<p> Betrayal trauma theory posits that victims of abuse perpetrated by someone close are more likely to dissociate from awareness of the abuse in order to protect the needed relationship. Shame may likewise protect the relationship by turning the victim's attention inward, thereby increasing the likelihood that the abusive environment will be overlooked. In this dissertation, the associations between shame, dissociation, and betrayal trauma were examined in two experimental studies. A third study examined the consequences of chronic shame. Aims were to determine whether shame and dissociation have a unique link with high betrayal traumas (HiBT), to understand the nature of the relationship between shame and dissociation, and to investigate the consequences of chronic shame. </p><p> In study 1, 124 female trauma survivors were randomly assigned to a high or low betrayal threat condition. Greater exposure to HiBT but not low betrayal traumas (LoBT) predicted increased shame and dissociation following high betrayal threat. Greater exposure to LoBT but not HiBT predicted increased fear following non-betrayal threat. Compared to non-dissociators, dissociators from threat endorsed more negative psychological consequences. </p><p> In study 2, 127 female trauma survivors completed a dissociation induction and battery of questionnaires. The bypassed shame theory, which proposes that dissociation serves to disconnect from the pain of shame, was examined. Results partially supported bypassed shame theory. Although feelings of shame led to a larger dissociation response to the induction, dissociation did not interrupt shame but rather led to even higher shame. Implications are discussed for a possible contributing role of shame to betrayal blindness. </p><p> In study 3, 247 trauma survivors completed online questionnaires addressing chronic shame hypotheses. Regression results revealed that all forms of chronic shame, especially trauma-focused shame, predicted negative health consequences. Correlation results revealed that HiBT was associated with more types of negative outcomes compared to LoBT and that HiBT but not LoBT was associated with chronic shame. </p><p> Taken together, results indicate that, like dissociation, shame may be both an adaptive and detrimental response following betrayal trauma and that emotional and cognitive responses other than fear warrant attention in trauma research and practice.</p>

<p> The major objective of this study is to critically engage with the representation of princesses in Walt Disney Studio animated films. Although popular feminist criticism of the last four decades claims that the Disney Studio creates negative portrayals of women in their fairy tales films, a deeper understanding of women's roles can by found through the use of critical analysis and close reading of <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast,</i> and <i>Tangled.</i> The work of the Disney Studio animation will be closely examined and discussed while exploring the domestic and feminist issues present within these four specific films. Through analyzing these films, I will demonstrate that these characters have a depth and complexity to them that showcase an evolution that mirrors the changes within American society.</p>

<p>One in four college aged women have been raped or sexually assaulted. The InterACT Sexual Assault Prevention Program offers promise as an effective intervention for rape prevention, intervention, and response training. Several bystander interventions, including InterACT, regard empathy as a crucial component of successful rape prevention efforts. </p><p> Theoretical foundations for the link between empathy and prosocial behavior are well established; however, the link between rape-specific empathy and rape-specific prosocial behavior has received less attention until recently. Experimental evaluations confirmed InterACT is successful in increasing general and rape-specific empathy among participants. </p><p> Limited research has identified emotional and cognitive components responsible for motivating rape helping behaviors. The current study is the first to empirically identify rape-specific empathy as a significant predictor of rape-specific helping behavior. Such evidence urges rape prevention programs to include rape-specific empathy exercises in intervention designs. Implications for continued research and programming are discussed. </p>

<p>This thesis explores relational aggression within the context of the female gender. Relational aggression is addressed from an evolutionary, depth psychological, and research-oriented perspective. The question asked in this thesis is: Why do women participate in relational aggression against other women? This thesis uses hermeneutic and heuristic methodologies to excavate the feminine shadow. The author explores why women relationally aggress and examines the place of relational aggression within Western patriarchal society. Support for this work includes current research on relational aggression, exploration of objectification of the female gender, evolutionary theories, the depth psychological perspective, and personal thoughts. </p>

<p> The primary objective of this thesis project is to investigate Woolf's narrative construction of consciousness and its enactment of resistance against the clinical model of cognitive normativity, using <i>Mrs. Dalloway. </i> This objective is part of an effort to identify the ways in which Woolf's writing can be used, foundationally, to challenge the contemporary language of clinical diagnosis, as it functions to maintain power imbalances and serves as a mechanism of the rigid policing of normativity. It is also intended to support the suggestion that Woolf's novels and essays make a valuable contribution, when advanced by theory&mdash;including disability theory, to scientific conversations on the mind. One major benefit is that doing so encourages border-crossing between disciplines and views. More specifically, this project examines the ways in which <i>Mrs. Dalloway</i> resists the compulsory practice of categorizing and dividing the mind. The novel, I assert, supports an alternative narrative treatment, not of the mind but, of the normative social forces that police it. It allows and encourages readers to reframe stigmatizing, divisive, and power-based categories of cognitive difference and to resist the scientific tendency to dismiss pertinent philosophical and theoretical treatments of consciousness that are viable in literature. The critical portion of the project is concerned with the way in which <i> Mrs. Dalloway</i> addresses consciousness and challenges medical authority. Its implications urge the formation of an investigative alliance between Woolf's work and psychology that will undermine the power differential, call attention to and dismantle the stigma of "mental illness," and propel clinical treatment into new diagnostic practices.</p>

<p> For the last twenty years, literature has demonstrated that women have attained jobs as faculty members within academic medicine at a steady rate. Yet, women faculty members have been consistently underrepresented in traditional senior-level positions in academic administration. Their underrepresentation is attributed to career decisions. The main purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of ELAM participants who pursued non-traditional career commitments. The problem of practice addressed the impact of career choices of women faculty in academic medicine, an understudied topic. Toward filling this void in the literature, this study utilized a constructivist methodological framework that is shaped, in part, by the Feminist Standpoint Theory, thereby, allowing the researcher to draw on pre-transcribed interview data that provide insight into ELAM participants' decisions to pursue non-traditional leadership commitments. For the purposes of this study, Traditional Leadership Commitments are defined as positions on the traditional career ladder, including faculty member positions, president, vice president, and provost. Non-traditional Commitments are defined as Director of Residency, Deputy Dean of Education, and Associate Director Echocardiography Lab. </p><p> The main question generated four operational research questions that, in turn, yield four findings that facilitate an understanding of the experiences and decisions that influenced women faculty choices to pursue non-traditional leadership positions. Finding One indicated that there are no 'dedicated leadership pipelines' for women seeking to advance to senior-level positions, and the 'leadership pipeline model' has failed to provide women with viable professional strategies for advancement. Finding Two demonstrated that the misalignment between institutional policies and work-life integration impedes women's advancement to senior-leadership positions. Finding Three showed that Non-traditional careers are viable and sustainable interventions for women seeking advancement to senior level positions in academic medicine. </p><p> Finding Four revealed that ELAM is a valuable intervention that enables its participants to become self-determined and self-directed agents in the creation of their non-traditional commitments as alternative 'career choices' to traditional senior-level leadership positions. By examining the experiences of ELAM participants who pursued non-traditional leadership commitments within academic medicine, this study made a scholarly contribution to the larger body of literature regarding women faculty career choices.</p>

<p> <i>Twilight</i> by Stephenie Meyer and <i> The Hunger Games</i> by Suzanne Collins are two of the bestselling series of our generation. These series are meeting widespread popularity just as the contemporary feminist debate of: "Can women have it all?" is occurring around the country. Although <i>Twilight</i> and <i>The Hunger Games</i> are not considered overtly feminist texts, they have emerged in a time when women are reexamining the possibility of empowering themselves both in the public and the domestic sphere. Meyer and Collins have introduced female protagonists that deal with precisely this issue. </p><p> First, I will be outlining why cultural studies are important to discussions of popular literature, as argued by both Jane Tompkins and Cathy N. Davidson, especially in terms of female readers and writers. I will also be exploring the bestselling works of Louisa May Alcott's <i>Little Women</i> and Jacqueline Susann's <i>Valley of the Dolls</i> which emerged during the first and second waves of feminism and how they expressed a hesitation to give women a happy ending outside domesticity within their respective historical contexts. Next, I will review the current "lean in" culture of the third wave of feminism. I will also show how both <i>Twilight</i> and <i> The Hunger Games</i> continue the pattern of female protagonists that cannot be empowered unless they are wives and mothers. Finally, I will analyze how my own creative writing has been affected by cultural debates involving women's roles. Popular women's writing that emerges in the context of major feminist moments in American history shows ambivalence towards empowering women outside the home. This ambivalence is also reflected in my own writing through poetry. By first examining the work of best-selling women writers in the last two centuries and then analyzing my own writing in concurrence with the evolution of feminist ideals, I will show that women writers display a hesitant feminism despite emerging alongside progressive cultural moments in American history.</p>

A community based, cross-sectional survey was undertaken of the anthropometric status of Oromo, non-pregnant women of child bearing age in Kersa subdistrict, southwest Ethiopia. The main purposes of this investigation were to determine normative anthropometric standards and to identify their important determinants. A structured questionnaire was administered by interviewers and anthropometric measurements were completed on 473 non-pregnant women randomly selected and stratified by 5 year age categories from 8 peasant associations. Women in this study sample were light with a mean (SD) weight of 46.9 (5.3) kg. Approximately three quarters weighed less than 50 kg and 34 (7%) less than 40 kg. Women's height averaged 155.5 cm with nearly 20% under 150 cm. The mean (SD) BMI was 19.4 (1.9) kg/m$ sp2$ and 35% of the women had a BMI lower than 18.5 kg/m$ sp2$. Means for all anthropometric measurements fell below the 10th percentile of the standard, NCHS reference for black women. No consistent predictor was found across the various anthropometric outcomes. In particular, all anthropometric outcomes were stable across age categories. The relationship between these anthropometric measures and adverse maternal or perinatal outcomes need to be validated.

This study is an institutional ethnography which employs a critical race feminist theoretical framework in order to explicate the social relations that coordinate the experiences of racialized female student activists at McGill University. Interviews with students, administrators, faculty and staff, along with observations about texts, institutional language and experiences around equity at McGill make up the data for conducting this anti-racist feminist analysis. In the first part of this study, knowledge produced through the experiences of racialized female student activists – who make up the entry point of this study – exposes a disjuncture between McGill's self-portrayal as equitable and diverse and how it is experienced by some racialized women. The next part of this study explores some challenges to doing anti-racist activist work at McGill and the lack of – yet need for – an institutional memory that encourages present and future organizing to document, refer to, and build on past initiatives (successful and otherwise) around race, racism and equity. / Cette étude est une ethnographie institutionnelle qui emploie une cadre théorique féministe-critique afin d'expliquer les relations sociales qui coordonnent les expériences des étudiantes-organisatrice racialisées à l'Université McGill. Les entrevues avec les étudiantes, administrateurs, professeurs et employés, avec des observations sur les textes, la langue institutionelle et des expériences autour de l'équité à l'Université McGill constituent les données pour effectuer cette analyse anti-raciste féministe. Dans la première partie de cette étude, les connaissances produites par les expériences des étudiantes-organisatrice racialisées – qui constituent le point d'entrée de cette étude – expose une disjonction entre la façon dont l'Université se portrait comme équitable et diversifiée et comment elle est vécue par certains étudiantes racialisées. La prochaine partie de cette étude examine certains des défis au travail d'organisation anti-raciste à l'Université McGill et le manque (et le besoin) d'une mémoire institutionnelle qui encourage l'organisation actuelle et future de documenter, de consulter, et de s'appuyer sur les initiatives passées (réussie et autrement) autour de la race, le racisme et l'équité.

This thesis examines the emergence and subsequent development of feminist activist service groups in Aotearoa/New Zealand feminist movements from the 1970s to the 1990s. It specifically considers, the Women's Centres, Women's Health Collectives, Women's Refuges and Rape Crisis groups. Feminism in the groups was closely linked to the internal processes of organising as a collective based on 'women's ways of working'. The groups merged a radical feminist political orientation with a service orientation as they developed services 'for women by women'. The study was based on a qualitative analysis of published and unpublished documents of activist service groups, and open-ended interviews with 65 women discussing their experiences of working in activist service groups. Two distinct phases of change to the internal organisation of the groups between 1970 and 1999 have been identified and examined. In the first phase, (1970s - 1980s), radical feminist collective ways of working acquired the status of a taken for granted institutional norm among the groups. These groups organised as women-only collectives, utilised consensus decision-making, embodied ideals of non-hierarchy, and had aspirations of sisterhood between women. The second phase (from the late 1980s) was marked by modification of the radical feminist collective, as groups experienced internal and external pressures to adopt bureaucratic practices. Major pressures included the shift by the state to contract funding of the groups, the changing participation of paid and unpaid workers in the daily work of the groups, and the increasing formal differentiation between employers and employees. These changes were a major source of conflict and tension, as the groups modified their organisations to include differentiation of roles, specialisation of positions and formal hierarchy. At the same time groups sustained aspects of radical feminist collective organising. Dealing with differences was a major site of tension and conflict in the activist service groups. Groups implemented various strategies to address differences between women in relation to race/ethnicity, sexuality and class. A major focus of the groups was the development of bicultural relations between Māori and non-Māori. Models of biculturalrelations in the predominantly Pākehā groups ranged from increasing Māori representation in the groups, to the formation of alliances between independent groups or alliances between ethnic-specific groups in the same organisation. These strategies were mostly framed in terms of a binary opposition between oppressed and oppressor, and along a single axis of oppression. Nevertheless, the groups' attempts to 'deal with differences' between women were important in challenging assumptions of genderbased commonality between all women. In spite of these conflicts and associated changes, participants in the activist service groups attempted to maintain inclusive, non-hierarchical, empowering organisations 'for women by women'. In the 1990s, many of the feminist activist service groups continued to pursue democratic collective ways of working and to engage in a politics of difference in their organisations.