Gender surfaced as an issue in the 1984 Presidential campaign due to the nomination of Geraldine Ferraro, the differences among the male candidates, the expected gender gap, and the "feminization" of the Democratic Party. Using Newsweek, Time, and CBS Evening News, the constructions of gender are interpreted using Kenneth Burke's cluster criticism. Two research questions were addressed: (1) How was gender constructed by the media? (2) What were the rhetorical implications of this study? The study suggests that when women are accepted into Presidential politics, they must balance "feminine" traits with "masculine" ones. Male candidates are expected to primarily exhibit "masculine" traits. Gender was not only a trait that candidates had, it was also constructed by the media as having an influence on how voters perceive and act upon the issues. Finally, the study concludes that male and female candidates used language to express gender characteristics and can overcome negative perceptions by voters with rhetorical strategies.

From the earliest draft of her first novel through her last published work, Virginia Woolf treated science--particularly evolutionary theory--as a powerful discourse that claimed the authority to explain reality and which legitimized the patriarchal social structure. While appreciating the richness of Darwin and later evolutionary writers, Woolf consistently criticized science in general and evolutionary discourse in particular as expressions of patriarchal values. In turn-of-the-century Britain, biology, medicine and the theories that directed social policies were imbued with various interpretations of evolution, most of which considered white northern European men the apex of evolution. Belief in the possibility of devolution prompted evolutionary minded social thinkers to warn that global societal degeneration would ensue if "lesser races" followed their own paths without European guidance and if women of any race or class turned their limited energies to educating themselves and entering professional work rather than bearing and rearing children. Woolf grew up in an intellectual Victorian circle involved in evolutionary fervor and the reification of the sciences that both objectified her as a female and provided her imagination with new realms of experience. Woolf read Darwin and the science and social theory of the late nineteenth century, and as scientific writing itself became more specialized, she continued to read about science throughout her life. Through extensive and usually ironic revisionist readings of evolutionary concepts, Woolf anticipated the feminist critiques of science of the late twentieth century. The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway and Between the Acts, along with their published drafts, are the works in which Woolf most clearly involves science in her social criticism and evolutionary discourse in her treatment of science. In those three sets of works, Woolf critically examines the cultural values that made evolutionary theory such a compelling social force. In these same works, she also creatively appropriates evolutionary writing, particularly Darwin's, to evoke connections among eons of time, vast reaches of the earth and relationships among different types of beings.

This dissertation studies the discourse of legal scholars and reformers, exploring the ways in which their assumptions about gender shaped their arguments in relation to shorter hours and minimum wage laws. Examining seemingly abstract terms such as "freedom contract" and "citizenship," this work shows how laissez-faire legal scholars employed a discourse embedded with gender assumptions, linking manhood, work, and citizenship to ideals of individualism and competition, to argue against legislation for men. Yet logical inconsistencies arose when they tried to use these concepts, especially citizenship, to deny women protective legislation. In contrast, paternalist legal scholars concentrated on the needs of the public welfare, asserting that legislation would enable men to become better fathers, husbands, and citizens. Reformers and progressive legal scholars united to gain labor legislation for women in particular. Employing a discourse of maternalism, they argued that shorter hours and good wages preserved women for motherhood and protected their morality, thus benefiting the nation. Although this strategy worked well for hours laws, it foundered in arguments for wage legislation, especially as labor studies reported that some women supported entire families on their meager wages. The idea of the female breadwinner did not fit well with the primary identification of wage earning women as daughters and mothers. Reformers' language of motherhood also fell apart as a rationale for securing legislation when women gained the vote. Some feminists began to challenge sex-specific legislation on the grounds that it kept women from attaining full equality with men, fomenting a division among feminists and reformers that remains with us today: the "equality-versus-difference-debate." Although most activists could not reconcile this debate and ended up either supporting equality or difference, social researcher and reformer Mary Van Kleeck, an avid supporter of labor legislation, moved beyond the biologism of difference and instead focused on the commonalities that workers shared, especially in their opposition to employers. Rather than divide male and female workers, and design special legislation for each, Van Kleeck moved toward a non-gendered view of women in the workforce and focused on the idea that all workers had a right to labor legislation in exchange for their productive relation to the state.

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