<p> Moral injury is a construct that has primarily been studied in war veterans, police officers, and military nurses. It involves a change in an individual&rsquo;s expectations about their own or another&rsquo;s behavior in the face of events involving a violation of their beliefs about themselves, observation of unethical behavior by others, and/or witnessing human suffering that violates beliefs in the goodness of humanity. Research indicates that moral injury involves at least five major themes: betrayal and trust issues; social problems; spiritual/existential issues; psychological symptoms; and self-deprecation. Moral injury represents an important, emerging area of study that may facilitate a better understanding of the treatment and recovery needs of individuals who have experienced trauma. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether moral injury may be present in populations experiencing non-war-related trauma: specifically, women who have experienced homelessness and/or intimate partner violence (IPV). A second goal was to explore themes of resilience and coping. Eight women residing at a transitional living center were individually interviewed regarding their experiences; a brief demographic questionnaire and the Trauma History Screen - Lite Version were also administered. Participants were diverse with regard to age (M = 33.88 years) and ethnicity. All eight had experienced homelessness and seven reported IPV. The researcher conducted qualitative analyses, guided by grounded theory, of the interview transcripts. Ten major themes were identified, eight of which overlapped substantially with the five core themes of moral injury. Self-deprecation was the most prominent theme in the present study. It was relevant to experiences of both homelessness and IPV; it was expressed to some degree by all participants. Six major themes of coping and resilience were also identified, with personal factors related to the individual emerging as the most prominent. This exploratory study indicates that moral injury may be a relevant construct in understanding the experiences of women who have endured extreme, non-war-related stressors such as IPV and homelessness. Consideration of moral injury may be useful in identifying treatment priorities, including the need to examine the impact of trauma on the self. Other findings, limitations, and research recommendations are also discussed. </p>

<p> This qualitative research study examined the role of the chief executive officer (CEO) in achieving an inclusive environment, specifically reviewing the messaging and actions of the CEO and how they impact executive women. Data were gathered from 15 executive women through interviews with predetermined, semi-structured questions. This study provides evidence that CEOs can create an inclusive environment by instilling an atmosphere of mutual respect, openly listening and valuing diverse perspectives, and encouraging healthy dialogue and debate. Internal competition, an imbalance of power, and perceived bias on the part of the CEO hindered participants from feeling like equal partners in the C-suite. Additional research studies using a larger sample size of female and male executives would be beneficial to determine if the preliminary findings hold true and to gain a comprehensive view of CEO behaviors from a diverse participant population.</p>

<p> Resting in the southeast corner of the Arkansas state capitol is the Little Rock monument honoring the women of the Confederacy. Known as the Southern Mother, the Arkansas division of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) erected this monument to commemorate the sacrifices of Arkansas women during the Civil War. Sculpted by J. Otto Schweizer, a Swiss-American from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this monument represents two versions of Arkansas&rsquo; Civil War history: that of the sculptor, and that of its patrons. Arkansas broke away from the national UCV in 1906 and proceeded on its own to memorialize Confederate women&rsquo;s war time sacrifices. Paid for by a state appropriation of $10,000, the Arkansas UCV were able to commemorate in stone a specific memory of Arkansas history during the Civil War. The monument effort began on a national scale in 1896, but did not come to fruition in Arkansas until May 1913. Several conflicts occurred with members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who opposed the monument idea and preferred that donations were routed into more social programs like retirement homes and scholarship programs. This monument occurred during a time of vast memorialization during the height of the Lost Cause, but the history behind it shows a more individual nature of healing traumatic wounds.</p>

<p> The basis of this investigation is the concept that identity is an emergent, or <i>performative</i> (Butler, 1990), process rather than a stable set of characteristics. Rituals such as weddings are moments when many, as individuals and as couples, socially construct identities through their interactions with others, and reflecting on one's wedding is also an event of intense identity construction. </p><p> This dissertation examines how language is used in the social construction of identity through the analysis of couples' wedding narratives. It is situated within the research domains of language and identity (Bucholtz &amp; Hall, 2004) as well as language and ideologies (Fairclough, 1992; Gee, 2014). Interviews were conducted in English, Spanish, or bilingually with 12 mixed-sex couples and 3 same-sex couples (a total of 30 participants) about their weddings in order to identify how couples performed identity and how such performances are connected to beliefs and attitudes. </p><p> Understanding that processes of identity construction are at times deliberate and planned, such as when one plans a wedding, and at others spontaneous and unconscious, such as when one reflects on her wedding, the analysis focuses both on the wedding event as reported by couples as well as on the interview as an event. This event is one in which couples and the interviewer interact to produce identity dialogically (Bakhtin, 1981) through relative position and stance (Wortham, 2004) via indexical labeling, presupposition, orientation to stereotypes, conversation structure, narrative structure, and evaluation during social interaction. </p><p> This study demonstrates how, in interviews about weddings, individual semiotic acts that contribute to the construction of identity may reproduce prior acts, giving a sense of cohesion, belonging, legitimacy, and authenticity to our identities, or may add another layer to a partial picture of who we are. These acts might even contradict the identities that we have constructed in the past, showing that identity is always complex and incomplete in a given moment. The analysis concludes that social change, especially regarding gender roles and attitudes toward same-sex relationships, occurs through performativity at macro- and micro-levels as participants both aligned with and pushed the boundaries of social expectations about how weddings should be and who should be in them in order to locate themselves and others within the social order. </p>

<p> Women are underrepresented in public office throughout the United States. Candidate recruitment and training are understood to be crucial interventions for increasing women&rsquo;s representation in elected leadership (Rozzell, 2000; Carroll &amp; Sanbonmatsu, 2009; Carroll &amp; Sanbonmatsu, 2010). In response to this need, campaign programs for women have become increasingly prevalent across the country. However, the implications of what happens within campaign training programs and the impact particular training content has on participants, women&rsquo;s political participation, and the political arena are still poorly understood. Using discourse analysis, this study seeks to understand the construction of womanhood in a campaign training program for women. The program for the purposes of this study is called Women in Politics (WiP). The WiP program is a multi-faceted, non-partisan, issue-neutral program geared towards encouraging and training women to run for public office and is located in a small city in the Southeast United States. Data was gathered using participant observation during three of six workshops in the series that were free and open to the public. Discourse about the intersections of candidacy, gender, race, age and class; family; and, appearance, perception and public judgement are examined to reveal how womanhood is constructed in ways that both reify and challenge or complicate hegemonic standards. The findings of this study indicate that for women to become elected to public office, a field in which women have been historically underrepresented, they must contend with and in many ways maintain hegemonic womanhood.</p>

No description available.

This study explores, through participant observation and interviewing, the meaning of the experience of Cape Verdean women who participate in a base group of the national women's organization of Cape Verde, Organizacao das Mulheres de Cabo Verde (OMCV). The study addresses the significance of this type of organizational activity for Third World women, seeking to illuminate the perspective of women who participate in it. It also has three underlying purposes: (1) to fulfill a goal of feminist research to see the world from women's viewpoint; (2) to aid outside 'helpers' of such organizations to understand them more fully; (3) to contribute to theory-building about women organizing by examining multiple theoretical perspectives in light of a Cape Verdean group's reality. Based on 20 months of field research carried out during 1989-1991 with the OMCV base group in a low-income peri-urban neighborhood of the capital city, the study asks: What are the relationships between important themes in the women's lives and the activities and issues of their group? To answer this question, I studied the women's words about their lives and their group, revealed in individual interviews, group discussions, and informal conversation, and blended these with my participant observation experiences with the women, their group, and their community, situated within the national context. The study chronicles and reflects on this process of doing research across cultures using an interactive, interpretive approach within an openly feminist research program. From the study of the women's life stories, four major themes emerged: (1) the economic imperative and women's responsibility for survival, (2) the dynamics of help ties, (3) self-respect, pride, and status, and (4) issues of change and resistance. In the analysis of how these themes relate to women's organization activity, the help relationship symbolized by the madrinha, or godmother, appears key in defining group purposes, functioning, and relations. I suggest that the women's organization expresses tensions evident in Cape Verdean society at large involving gender, economics, and social relations and status, while it also serves as a subtle challenge to the status quo in the consciousnesses of women.

This feminist discourse analysis examined litigants' and judges' speech in thirty small claims court hearings. Two areas of interaction were examined: The speech strategies people used to negotiate public institutions and the ways power relations of gender, race, class, and ethnicity were maintained, challenged or negotiated. The study revealed that while male and female litigants often engage in similar strategies for presenting themselves in court, there are a few clear differences in the choices they make. Men's testimony displayed a wide array of means to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. These strategies included frequent use of passive constructions and prefacing their account to shift the focus away from their liability. Women used prefacing in order to be permitted to continue their stories. Men frequently attempted to portray themselves as victimized and powerless, while women's testimony reflected attempts to appear in control and compassionate. Male litigants were more likely to use power-over strategies, such as interrupting and ignoring others. Women engaged in strategies of self-empowerment, such as using direct address to judges and other litigants. Male and female judges alike used power-over speech, including interrupting and ignoring. Reprimands, one of the forms of power-over, were used by both male and female judges, but the strongest forms of these came from men. Judges empowered litigants by two means: neutral and proactive strategies. All judges displayed the neutral versions. The proactive versions--explanation of legal procedure, fact finding and concern--were displayed more often by the woman judge. Most significant for this study were the ways in which all court participants brought assumptions about gender, class and race into the "neutral" courtroom. Those in positions of social power--whites, men, the upper classes, and native speakers of English--engaged in discourse in the court which presumed and perpetuated their social power. These practices include speaking for the less powerful, introducing negative assumptions about the worth of those in working class occupations, and arguing based on the negative values one holds about the relative value of men and women.

The following dissertation is a study of the construction of gender expressed by American women in a traditionally male occupation, that of the military. Specifically, the project focuses on the images and symbols of gender, work, and society created by the personal stories and life histories of women in the armed forces. The theoretical background includes contemporary concepts of language and social life, particularly those theories identified as social constructionist as well as feminist and anthropological theories of gender constructs. The methodological focus will incorporate ethnographic interviewing and discourse analysis of the life stories of the female participants. The conclusion will defend the constructionist view of communication theory and suggest ways of reconstructing gender roles in a changing post-industrial society.

This dissertation seeks to understand how the women of Cambodia recreated self and culture after experiencing civil war, displacement, refugee camps, and resettlement. The women, as well the men, lost all that was meaningful including children, spouses, immediate and extended family, known villages, the Buddhist religion, predictable life rites, and economic self-sufficiency. Since most women lost the protection of husbands, brothers, and fathers, their plight was all the more urgent as they attempted to keep their remaining children alive and safe. In order to comprehend this enormous problem, I conducted interviews with the women (and some men) in Amherst, Massachusetts, a rural New England town. In addition, I questioned several nuns and a Buddhist wiseman and gathered life histories from some of the women. I used a loosely structured interview method as well as participant observation. I attended Buddhist festivals and family events. I had access to videos, library resources and archival material at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts. I found the women have not recreated but added to their pre-war sense of self and culture. Most families maintain their Khmer/Buddhist identity through language, food, clothing, celebrations, and personal surroundings. It is important to the women that the children remain knowledgeable in Buddhist practices and learn the valuable Khmer lesson of respect. The women readily accept aspects of American culture. They understand the importance of education for their children and the need for their children to learn English. English is beyond the grasp of many older women. There are areas of difficulty for the Khmer women, especially when strongly held Khmer values violently clash with American values. There are also endeavors that will strengthen the Khmer community in Amherst, such as the construction of a traditional Buddhist Wat (Temple) in neighboring Leverett, Massachusetts. It is my conclusion that the Khmer community will remain viable as the women actively blend new traditions with older rituals.