<p> The Occupy movement galvanized people from across the United States and around the world to stand up against corporate profiteering and political corruption. The revolutionary energy spread from community to community and Occupiers began to create a reality moving beyond racism, hierarchy, and patriarchy. Feminist activists, both women and men, had a major voice in Occupy. They called into question sexist behavior, unrecognized privilege and gender inequality in conjunction with other forms of oppression. Unfortunately the breakdown of the encampments and the backlash in the mainstream media led to a critical view of the movement. In reality, Occupiers formed networks of mutual aid which continue to expand and transform today. </p><p> Based on ethnographic research conducted at Occupy Los Angeles and Occupy Long Beach, this thesis project explores a feminist perspective of the Occupy movement. Inspired by applied visual anthropology and new media, Occupy Feminism is an interactive zine interspersed with writing, photographs and videos. This project is an educational resource for those who want to understand feminist theory, the Occupy movement and how they intersect.</p>

<p>In many countries, particularly in the developing world, a large number of girls are receiving little or no formal education, in spite of all of the benefits that education can confer. Education has intrinsic value, as girls can experience a sense of agency and empowerment when they are able to achieve their educational goals. It is also important to human development, and there are tangible benefits to be gained from educating girls. This study examines the effects of increased efforts to improve gender equality in education in the developing world. Specifically, I investigate many of the interventions that have been implemented for the purpose of improving girls? secondary education, and consider which have been the most effective, in terms of both numbers of girls in school and the quality of their educational experience. In evaluating quality, I specifically consider what ramifications the different strategies have for girls? capabilities as informed by Martha Nussbaum?s conception of the capabilities approach. The data come primarily from published papers and reports from a variety of countries, and also include a small amount of firsthand information that I collected from contacts that I met during recent travel in Uganda and Rwanda. Details from people who work in schools and in education-related NGOs in these countries, and who have seen up-close the effects of different interventions on girls? education, are utilized to add depth and personal insights to the data from the published reports. At the conclusion of the study, I make recommendations, with girls? capabilities in mind, about which interventions I think are the most beneficial and worth pursuing. Which strategies are the most effective at improving girls? access to schools and the experiences they have once they are there? Those that specifically address issues of quality, rather than just access, seem likely to have the most beneficial effects on girls? capabilities.

<p> This qualitative narrative inquiry study involved exploring the perceptions of African American women about career advancement in public school administration. The research questions guided the exploration of perceptions and experiences about seeking positions of authority in public school systems administration in the state of California: What are the identifiable factors slowing career advancement for African American women seeking positions of authority in public education? How can other African American women avoid identifiable factors that slow career advancement? What supports should be in place to aid African American women on their quest to attain positions of authority in public education? Purposeful sampling was used to select five African American women administrators seeking career advancement in public schools. Transcriptions of audio-recorded interviews yielded data for analysis with the NVivo 9 computer analysis program. The perceptions and lived experiences of the participants were compiled and themes identified to determine the factors influencing career advancement of African American women to upper administration in public education. Five core themes embodied the main findings of the study: Personal Traits and Priorities, Exclusion Experiences, Extrinsic Motivation, Understandings, and Supports. Recommendations in the study include African American women increasing self-awareness and situational awareness within the organizational context and leaders gaining understanding about the unique characteristics, traits, qualities, and contributions of the African American women within their organization. Other recommendations include creating and evaluating a succession plan or policy for all individuals desiring career advancement, developing a leadership academy with an emphasis on diversity programs and multiculturalism supporting the succession plan and policies, and developing a pool of qualified candidates. Implementation of these recommendations may change policies and practices in public school systems to ensure fairness and equity for all members desiring career advancement. </p>

<p>Illustrated Ladies examines the figure of the tattooed woman in nineteenth century America and Britain within Victorian social and cultural constructs. Western exploration and imperialism dovetailed with developing criminal, medical, and human sciences. The tattoo became a central image within these elements. Appearing on the bodies of the foreign "savage", the criminal, and the lower class - the tattoo carried "uncivilized", criminal, and masculine connotations. At the same time, white women marked their bodies as a means of public and private rebellion against proscribed gender roles and Victorian ideals of femininity in a need to reclaim bodily agency that transcended class lines. Some women manipulated the tattoo as they displayed their marked bodies in public venues for profit, creating a level of financial independence that was rarely achieved during this period. The tattoo served as a means in which women could manipulate racial and gender identities, transform themselves into spectacles, and control the male gaze. Representative of an emotive experience - the tattoo is an image created through pain that illustrated the corporal and psychical suffering of working and upper class women. Illustrated women reclaimed control of their external experiences by taking control of their suffering and displaying in on their bodies in the form of the tattoo.

The practice of affirmative action, while controversial, permits organizations to realize an important employment objective: to establish an integrated workplace by hiring, training, and promoting a diverse workforce. Affirmative action programs redefine an organization's culture by explicitly acknowledging a managerial imperative to sustain such integration, thereby refocusing organizational assumptions about white women, minority women, and minority men as employees. This dissertation reports on an empirical investigation of a federal agency's values and beliefs concerning affirmative action, underscoring the multiplicity of basic assumptions that constitute organizational culture. Informed by the interpretive perspective on organizational communication, this study explores issues raised during a participatory research program sponsored by the agency. It also challenges the managerial focus of much scholarship on organizational culture. This study addresses the following research questions: (1) What are the values and beliefs concerning affirmative action espoused by a particular government agency? (2) To what extent are the espoused values and beliefs concerning affirmative action shared by various employee groups within the agency? Do women and men articulate similar views? Do minority employees and white employees? Data were collected by examining pertinent cultural artifacts: namely, 13 documents representing the agency's official stance on affirmative action during a particular era; plus, employees' views on the localized practice of affirmative action as recorded on a Needs Assessment survey. Official documents contain three themes, presenting a consistent message disseminated to several audiences. Affirmative action befits the agency; cultivates a diverse workforce; and improves the representation of all women and minority men. Despite efforts at strategic management, the espoused ideology is not adopted by all employees. Analysis of survey data reveals varying perceptions of affirmative action's role in the agency. Ways of knowing and acting in relation to localized priorities are often gender-specific and race-specific. There appears to be no singular pattern of basic assumptions for conducting organizational life as a distinct agency of the federal government. Results are discussed in the context of the paradigmatic shift toward an interpretive perspective on organizations, as well as the shifting demography of the U.S. workforce. The research provides suggestions for revising notions of organizational culture.

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the perceptions of a small group of working class women students of non-traditional age (25+) who completed a women's studies course at a community college. The study described the women's experience at a community college and with the content and teaching practices of the course, Women in Literature I. The study describes these students' sense of themselves as women and their emerging sense of feminism. The study examined how the students saw the course relating to their lives as women. The study explored how a working class family background, values and lifestyle influenced her sense of self as a woman. The study explored her connections between her lived experiences with her family life and the course. The study described how she reflected upon her experiences with her family and how she viewed their influence on her sense of self as a woman and on her sense of feminism. The dissertation was explorative and descriptive in nature. The primary research methodology was indepth interviews. The study used a purposeful sample of ten students from three sections of one literature course. In addition to the taped and transcribed interviews, an interviewer's journal and content review of course materials were also used. The findings suggest that working class women succeed in their attempt at college as adults when a significant role model takes an active interest early in their re-entry to school. The findings also support the importance of special adult programs for non-traditional aged students. Additionally, working class women readily described the conflicts that existed for them in returning to school, especially when schooling had been unsuccessful in the past. Information about the course suggested that women gained an increased understanding of history and its impact on women's lives. This historical perspective served as a base for understanding feminism. Additionally, reading about women's lives assisted participants in better understanding their own lives. The course gave them an increased appreciation of the context of their mothers' lives. Finally, the course readings also provided insights about the conditions of black women's lives.

This dissertation examines the impacts of family policies on the economic position of women in East and West Germany in 1989-90. Chapter I reviews and critiques neoclassical and Marxian theories of women's subordination, focussing on the neoclassical postulate of a joint household utility function and the absence of a Marxian analysis of reproduction. Chapter II describes and analyzes the specific family policies and policy climates of East and West Germany prior to unification in 1990, providing a brief overview of the history of family policy, women's employment, and fertility from World War I to the present. Chapter III models the costs of childrearing, state subsidies of childrearing, and the shares of the remaining costs distributed to men and women, using 1989-90 data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Estimated costs include the opportunity costs of women's earnings and men's and women's leisure. Chapter IV uses the same data to compare the effects of family policies on the childbearing choices of women of different marital status, educational backgrounds, incomes, and levels of labor force attachment within each country. Chapter V models the allocation of household work, with a focus on male/female bargaining power in East and West Germany, again using cross-sectional analysis. Chapter VI summarizes the results of the dissertation as a whole.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the historical relationship between four Catholic women's colleges and the emergence and development of feminism in general and Catholic feminism in particular. The four colleges were: Trinity College, Washington, D.C., 1898; St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN, 1903; The College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, MN, 1906; Regis College, Weston, MA, 1927. Three questions are examined, using official and informal publications and correspondence and interviews with the presidents and other staff of the colleges. In Catholic women's colleges, what attitudes and beliefs about the role of women and the nature of the education of women were held by the founders and also their successors? How do these attitudes and beliefs relate to feminism and in what respects did Catholic women's colleges share feminist goals? In what ways, if any, have Catholic women's colleges contributed to Catholic feminism? The intentions of their founders and the mission statements and curricula demonstrate a sharing of the feminists' goals of education and job opportunity for women. The mission and curricula show a reflection of the times and the needs of the students. These are woman-centered campuses with a clear Catholic identity; Catholicism and feminism co-exist in these colleges, resulting in a space for the development of Catholic feminism. Though they are not strongly feminist, these colleges are committed to remaining all female, and to remaining Catholic. They do not challenge their church on issues concerning women's access to birth control and to abortion since to do so would violate their mission as Catholic institutions. However they act on feminist goals by encouraging women to learn, to achieve, and to effect change.

In spite of the proclivity to organize educational practices around the concept of gender and the pervasive presence of women in public school teaching, little research exists which focuses on women's experience teaching in a patriarchal school environment. Even less exists on the experience of women student teachers in that same school context. This dissertation describes and develops an understanding of what it means to be a female learning how to teach in public secondary schools during the student teaching phase of preservice education. It focuses on how connecting the individual experiences of these women provides insight into the gender issues embedded in their lives and in the secondary schools where they did their preservice work. The gender issues that emerged from the study center on women's self-esteem and ways of knowing, patriarchal attitudes and other forms of harassment by male students and faculty, and collaborative and non-collaborative relationships between women student teachers and male and female cooperating teachers. I have used in-depth, phenomenological interviewing to ask women to reconstruct their student teaching experience in the context of their life history and inquire how they understand the meaning of that student teaching experience (Seidman, 1991).

This dissertation combines the two methodologies of historical analysis and ethnographic interviews, to expose a dynamic relationship between dominant and marginal ideologies which concurrently shape women's relationships to image making in the domestic sphere. The analysis focuses on the discursive dynamic between stories of domestic photo practice throughout the century and advertising copy of the Eastman Kodak Company for snapshot cameras, home movie cameras and slide projectors. The stories of 18 women who have taken snapshots/home movies are compared to Kodak advertisements from the 1880s to the 1980s. In my analysis of advertisements and interview transcripts I explore the links and gaps between domestic and dominant social conceptions of women and photo-technology. I argue in my analysis that Kodak was particularly successful in establishing filmic and still image making as a domestic practice because it was able to draw upon existing and changing conceptions of women's roles in the modern family context. I also argue that Kodak was able to effectively utilize modernist notions of technology and society in sculpting a dominant mythology of home image making; however, the stories I have gathered also suggest that the day-to-day use and beliefs about home documentation were largely effected by socio-economic realities and the physical impossibility of upholding ideal lifestyles represented in advertising. This comparison of practice and ideology reveals a contradiction between idealized and actual home documentary practices. Most significantly, my analysis points to the ways in which cultural ideologies of femininity, democracy and individualism are maintained despite their inability to function smoothly in actual domestic situations. Because home photography and filmmaking are so closely linked to child rearing, the domestic frame encompasses photo/filmic practices such that the process rather than the product (snapshot/movie) is emphasized. An ideology which dismisses women's technical ability is masked by the larger representation of snapshot photography and home movie making as simple--that is, democratically accessible to people of all mechanical aptitudes.