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The issue addressed in this article is how a feminist case study would look like. This includes that the one who does the research, the purpose of the study, the content of the study and to whom the case study contributes should have feminist perspectives in order to be a feminist study. The case studies mapped in this article are limited to case studies about leadership, education and organizations. By analysing 20 different case studies with feminist point of views, I concluded that feminist case studies often includes gender inequality issues like acceptation of gender inequalities or gender employment discrimination but some of them cover how feminism ideology in organizations operate.

This research explores how midlife women found the strength and resilience that enabled them to rebound and grow as they negotiated significant life challenges in their marriage, and with their children, parents, careers, and health. Using a family resilience framework grounded in systems theory with a feminist perspective, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with 18 diverse women between the ages of 40 and 60 years in different regions of the United States. The phenomenological method of inquiry allowed the researcher to gather the experiences of midlife women in order to understand the protective processes of resilience for overcoming adversity. Three research questions guided this study: (1) How have women dealt with an adverse experience or challenging transition in their adult married life and where did the strength or resilience they needed to rise above it come from? (2) How did they use their resilience in challenging situations? (3) How did this challenging experience influence their marriage and how was the experience affected by their marriage? Results suggest that the participants' core beliefs facilitated how they made meaning of their struggle and influenced their response to their challenges. The themes they discussed fell into beliefs that were organized as affiliative values, facilitative beliefs and transcendent spiritual beliefs. These belief systems described how they made sense of their challenges. Themes related to the importance of connectedness and relationships also occurred frequently in the narratives of these midlife women as they developed resilience. As expected, marriage was important to the majority of the women as they discussed the importance of emotional support, but their sense of well-being was also greatly influenced by other close relationships in their communities with friends, family, children, and role models. Work and education emerged as significant themes in the women's appraisal of their challenges, beliefs, and connectedness as they described their sense of resilience. Resilience was fostered when these women made connections between their past, present, and future and integrated their experiences, their beliefs, relationships, and resources. / Ph. D.

Although previous research on singlehood has often focused on middle-class career women, little is known about the life experiences of non-career path single women. This study examined the core marriage beliefs of never-married and once-married child-free, midlife women and the ways in which those beliefs have evolved over time. The sample consisted of 10 women, 5 never-married and 5 once-married between the ages of 35 and 48. For the purposes of this inquiry, non-career path was co-determined on the basis of occupation and educational background. The theoretical framework that guided this study combined a life course approach with a feminist perspective. Respondents were recruited through extensive networking and the sampling technique of snowballing. A qualitative methodology was employed utilizing the research strategy of in-depth interviewing. Data were analyzed on the basis of emergent themes and patterns. This study produced 3 salient findings. First, the process of forming core marriage beliefs is similar between never-married and once-married women. Although an experience of marrying (or an experience of not marrying) may change the way a woman views herself within the context of her marital beliefs, those core marital beliefs do not necessarily change. Second, whether never-married or once-married, single midlife women live ambivalent lives: acknowledging their singlehood status while simultaneously remaining hopeful of attaining a marital union. Finally, women made a clear distinction between getting married and marrying successfully. While most believed that getting married was a choice, having a successful marriage was a result of chance. Despite this appraisal, the ideal of marriage remained pervasive regardless of age or past experience. / Master of Science

Male-perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV) against women remains as a pervasive and detrimental issue both in the United States and globally. Researchers, counselors, and others often develop psychological measures to help understand the causes of IPV in an effort to prevent this issue from occurring. Debate still persists within IPV research as to the definitive factors that contribute to the perpetration of IPV. The socio-feminist perspective remains as the predominant theoretical basis that drives IPV research and understanding. Despite this, no psychological measure grounded in this theory that predicts IPV perpetration proclivities has been developed and validated to date. The purpose of the current project was to develop and validate a psychological measure that predicts a likelihood to physically abuse a female intimate partner among heterosexual men – the Likelihood to Physically Abuse (LPA) scale. The development of which followed the methods of previously developed and validated measures of likelihood to rape and likelihood to sexually harass. Two studies were conducted that utilized two, independent and samples of adult, English-speaking American men. Study I involved a review of the literature to develop the LPA scale and initial internal reliability testing. Two hundred men were recruited using Qualtrics and were administered the LPA scale online. In Study II, three hundred men were recuited using Qualtrics and were administered the LPA scale along with other measures related to male-perpetrated IPV online. The purpose of the second study was to further test the internal reliability of the LPA scale and test the construct and external validity of this measure. The results from both studies demonstrated good internal reliability and initial evidence for good construct validity of the LPA scale. The LPA scale was concluded to show promising reliability and validity. However, the external validity results require further investigation. Implications for future IPV research and applications, and limitations are discussed.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (Education) / The World Health Organisation defines mental health as "a state of well-being in which the individual realizes her or his own abilities, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community" (WHO, 2001, p. 1). There is a paucity of academic research about the mental health status of minority groups, especially women of colour (Moultrie & Kleintjes, 2006). In South Africa too, this gap in research is evident when focussing on the mental health of women, especially Coloured women in South Africa. Women's health and their mental health in particular are often affected by the way society treats and regards them; often they suffer from emotional, mental and physical exhaustions. This study investigated the mental health status of Coloured female teachers working in historically disadvantaged Special Schools in the Cape Metropole of the Western Cape Education Department. This group designation is the designation that was formally used during South Africa's Apartheid past policies of segregation in categorising groups according to pre-determined race categories. Coloureds where then considered to be a minority grouping in South Africa. Reference is still currently made in democratic South Africa to the Apartheid race categorisations in contemporary formal policies that seek to redress the inequities of the past, both in terms of race as well as gender categories (Conway-Smith, 2011; Stromquist, 1998). Given the intimate association between race and identity, especially within a socio-historical context such as that of South Africa, it is reasonable to consider the impact of this association on an individual's mental health status.

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Although women’s rights have been widely recognized in the international agenda, violence against women in the private sphere does not seem to decrease. Women are still suffering today from not enjoying the most basic human rights. States fail often to recognize domestic violence as a human rights violation because it is committed in the private sphere by non-states actors. Because of this the European Court of Human Rights decided to develop the due diligence standard in 2008 to combat violence against women. This thesis examines the European Convention on Human Rights law regarding domestic violence and the meaning of member states positive obligation and the concept of due diligence. The European Court has established that member states have several positive obligations to fulfill in order to address the issue of violence against women in the private sphere. However states fail too often to exercise the due diligence by not living up to the standards that has been established by the Court. It has been proven that the Convention articles are inconsistent. The Court needs too clarify exactly which measures states should take to address the issue of violence against women and send a clear message how much effort it takes to fill the scope of the due diligence standard. This inconsistency allows states to take stand in the law enforcements, which are contemplated to be dominated by male norms. The consequence of this is that women are usually disadvantaged in state law enforcement when it comes to violence in the private sphere. It is therefor of great importance to pay attention to women’s rights when it comes to domestic violence, as well as analyzing states approach in the domestic violence cases. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze domestic violence as men’s violence against women from a critical gender perspective by highlighting elements that effects states actions in the cases. The point of departure is to recognize similar behavior in states actions by focusing on the concept male norm and private and public sphere. The results revealed a clear pattern of the concepts. In each case signs of male norms expressed in a male position, where men are superior to women were shown. States divisions of the private and public spheres were also proven in the cases. States would prefer not to intervene when a woman was exposed to violence in the private sphere. This leads to women being suppressed and unable to reach legal protection in the private sphere.

For most writers who deal with displacement, rewriting themselves, articulating and communicating their sense of estrangment is their lifetime work. For displacement forces one to leave behind the familiar and embrace the unknown. In this process of deconstruction, the concepts of home, belonging and identity are renegotiated and questioned constantly. Le Grand Voyage – the working title for the draft of a novel that is presented in conjunction with this exegesis – is a fictional work that is produced out of the implications of displacement, which inscribes itself in a series of explorations I started in 2001, cumulating with two video works Frammento in 2003 and Footnotes in 2004. Le Grand Voyage investigates further the concept of home by questioning the home/mother relationship. The exegesis aims to contextualise the making of Le Grand Voyage by using another woman’s narrative as the main point of reference: Linda Olsson’s Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs (2005). Olsson’s work – like mine – is conceived out of the effects of displacement, and the literary form and structure display symptoms that are characteristics to narratives of displacement. By putting the home/mother/daughter in context, the narrative displays home as a patriarchal construct showing how the idealisation of home/place is predicated on a gendering of home, whereby, as McDermott notes, ‘home is constructed as a maternal, static and past, to which the (male) subjects longs to return’ (2003: 265). The narrative’s point of view is that of daughters but also that of mothers as daughters, and enables not only a feminist discussion of the notion of home but also of motherhood. Therefore, the theoretical approach for this work has encompassed feminists’ writings that have particularly focused their research on space, place and gender. In challenging the dominant form of gender constructions and relations, the first and second wave feminism have empowered many women to leave home in order to shape their own version of identity. I believe it is within the perspective of displacement, of being out of place, that many women continue to find the necessary distance to contest a particular reading of woman and home that still prevails in academic literature and fiction. Thus, an important part of this exegesis concentrates on the critic of home. I want to argue in a feminist way that our ideas of home and belonging still reflect gendered assumptions and are therefore contestable. That displacement as a catalyst for loss, emotional grief and mourning becomes an enabling way for women to rethink home in terms of what was at play rather than in place and to do the ‘memory work’ that feminists ask women to do: to remember in order not to forget because ‘forgetting is a major obstacle to change’ (Greene, 1991: 298). Their attacks on the feminisation of place have opened up for me possibilities to think of home outside the parameters of sameness. They have also enabled me to understand the paradoxical position a displaced person is faced with: if displacement is favored and privileged why then do longings for home still persist for some? – a fact that is well illustrated in the actual resurgence of the preoccupation to belong. The gain in displacement also involves the fact that distance forces one to look at the longing and nostalgia for what they really conceal. In the case of a woman and, motherless daughters, distance, as this exegesis demonstrates, enables the writer to unveil the longings as subversive and fraudulent, tricking women into thinking there was nothing better than the past: home sweet home, the safe, bounded nest where women could be women: could be the mother. With the ‘memory work’ they both learn to think away from the parameters of sameness and the past, outside the nostalgic stances of singularity, safety, boundaries and internalised histories, therefore outside of the maternal, the home/mother relationship. ‘What is home?’ is a difficult question to negotiate for a woman. The exegesis and the first draft of the novel show what is at stake when one asks the question and the responsibility of women when writing about home.