<p>The purpose of the present study is investigating whether gender identity (masculinity and femininity) has an effect on women?s career choices (STEM or non-STEM), and their person-environment fit, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions with their choices. One-hundred eight-two female employees recruited via Amazon?s Mechanical Turk and a snowball/network sampling strategy completed an online survey. The results supported that masculine females were more represented in STEM jobs. However, feminine females were not more represented in non-STEM jobs. Furthermore, results revealed that higher person environment fit resulted with higher job satisfaction and lower turnover intentions for female employees. However, there were no significant relationship between gender identity, and person-environment fit, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. These results suggest that gender identity may affect female employees? career decisions, and their person-environment fit is important for their job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

<p> This thesis, by analyzing how rape is treated in William Shakespeare&rsquo;s <i> Titus Andronicus</i> (1592-3), Thomas Middleton and William Rowley&rsquo;s <i> The Changeling</i> (1622), and Aphra Behn&rsquo;s <i>The Rover</i> (1677), details how the early modern English theater frequently dramatizes the period&rsquo;s problematic understanding of rape. These texts reveal the social and legal illegibility of rape, illuminating just how deeply ambivalent and inconsistent patriarchy is toward female sexuality. Both using and departing from a feminist critical tradition that emphasized rape as patriarchy&rsquo;s sexual entrapment of women, my readings of the period&rsquo;s legal treatises and other documents call attention to the ambiguity of how rape is defined in early modern England. As represented in these three plays, male rapists exploit the period&rsquo;s paradoxical views of female sexual consent, thus complicating how raped women negotiate their social and legal status. The process of disclosing her violation ultimately places a raped woman in an untenable position.</p>

<p> Proper implementation of pregnancy prevention programs is essential to sexual health program success and intended health outcomes for participants (Demby et. al, 2014). Large scale implementation of state-wide and local programs can vary. Multiple studies have shown that proper implementation of such programs is an essential requirement to their success (LaChausse, Clark, &amp; Chapple, 2014; Demby et. al, 2014; Fixsen et. al, 2009). Generally, there are three types of organizations that receive funds for pregnancy prevention program implementation: schools, large city community organizations, and smaller community-based organizations (Demby et. al, 2014; Fixsen et. al, 2009). Be Proud! Be Responsible! is an evidence-based comprehensive sexual health curriculum that is implemented in all three settings.</p><p> The current study is an evaluability assessment of Be Proud! Be Responsible!, one of the evidence-based programs implemented as part of the New York State Department of Health&rsquo;s Comprehensive Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention initiative. Evaluability assessments, also known as &lsquo;exploratory evaluations&rsquo;, are administered with the intention of providing enough useful information to maximize the program&rsquo;s subsequent evaluations, policies, or practices (Leviton et. al, 2010). This evaluability assessment utilized a mixed-methods approach in the form of interviews, fieldnotes from observation, document review, and secondary data analysis during Fall 2014 and Spring 2015, using Be Proud! Be Responsible! data from 2012-2013. </p><p> This study drew upon multiple sources to seek convergence and corroboration through the use of different data sources and methods (Bowen, 2009). By using this mixed-method approach to analysis it was determined that process evaluation is feasible and assessable while outcome evaluation can be carried out in the future with slight modification to the current measurement tools &ndash; the pre- and post- test, attendance records, and the fidelity checklist. It was also determined that there was a significant change in pre- and post- test responses for Be Proud! Be Responsible! participants in 2013, showing that evidence-based sexual health programs can be successful when properly implemented in specific settings.</p>

<p> By reconsidering the concept of a &ldquo;women&rsquo;s literary tradition,&rdquo; this study aims to uncover the links binding together Austen, Bront&euml;, and Gaskell in a shared, female project of literary inquiry and political reformation. Reading the physical, material dimensions of the fictional environments (female movement, bodies, and socially defined spaces) in <i>Mansfield Park, Villette,</i> and <i>North and South,</i> we can see that all three novels engage in acts of <i>subversive recuperation.</i> After problematizing incumbent systems of masculine authority, these texts all work to infuse fresh relevancy and import into traditional value systems. Old is made new again as the influence of the novels&rsquo; heroines is seen to initiate processes of thoughtful social renovation able to rescue these young women from positions of threatening marginalization and able to realign existing patriarchal constructs with evolving communal needs.</p>

<p> From a reading of the Hebrew Bible itself it would be difficult to determine that a goddess culture existed for thousands of years prior to the appearance of the monotheistic Father God of Hebrew Scripture. As such, the repression of the Goddess during the Iron Age and the implications of this repression in our own Western culture have been evaluated throughout this dissertation. This hermeneutic study weaves together a broad range of topics that begins with an exploration into the roots of the Hebrew God-image as it emerged out of a polytheistic context that included powerful female deities. The study reveals that Yahweh once had a divine feminine consort and together they were known as Yahweh and his Asherah. Over time the feminine aspect of the Godhead was torn asunder and the divine feminine was submerged and repressed into the unconscious. The research explores the effects of this repression within the feminine psyche and the ways in which the one-sided masculinity of the Western God-image has become incorporated into the individual psychology of women. This study seeks to reclaim the deep feminine repressed by the Father God complex through an amplification of serpent symbolism that leads towards the recovery and redemption of the feminine principle in her creating, preserving, and destroying aspects. </p><p> Additionally, the research addressed the development of the God-image by examining the relationship between a negative father complex and the traditional God-image of Western culture through a psychoanalytic object relations perspective. The research shows how early object relations can color the ways in which we perceive the divine. The study suggests that when we can withdraw our infantile projections onto a God-image we are able to develop a more mature spirituality that no longer reflects a parent-child relationship. Jung devoted attention to this evolutionary process, that he refers to as the transformation of God, leading to the birth of a new God-image.</p>

<p> This study assists in gathering narratives of lesbian lived experiences in the culturally conservative context of the Shenandoah Valley during the political shift toward marriage equality in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Framed in relational-cultural theory (Jordan, 2010), individual narratives document 5 Shenandoah Valley lesbian couples&rsquo; conversations about marriage among partners located between February 13, 2014, when U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen declared Virginia&rsquo;s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, and October 6, 2014, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeals, thereby removing the delays to legal same-sex marriage in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Conducting this inquiry during this cultural transition, the study&rsquo;s focus is centered on contextual factors contributing to personal responses to prospective legal marriage. A poststructuralist feminist inquiry, the thematic analysis provides a contextualized snapshot in a time when political change is leading culture and invites readers to reflect and challenge their own discursively defined views. The thematic analysis revealed 7 key concepts for deeper consideration: relative belonging, caution, equal protections, the respectable same-sex couple, revisiting the relationship, family of origin, and personal ideology about marriage. </p><p> This study broadens the discourse of marriage equality by contributing lesbian-generated knowledge to the literature on the impact of the political shift toward marriage equality, and presents 5 distinct interview narratives. The project documents the tensions between assimilation and re-imagining marriage for lesbians performing heteronormativity as a facet of creating connection in a socially conservative culture. The impacts on the socially conservative culture includes the creation of new myths that reconfigure a separate gay culture in the paradigm of Foucault&rsquo;s (1978a, 1978b) <i>homosexual </i> into an ambient community (Brown-Saracino, 2011) of the <i> posthomosexual</i> (Valverde, 2006) aligned with the emergent respectable same-sex couple (Valverde, 2006) and queer-blindness, an appropriation of the racism construct color-blindness aimed at queer sexualities rather than people of color. This project is significant to queer, feminist, and social justice scholars, activists and practitioners, lesbian couples considering marriage, and antigay activists whose collusion to subordinate this population has largely been an ideological fight against a disembodied other.</p>

<p> Traditional femininity is a construct that impacts women throughout their development and manifests through inauthenticity in relationships, self-objectification and inauthentic sexuality. Traditional femininity has been associated with greater depression, body shame, dissociation, and negative sexual outcomes. Traits of traditionally defined femininity can impede women&rsquo;s ability to assert their sexual wants and needs and can increase the likelihood of negative health outcomes and negative psychological consequences, all of which impact relationship satisfaction and sexual well-being. To date, the majority of research in this area has focused on adolescent and college aged women. The current study addressed the gap in existing research by focusing on women in their 30s (<i>n</i>=146) and women in their 60s (<i> n</i>=81). The study assessed their level of traditional femininity ideology (TFI) and exploring whether their degree of TFI impacted their sexual well-being. The study took a quantitative approach and 230 participants were recruited through the internet to complete the studies survey. Results indicated that there was no significant difference between the two age cohorts on a measure of inauthenticity in relationships. Participants in their 30s were found to engage in greater self-objectification than the 60s cohort, and the study found that women in their 30s enjoyed sexualized attention to a greater degree than did the women in their 60s. Although the study had hypothesized that there would be a relationship between the participants&rsquo; level of TFI and their sexual well-being, no relationship was found. Implications for future research and application for clinical practice are discussed.</p>

<p> This qualitative study analyzed mentoring experiences and perceptions of females enrolled in a doctorate program of education, including a Principal Investigator-led peer mentoring group. The snowball technique generated 20 participants who were interviewed for a two-part study to share mentoring experiences by responding to Research Question One: What are the mentoring experiences of a sample of female students enrolled in an Educational leadership doctoral program at a Midwestern University? The conceptual framework explored experiences and perceptions of women at the doctoral level, mentoring support systems, and barriers to doctoral completion. Additional interviews were sought from faculty named as providing mentoring support for students. Faculty shared best practices of mentoring female doctoral students. The second part of the study was a voluntary peer-mentoring group. Research Question Two examined: What are the experiences of a group of doctoral students voluntarily participating in an experimental peer mentoring group in the same doctoral program in education? Emerging themes were participants&rsquo; varied perceptions of what constituted their unique mentoring needs, how to define or recognize a mentoring relationship, and why participants did not participate in accessible mentoring opportunities. Findings indicated a range of responses and experiences about mentoring, including for some participants, the perception of not having mentoring. A significant finding in the study was that women desired to be mentored but have different perceptions of what constitutes mentoring. Additionally, women who felt they were mentored expressed positive comments about the professors who mentored them as well as positive experiences as doctoral students. Students who perceived themselves as not being mentored expressed more negative concerns about the doctoral program process. Recommendations are offered on ways the doctoral program can better support both formal and informal mentoring at the doctoral level. Future research focusing on women and mentoring perceptions and experiences at the doctoral level is needed, whether men at the doctoral level have similar or contrasting mentoring needs as women, how diversity of faculty impacts African American women&rsquo;s mentoring experiences, whether female students benefit from being mentored by female faculty, and how peer mentoring groups can be implemented or academically improved for doctoral students.</p>

<p> <i>Nothing We Haven&rsquo;t Seen Before</i> uses the appropriated aesthetics of F&eacute;lix Gonz&aacute;lez-Torres, whose own aesthetics were appropriations of minimalist and conceptual aesthetics, to intersect three occurrences that cannot be remembered by those who experienced them &ndash; the death of Ana Mendieta; my own experience being drugged (without my consent or knowledge) and subsequently becoming very lost on-campus; and the death of Claudia Alvarez whose body was found by UCSD&rsquo;s Birch Aquarium. The intersections of these stories with both themselves and the way in which they are presented levels historical, structural, and personal trauma while reflecting a larger conversation about how trauma is lived with, moved on from, and at the same time continual.</p>

<p> This study, <i>Relational Aggression, Middle School Girls, and the Development of Critical Consciousness,</i> engaged both feminist theory and critical pedagogy as a means to deconstruct the issue of relational aggression among adolescent girls. The objective of this research was to contribute to the growing body of literature pertaining to relational aggression and fill some gaps in the literature surrounding preventative programming. This study investigated the experiences of middle school girls engaged in a solution-oriented approach in order to postulate possible program approaches and educational initiatives to decrease the prevalence of relational aggression in middle school girls. The collection and analysis of the data sought to describe a connection between girls&rsquo; participation in the program and developing critical consciousness about relational aggression, as well as strategies to address it in their lives. The qualitative data collected in this participatory action research show that relational aggression is much more than a mere &ldquo;right of passage&rdquo; or indicate that &ldquo;mean girls&rdquo; are a just a normal part of growing up. Relational aggression is harmful, has intense, negative short- and long-term effects, and&mdash;in the lives of the girls I have worked closely with&mdash;is very real, incredibly painful, and deeply personal. The findings of this study confirmed that girls benefit from the creation of educative environments, or &ldquo;safe spaces,&rdquo; where they can dialogue critically with one another about issues that are important to them; this is integral to their socioemotional development in middle school. </p>