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The purpose of this study is to investigate how male and female educators treat boys and girls in care situations to gain knowledge about whether different demands are asked of children depending on gender. This also relates to the question of how girls and boys are constructed in the treatment and what consequences this may have for their room for maneuver in care situations. Furthermore, the study also intends to investigate how female and male educators relate to both the concept of care, the actual care and how they view the role of care in preschool. By using methods such as interviews and observations of educators in different care-related situations, we have investigated how they view their own care for girls and boys, and what it looks like in practice. In addition, we have tried to get a grip on the importance of care in preschool today, in relation to learning. We have our theoretical starting point in feminist poststructuralism, which together with previous research on female and male educators in preschool and the concept of care has helped us understand our results. The results of our study show that there are many similarities in the reasoning about the role of care in preschool, how you want to meet each child according to its individuality, but despite this, the children provide different types of care based on their gender. We have been able to see that educators think that care is often the most important thing for the children in preschool, but that they rarely talk about care as a prerequisite for children’s wellbeing, development and learning towards society.

<p>Nursing is a primary partner on the interprofessional team, yet there is minimal empirical evidence of nurse educators acting as architects of interprofessional education. Feminist poststructuralism (FPS) guides an exploration of nursing’s engagement in interprofessional education (IPE) using Yin’s (2009) case study methodology. A multiple case design of three English-language baccalaureate nursing programs investigates research questions: What are the antecedents of nursing’s engagement in IPE; how are nurse educators/nursing faculty engaged in IPE; how does gender impact nursing’s involvement in IPE development and implementation; and, how is nursing’s IPE engagement impacted by contextual factors inherent in health professional and academic contexts? Data from documents, archival records, individual and focus group interviews, field notes, non-participant observation, and a demographic questionnaire are reported in three individual case reports. A cross case analysis report is interpreted through FPS tenets including language, discourse, subjectivity, and power. Findings indicate that despite valuing IPE, nursing’s IPE engagement is minimal, inconsistent, and diverse in the presence of discrepant and/or uncertain understandings of the term interprofessional. The cross-case analysis outcome speaks principally of nursing’s general experience in the academy, with IPE engagement seemingly providing the vehicle to convey messages of enduring concern and tension inherent in nursing’s experience in the academy. Prominent concepts uncovered include nurse academic, professional subjectivity, and professional identity. Historic, hegemonic discourses of women, nurse, and nursing’s relationship with medicine impact nursing’s professional subjectivity such that nurse academics’ sense of professional self and professional confidence are viewed as antecedents to nursing’s IPE engagement.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This thesis examines how obscenity can be used either to maintain or to challenge gender stereotypes. Though this thesis focuses on only three texts, the questions raised concerning the relation between obscenity, gender, and subjectivity have wide applications. The primary theory applied here is a feminist poststructuralism which sees gender as socially constructed through language. According to poststructuralism, everything is formed socially or culturally through language. This includes the realities people experience of themselves and their surroundings; therefore, the language used to describe, and ultimately to construct, gender, is extremely important for a feminist critique of gender construction in our patriarchal society. Obscenity plays an often theoretically neglected role in the construction of gendered subjectivities. Drawing attention to the interconnection between obscenity and gender construction is important to feminists for several reasons. Understanding this interconnection may allow feminists not only to undermine stereotypical gender subjectivities, but to create entirely new subject positions.</p> <p>To investigate the relationship between obscenity, gender, and subjectivity, this thesis examines the following texts: Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Women of Brewster Place, and for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. The Introduction provides a general survey of critical work concerning obscenity and gender construction as well as providing an introduction to poststructural theory. Chapter I examines Last Exit to Brooklyn and raises questions about, among other things, the misappropriation of obscenity by Selby's female characters where women swear but do so in a patriarchal manner. Selby, in privileging violence over language, silences his female characters in his reinscription of the patriarchy. Chapter II examines The Women of Brewster Place and the context Naylor creates which clearly condemns male violence and gives power to female voices. Chapter III examines for colored girls ... and finds several similarities between Naylor's and Shange's use of obscenity. The new subject positions that these two authors create will be investigated.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Increasingly since the 1990s those of us who are interested in gender issues in education have heard the question: What about the boys? A discourse has emerged in New Zealand, as in other countries including Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, that attention spent on addressing issues related to the educational needs of girls has resulted in the neglect of boys and problems related to their schooling. Positioned within this discourse, boys are depicted as disadvantaged, victims of feminism, underachieving or failing within the alienating feminised schooling environment and their struggles at school are seen as a symptom of a wider ‘crisis of masculinity'. This anxiety about boys has generated much debate and a number of explanations for the school performance of boys. One concern, that has remained largely unexamined in the Aotearoa New Zealand context, is that the dominant discourse of masculinity is characterised by a restless physicality, anti-intellectualism, misbehaviour and opposition to authority all of which are construed as antithetical to success at school. This thesis explores how masculinities are played out in the schooling experiences of a small group of 5, 6 and 7 year old boys in two New Zealand primary schools as they construct, embody and enact their gendered subjectivities both as boys and as pupils. This study of how the lived realities of schooling for these boys are discursively constituted is informed by feminist poststructuralism, aspects of queer theory and, in particular, draws on the works of Michel Foucault. The research design involved employing an innovative mix of data generating strategies. The discursive analysis of the data generated in focus group discussions, classroom and playground observations, children’s drawings and video and audio recording of the normal classroom literacy programmes is initially organised around these sites of learning in order to explore how gender is produced discursively, embodied and enacted as children go about their work and their play. The research shows that although considerable diversity was apparent as the boys fashioned their masculinities in these different sites, ‘doing boy’ is not inimical to ‘doing schoolboy’ as all the boys, when required to, were able to constitute themselves as ‘intelligible’ pupils (Youdell, 2006). The research findings challenge the notion of school as a feminised and alienating environment for them. In particular, instances of some of the boys disrupting the established classroom norms, as recorded by feminist researchers more than two decades ago, are documented. Concerns then, that “classroom practices reinforced a notion of male importance and superiority while diminishing the interests and status of girls” (Allen, 2009, p. 124) appear to still be relevant, and the postfeminist discourse “that gender equity has now been achieved for girls and women in education” (Ringrose, 2013, p. 1) is called into question. Amid the greater emphasis on measuring easily quantifiable aspects of pupils’ educational achievement, what this analysis does is to recognize the processes of schooling as highly complex and to offer a more nuanced response to the question of boys and their schooling than that offered by, for example, men’s rights advocates. It suggests that if we are committed to improving education for all children, the question needs to be re/framed so as not to lose sight of educational issues related to girls and needs to ask just which particular groups of boys and which particular groups of girls are currently being disadvantaged in our schools.

Increased participation rates and significant performances of girls and women in sport over the last three decades would have many believing that the barriers and discrimination experienced in the past have been overcome and that continued participation and success into the future is unproblematic. Feminist research has problematized what now seems like acceptance of women’s participation in sport in this postmodern era by considering the location of the female athlete at the intersecting of discourses of femininity, masculinist sport, heterosexuality and homophobia. Situated among these powerful regulating forces, female athletes become subjects attached to often contradictory identities. For instance, the paradox of femininity and athleticism can result in a troubling experience that requires complex negotiation and time-consuming management of gender boundaries and behaviour expectations. Although sport has been considered a liberatory space for women, that view fails to consider that sport continues to maintain the status quo through workings of power politics that sustain oppressive social structures and relations. In this study, the review of literature in Chapter Two illuminates that sport, as it currently exists, perpetuates gender inequality and builds and maintains socio-cultural boundaries of normative femininity and heterosexuality. Unpacking women’s sport experience, therefore, involves exploring the discursive force fields that structure their everyday lives. Immersed in the dynamics of power and resistance, women performing so-called “masculine” activities such as skilled sport performance create a contradictory and precarious location for themselves. This location could be perceived as transgressive and liberating or as one that must negotiate, and possibly resolve, the tension between discursive expectancies and non-normative performances. My study examined the sport experiences of eight female athletes. Each was interviewed three times using a semi-structured interview process. During the initial interview, the participants were asked to provide the history and priority of sport in their lives and speak about the repetitive act of “becoming” an athlete as they make the transitions from other subjectivities. Chapter Four summarizes this conversation with each of the participants. Through a photo-elicitation process, one of the interviews was dedicated to revealing each of the participants’ movements through the social spaces of their daily lives. Another of the interviews was supported by video footage of the athlete as she trained and/or competed in her sport(s). This data collection process allowed for the participants’ multiple subject positions or locations to be spoken by them throughout the conversations. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using discourse analysis. In order to critique the various discourses that dis/advantage female athletes, the theoretical framework provided by feminist poststructuralism was chosen for this project. Through this perspective, detailed in Chapter Three, an understanding of how social power is exercised over and experienced by women is helpful in knowledge production that supports women’s on-going efforts of contestation and change. For example, continued improvement and achievement in sport performance vi could be the result of new versions of femininity fostered by my critique of the privileged female identity that allows for less docile and more athletic female bodies. Discourse analysis, as described in Chapter Three, allowed for surveying the discursive terrain of the lives of the participants. This method also illuminated the ways of speaking, descriptions and specific images that the athletes used to speak about their sport experiences. The women spoke sport into their lives and created a positive space that featured personal achievement, escape or freedom from the “rest of life”; an activity that supported a healthy body and a positive body image; a place of family support; and a social, fun and accepting environment. In contrast to this, the participants’ sport space was troubled by the management and negotiation that was required by them to continue participation. Even though, as described in Chapter Five, they could speak sport into their lives in a positive way, they also spoke sport out of their lives (or at least further down the priority list) because of the effort that was required to juggle it or balance it within their multiple subjectivities. The sometimes simultaneous and always sequential contradictory gendered discursive force fields of motherhood, the ideal feminine body image, intimate relationships, compulsory heterosexuality, and physical activity required constant strategies of negotiation and management that are described in Chapter Six. A brief concluding chapter summarizes how the participants in this study found themselves frustrated by their “in-between-ness”. They are not athletes in the dominant heteronormative discursive space of male sport (they are “othered”), and they do not fit in the dominant discursive space of privileged femininity. The results of this study reveal that while sport presents itself as a site of empowerment for women, it also perpetuates and maintains traditional patriarchal values. The participants, however, creatively negotiated and renovated that patriarchal space to create a location in which they could evade the strength of dominant discourses and experience the benefits of sport engagement.

Increased participation rates and significant performances of girls and women in sport over the last three decades would have many believing that the barriers and discrimination experienced in the past have been overcome and that continued participation and success into the future is unproblematic. Feminist research has problematized what now seems like acceptance of women’s participation in sport in this postmodern era by considering the location of the female athlete at the intersecting of discourses of femininity, masculinist sport, heterosexuality and homophobia. Situated among these powerful regulating forces, female athletes become subjects attached to often contradictory identities. For instance, the paradox of femininity and athleticism can result in a troubling experience that requires complex negotiation and time-consuming management of gender boundaries and behaviour expectations. Although sport has been considered a liberatory space for women, that view fails to consider that sport continues to maintain the status quo through workings of power politics that sustain oppressive social structures and relations. In this study, the review of literature in Chapter Two illuminates that sport, as it currently exists, perpetuates gender inequality and builds and maintains socio-cultural boundaries of normative femininity and heterosexuality. Unpacking women’s sport experience, therefore, involves exploring the discursive force fields that structure their everyday lives. Immersed in the dynamics of power and resistance, women performing so-called “masculine” activities such as skilled sport performance create a contradictory and precarious location for themselves. This location could be perceived as transgressive and liberating or as one that must negotiate, and possibly resolve, the tension between discursive expectancies and non-normative performances. My study examined the sport experiences of eight female athletes. Each was interviewed three times using a semi-structured interview process. During the initial interview, the participants were asked to provide the history and priority of sport in their lives and speak about the repetitive act of “becoming” an athlete as they make the transitions from other subjectivities. Chapter Four summarizes this conversation with each of the participants. Through a photo-elicitation process, one of the interviews was dedicated to revealing each of the participants’ movements through the social spaces of their daily lives. Another of the interviews was supported by video footage of the athlete as she trained and/or competed in her sport(s). This data collection process allowed for the participants’ multiple subject positions or locations to be spoken by them throughout the conversations. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using discourse analysis. In order to critique the various discourses that dis/advantage female athletes, the theoretical framework provided by feminist poststructuralism was chosen for this project. Through this perspective, detailed in Chapter Three, an understanding of how social power is exercised over and experienced by women is helpful in knowledge production that supports women’s on-going efforts of contestation and change. For example, continued improvement and achievement in sport performance vi could be the result of new versions of femininity fostered by my critique of the privileged female identity that allows for less docile and more athletic female bodies. Discourse analysis, as described in Chapter Three, allowed for surveying the discursive terrain of the lives of the participants. This method also illuminated the ways of speaking, descriptions and specific images that the athletes used to speak about their sport experiences. The women spoke sport into their lives and created a positive space that featured personal achievement, escape or freedom from the “rest of life”; an activity that supported a healthy body and a positive body image; a place of family support; and a social, fun and accepting environment. In contrast to this, the participants’ sport space was troubled by the management and negotiation that was required by them to continue participation. Even though, as described in Chapter Five, they could speak sport into their lives in a positive way, they also spoke sport out of their lives (or at least further down the priority list) because of the effort that was required to juggle it or balance it within their multiple subjectivities. The sometimes simultaneous and always sequential contradictory gendered discursive force fields of motherhood, the ideal feminine body image, intimate relationships, compulsory heterosexuality, and physical activity required constant strategies of negotiation and management that are described in Chapter Six. A brief concluding chapter summarizes how the participants in this study found themselves frustrated by their “in-between-ness”. They are not athletes in the dominant heteronormative discursive space of male sport (they are “othered”), and they do not fit in the dominant discursive space of privileged femininity. The results of this study reveal that while sport presents itself as a site of empowerment for women, it also perpetuates and maintains traditional patriarchal values. The participants, however, creatively negotiated and renovated that patriarchal space to create a location in which they could evade the strength of dominant discourses and experience the benefits of sport engagement.

Syftet med studien är att synliggöra hur normer om kön och genus gestaltas i aktuell barnlitteratur. Metoden som användes var en kvalitativ innehållsanalys av tio barnböcker. Barnböckerna som analyserades var de mest lånade barnböckerna bland förskolorna i ett och samma landskap. Analysen av barnlitteraturen bestod av att undersöka hur huvudkaraktärer, bikaraktärer och handling skildras utifrån studiens teoretiska ramverk feministisk poststrukturalism och Nikolajevas schema som användes som verktyg i analysen. Resultatet visade på exempel på performativt genus, normbrytande, könsneutralt och könspermutation. Slutsatsen var att både normbrytande och icke normbrytande gestaltningar av kön och genus syntes i barnböckerna. Barnböckerna visade på en variation där män framställdes med stereotypiska egenskaper men även i mer normbrytande roller. Kvinnor skildrades även med mer maskulina egenskaper och med feminina egenskaper. Det framkom dessutom att kvinnor var underrepresenterade i barnböckerna och hade färre huvudroller än männen. / The purpose of the study is to make visible how norms about sex and genderare portrayed in current children's literature. The method used was a qualitativecontent analysis of ten children's books. The children's books that wereanalyzed was the most borrowed children's books among preschools in thesame region. The analysis of children's literature consisted of looking at howmain characters, supporting characters and plot are portrayed based on thetheoretical framework of the study, feminist poststructuralism and Nikolajevasscheme, which was used as tools in the analysis. The results showed examplesof performative gender, norm-breaking, sex-neutral and sex permutation. Theconclusion was that both norm-breaking and non-norm-breaking depictions ofsex and gender appeared in the children's books. The children's books showeda variation where men were portrayed with stereotypical characteristics butalso in more norm-breaking roles. Women were also portrayed with moremasculine characteristics and with feminine characteristics. It also emergedthat women were underrepresented in children's books and had fewer leadingroles than men

Using a feminist poststructuralist approach as a guide, I begin this thesis with the workinghypothesis that gender may be an adult-centred concept in feminist studies. This leads me toask: If the concept of gender in feminist studies is adult-centred, how is this centring formedand maintained? To answer this question, I begin by splitting my analysis into three analyticalsections: age, children, and gender. Although I include age, children, and gender into eachsectional analysis, my main priority in the first two sections is to look at how feminist scholarsdiscuss and use the terms age and child(ren). In the gender section, I use three canonical gendertheory texts as the basis of my analysis, where I see how gender is discussed and conceptualisedand how both children and age figure in these conceptualisations.One of the main concerns of feminist poststructuralist theory is tackling binaries. However,with the category of age having been often taken for granted in feminist studies, and thereforeunder-theorised, the adult/child binary in the category of age remains largely unchallenged.Instead, where age has been investigated in terms of tackling binaries, the young/old binary hasdominated but has remained centred around the adult; leaving children underacknowledgedand under-theorised in feminist studies age discourse. This under-theorisation of childrenmeans that “child” remains a master status with seemingly unshakeable connotations ofinnocence, vulnerability, and incompetence. Children are those who are not adults and not-yetsubjects. They are understood as being in constant need of care from the competent andcomplete adult. In this thesis, I show how these points, among others, contribute to both theformation and maintenance of the concept of gender as adult-centred.

In this thesis I address the following questions: (1) How do dykes take up space in public in contemporary cities? (2) How does the ‘marching dyke’ emerge as a subject and what kind of subject is it? (3) How, in turn, do marching dykes affect space? In order to examine these questions I focus on the Toronto Dyke March to ask how it emerged in this particular time and place. The answer to each of these questions is paradoxical. I argue that the Dyke March is a complex, complicated and contradictory site of politics, protest and identity. Investigating ‘marching dykes’ reveals how the subject of the Dyke March is imagined in multiple and conflicting ways. The Toronto Dyke March is an event which brings together thousands of queer women annually who march together in the streets of Toronto on the Saturday afternoon of Pride weekend. My research examines how the March emerged out of a history of activism and organizing and considers how the March has been made meaningful for queer women’s communities, identities, histories and spaces. My analysis draws together queer and feminist poststructuralism, cultural geography literature on sexuality and space, and the history of sexuality in Canada. I combine a Foucaultian genealogy with visual ethnography, interviews and archival research. I argue that the Dyke March is an event which is intentionally meaningful in its claims to particular spaces and subjectivities. This research draws connections across various bodies of scholarship and offers an interdisciplinary contribution to the literature, contributing to discussions of queer women’s visibility and representation. Although my analysis is focused on Toronto as a particular site, it offers insight into broader queer women’s activist organizing efforts and queer activism in Canada.