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This thesis aims to explore the perceptions and experiences of professional women at the University of Sindh, Jamshoro-Pakistan (UoSJP), regarding their respectability and social status in the workplace and in the community. Additionally, the thesis elaborates on professional women's perceptions and experiences regarding their autonomy and independence, which they have supposedly achieved through their university education and gainful employment. The major contribution of the thesis is that it addresses the lack of feminist research on professional women in the context of the ongoing debate over gender equality in Sindh, Pakistan. This thesis, by using feminist standpoint theory and intersectionality as theoretical and analytical tools, emphasises multiple identities, rather than focusing on a single dimension of social difference. Additionally, this thesis, by employing a Bourdieusian framework (economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital), explores and examines professional women's identities in relation to their particular spatial locations, as well as the ways that social capital and institutionalised cultural capital intersect with their social and familial backgrounds to produce complex hierarchies. The research asserts that women's higher-ranking position (socially accepted) also has a potential influence on their respectability, social status and autonomy in the workplace and in the community. Because it plays a significant role in establishing influential social networking, which further increases women's symbolic capital. Thus, the thesis explores and establishes links between the respectability, social status, autonomy and independence of these professional women, and the intersection of potential influencing factors (for example, patriarchy, class, caste, familial and educational backgrounds, locale and employment). The thesis, then, discusses how professional women negotiate their multiple identities within certain defined spheres while upholding or regulating the respectability, dignity and ‘family honour' that is linked to their modesty (sexuality). The thesis claims that ‘collectivity' is the social ethic or essence of Pakistani society, while ‘individuality' has been socially and culturally dishonoured and/or disapproved. Therefore, these professional women, understanding and attributing meanings to these concepts in local context, observed their ‘limited' or ‘defined autonomy', which is influenced by many potential intersecting factors rather than their gender and/or patriarchy.

Whilst the literature of academic identity is well represented in the sociology of Higher Education (HE) in the UK, personal narratives of journeys through the process of being and becoming an academic are less present. The potential of narrative methodology to produce different knowledge by producing knowledge differently (St. Pierre, 1997) is used as a conceptual framework to co-construct case stories of the career journeys made by five women academics within a globalised academy in the early 21st century. The study draws on two principal theoretical frameworks to contrast the dynamic relationships between gender, structure and agency and their implications for Academic Development. These are: the critical realist theories of Margaret Archer (1995; 2000; 2003; 2012) and Judith Butler's work on gender ‘performativity' (1990; 2005; 2004). In terms of senior roles at policy level the Academy can be seen as a male dominated sphere. My thesis focuses on women's journeys to foreground the effects of wider social relations and how they impact on women's academic identities and careers to continually reproduce dominant discourses of a male hegemony and neo-liberal socio-economic climate. The consequential distortions in academic development practices are framed in the light of this knowledge. This contributes knowledge to the literature of Academic Development in Higher Education and has implications for my own professional practice as a Head of Continual Professional Development (CPD) for Teaching and Learning in a pre-92 University. Three broad research questions guided this exploration. 1. What are the experiences of women academics in developing their careers and academic identities? 2. How can case stories of the career choices made by women academics help academic developers understand gender inequalities in higher education? 3. What are the implications of gender equalities in the academy for the practices of Academic Development? The stories at the centre of this thesis speak of grand narratives; the ontological puzzles of structure and agency; class and gender oppression finding symbolic expression in women's lives and institutional structures. There is no lack of agency in the voices of these women, and the first person narrative highlights that sense. However, from the narrative can be seen identity formed by individual struggles within macro and micro sociological forces. By theorising academic women's lived experience at the micro-level, this thesis makes an original contribution to the field of Academic Development and affords opportunities for the widening of debate within the macro policies and micro practices of Academic Development; it supports counter-hegemonic gender discourses of HE which have been established from global studies of equalities in Higher Education. My study accords with feminist standpoints which conclude that policies based on polarised understandings of equalities which focus only on agency rather than structure will not redress the wider nor internal social inequalities which women face (Morley, 2012). I argue that the subsequent distortion in equalities policy making in the academy has implications for Academic Development. A significant finding in my study is that academic development practices cannot be seen as a dominant influence in the career journeys of my respondents. This finding supports the counter-hegemonic discourses of Academic Development which suggests that Academic Development and practices, promoted through managerialist agendas are inevitably seen as part of the masculinist, neo-liberal hegemony, and are more likely to reproduce hegemony rather than contest it. In conclusion, looking for strategies whereby Academic Development may better support gender equalities, my thesis suggests that academic developers, caught in the eternal dilemma of ‘straddling' personal values and hegemonic discourses become more explicitly aware of the game (Lee and McWilliam, 2008) and make more creative use of the ways in which non-formal value-based approaches and dialogue can replace monolithic initiatives.

Within feminist scholarship advertising – representing women as wives, mothers and sexual objects – has long been regarded as patriarchal, blocking women's liberation (Talbot 2000) and thus an impossible practice for progressive activism. More recently, however, approaches acknowledge advertising as a ‘tool' deployed for a range of ‘political' ends, encouraging changes in values, understandings and behaviors. Such advertising is often referred to as ‘social marketing'. This thesis focuses on one such campaign in Ghana between 2007 and 2009 attempting to raise awareness about gender violence. This campaign is considered in the context of the position of women in post-colonial Ghana and tracked across the different processes of a ‘circuit of culture' (including production, representation, consumption) through which meanings are made (du Gay et al 1997). The thesis explores the campaign's inception, production, mobilization within educational and ‘consciousness-raising' endeavors, the form and textual construction of the ads (largely posters), women's (and some men's) understanding of the posters and gender violence. Methodologically, the project involved interviewing twelve individuals in key organizations working with the public, victims, and on the campaign. It also involved collecting a sample of ten ad posters and conducting eight ‘focus group' discussions with women and some men. Findings suggest that the campaign did lead to increased awareness of gender violence across gender, generations and literacy levels. Nevertheless, audiences/consumers interpreted the campaign posters in very distinctive ways, depending on the resonance with their own lives. Further, constraints on reporting abuse still held, not least on account of the embarrassment and shame of admission. Overall the thesis contributes to scholarship on social marketing but more particularly to debates about improving women's position in Ghana.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-246). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Seminary, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-84).

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 155-160). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p.155-171 ). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1989. / Pagination includes pages of photographs numbered 23-42. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-51).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.