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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 286-297). / In the communities of the Cape Flats, it is expected that all women will bear children and become mothers. Motherhood serves as a social and cultural indicator of femininity and enables women to access social and economic networks that knit them into community. The social and cultural valorization of motherhood in these communities has informed the powerful stigmatization of infertility (or the involuntary nonconformance to motherhood). The stigma associated with infertility affects women in particular, because the inability to bear children is commonly perceived to be a woman's problem. This study explores the cultural constructions of infertility. It examines in particular, the diverse cultural meanings and the stigma associated with infertility. The examination of these cultural meanings challenges the notion that infertility should only be examined in the biomedical realm. My research was conducted over a seven month period with six infertile women and with women who have borne children from different areas on the Cape Flats. The infertile women were the primary informants. Other informants included the mothers with whom the focus group was conducted and specialist informants who were healthcare professionals. The participants were recruited through the primary health care clinic in Manenberg, the network of community newspapers, The Daily Voice and through my own social network. Qualitative research methods were used. The study also used participatory research methods involved because the participants played an active role in the construction of the research process and interview schedules. The primary information used was obtained from in-depth interviews and journals kept by the infertile women. For comparative purposes, a focus group was conducted with a group of mothers. The study illustrates that on the Cape Flats, infertility is constructed as a major cultural and social problem for women. The stigma attached to infertility draws its power from the social and cultural meanings associated with inability of infertile women to live up to the expectation that every adult woman will become a mother. The effects of the social stigma of infertility are especially profound. As I show, bio-medicine does offer some solution, but only to the few who can afford it.

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This thesis investigates how intersexed bodies are represented in internet-based sex education teachers’ materials for school years 4-6. This study also investigates how the materials reproduce and challenge which gendered subjects are marginalized and which are privileged. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, by Norman Fairclough, I analyze textual features of the materials and the discursive and social practices. The analysis of the social practices is complemented by a post-structuralist approach to norm-critical pedagogy and Nikki Sullivan’s notion of somatechnics. I contribute to the discussion also by proceeding from my own experiences as a teacher in Swedish schools and from being a student in one of the Swedish teacher’s programs. I argue that the five materials I have analyzed represent intersex bodies as marginalized. This is done by maintaining the invisibility of intersexed bodies and presenting them only in connection with medical diagnosis or juridical discussions. It is also done by implicitly excluding gendered subjects that do not follow the cultural and social standards of the binary sex order. These findings reproduce the marginalization of gendered subjects that do not follow the binary sex order. Despite the above-mentioned reproduction, the materials also challenge which gendered subjects are marginalized/privileged to some extent. This is done by explicitly and implicitly including gendered subjects that do not follow the cultural and social standards of the binary sex order, including intersexed bodies.  Understanding discourse as both constitutive of and constituting social practices, I argue that educational contexts, and these findings for educational materials, are connected to the current treatment of intersexed bodies. Keywords: intersex, sex education, norm-critical pedagogy, somatechnics, CDA

This thesis explores how gender and sexuality are expressed in southern Manabí Province, Ecuador. The study employs ethnographic methods to recruit local people who identify as LGBTQ (called LGBTI regionally) to participate in interviews on sexuality and gender identity/expression. Based on this research, I explore the construction of “gay” in this part of Ecuador as identity and performance; additionally, reflective viewpoints of those who self-identify as “gay” are thematically incorporated. The term “gay” is used to describe a spectrum of identities that include: homosexual, transformista, travestí, transexual, and transgénero. These identities are not necessarily static, as many individuals traverse categories in a culturally specific progression that I describe. I propose that coastal Ecuadorians utilize a structuring of sexualities and genders within the region that challenges Western LGBTQ+ labels. This research suggests a new regional depiction of non-conforming identities and their manifestations through language, shared strife, communal beliefs, and individual experience. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (MA)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Throughout history, women in comics have played subordinate or lesser roles compared to males and were stereotyped. Today, representations have improved in comic-based tv shows. This thesis is answering three research questions: How does one define a “strong female character” within the comic-based and comic-styled genres, specifically in the TV shows Jessica Jones, Agent Carter, and Wynonna Earp? How does race/gender intersectionality affect the ways in which the non-white characters express masculinity or femininity compared to the white characters? How do the videos made by fans of the three tv series define a “strong female character?” This study applies textual and participatory cultures analyses. It is interdisciplinary and uses theories from different areas. This research finds that Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, and Wynonna Earp simultaneously reinforce and challenge stereotypes such as emphasized femininity, hegemonic masculinity and the “Black Buck.” Future research might examine white stereotypes with the white heroines. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (MA)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

By posing a provocative question, “What is a Woman?” this thesis intended to deconstruct normative conceptions of womanhood which are essentialised to marriage. To achieve these ends, I located the key questions of this thesis within intersecting theoretical premises of decolonial, African and Black feminisms. Intersectionality augmented by the framework of uMakhulu , that privileges the indigenous world-senses, are the tools of analysis to achieve better insight into how notions of womanhood bear multiplicities, complexities and ambiguities. Through the narrated life-stories of twenty ‘unmarried’ Basotho women (Methepa), I explored re-constructions of womanhood and the role of women’s agency in this process. Through these ‘invisibilised’ narratives, it is established that womanhood and the meanings thereof are located within a messy terrain of intersecting religio-socio-cultural and indigenous forces. I argued that these beg unpacking in identity re-construction to reveal multidimensional and complex constructions of Mosotho womanhood. Untangling these intricacies provides an anchor for deconstructing, and finally debasing, colonial hetero-patriarchal eurocentric universalism that plagues contemporary constructions of womanhood essentialised to marriage. At the core of this thesis lies the contention that ‘unmarried’ Basotho women (Methepa) are agents who are aware of the gendered social, cultural, religious terrain that necessitates marriage; which in turn, shapes their constructions of womanhood and agency. Unstructured interviews on past lived experiences of childhood and adulthood reveal self-definition characteristic to ‘unmarried’ Basotho women’s (Methepa) agency constructed and enacted within the locus of marginality. Within the analytic chapters titled ‘(Re)construction of womanhood’ is an appreciation of how women’s agency and their re-constructions of womanhood are shaped by childhood experiences of ‘becoming’ Woman as reflected upon in the chapter titled ‘The young Mosotho girl’. These chapters reflect the continuities of time; ‘then-now’ and space; ‘there-here’, to illustrate how ‘unmarried’ women’s senses of self and subjectivities are located in intersecting ‘modern’ Christianised and ‘indigenous’ terrains. Moreover, the findings reveal multiple reconfigurations of womanhood characterised by a complex, contradictory and convoluted enmeshment of multiple forces borne out of the world-senses of ‘unmarried’ Basotho women (Methepa). My conclusion is, partly that ‘unmarried’ Basotho women’s (Methepa) constructions of womanhood deconstruct the hegemonic constructions of womanhood. Therefore, not only does the analysis achieve epistemic redress by giving voice to historically silenced and subordinated knowledges, but it also places as central the indigenous African world-senses as the new anchor of African women’s identity and agency. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Sociology / PhD / Unrestricted

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses.