Longtemps les militantes féministes ont exigé une meilleure prise en compte de l'égalite entre les sexes dans les programmes de développement des pays du Sud. Il semble que leurs efforts aient porté des fruits. De nos jours, de la Banque mondiale en passant par les Objectifs du Millénaire pour le développement, les acteurs, les engagements et les stratégies de développement se disent soucieux de l'égalité entre les sexes. Il convient toutefois de s'interroger à savoir comment ces derniers entendent l'égalité entre les sexes. En effet, leur conception correspond-elle à celle garantie par les instruments juridiques internationaux? Cette étude propose une analyse comparative de la norme d'égalité entre les sexes en droit international des droits de la personne et dans le champ du développement international. À l'aide d'une étude de cas qui porte sur les États de l'Afrique francophone, l'auteure explore comment ces derniers intègrent l'égalité entre les sexes dans les documents de stratégies de réduction de la pauvreté (DSRP) et dans les rapports du Mécanisme africain d'évaluation par les pairs (MAEP), associé au Nouveau partenariat pour le développement de l'Afrique (NEPAD).

Genetic testing to determine whether a woman carries a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation, which may entail an up to 80% lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, is relatively recent. As there is an apparent void in the literature investigating the experiences of these women, and few qualitative studies of this nature exist, six women identified as carriers were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. The grounded theory method was utilized and through findings emerged two core categories: Context Following the Receipt of the Test Results and Living with the BRCA Genetic Mutation: An Uncertain Conclusion to an Unending Process. Specifically, following the receipt of their test result, participants reported changes in their self-perception and perception of others. Over time, participants described living with the BRCA gene mutation and its medical consequences. Particularly significant findings consisted of participants feeling less like a woman, feeling stigmatized, and living with unending uncertainty.

This thesis analyzes the role of the Canadian women's movement in the formulation of sections 15 and 28 in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Grounded in the context of the decade leading up to the 1980-1982 mega-constitutional debates, the ideas and actions of the women's movement demonstrate both their intellectual and political agency in securing a new interpretation of equality rights within the Charter. Intellectually, women drew on the legal experiences of Canadian, American, and international interpretations of equality as well as feminist ideology to conceive of a more substantive equality. Built out of two principles, equality of opportunity and equality of results, Canadian women devised a new language to reinforce the interpretation of substantive equality and sought out the means to transform their idea into reality. The success of the women's movement in this era is typically attributed to its effective mobilization, profiting from an environment in which Canadian women were able to develop a complex network of organizations at the national, provincial, local, and grass roots level. Moreover, the structure of the women's movement provided a powerful platform for key figures within the movement to articulate women's concerns and have those opinions respectfully considered. Only in tandem do the ideals championed by the women's movement and the structure of the movement allow for its eventual success. The women's movement was riddled by strong cleavages, including ideological, regional, class, and ethnic cleavages, but held together in this era by a common commitment to substantive equality. Providing an arena for action, the critical events that mark the 1980-1982 mega-constitutional debates showcase these elements and illustrate how Canadian women transformed their ideas into action. Examining the context leading up to the debates along with the events during the fourteen-month span of negotiations, it is argued that women played both an intellectual and political role in shaping equality rights in Canada. Their contributions not only secured an effective path to substantive equality but also irrevocably altered the nature of the debate surrounding human rights and changed the way Canadians understand, interpret, and practice equality.

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into creativity and creative talent development in order to address the problem of underachievement of creatively talented females. The experiences of ten female visual artists were investigated from a feminist, interpretive perspective using open-ended interviews and a focus group, which was observed by a reflecting team. Using grounded theory, the data analysis identified seven themes. The themes are: educational experiences, urge to create, gender issues, talent is not enough, connections, obligations and expectations, and need for support. Results revealed that talent alone is not enough to ensure realization of potential. A variety of supports are critical to the development of talent. Strategies to promote talent development included mentor programs and career-training programs specific to the needs of creatively talented females. There is also a need to provide professional development for teachers in both art and creativity. A further result demonstrated that while life and work may, at times be distinct, they are not separate. They are inextricably linked and influence each other in reciprocal ways. As such, in determining how to support talent development, one must consider supporting life choices. A model of creative female talent development was developed to represent the intersection and influence of professional and personal lives of the participants. It is in the form of the two rails that make up the double helix framework of the DNA molecule. One rail represents aspects of personal life and the other rail represents career components of creatively talented females. The rails connect the various parts of a life together. The rails are meant to convey the fact that the career development of creatively talented females is not a linear process. There may be many ups and downs, twists and turns. The two strands are ultimately connected and, as such, events or developments in one area, can affect the other.

This dissertation examines a group of female writers in the eighteenth century, the Countess of Winchilsea, Sarah Fyge, Mary Chudleigh, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Mary Collier, Mary Leapor, Ann Yearsley, and Anna Barbauld, who reconfigured elements of an authoritative generic mode, the georgic. In undertaking this reconfiguration these women developed their own distinctive tradition of verse which I describe as a portrayal of a beata femina . The poetry of the beata femina acknowledges the separate sphere to which eighteenth-century mores restricted women and privileges the life of that sphere. Thus the narrative of the beatus vir is not figured as an appeal to rural retirement so much as a gendered escape from a male dominated world into a female life of the mind. The traditional affirmation of the georgic labour of the estate is transformed into a testimony of domestic labour. The country-house poem is rewritten to celebrate the women who give it life, while the topographical survey is reordered as a means for women to survey their own narratives. However, the most significant way in which these women establish a sense of a beata femina within georgically inflected verse is through their employment of time. Women's poetry in this mode self-consciously rejects both the seasonal cycles and sense of historic progression associated with the georgic. Instead, women describe short periods of time within their quotidian lives in which they experience pleasure, connect to nature or other women, and, often, achieve transcendent experiences which seem to stand outside time.

In later life, osteoarthritis is a prevalent (Badley, 1995; Health Canada, 1999) and chronic disabling condition (e.g. Blixen & Kippes, 1999; Buckwalter & Martin, 1995; Burke & Flaherty, 1993; Croft, Lewis, Jones Wynn, Coggon, & Cooper, 2002; Hochberg, 1984) which is also associated with psychological distress. Adaptation to stressful life circumstances, including a chronic illness such as osteoarthritis, appears to be influenced by perceived control and coping strategies (Lazarus & Folkman 1984; Moos & Schaeffer, 1993). The present cross-sectional correlational study examined the relationships between perceived control and coping strategies when faced with a specific osteoarthritis-related stressor, that is, specifically limitations in activity, and assessed their capacity to predict two possible outcomes, i.e. anxious and depressive symptoms. This study also addressed the effect of the interaction of perceived control with coping strategies on both anxious and depressive symptoms. Self-report data were obtained from 92 older women suffering from osteoarthritis, through four hospital-based orthopaedic clinics located in the Ottawa-Gatineau region, where they were awaiting hip or knee surgery. The findings revealed that perceived control did not predict anxious symptoms, while coping strategies (approach-type coping, in particular) did. In contrast, for the prediction of depressive symptomatology; perceived control and coping strategies (approach-type coping, specifically) individually predicted depressive symptoms. However, perceived control did not hold higher predictive value than coping strategies in the prediction of depressive symptoms. Finally, the interaction of perceived control with coping strategies was significant only in the prediction of depressive symptoms, with higher perceived control combined with lower use of avoidance-type coping strategies predicting lower depressive symptomatology, specifically. Overall, results suggest that perceived control and coping strategies with regard to activity restriction are differently related to anxious and depressive symptoms. Regarding anxiety symptoms, only a specific type of approach coping, i.e. positive interpretation, was negatively associated with them. As for depressive symptoms, higher perceived control, higher use of approach-type coping strategies and lower use of avoidance-type coping strategies, individually predicted lower depressive symptomatology. All approach-type coping strategies (active coping, planning and positive reinterpretation) were negatively related to depressive symptoms, while one type of avoidance-type coping strategy, behavioural disengagement, was positively associated with them. Additionally, higher perceived control combined with lower use of avoidance coping contributed to lower depressive symptomatology. The cross-sectional nature of the study and correlational analyses do not allow to state causal relationships. The strengths and limitations of the study, as well as its implications for future research and clinical applications, are discussed.

Dans cette thèse, nous souhaitons identifier comment l'État tunisien a-t-elle parvenu à formuler une équation équilibrée entre les concepts de la modernité et les dogmes d'un islam traditionnel et Comment l'émancipation des Tunisiennes a-t-elle été rendue possible. Les questions sont multiples mais elles renvoient à un seul objectif qui est de soutenir notre hypothèse: le droit de la famille tunisien, tout en étant l'élément déclencheur et déterminant de la promotion des femmes, reste une norme juridique qui peine à se demarquer, dans certains de ses aspects fondamentaux, de la lecture et de l'interprétation encore uniformes d'un corpus de lois découlant du droit et de la tradition musulmans. Pour voir clair, un retour vers le passé, c'est-à-dire vers l'étape de la colonisation, s'avère important et ce, d'autant plus que cela nous permettra de mieux saisir les acquis des femmes d'aujourd'hui. C'est précisement ce que nous nous proposons d'exposer dans la première partie de notre thèse. Nous avons essayé, en premier lieu de définir le droit musulman; nous en retracerons l'historicité; nous présenterons les droits qu'il accorde aux femmes musulmanes; nous étudierons leur application dans la Tunisie d'autrefois et, enfin, nous retracerons la genèse du discours émancipateur. Suite à l'intervention coloniale, le monde moderne n'etait plus une donnée abstraite et lointaine, mais devenait omniprésent. La réaction des Tunisiens fut ambivalente; tirailles entre la crainte et l'envie, la répulsion et la fascination, toute tentative pour modifier la situation des femmes se voyait qualifiée de francisation de l'identité tunisienne. Une identité que les Tunisiennes étaient sommées de protéger. Aussi leur statut restait-il régi par des prescriptions coraniques, certainement mal interprétées, et des pratiques sociales ancestrales les plaçant sous la soumission inconditionnelle des hommes et empêchant toute tentative d'émancipation. La seule chance de voir ce statut évoluer vers une plus grande égalité aura été d'accepter de porter un regard plus critique sur l'interprétation du Coran. Il s'agissait de procéder à une lecture libérale du texte coranique par référence à ses fins, c'est-à-dire d'avancer une interprétation évolutive du Coran afin d'octroyer aux femmes la place qui leur revenait selon une religion bien comprise. Telle fut l'intention de Tahar Haddad, le défenseur de la cause des femmes, qui a été frappé d'ostracisme à cause de ses idées. T. Haddad a bouleversé l'approche traditionnelle et dogmatique du droit musulman en proclamant l'égalité entre les hommes et les femmes pour préconiser une réforme juridique totale du statut des Musulmanes. Heureusement, ses thèses réussirent à briser les barrières de la répression pour pouvoir toucher les esprits des Tunisiens et ses idées furent reprises par la nouvelle équipe dirigeante de la Tunisie indépendante. La seconde étape de notre thèse consiste à analyser le statut juridique des Tunisiennes à travers le Code de statut personnel, lequel a permis de réparer les grandes injustices qui pesaient sur les femmes jusqu'à l'indépendance. Cette étude du droit tunisien est très vite investie par une interrogation sur le rapport de ce Code a l'héritage islamique. Un Code qui paraît tantôt traditionnel, tantôt moderne. En effet, le Code de la famille a marqué ses distances par rapport à l'oeuvre des jurisconsultes musulmans d'une part, mais il est resté fidèle à une certaine interprétation classique, d'autre part. Sans faire table rase du passé, il a essayé de s'ouvrir sur la modernité afin de propulser la société tunisienne sur la voie du développement. La démarche que le législateur a suivie est particulière: il s'est efforcé de rester fidèle au droit musulman tout en reformant le droit de la famille chaque fois que ses solutions ne s'ajustaient pas aux impératifs de la modernisation de la société tunisienne et chaque fois qu'une relecture du Coran était possible. Arrivée au terme de cette étude, nous pouvons affirmer que le Code du statut personnel a joué un rôle déterminant dans la modernisation du statut des Tunisiennes et dans la transformation des mentalités. Malgre les insuffisances de certaines de ses règles juridiques et le caractère discriminatoire de quelques dispositions, ce Code est résolument moderne. En réalité, il a été et demeure un vecteur de changement de la société tunisienne, en général, et du statut des femmes, en particulier. Ainsi, l'exemple tunisien démontre que l'émancipation des femmes musulmanes est non seulement possible mais faisable. La Tunisie a su adapter et réactualiser un droit ancestral, enraciné dans le sacré et consacré dans la pratique par une tradition difficile a contester. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Abstract not available.

My dissertation is a response to the lack of theological reflection on the qualitatively different poverty endured by women, a concrete manifestation of which is maternal mortality. I claim that the lack of theological reflection on women's poverty is not a benign phenomenon. It reinforces a world in which women's disenfranchized status perpetuates the injustice of maternal mortality. I also claim that the failure of liberation theology to attend adequately to the particular poverty of women compromises its commitment to solidarity with the oppressed. Using a feminist liberation methodology, my dissertation is divided into a hermeneutical circle animated by "see-judge-act" dimensions. Within a liberation paradigm, the tasks of solidarity and theopraxis are a multi-differentiated unity: all three dimensions of "see-judge-act" are theologically interdependent and critical to the goal of liberation. Feminist liberation theological ethics begins by attending to the concrete injustices of women's lives. Chapter 1 corresponds to the initial "see-judge" dimension of the hermeneutical circle. I provide a historically conscious analysis of maternal mortality. I draw on the feminist interpretive framework of multiple jeopardy and the "traffic" of women's everyday lives to reveal the causal dynamics implicated in maternal mortality. I explore maternal mortality from a gender-sensitive economic lens, thereby substantiating my claim that maternal mortality is a sensitive indicator of economic justice for women. In Chapter 2, I continue to develop the "see-judge" dimension of the hermeneutical circle. I situate maternal mortality within the structural jeopardy of inadequate health care. I then demonstrate how women's marginal economic status is reflected in and reinforced by the minimal value placed on their health and well-being within global and national economic policies. I examine the implications for impoverished women of two specific economic policies: the global funding of reproductive health and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers implemented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. To ensure that my insights into maternal mortality are consistent with a gender-sensitive and informed economic analysis, I introduce the discourse of feminist economics. I ascertain the methodological base points and central themes of feminist economics. I underline the relevance of this discourse for a feminist liberation analysis of maternal mortality. In addition to the discourse of feminist economists, the sources for both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 are drawn from the discourse of trans-national feminism, as well as from social scientific, medical and health related studies. Chapter 3 corresponds to the "judge-act" dimension of the hermeneutical circle: I evaluate maternal mortality through the eyes of faith. I introduce the work of the Christian social feminist liberation ethicist Beverly Wildung Harrison. I submit that within Harrison's corpus are resources that correlate well with the needs of a feminist liberation analysis of maternal mortality. However, I note that while the theme of emancipatory praxis animates Harrison's liberation social ethics, it is not explicit. I therefore make explicit Harrison's pastoral, theological and theoretical commitments to emancipatory praxis. I then synthesize categories that I use to illumine and judge maternal mortality as a theo-ethical issue of injustice. I conclude the chapter by developing a praxis of resistance in solidarity with economically marginalized pregnant women. I deepen my analysis and judgement of maternal mortality in Chapter 4 by integrating Harrison's approach to justice and her social theory. I claim that Harrison's understanding of justice as right relation is the fruit of emancipatory praxis. I also claim that her social theory is a logical extension of her concept of justice and is, therefore, an important theo-ethical tool for appropriating the geo-political economy from the perspectives of economically marginalized women. Harrison's approach to justice and her social theory further clarify maternal mortality as an injustice experienced by impoverished women. These resources are necessary for an adequate theo-ethical understanding of the oppression of women. In conclusion, I underline that the reality of maternal mortality presents both crisis and opportunity. The crisis presented is that as a global community, we continue to do little to counter the preventable deaths and disabilities of economically marginalized pregnant women. Alternatively, maternal mortality is an impetus for justice making: it can foster a world of right relation in which the structured jeopardies and the "traffic" of impoverished women's lives are concrete collective sites of resistance. Maternal mortality is a profound locus theologicus in which a God of life needs to be proclaimed and embodied in ways life-giving to impoverished women. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This thesis is an examination of the relations between sexuality, religion and spirituality. The use of these terms is not conventional, and my introductory chapter is to a large extent concerned with elucidating what I mean by each of them. This unconventionality is itself crucial to the thesis: I am calling into question some of the basic assumptions behind traditional anthropological questions. I am using Burridge's definition of religion from his New Heaven New Earth: The redemptive process indicated by the activities, moral rules, and assumptions about power which, pertinent to the moral order and taken on faith, not only enable a people to perceive the truth of things, hut guarantee that they are indeed perceiving the truth of things (1969:6-7). I examine how religion, insofar as its assumptions about the truth of things are to he taken on faith, is at odds with spirituality, which is the essential quality of a life which is lived to experience the truth for oneself. Religion, which upholds the moral order of society, is static; spirituality is dynamic - it implies change and growth. Sexuality is defined as "... the biological differences between female and male, and the real or assumed psychological differences dependent on these". It is shown that the only such difference is the fact that women are able to bear children, and men are not. There are no innate psychological differences between the sexes. However, people are differently socialized on the basis of the one biological difference mentioned above, so that the social personalities of women and men may, on the average, be different. My understanding of the causes of this difference in socialization rests on Simone de Beauvoir's approach to the problem in The Second Sex. Cultural assumptions about what it means to be female or male are discussed as being oppressive to spirituality. Insofar as the religion of a culture is its rationale, religion is focused on here as the arena where the sexual division of society takes place. Cultural definitions of sexuality are seen as the major cultural obstacle to spiritual growth. The particular religions examined are 1) those of the Australian Aborigines and the BaMbuti Pygmies; 2) that of Hindu civilization as manifested in the Kama Sutra ( I explain why I feel it is legitimate to consider the Kama Sutra a religious work); and 3) Buddhism. I discuss how anthropologists avoid questioning the morality of sexual oppression, and why they are concerned only with examining its effects upon the members of society. My basic conclusion is that all definitions of sexuality which attribute more to females and males than the fact that the former can bear children while the latter cannot are sexist: they are akin to religion and inimical to spirituality. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate