In this thesis I investigate gender in environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) in the United Kingdom (UK) and Turkey. ENGOs play an increasingly important role as lobbyists on environmental policy making at national and international scales. There is large literature dealing with gender inequalities in governing bodies, and in organisations. However, gender structures of ENGOs and their implications for campaigns have been under-researched. I therefore examined the structure and composition of ENGOs in the UK and Turkey, how far they include women in decision-making process and the implications for their campaigns. To this end, I undertook cross-national comparative research applying feminist research methodology to explore differences and similarities and underlying factors for gender inequalities in organisational settings in two different societies. The research methods included 38 interviews and one focus group interview in 9 ENGOs in the UK and 40 interviews in 10 ENGOs in Turkey. These were conducted mainly with senior managers, but also with junior managers and staff. Furthermore, I placed myself as a volunteer and researcher in two ENGOs, one in the UK and one in Turkey in order to observe the organisational practices directly and to enable triangulation of data. In addition, I collected secondary data from annual reports, staff charts, publications and websites of the organisations to collect data on gender compositions as well as campaigns of the ENGOs. In order to explore and provide sufficient explanation for the under-representation of female senior managers and gender inequalities in ENGOs settings, theoretical approaches were looked into in order to find the most appropriate feminist theories that explain the gendered nature of ENGOs. I found that while the ENGO sectors in both countries are dominated by female employees, white, middle class men are in charge of the decision-making in the ENGOs. Moreover, in the ENGOs I found that there seemed to be resistance to integrate gender related perspectives when deciding environmental campaigns. Since there is no research on ENGOs that makes gender blindness visible, this thesis is an attempt to fill that gap. I argue that neglecting gender relations in environmental decision-making and campaigns reinforces the current gendered practices and imbalances in ENGOs that fail to integrate women’s perspectives in environmental policies.

This snapshot ethnographic research was conducted in Kihande Village in Uganda with the Agabagaya Women’s Group for a period of five weeks in 2004. Using a feminist ethnographic methodology, the researcher explores how women value, share and pursue knowledge informally among themselves to support themselves, their families and their communities. The analysis indicates that the women of Agabagaya are knowers in their worlds, that they actively pursue educational opportunities and development opportunities, and that they do so from a grassroots level. This particular group does not rely on and may actually be hindered by external development organizations and outside educational influences with top-down models. However, the group does use external development agencies when there is opportunity for the group to benefit. The researcher further explores the positions and implications of a white, Western researcher conducting research in a developing, non-white country and discovers that positive and respectful relationships are at the heart of the research process and that the participants control many aspects of the research itself.

This snapshot ethnographic research was conducted in Kihande Village in Uganda with the Agabagaya Women’s Group for a period of five weeks in 2004. Using a feminist ethnographic methodology, the researcher explores how women value, share and pursue knowledge informally among themselves to support themselves, their families and their communities. The analysis indicates that the women of Agabagaya are knowers in their worlds, that they actively pursue educational opportunities and development opportunities, and that they do so from a grassroots level. This particular group does not rely on and may actually be hindered by external development organizations and outside educational influences with top-down models. However, the group does use external development agencies when there is opportunity for the group to benefit. The researcher further explores the positions and implications of a white, Western researcher conducting research in a developing, non-white country and discovers that positive and respectful relationships are at the heart of the research process and that the participants control many aspects of the research itself.

Motherhood has been set up as an institution of control over women by the patriarchy. Dominant ideas of motherhood and what constitutes being a good mother are steeped in patriarchal ideals and conceptual thoughts. What is absent from ideas of motherhood is the female lived experiences of mothering. Mothering, by contrast, is the conceptual understanding of what it means to be a mother from a women-centered perspective. Under the dominant discourse of motherhood, mothers are self-sacrificing, generous, calm, patient, and loving. Those mothers who do not meet these standards are constructed as "bad mothers," reinforcing a binary understanding of mothers. This paper challenges the good/bad mother binary by drawing on the lived experience of one mother who uses substances to demonstrate the judgmental road mothers are forced to walk. This thesis takes a feminist-based approach to explore Ruth's story: a mother who engages in substance use. This research is produced through a feminist ontology to add to a body of scholarship that works to create a counter-discourse for mothers from mothers against dominating patriarchal norms of motherhood. A Narrative case study methodology is applied to Ruth's story to extrapolate the complex realities Ruth faces as she attempts to make sense of her mothering identity within the patriarchal definition of the "good mother." While engaging in substance use, Ruth's mothering story produced four themes that facilitate understanding mothering from a holistic, women-centric lens. First, this research emphasizes the barriers Ruth experiences in building, understanding and maintaining her sense of self. Second, Ruth's story illuminates the impact of the dominant "good" motherhood discourse on how women like Ruth conceptualize themselves as a mother. Third, Ruth's story enables the exploration of the intersectional identities of mothering and substance use in a way that creates space for both identities to work together rather than in opposition. Lastly, reflecting on the surveillance Ruth has endured in relation to her family and interactions with child welfare, her story reveals how discourses of risk are connected to and associated with substance use. Through the exploration of Ruth's mothering experiences, a narrative is produced to challenge and disrupt the oppressive institution of motherhood. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

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Canada is widely regarded as a liberal, multicultural nation that prides itself on a history of peace and tolerance. Oftentimes set up in contrast to the United States, Canada’s history of colonialism has been popularly imagined as a gentler, necessary, inevitable, and even benevolent version of expansion and subjugation of Indigenous populations. In recent decades scholars in the social sciences and humanities have challenged the rhetoric of Canada as a consistently benevolent and peaceful nation. They have pointed to the discontinuity between Canada’s rosy image, drawn from foundational nation-building myths of benevolence, and the deeply rooted colonial narratives of necessity and inevitability that underpin those nation-building myths. This discontinuity manifests itself in far reaching patterns of social and economic disparity between Indigenous and settler populations over time across the nation. This reality is acutely seen in the Canadian West, as Canada’s historic frontier. This thesis re-problematises narratives of Canadian nation-building from a regional perspective. It is argued that positioning the West as the frontier peripheral to Canadian ‘civilisation’ is part of a broader settler colonial logic that sees the contemporary manifestation of disparity between Indigenous and settler populations as emanating from uniquely backward, peripheral places in Canada, rather than challenging the fundamental benevolence of the Canadian nation. Through a close reading of two trials pertaining to an instance of multiple perpetrator sexual assault that occurred in Saskatchewan in 2003, I demonstrate how the complex web of interlocking systems of domination that oppress and privilege in trials do not emanate from the backwardness of the place in which they occurred, but are rather indicative of broader societal processes and power relations indicative of settler colonialism. This thesis argues there is a conflation between western Canadian identity, and settler identity, owing to the foundational nation-building myths in which the West became Canadian. In moving forward, this thesis proposes an acknowledgment of the settler colonial nature of westward expansion and suggests practicing openness to considering different ways westward expansion might have been understood and experienced. Key to this process is learning to listen, learning to hear, learning to believe, and learning to see oneself implicated in the stories of those who experienced westward expansion differently from how it is popularly constructed in settler society. I begin here by proposing the complainant’s voice in the trial be heard, and be believed. Her voice and her silence provides insight into understanding the oppressive power of settler-colonialism.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the process of forgiveness and the relationship among state forgiveness, self-compassion, and psychological well-being experienced by Buddhists in the United States. An integral feminist framework was developed for this mixed-method study. For the quantitative component of this study, a convenience sample of 112 adults completed an online survey. Multiple regression analysis was performed to examine: (a) the impact of gender, age, and the years spent in Buddhist practice on state forgiveness and self-compassion; (b) the outcome of psychological well-being in relation to state forgiveness and self-compassion; and (c) self-compassion as a mediator for the relationship between state forgiveness and psychological well-being. Quantitative results indicated: (a) state forgiveness positively predicted psychological well-being; (b) the years spent in Buddhist practice positively predicted self-compassion; (c) self-compassion positively predicted psychological well-being; and (d) self-compassion partially mediated the relationship between state forgiveness and psychological well-being. Age did not predict any of the three primary variables. Gender did not predict state forgiveness. For the qualitative component of this study, this researcher purposefully selected four adults from a local Buddhist community in central Kentucky and conducted two in-depth interviews to explore their subjective experiences of forgiveness within their own contexts. A holistic-content narrative analysis revealed unique features of each interviewee’s forgiveness process interwoven with the socio-cultural, family and relational contexts. From a phenomenological analysis, common themes and elements of the interviewees’ forgiveness processes emerged. Qualitative findings corresponded to the quantitative results concerning state forgiveness as a route to psychological well-being, the positive relationship between Buddhist practice and compassion, and the role of self-compassion in the relationship between state forgiveness and psychological well-being. Qualitative findings also suggested the following. First, two-way compassion toward self and the offender was a facilitating factor for forgiveness that may be unique to Buddhists. Second, one’s actual experience of forgiveness may encompass not only cognitive, affective, and behavioral changes, but also transformation of self and perspective on meaning and purpose in life. Third, Enright and his colleagues’ (1998) stage and process models of forgiveness were useful to understand Buddhists’ experiences and processes of forgiveness.

Whilst the idealisation of extreme slenderness is widely recognised as a problematic issue, the negative portrayal of larger individuals is rarely criticised for its link with stigmatisation and problems with self-esteem. To the contrary, the representation of larger individuals in dehumanising terms – whether in news reports, advertising and research accounts – is generally regarded as a necessary means to encourage the pursuit of a ‘better’, ‘healthier’ self. However, these negative stereotypical portrayals – generally excluding the perspective and consent of those depicted – can also have adverse effects on human dignity, legitimacy and self-esteem of those thus depicted. Building on the work of fat studies scholars, as well as feminist marketing researchers, this research project seeks to contribute to the inclusion and rehumanisation of fuller-figured individuals, by involving them in the dialogue of visual and research representation. To do so, this research invited a group of fuller-figured women living in the UK and Canada, to ‘envision’, ‘model’, and ‘review’ their own self-presentations, primarily via the use of self-directed portraits, blogs, and conversations. Whilst the inclusion of their embodied perspectives is expected to contribute to humanising the representation of larger individuals – and offer a glimpse into what could be if we started considering women ‘of size’ as authors of their own depictions – it also contributes in filling a gap left by consumer researchers who have overlooked the way larger individuals make sense of their selves, bodies and well-being. As such, this research contributes to existing consumer research theories by explaining the ways individuals can envision their selves/bodies in the shadow of, but also in contrast with, the dominant marketplace promotion of slenderness. In terms of contribution, this research illustrates the relevance of therapeutic and embodied perspectives to understand the self, the body and to engage in acts of consumption. A new ‘self-nurtured’ discursive position offers challenges to the meanings generally attributed to larger individuals, and to the traditional approaches taken by consumer researchers to solve the ‘obesity crisis’. Overall, this research provides empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions to the field of consumer research. It also offers practical implications for the representation of larger individuals, and recommendations for those interested in the social marketing of health to enjoin people of all sizes in mindful acts of self-care and consumption.

In this project, I focus on women's relationships with technology in the context of contemporary music culture. In choosing this focus, I intend to elucidate the interplay between social constructs of gender, power and technology as they enacted in a particular arena of artistic and economic activity. The nature of this interplay is informed by prevailing regimes of truth which have emerged through historical processes and which surface in diverse social contexts, of which this is but one. My intention here is to identify such regimes and to situate women's discourses within them. In this undertaking, I draw on a body of theory which lies at the conjunction of contemporary feminist critique and the later work of Michel Foucault on power and the 'technologies of the self' to explore a model of power which promises cogent strategies in the feminist project of reworking notions of gender and social agency. The inquiry enlists the perspectives of women students in a university school of contemporary music through a guided interview process. The technologies referred to include musical instruments both of traditional and twentieth century design, as well as a range of sophisticated systems of equipment used for recording and amplifying, for composing and arranging music. Through analysis of the interview data and through readings from social science and musicology, I identify a dominant discourse, or regime of truth, which privileges men and marginalizes women in the realm of techno-musical activity. Alongside this prevailing regime are women's discourses which both comply with and dissent from its assumptions. In examining these discourses, I seek insights into the processes by which women collude in their own exclusion from a male-colonized terrain, but also exercise power to insist on entry. The alignment of technology and masculinity in contemporary music creates serious training and employment disadvantages for women in many facets of the industry. I contend that this anomaly demands attention in the interests of socio-economic justice, in the interests of the industry itself through full utilization of human resources and market potential, and in the interests of women's desires to expand their creative options and employment opportunities.

In this project, I focus on women's relationships with technology in the context of contemporary music culture. In choosing this focus, I intend to elucidate the interplay between social constructs of gender, power and technology as they enacted in a particular arena of artistic and economic activity. The nature of this interplay is informed by prevailing regimes of truth which have emerged through historical processes and which surface in diverse social contexts, of which this is but one. My intention here is to identify such regimes and to situate women's discourses within them. In this undertaking, I draw on a body of theory which lies at the conjunction of contemporary feminist critique and the later work of Michel Foucault on power and the 'technologies of the self' to explore a model of power which promises cogent strategies in the feminist project of reworking notions of gender and social agency. The inquiry enlists the perspectives of women students in a university school of contemporary music through a guided interview process. The technologies referred to include musical instruments both of traditional and twentieth century design, as well as a range of sophisticated systems of equipment used for recording and amplifying, for composing and arranging music. Through analysis of the interview data and through readings from social science and musicology, I identify a dominant discourse, or regime of truth, which privileges men and marginalizes women in the realm of techno-musical activity. Alongside this prevailing regime are women's discourses which both comply with and dissent from its assumptions. In examining these discourses, I seek insights into the processes by which women collude in their own exclusion from a male-colonized terrain, but also exercise power to insist on entry. The alignment of technology and masculinity in contemporary music creates serious training and employment disadvantages for women in many facets of the industry. I contend that this anomaly demands attention in the interests of socio-economic justice, in the interests of the industry itself through full utilization of human resources and market potential, and in the interests of women's desires to expand their creative options and employment opportunities.