<p> The Female-To-Male (FTM) transgender community has begun to receive a lot of attention in recent years. Academic research executed with a focus on the experiences of the FTM community is also growing quickly and exploring issues and concepts beyond transition. The effect of social expectations on the leadership experiences of FTM leaders has yet to be examined, specifically the influence of the social expectations of masculinity and leadership on FTM leaders. This dissertation seeks to capture the experiences of 4 transgender men who hold, or have held, leadership roles in their organizations of employ and to inquire about how the social expectations about what it means to be a man, or how to appropriately behave to be perceived as a man, affects themselves as leaders as well as their leadership experiences. The work also elucidates a relationship between socially-imposed stereotypes on gender identity development as well as the importance of gender identity gaining recognition as a workplace well-being issue.</p>

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Amongst the personality dispositions, sensation seeking (SS) has special relevance in explaining and predicting types of risk-related behaviours, such as participation in sports containing high risk and even danger. The prevalence of risk-taking in the context of sport, and the impact of gender, was the objective of the present study. All subjects were administered the Sensation-Seeking Scales of Zuckerman Form II and V (SSS-II & V). The results show that male sports participants are higher risk-takers than female participants, thus concurring with the general profile of male and female tendencies concerning sensation seeking behaviour. The resulting data are discussed and explained within the context of Zuckerman's sensation-seeking model.

This dissertation consists of three empirical essays broadly concerned with the determinants of human capital. The first essay estimates the causal effect of exposure to maternal psychological stress generated by the 9/11 attacks on the cohort in utero that day. The analysis finds that cohorts exposed during the first or second trimester in New York City weighed less at birth and had shorter gestation lengths. Male and female newborns were affected similarly. At age six, boys were more likely to be in special education and more likely to be in kindergarten rather than first grade, with no effect on girls. Births outside New York City were not affected. The results suggest that psychological stress is an important channel through which adverse conditions experienced by pregnant women negatively impact the early life outcomes of in utero cohorts. The second essay (joint with Katherine Baldiga) presents experimental evidence of a gender difference in the valuation of job training as an explanation for the female advantage in human capital investment that has emerged in many high income countries. In an online labor market, we find that when subjects have limited experience with an unfamiliar task, women are more willing to pay for training than men, and women estimate that the returns to training are higher than men do. We find that task performance, the return to training, self-confidence, and risk aversion cannot explain the gender gap in valuing training. We present suggestive evidence that training may be valued by women for increasing their willingness to take on a challenge. The third essay tests the prediction of several biological theories that maternal condition impacts the sex ratio at birth and causes differential investment by child's sex with data from the Dominican Republic, a developing country with relatively neutral offspring sex preferences. The analysis finds that more educated women are more likely to give birth to sons, and women in the middle of the maternal age distribution are less likely to have a male child die during infancy. These results provide evidence that maternal condition is correlated with the sex composition of children. / Economics

The thesis covers the period roughly between 1688 and the 1780s and is concerned with the construction and perfonnance of heterosexual male identity and the emergence, during that period, of what would become a culturally dominant model of an ideal masculinity. It is a model which is adapted to the requirements of a capitalising economy and is therefore inextricably linked to the rise of the middle classes and the Puritan tradition which informs their ethical perspective. The introductory chapter gives reasons why I regard the novel as particularly relevant in looking at the dissemination of culturally determined notions of gender. Chapter One is concerned with contemporary anxieties about identity and the attempts to forge a middle-class male identity, which is 'authentic' and differentiated from that of the upper classes Changes in the way gender identity was percei ved are also traced and the novels of Tobias Smollett are discussed to illustrate the struggle towards the definition of an ideal masculinity. Chapter Two examines the genesis of 'sensibility' and how it was modified and adapted by the novelists of sensibility to create a benevolent man of virtue who was dissociated from any notion of 'softness' and femininity. Chapter Three looks at the models of masculinity presented by Samuel Richardson in Clarissa (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753/4) and the author's concern to discover and present the ideal model of a bourgeois patriarch. Chapter Four discusses the perceptions and representations of masculinity by women writers, how they portrayed gender relationships and what kind of critique they offered of a construction of gender which rendered women as passive and men as active.

British cinema of the post-war period has often been characterised as anodyne in terms of gender relations, with the exciting 'wicked ladies' of the war years erased in favour of more conservative versions of femininity. Recent writing (Geraghty, 2000, Harper and Porter, 2003) has brought challenges to bear on this paradigm and opened up a critical space for a more nuanced analysis of gender. This thesis considers representations of divergent femininities in post-WWII British films, that is, female characters who function as liminal figures and who queer boundaries between normative and divergent femininity. I explore how divergent femininities are constructed and the extent to which gender conservatism can be challenged in films from the period. A number of well-known (cross-genre) films, such as Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) and Mandy (1952), are analysed, augmented by other films that have received little critical attention, for example, The Perfect Woman (1949), Dear Murderer (1947) and Young Wives' Tale (1951). This study employs detailed textual and semiotic analyses (film, reviews, publicity material, critical writings) to produce a historicised feminist reading of 1950s films and femininity and, by combining attention to visual style with an analysis of contextual material, complements existing scholarship which emphasises film production and reception. This thesis explores the extent to which female desire for autonomy, excitement and social mobility could be expressed in 1950s films, and how women questioned their 'proper place' in the gendered social economy. Women's function as housewives is problematised in ways that enter into contemporaneous debates about modernity and consumerism. The heterosexual nuclear family survives as the preferred familial model but the difficulty of mothering is dramatised in ways that challenge hegemonic maternity. Heteroromance and marriage remain the central goal for all women and censorship largely curtails the depiction of female sexuality outside this paradigm. A space however is opened up for women to voice desire for something in addition to the role of wife and mother and in this respect these liminal figures represent a cultural contestation of normative femininity. They shore up - whilst simultaneously challenging - certain ideals of femininity and in doing so speak of the consolidation and transformation of gender relations in post-war British society, suggesting a more dynamic model than has been acknowledged.

The World Health Organization has made global mental health a priority since making it the center of world health day 2001, yet much of the current literature on mental health examines the subject within the context of the U.S. and Western Europe. This research takes a more global approach, shifting the focus to the issue of depression in Ukraine. Specifically this thesis analyzes data to examine the hypotheses that: 1) a statistically significant relationship exists between gender and depression prevalence in Ukraine; 2) women over the age of 50 in Ukraine have a significantly higher chance of suffering from depression than other age groups, unlike trends described in the literature; and 3) there are socio-economic and social factors present in Ukraine, which impact depression prevalence among women. A mixed-methodology, which utilizes analysis of quantitative data from the World Mental Health survey initiative, completed in Ukraine in 2004, and qualitative interview data, was employed to explore these hypotheses. Strong relationships are found between gender and depression and between depression and aging, particularly past the age of 50. Some socio-demographics of significance include low level of education, very inadequate financial resources and being on a pension. The conclusions that result from this analysis, describe an interesting case for assessment of global mental health issues. While the results are perhaps not generalizable far beyond Ukraine the conclusions drawn have interesting implications for how we study global mental health and the characteristics which make a person more or less vulnerable to mental illness. / text

This study examines the literary depiction of the black surrogate mother as she is created according to the author’s race, gender, background, experience, biases and goals. Even though she is one of the most successful and popular characters of fiction, she is also controversial. Her reputation is iconic as well as dichotomous. For example, she is credited for the exemplary upbringing of her white charges, while simultaneously blamed for neglecting her own children. Particularly, this paper looks at three black surrogate mothers who conform to the prototypical, often stereotypical, image of the black surrogate mother: Mammy, Aunt Mammy Jane, and Dilsey. The critique substantiates that Mitchell and Faulkner, respectively, were invested in depicting Mammy and Dilsey as representatives of the real black surrogate mothers of their lives. Although, the character of Mammy Jane mirrors Mammy and Dilsey in her commitment and devotion to her white family, Chesnutt employs her as a cautionary warning to the blacks who refuse to accept change and progress after Emancipation. The other three black surrogate mothers, Sofia, Berenice, and Ondine, are antithetical to the stereotypical black surrogate mother. Sofia, an accidental maid, is representative of Walker’s intense efforts to deconstruct the image of the black surrogate mother that plagued her throughout her lifetime. Unlike most white authors, McCullers crafts Berenice as independent, strong, and autonomous, not just as a black surrogate mother of a white child. Morrison provides Ondine with a husband and daughter to be concerned with so that she cannot be cast as the stereotypically loving, nurturing black mother of white children. The conclusion of this study validates that the literary black surrogate mother is most often a creation based upon her author’s specific and personal biases and goals. In conjunction with the above assertion, the critique also contends that the real life black domestic has been and will continue to be significantly influenced by her fictional representative.

This study examines the pornographic images of black women from Sara Baartman, the “Venus Hottentot,” to the Middle Passage, the Auction Block, Plantation Life, Harlem Renaissance, Blaxpomploitation movies, mainstream contemporary cinema, and pornography. It is based on the premise that throughout history black women’s images have been pornographic. The researcher found that the pornographic images present in today’s visual media are outgrowths of the debilitating, racialized and sexualized images of black women historically. The conclusion drawn from the findings suggests that black women’s images in cinema continue to subjugate and objectify black women on and off screen.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts