<p dir="ltr">This two-paper dissertation focuses on gender equity in higher education in the United States, specifically on workplace gender equity. There is a lack of feminist research in the literature which can have significant consequences in the development of both higher education policy and practices, as a misunderstanding about the gendered nature of educational experiences may be linked to inadequate responses to the situation. Feminist research helps understand and provide recommendations for such experiences. As such, gender equality should not only be an ethical imperative but also an emphasis in higher education. To increase gender equality in higher education, this dissertation recommends that scholars focus on feminist research. The goal of this research is to understand how gender impacts a person working in higher education by investigating historical and contemporary gender-based identities and inequities in higher education in the United States. Hence, this dissertation answers the following questions: What strides have been made to reduce gender inequity in the workplace in higher education in the United States? How does gender impact a person's career trajectory into leadership positions in higher education? As a result, this research provides recommendations for administrators and policy makers to reduce gender inequity in higher education. </p>

This dissertation, "From Reflection to Reflexivity: Challenging Students' Conceptions of Writing, Self, and Society in the Community Writing Classroom," examines the disconnect that characterizes much of the discussion of reflective writing in community writing studies and argues for the potential of reflexivity as a concept to further develop the kinds of reflective writing assigned in community writing classrooms. Many practitioners and scholars view reflective writing as a potentially powerful tool that may help students learn challenging or abstract theories and practices from their own community writing experiences. With such potential, it can be disappointing when student reflective writing does not achieve teacher expectations of critical thinking and analysis, stopping before critical engagement and understanding is achieved. Instead, it often centers on students' personal feelings and motivations that shape or arise from their community experiences. This dissertation argues that one reason for such a disconnect between teacher expectations and actual student writing, comes from the word "reflection" itself. While a traditional understanding of reflective writing asks students to look back on their experiences, observations, feelings, and opinions, community writing teachers use the term "reflection" with qualifiers like "critical," "sustained," or "intellectually rich." In qualifying their expectations for reflective writing, teachers are in fact asking for something very different from reflection, namely, reflexivity. When reflexive thinking is presented to students as "qualified reflection" it loses the considerable theoretical grounding that makes it a particularly unique way of using experiences as the foundation for inquiry. Building on theories of epistemological reflexivity for researchers in the social sciences, this dissertation highlights the methodological reflexivity theorized and practiced by feminist researchers. Feminist reflexivity specifically affords researchers more nuanced ways of looking at issues of positionality, social transformation, and agency. Such strategies have the potential for moving student reflections from private writings toward writings that impact students' understandings of the rhetorical and theoretical issues that community writing hopes to illustrate. This combination of feminist reflexivity and community writing reflections can provide community writing theorists and practitioners with alternative ways to solve reflective writing's challenges. / Ph. D.

This thesis aims to evaluate and consider the topic of human rights journalism conducted by women in Chechnya. The primary research question that will be supported by this research, is whether or not Anna Politkovskaya's gender impacted her work, the reception of her work, and her overall experience as a human rights advocate in Chechnya. Anna Politkovskaya is being used as a primary case study due to the volume and breadth of the reports that she produced, and because she was the most well-known reporter in Chechnya during the Second Chechen War, giving her a wider audience. The work of other female journalists will be covered, but those works will serve a secondary purpose of aiding in looking at how Politkovskaya's journalistic legacy impacted other female journalists within Chechnya. The current state of affairs within the Chechen Republic is one of limited civil liberties and increasing violence on behalf of the authoritarian state government towards advocacy groups and opposition parties. The environment for human rights has not notably improved since the official conclusion of the Second Chechen War, but the level of media attention dedicated to issues there has dramatically decreased. Chechnya is currently lacking a voice of passionate reason, and as a result lacks an effective advocate for civilian interests, which was the role previously filled by Politkovskaya. / Master of Arts

This thesis looks at the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast to examine the way that this tale has been used throughout history to address the concerns of young women, as well as reinforce the culturally accepted gender roles of the time of their publication. The first chapter defines the fairy tale genre and features some of the most common criticism on the genre, it will then define and offer critical perspectives on the monster bridegroom motif which Beauty and the Beast is a part of. The second chapter will look at the first two publications of the text, the 1740 version by Mme de Villeneuve and the 1756 version by Mme de Beaumont. The final chapter will examine the first two books in the ACOTAR series by Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses published in 2015 and A Court of Mist and Fury published in 2016.

By employing pláticas y encuentros, this qualitative study examined the testimonios of Chicana/Latina youth and their experiences with navigating the sexual politics on the high school campus. Six young Chicana/Latinas, all of whom graduated from the same high school in South East Los Angeles, participated in the study. The study used two frameworks: Chicana/Latina feminist theory and critical pedagogy to analyze the young women’s testimonios. Findings speak of their daily struggle with adults policing, objectifying, and containing their bodies; as well as the benefit of a third space, counterspaces, for self-actualization. This study contributes to this field by identifying how Chicana/Latina youth experience schooling and what they believe must happen in order to ensure that the school community and larger society is more responsive to their experiences with navigating sexual politics in and outside of the educational context.

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary work that explores the intersection of humanities and technical communication by focusing on the presence and impact of software company workplace bias in technical professional communication. It focuses on workplace bias in technical communication because, when present, bias can impact the experiences that technical communicators and end-users (people who use the software) have with the software. This mixed-methods study consists of a survey, an interview, and a new diagram designed to help technical communicators mitigate biases in technical documentation. To understand better the presence and impact of bias in these workplace contexts, this study surveys and interviews technical communication professionals (TCPs) with software industry work experience. First, I introduce key relationships and terms that connect the software industry to technical communication, discuss the significance of workplace bias in technical communication, and provide an overview of the study, including its research questions, research methods, and design. Next, I present background based on a literature review, including defining and presenting workplace bias issues in the software industry and technical communication field. I also present intersectional feminism as the theoretical framework. Thereafter, I detail research methods, which include the mixed-methods design, strategies for a feminist research approach, and a detailed explanation of the survey and interview design. Next, I present survey and interview results and discuss implications from professional and scholarly technical communication lenses. Finally, I draw conclusions about workplace biases based not only on survey and interview data but also by discussing new intersectional themes that offer new bias-based perspectives and legitimize issues of intersectional feminism and social justice in technical communication.

As organized criminal groups continue to produce an increasingly devastating effect on Swedish society, a more extensive amount of public policy and research is aimed at tackling this growing issue. However, little of the research is focused on the role of women in organized crime. The research that does exist shows rather inconclusive results regarding the roles of women. Therefore, the current essay aims to investigate, using a feminist framework, what role women play in organized criminal acts and within organized criminal groups. This study uses the method of systematic content analysis and the material consists of court judgements and preliminary investigation reports related to organized crime, in which encrypted chats have been utilized as evidence. This material provides a unique resource to be able to study the demographic variables of the women involved in organized crime as well as investigate their specific roles within the organized criminal groups by looking at variables such as their relationship to other actors, criminal involvement and contacts within the network. The results show that the women involved in organized crime were mainly involved in narcotics, financial and weapons crimes, and the most common role was that of a passive role in the form of possession of narcotics, cash or weapons. Some women had romantic or familial relationships with other offenders and most women existed on the periphery of the network with no organizational or leadership roles, which largely reflects what would be expected of female roles in feminist theory. This information can be used to gain a better understanding of women in organized crime and inform policy and rehabilitation efforts. The knowledge gained from this study could be further developed by conducting comparisons between male and female offenders.

This paper analyses the experiences of Paraguayan migrant women in Greater La Plata, Argentina, from the Intersectional Feminist Theory. Through in-depth interviews with nine Paraguayan migrant women, this study analyses how the intersecting factors influence and shape the realities of these women. The analysed factors are gender dynamics, economic vulnerability, low levels of education, precarious employments, dependence on social assistance, linguistic discrimination and xenophobia. Furthermore, considering the unique socioeconomic uncertainties that occurred in Argentina at the time of the interviews and the already vulnerable position the Paraguayan migrant women find themselves in, this paper also analyses their adaptation strategies. This study thus contributes to the field by providing a holistic perspective of the multilayered factors that contribute to the discrimination, oppression and marginalization of Paraguayan migrant women in Argentina.

This essay aims to investigate how gender is constructed, represented, and reproduced in the reality dating shows Hotell Romantik and Love Island Sverige. Additionally, it explores whether generational differences affect these representations. To investigate this, a critical discourse analysis and a comparative analysis of the programs are employed. Theories used include encoding/decoding theory, gender theory, feminist critical theory, and discourse analysis. Fairclough's three-dimensional framework was utilized to analyze two specific themes: the description of the ideal partner and the selection of a partner. The results indicate that while both programs adhere to traditional gender norms, they also challenge them to some extent. Notably, women in both programs take the initial step in partner selection, contrasting with traditional norms. The study also reveals a strong emphasis on physical attributes among participants, a focus present in both shows that cannot be solely explained by age differences. In the comparative analysis, we found both similarities and differences in the programs that could be related to the age of the participants. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the multifaceted nature of gender representation in reality dating shows, shedding light on their implications for societal perceptions and norms. Our findings reveal that reality dating shows play a crucial role in the construction, representation, and reproduction of gender, simultaneously reinforcing and challenging traditional gender norms.

Coming from current scholarly debate and research about relationships between women, this study seeks to situate the current debate amongst larger examinations of gender relations in Victorian England as well as examine the importance of sister relationships to understanding female relationships and how these relations provide multiple ways of subverting the dominant culture of the Victorian age. After a review of several different nineteenth-century and Victorian writers, I have selected a small sample of poetry and prose with which to form an argument about the importance of sisterly relationships. This importance is two-fold: it allows women a space in which to define themselves without masculine interference and it allows women to subvert the patriarchy in ways which are much more socially acceptable than others. Relationships between women are discussed in the framework of a variety of scholarly debate and criticism which allows a more comprehensive understanding of the complexity of female relationships and their importance in the development of an emerging consciousness that would encourage women to agitate for women's rights.