<p> This study examines how conflict between public assumptions and media framing of a political candidate&rsquo;s gender performance impacts public trust in the candidate, building upon prior research concluding that the Republican and the Democratic Parties are linked cognitively with ideas about gender, with people often associating the Republican Party with masculine characteristics and the Democratic Party with feminine characteristics. This study operates under the theory that conflict between media representation and participant assumptions will lead to lower levels of trust in a candidate whose gender is framed as conflicting with the underlying gendered assumptions of their party. In an experiment, subjects read one of six news articles describing a hypothetical presidential candidate and answered a questionnaire to measure their trust in the candidate. The results indicate that participants have a higher level of trust in the feminine-framed candidate and a lower level of trust in the masculine-framed candidate &ndash; in comparison to the baseline of a gender-neutral framed candidate &ndash; in both the Democrat and the Republican condition. Further analysis of the results suggest that while participants assume all candidates possess certain masculine traits often associated with leadership, the presence of feminine traits may increase a candidate&rsquo;s perceived likeability, which in turn leads to the perception that the candidate has a higher degree of integrity, is more responsive to public concerns, and is ultimately more trustworthy. Additionally, the presence of masculine traits may threaten the candidate&rsquo;s perceived trustworthiness without the presence of feminine traits to increase the candidate&rsquo;s likeability. This study expands the current conversation about media and gender to look beyond a candidate&rsquo;s sex and consider the media&rsquo;s role in constructing and reinforcing a candidate&rsquo;s gender performance. It also provides a foundation for future research about the media&rsquo;s power to shape public perception of candidates and, by extension, the electoral process.</p>

<p> Literature that depicts females in restrictive roles may limit girls&rsquo; aspirations and success. Previous studies of award-winning books for young children have found gender-stereotypical role portrayal to be common. The purpose of this qualitative content analysis was to identify the archetypal roles assigned to female characters in picture books read aloud by teachers in the preschool classroom. The conceptual framework for this study was derived from feminist theory and Jungian archetypes. Data were collected in the form of teachers&rsquo; logs of books they read aloud over a 2-week period. Data were analyzed by employing the 3-read method developed by Madsen, which was revised to assign Jungian archetypes to each female character in a sample of 20 books. According to study results, female characters were portrayed as passive and often silent. Most of the female characters in these books were assigned archetypes typified by low personal agency, passivity, and service to others (orphan, innocent, and caretaker) and none were assigned archetypes associated with innovation (magician, jester, and creator). Of the 106 female characters portrayed in this sample, only 26% were verbal, and of those who spoke, 46% were limited to the one or two words needed to ask for assistance or to offer to serve. Female characters who did advance the plot through dialogue were often in animal form. Gender stereotypes still exist in children&rsquo;s picture books, as evidenced by objectification of females, female servitude, and lack of positive agentic female roles. This study has potential to elicit positive social change, benefiting both boys and girls, through increased awareness of archetypal role portrayal of female characters in picture books and teachers&rsquo; increased care in selecting read-aloud books with regard to the gender-based messages they send.</p>

<p> This quantitative research study examined the frequency of street harassment and women's responses to it in terms of emotional reactions and coping mechanisms. A self-administered survey was administered to 51 female graduate students. Frequencies and percents were reported, along with ethnic and age differences in the experience of street harassment. </p><p> Verbal/stalking harassment was found to occur frequently. In addition, many participants reported negative feelings (e.g., annoyance and anger). Women also reported restricting their mobility and changing their appearance in order to avoid harassment. </p><p> These findings highlight the utility of intervening to reduce street harassment to increase women&rsquo;s safety and comfort in public. As women experience oppression due to their gender, their mental health has significant implications for our communities. In short, women&rsquo;s lives matter.</p>

This project considers the role of conversation in writing by women, specifically, the role of conversational spaces for women’s construction of self within the symbolic. It does this through a consideration of narrative structures, modeled by Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. It also points towards how these concerns are situated within the latest textual media, the Internet. It then presents a model of textual reproduction and representation for online texts informed by the preceding discussions. Women in patriarchy can never presume a listener. Consequently, women’s textual productions very often foreground issues of “am I being heard, can I speak?” The lack of consideration in Eurocentric male texts/theories of whether or not a speaker is heard is significant in its absence from any canonical literary theoretical or critical model. By foregrounding conversation both as an issue specific to women’s writing, and as a narrative structure particular to women’s writing, this work provides a new site for pedagogical and critical consideration of writing by women. The chapters in this dissertation based on Wuthering Heights and To the Lighthouse read these novels from that site. Based on the above conversational theory, this thesis provides an historical context and feminist perspective through which to read women’s relationship to the Net as another textual medium in which women are foregrounding issues around voice, who can be heard and how. Historically women have been erased from contributions to computing. This erasure continues in patterns of text based identity construction in online interaction, where, again, the silencing of women’s voices is of critical moment. To address this erasure, this dissertation presents the constructions of a new text form, ConTexts (conversational texts), which brings feminist perspectives to engineering practices. Conversational texts differ from standard writing practice and current web document delivery in two ways. First, ConTexts are polylithic rather than monolithic. That is, a document is constructed only as the product of an exchange with a user/reader which results in the combination of appropriate text chunks into a new document. Current document models simply present prefabricated, monolithic units written for a single audience. Second, ConTexts incorporate intensional and AI programming, allowing the text delivery system to become involved in the exchange with the user to process user input and to create dynamic content (different versions of the text) which results from that exchange. Revising the presentation of texts as interactive and polylithic rather than prefabricated and monolithic is an insight located in this dissertation, derived from feminist study of conversation as narrative strategy. The versioning of texts according to user requests is situated and described within intensional logic programming and demand driven dataflow models. Intensional logic provides a framework and semantics for describing versions in terms of a version space and possible worlds. In this dissertation, Intensional HTML is used to demonstrate a preliminary form of conversational texts because it allows versions of texts to be delivered through standard web browsers. That conversation is a formative issue in writing by women is a unique contribution of this thesis to feminist literary practice and is the organizing principle of this dissertation. That real conversation is only an issue in women's writing is the main insight of this work. This dissertation presents the blending of feminist theory with feminist engineering practice. Its observations and implementation designs point to new directions in both text reading and creating practices. / Graduate

The number of women joining the work force is greater today than it has ever been in the history of the United States. Between 1960 and 1988, statistics have shown a 37% increase in the number of employed women who are married with children (U.S. Department of Labor, 1989). It is not uncommon for women to postpone marriage and/or childbearing in an effort to attain educational and professional goals (Katz, 1988). Jewish women are a unique ethnic group among the population of women in the United States. As a group, Jewish women are typically well educated, among the highest female wage earners, married or plan to marry, and have or plan to have children (Monson, 1987). The difficult and complex decisions which Jewish women face regarding marriage, motherhood, and career development often create conflicts between values, including education, marriage, childbearing, individual achievement, career development, and gender equality (Monson, 1987; Katz, 1988). Additionally, unclear values or conflicting values can lead to difficulty in decision-making, difficulty in coping, and difficulty in achieving self-actualization (Simon & Kirschenbaum, 1973; Simon et al., 1978). Through in-depth interviews, this dissertation qualitatively analyzed five case studies demonstrating links between ethnicity, career development, and multiple role lifestyle for selected Jewish women. Some of the most interesting findings included: life polarities expressed by the participants; identification with superwoman syndrome; power of career typing, ethnic and secular socialization and both positive and negative messages received from parents, role models, and mentors; and the ability of this research paradigm to link ethnicity, career development and values. The ability of academe to provide research which describes and analyzes women's lifestyle options is tantamount to women's successful integration of marriage, family, career, personal growth and development. This research has important implications for counselors, educators and policy makers who are concerned about appropriate counseling, education, and program development for women who are occupying or may occupy multiple roles. This research further served as a successful pilot study testing the applicability of this conceptualization for replication encompassing women of other ethnic and racial groups.

Early advertising in the U.S. is considered from a critical perspective which understands economic life to be a cultural process. Advertising correlates the world of industrially-produced commodities with crucial social distinctions such as class, race, and, especially, gender. Nineteenth-century, patent medicine advertising formed an important prehistory of the modern advertising institution, particularly through the ways in which medicine advertisers drew the emergent mass media into the structures of the modern marketplace. Furthermore, medicine advertising systematically presented gender distinctions by correlating feminity and masculinity with a symptomatology of disease. Modern advertising directly inherited many of its communicative techniques from medicine advertising. It also took over a gendered way of speaking about goods. From 1900 through the 1920's national advertising spoke to middle class women primarily through remedy appeals, situating women's commodities within the world of family care and nurture. Through the same period advertising spoke to middle class men primarily through utility appeals, locating men's products within the wider world of city, business, and industry. However, this provided an ambiguous context for masculine consumption at the very moment that middle class men were being turned toward the home and commodity consumption as a primary field for masculine identity formation. Through the period, advertisers responded to this cultural situation through increasing reliance on desire appeals, in which gender distinctions are concentrated in a triangular relationship between the reader, the product, and an ideal-typical model consumer, this configuration presented primarily through visual imagery. The turning of masculinity towards the feminine field of consumption represent a massive figure-ground shift in U.S. popular culture.

The subject of "women in development" has received some attention from both the African governments and donor agencies, but the focus needs to shift to African women in educational leadership. While some work has been done, most of it has concentrated on women in agriculture, health, and primary education. African women in higher education and girls in secondary schools have received little, if any, attention. Education at these levels is highly competitive and not many women and girls attain it. Hence, few women have made it to top- and middle-level administrative management positions, while the majority continue to fill teaching and support staff positions. This study was designed to investigate issues and factors that affect African women in educational leadership positions. To better understand the phenomenon, it was necessary to explore what happens to girls while in school up to employment stage. The study was guided by research questions centered around: factors and issues affecting African women educational leaders, the role of education in promoting and hindering women's advancement, the African woman's role in the public domain, and strategies for planned change. Qualitative methods of inquiry were used, and data gathering techniques included literature review, interviews, observation and photography. Kurt Lewin's Forcefield Analysis was utilized to organize recurrent issues and factors. The findings included: a high drop out rate for girls due to social problems; that girls receive marginalized attention when parents have financial constraints; girls' educational attainment is lower than that of boys; the education system contributes to low levels of girls' and women's education and training through curricula and sitting arrangements that segregate girls from boys, and policy that perpetuates the problem of underrepresentation of girls. The study also found that girls' and women's success is dependent on such factors as the girls' and women's perception of their own future, their willingness to break the traditional barriers that are detrimental to women's success, support from people around them, ambition, and perseverence. The study concludes with some pertinent recommendations and an action plan. They include changing women's attitudes toward their roles, educating society on the value of educating girls and women, creating opportunities to enable more women to get further education and training, encouraging and preparing women with potential for leadership positions, providing enabling services such as day-care facilities, workshops, forums, summer institutes, organizing task forces, opening a women's center where women in education can begin to critically discuss women's issues, creating a roster for women in educational management, encouraging continued analysis of educational policy, inclusion of more women in policy-making positions and training of educational policy makers.

The study has two major related goals. The first is to develop a pedagogy with which to teach feminist Chinese literature to female Taiwanese college students. The second is to develop a pedagogy within the context of a feminist Chinese literature class which raises students' feminist consciousness. There are two research questions related to the main goals: (1) What elements constitute an effective pedagogy for teaching feminist Chinese literature at the college level to Taiwanese students? (2) How does studying feminist Chinese literature within the context of a course in question #1 affect Taiwanese female students' feminist consciousness? The design of the research centers around the teaching of a course on feminist Chinese literature from a cultural perspective, with detailed examination of student reactions to both the pedagogy and content of the course, gathered from various sources. The study involves implementing planned instructional strategies in an effort to incorporate a whole language pedagogy and then systematically submitting the strategies to observation, reflection, and change. The data collected in this study consists of several different components: students interviews, papers and journals, questionnaires, transcripts of classroom discussions and my own personal journal containing my observations and reflections on my decisions as a teacher/researcher. Findings basic to the success of this research were: (1) Students became less dependent on the teacher. (2) Students became more responsive over time to classroom discussion and interaction as a method for learning. (3) Student participation was enhanced indirectly by showing respect for them as individuals and for their ideas; and directly by praising their participation in class and by grading them for class participation. (4) Students beliefs did not change radically but they become more receptive to other student's ideas. (5) Students were influenced by feminist pedagogy. (6) Prior knowledge can be built upon through the sharing of experiences. (7) The teacher's attention to student self-esteem and confidence had a significant impact. (8) Students experience some degree of conflict in trying to reconcile their feminist consciousness with their individual lives. Finally, I propose to adjust these findings to traditional teaching style currently in use in Taiwan, specifically with regard to changes in the process of learning, moving from a teacher-centered process to one in which the students are more actively involved.

In a culture that has traditionally valued women's looks above all else they offer, "ugliness" has been a site where powerful forms of oppression--sexism, racism classism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia--intersect. Just as physical determinants of unattractiveness have fluctuated along with changing cultural ideals, film's construction and treatment of the unattractive woman have varied throughout the hundred years of film history, forming a site upon which one may explore the shifting socio-cultural imperatives presented to U.S. women in the 20th century. Using socio-historic and feminist methods, I argue that film constructs ugliness as carefully as it does beauty, and that, as cinematic signifiers of ugliness are fluid, the "look" of the camera is the most reliable indicator of ugliness and spectator (non-)identification. Cinematic representations of ugly women may be broken down into two broad categories whose dimensions--barely evident during the silent film era--became fixed during the classical era of Hollywood cinema. I refer to these depictions as the "ugly duckling" and the "truly ugly" woman. The ugly duckling is a sympathetic character, transformed--usually at the hands/eyes/scalpel of a man--from ugly to beautiful, while the "truly ugly" woman, never transformed, demonstrates that it is she herself, not only her appearance, that is ugly. This dissertation focuses primarily on the cinematic construction of the ugly woman during the 1940's--an age generally regarded by film historians as Hollywood's "Golden Era"; a decade of intense military, economic, and social upheavals reflected in the gender messages presented on the silver screen; and a period when the "ugly duckling" was more prevalent than at any other time in film history. Though the ugly duckling plot was compromised often by patronizing treatment of the material, and always by the utilization of a glamorous star appearing in "homely drag" (rather than the employment of an average-looking actress), it nevertheless merits serious and extended analysis because of its potential to present powerfully liberatory images of women on the screen.

This dissertation is a comparative study of the work and ideas of the Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian author Sigrid Undset (1882-1949) and the American Willa Cather (1873-1947). Their mutual admiration and written correspondence began in the 1920s and culminated during Undset's World War II refugee years in New York, when the two women met and developed a warm friendship. While several scholars are aware of their personal connection, no one has ever examined it. I do not claim that the writers influenced each other's work. Instead I examine the thematic and historical issues that most influenced them and attracted them to each other. Both had a very early devotion to nature, and both contemplated a career in science. At puberty both suffered a traumatic loss--death of a parent for one, removal from Virginia to the prairie for the other--which had a profound impact on their personal and artistic development, particularly around issues of sexuality, commitment, and love. I then explore the ways Undset's and Cather's early writing wrestled with the power of the erotic impulse, its effect on the artist's need for autonomy, and the conflict between the artist's life and socially expected female roles. I discuss the significance of their personal choices--which were reflected in choices made by heroines of their early novels--and place them in the context of Symbolist responses to the social disruptions of the late Victorian era. These include changing attitudes toward sexuality, feminism, art, and idealism, particularly the effect of thinkers like Darwin, Nietzsche and Freud on social attitudes; the apotheosis of Romanticism in the Decadent movement; the emergence of an increasingly mystical politics as the authority of religion waned; and the moral shattering of Western civilizations by World War I. The dissertation concludes at this point, when both women were faced with ruptures in their personal lives, both formally changed their religious affiliations, and both entered the decade in which they produced their most powerful work. Appendices include previously untranslated and unpublished texts (in both languages) of tributes each woman wrote about the other during the last years of their lives.