth 90-minute interviews and asked to describe her experience at the six week centralized training camp. Analysis occurred on two levels---individual profiles and shared experiences. The findings are discussed in terms of the research questions. With respect to process of the experience and the strategies employed to progress through the camp, social and organizational factors played a fundamental role in the experience of the participants. Moreover, the coping strategies selected by the participants' were related to their cognitive appraisal of the person-environment relationship. With respect to the various contexts of their lives and the strategies employed, the participants approached the centralized training camp by taking steps to minimize the distractions from their outside world before attending the camp. Further, during the camp, participants had limited contact with individuals outside the camp environment, followed routines and activities, and sought social support from teammates to maintain and achieve their desired focus while in camp. Finally, with respect to the meaning of the experience and the lessons arising, the participants highlighted numerous issues of both a positive and negative nature. The camp meant opportunities for personal growth; mastery experiences; feelings of anger, disappointment, and failure; and questions of continued involvement in the sport. In addition, participants stressed the meaning of the centralized training camp experience with respect to the opportunities to interact and share experiences with others and develop positive friendships and memories. The findings are also discussed in terms of initiatives for educating national team athletes, coaches and organizations on preparation for, and implementation of, centralized training camps. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Le trafic des femmes pour les fins de leur exploitation sexuelle est un problème complexe et difficile à résoudre qui ne cesse de croître, malgré les instruments internationaux anti-trafic déjà en place. Sans pouvoir voir que le fondement du système international privilégie la masculinité par rapport à la féminité, les efforts onusiens pour mettre fin à ce problème de violence sexuée sont inadéquats. Deux ONG féministes luttent pour éradiquer le trafic des femmes mais adoptent des discours opposés; une, le GAATW, est pro-prostitution tandis que pour l'autre, le CATW, anti-trafic veut dire anti-prostitution. L'objectif de cette thèse est d'examiner le discours hégémonique onusien et l'effet des deux discours anti-trafic féministes sur celui-ci. Nous étudierons quel groupe aura le plus d'influence sur l'ONU et la possibilité de l'émergence d'un discours contre-hégémonique féministe.

In this qualitative study, five stories of work meaning are explored. Grounded in phenomenology and guided by a constructivist, feminist perspective, its purpose was to describe how mid-life women subjectively understood, interpreted and defined work meaning, after a voluntary transition to work---in either paid or non-paid arenas---which held more personal significance. Following Seidman's (1998) tenets for in-depth phenomenological interviewing, the sessions enabled the women to expand upon the conversational narrative (Kvale, 1984, 1996; Ochs, 1997). The existential dimensions of lived time, lived space, lived body and lived relation provided a systematic structure for developing a thematic textual understanding. Descriptions and interpretations of the women's mosaic and metaphoric accounts were woven together with the researcher's own experience in a narrative structure, revealing everyday, ordinary aspects of work meaning. The analysis uncovered several themes concerning metamorphosis, re-discovery and reclaimed purpose. The results indicated perspectives which coincide with some aspects of both traditional theories of adult development and relational theories of female development. Where they denote a difference is in the centrality of work as a construct that has greater continuing meaning for women's individual psychological development and identity than traditional concepts of mid-life maintenance and decline have allowed. The women in the study did not separate work and enjoyment, and pursued personal meaning and emotional, artistic and intellectual self-fulfillment through work as a way of integrating categories of identity. They were living consciously, activated by an appropriate use of self. By giving voice to this under-represented group, the study makes the work meanings of mid-life women intelligible to educators, career development practitioners and policy makers.

Cultural fragmentation in Postmodern America has led to a destabilization of the political sphere and created a climate of change and possibility, one in which socialist-feminist Donna J. Haraway labours to redefine feminist politics by constructing a borderless and especially, genderless, cyborg subjectivity. "Cyborgs" and "serials" are figures of social and fictional "reality," that, together, reflect the normalizing, hierarchical, and psychologically traumatic aspects of operational Harawayan cyborgology. Chapter 1 explores the practical limits of the hybridity and fluidity characteristic of Harawayan cyborg subjectivity and politics to suggest that processes of political normalization are far less easily dismantled in practice than they are in theory. This discussion focuses on the persistent influence of sex/gender dualism on hierarchical structures in technoculture, a persistence illustrated in science fiction novels by James Tiptree, Jr. and Vonda McIntyre. Chapter 2 looks at how race influences the divergence of feminist agendas by engendering the mutually exclusive, racially influenced perspectives of both Harawayan cyborg politics and radical U.S. feminism. Two science fiction stories by Octavia E. Butler, a black American writer, illustrate the translation of gender hierarchy into racial hierarchy. A sensitivity to this rearticulation of oppression seems to be missing from cyborg politics. Finally, Chapter 3 investigates the psychoanalytic trauma of fragmentation, multiplicity, and fusion through the psychopathology of serial killers in order to question Haraway's emphasis on, what is for her, the "liberating" and "creative" quality of a psychological state that is, for these criminals, the source of psychosis and aggression. This chapter explores what I consider to be the "serial" side of Harawayas "cyborg," in a crime fiction novel by Gordon Lish.

Many women currently occupy the position of high school principal, and the number of studies conducted with women educational administrators has increased to reflect that reality. In the past, women who became school administrators had to have succeeded according to rules that they had no part in making; they were accommodating the demands of administrative roles shaped by men (Young, 1995). Since Young wrote that conclusion in 1995, the landscape has changed, and even more women occupy educational administrative positions. This study attempted to ascertain to what extent and in what ways women are now able to shape administrative roles to suit themselves; in terms of their leadership approach, and their conception of power, and authority. The qualitative study is based on data collected from semi-structured, open-ended interviews with five women high school principals, as well as observations conducted at their work place. The aim of the study was to further our understanding of how they enact their role as the principal of a high school. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This study of British women writers of the Great War highlights the connections between literature and social history in the first quarter of the twentieth century. An examination of The Tree of Heaven (1917), The Return of the Soldier (1918), The Crowded Street (1924), and Mrs. Dalloway (1925) will reveal the manner in which male and female gender roles were subject to acute interrogation in wartime and post-war British society. Chapter 1 surveys literary and cultural scholarship on the Great War in order to emphasize the failure of gender-specific narratives of social change to address the complex dynamics of gender conflict which characterized the period. Chapter 2 investigates the non-combatant communities of women created through the gender-segregation of the War, revealing that the constructions of feminism in The Tree of Heaven and The Crowded Street are contextualized within their appropriation of military models for female collectivity and interaction. Chapter 3 focuses on the relationships between non-combatant women and shell-shocked veterans in The Return of the Soldier and Mrs. Dalloway, illustrating that the male and female subjects of these texts are constructed in terms of their mutual subjection to the discursive institutions of the State in wartime and post-war society. All four texts provide both Modernism and feminism with a compelling, if contradictory, dimension which needs to be recovered.

Conflicts between seniority and employment equity became evident after the United States adopted laws in the 1960s prohibiting discrimination in employment. Seniority rights sometimes slowed down or prevented the integration of Blacks and women in the workplace; in times of layoffs, they insured that recently-hired employees from these groups were the first to go. This led to innumerable law suits culminating in a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The potential for similar conflicts is even greater under Canadian anti-discrimination provisions because Canadian laws contain no counterpart of the general seniority exemption which is included in U.S. law. In spite of this, not a single case concerning indirect discrimination by seniority systems has been reported in this country. The few reported cases involving seniority and discrimination dealt with crude questions such as separate seniority units for women and men. The main elements demonstrated in this thesis are: (1) that seniority rules have harmful effects on Canadian women; (2) that these harmful rules constitute unjustified adverse impact discrimination under Canadian law; (3) that laws prohibiting adverse impact discrimination by seniority rules are not enforced in Canada; and (4) that many measures could be taken to reduce the negative impact of seniority systems on women while retaining the beneficial effects of the seniority principle. These points are developed in five chapters. Chapter I provides background information on the nature and coverage of seniority rights, the arguments for and against them and the way in which they are applied. Chapter II assesses the impact of seniority on women to correct its unjust effects on them. Chapter III reviews the legal history of the conflict between seniority and equality rights in the United States. In Chapter IV, we consider whether unmodified seniority rules constitute unjustified adverse impact discrimination under the following Canadian laws: (1) laws on the duty of fair representation of labour unions; (2) human rights acts; and (3) the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. At the end of Chapter IV, and in Chapter V, we describe changes which could be made to correct present injustices. Some, like the adoption of proactive employment equity laws with vigorous sanctions and powerful implementing agencies, aim at correcting the lack of enforcement. Other proposed changes involve a broad range of modifications to seniority systems to reduce or eliminate their negative impact on women, as well as alternatives to seniority-based layoffs. Our conclusion is that if such changes were made, the seniority principle could at last become the essential protector of vulnerable workers it was originally meant to be. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Abstract Not Available.