This thesis argues for the consideration of child care accessibility and costs as one factor in the success and wellbeing of farmers in the United States. There is a long tradition in rural studies of recognizing that farms are not just economic enterprises but are family-based social enterprises as well, with household level issues and family roles that are both acknowledged and contested. However, child care is missing from virtually all scholarly and public discussions of agricultural workforce development - even more so than other social services and family supports. Additionally, the agricultural sector, considered as a portion of U.S. businesses and as a locus of U.S. family life, is missing from most discussions of child care services. Although child care has been shown to be crucial to workforce development, and the need for workforce development in the agricultural sector is vital in light of an aging farm population, the agricultural sector has remained largely absent from child care policy discussions. This two-article thesis seeks to inform scholarship and public policy in both of these areas. Using data from a national survey of 186 farm families at the Rural-Urban Interface, Article One examines child care challenges faced by farm families and the influence community networks have on these challenges. This article focuses specifically on two groupings of farmers: multi-generation (MG) and first generation (FG) farmers, as part of a larger effort to support beginning farmers; and men and women farmers, as challenges related to child care are of particular concern for the increasing numbers of women farmers, who may have multiple roles including primary child caregiver, wage-earner through off-farm employment, and farmer. Findings establish that child care is an issue that influences farm business decisions for farmers, that FG and women farmers are farming populations that are more likely to have challenges with child care, and that family networks are an influencing factor in child care problems for MG and FG farmers. Through analysis of interviews and focus groups with 43 farmers in the Northeastern United States, a geographic region chosen for its high concentration of female farmers, Article Two seeks to understand child care in farm families by examining patterns in farmers' experiences with child care and the ways child care affects both the farm family and the farm business. Findings reveal child care as an issue in the wellbeing of both farm family and farm business: child care has economic effects on the farm business, influencing decisions about labor, growth, and financial resources; child care also has social effects on the farm family, including shifts in gender roles, stress, and reduced quality of life. Recommendations include child care subsidies specifically for farm families and the creation of formal child care networks that could allow for collaboration and use of already-existing networks of agricultural organizations: Extension, food policy councils, and producer groups. Additionally, state level departments of family and youth services, local child care organizations, and community development corporations are urged to tailor their resources specifically to farm families.

Well-meaning educators often recommend more "boy" books to increase reading motivation amongst boys. This experimental mixed-methods study investigated the influence of the "boy" book/ "girl" book phenomenon on willingness to read using a researcher-designed instrument called the Textual Features Sort (TFS). The TFS measured two attitudinal constructs—gendered beliefs about texts and willingness to read—in relation to individual textual features of selected young adult novels. Data came from 50 sixth and seventh grade students at a mid-sized public school in a rural New England state. Mean scores, frequencies, and percentages were analyzed using independent samples t-tests, paired t-tests, and Fisher's exact test. Qualitative data was used to explain quantitative results. Findings indicate that boys were not more willing to read "boy" books than other books, nor less willing to read books with female protagonists. Boys were significantly less willing to read "girl" books, though individual textual features of a single novel elicited different gendered beliefs along with varying degrees of willingness to read. Girls were significantly less willing to read a novel if it was first sorted as a "boy" book. Research revealed a widespread belief in social consequences for a boy carrying a "girl" book down the hallway, that did not hold for girls. Findings suggest that sociocultural constructions of gender inhibit both boys and girls as readers, though to varying degrees, and challenge the notion that highly gendered and heteronormative assumptions about books and reading practices will increase willingness to read among young adolescent boys.

Environmental pressures such as natural disasters, resource scarcity, and conflict related to climate change have emphasized the importance of considering social justice within its ecological context. Gender inequality is one type of injustice that has traditionally been addressed as a social matter, yet gendered divisions in bargaining power, mobility, and access to resources are exacerbated by environmental instability. One barrier to gender equity in the face of a changing climate is the mainstream economic paradigm, which promotes growth and individualism, often at the cost of environmental and social wellbeing. The issue of gender inequality in the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch highlighting human impact of earth systems, is explored here in three parts. The first section identifies opportunities for feminist and ecological economics to assimilate notions of justice in mainstream economic thought. The second considers dynamics of gender equality through an econometric analysis of macroeconomic effects of traditionally female-dominated unpaid care work. Finally, the third part investigates national progress toward the maternal mortality reduction target set in the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals and proposes a gendered perspective for the newly implemented Sustainable Development Goals. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of policy implications for national and international development institutions as they seek to improve gender equity in diverse social and ecological contexts.

Sweaty Mother Slow Groove is an engagement in magical thinking that proposes a displacement of swamp methodologies into the virtual realm, existing during the fourth wave. In doing so the cyborg and goddess are united in a re-routing of essentialism and the neo-liberal domination of technology. The metaphorical swamp is the possibility of a mushy danger zone that harnesses the absorption of an unwanted space: a disintegration of the binary and the soft-coded awareness of the body as a process, not a site.

In this thesis, I invite readers to accompany me as I build a bridge that links my learning as a Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major in an elite private college back to the educational settings I grew up in. Here, I present a curriculum for middle school students in a private summer school I attended and worked at in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I chose to create a curriculum as a case study and a launching off point to learn how to bring feminist theory and critical social justice pedagogy back to my home and into my work. I hope to take intersectional feminist lenses and epistemologies forward into a career in K-8 teaching.

This study developed and validated the Trueblood Sexual Attitudes Questionnaire, created to measure attitudes about one's personal sexual behavior and attitudes about the sexual behavior of others. Scores from 414 college level participants were used to determine the internal consistency of the Trueblood Sexual Attitudes Questionnaire. Participants were recruited from one university and two community colleges in California. Coefficient alpha was computed on the two scales, (a) attitudes towards one's personal sexual behavior and (b) attitudes towards the sexual behavior of others, and yielded results of .93 and .96. Factor analysis showed that the items did not cluster together in five groups as expected. A 2 x 2 split plot factorial ANOVA with sex as the between subjects variable and self/other as the within subjects variable was calculated for the total scores and significant differences were found. Five 2 x 2 ANOVA's with sex as the between subjects variable and self/other as the within subjects variable were calculated for each subscale score and significant differences were found. This questionnaire has good psychometric properties, and can be used in additional research and academic settings to determine the amount of attitude change occurring in the classroom. It may help to determine the effectiveness of sexuality education in changing attitudes, and to compare different methods of sexuality education.

After an examination of the typical Victorian woman was made from available authoritative sources it was found that George Eliot deviated from this standard and presented several views of the anti-Victorian woman in her novels. While the Victorian woman was pious, content with her role in life, poorly educated, dependent on the man in her life for answers to all problems, frail, feminine, attractive and frivolous, Eliot, on the other hand, contradicted these characteristics at almost every point. She refused to write the sort of entertaining stories the Victorian reader demanded, and furthermore, she viewed the Victorian home realistically. Eliot was discontented with the standards controlling women’s role in life. Women were frustrated by inadequate opportunities for participating in the intellectual ferment of the time; but by her own persistent application, Eliot had been contaminated by the contagion of her critical age. It is the spread of this contagion through three of her female characters that is traced here and its degree of domination is noted. Eliot’s negative relationship to the typical conception of what the Victorian woman was like is illustrated through her portrayal of Dorothea in Middlemarch, Gwendolyn in Daniel Deronda and Mrs. Transome in Felix Holt, The Radical.

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Writer and critic Caroline Gordon has been a participant on the Southern literary scene since the early 1930s, yet her works have been neither studied nor appreciated as frequently as the works of her male contemporaries. Her novels and short fiction never received the critical acclaim that they merited due to the perpetuation of the erroneous idea that women have little to say. While at the time other female writers were exploring their emancipation, Gordon retreated to the consistent confines of male-dominated tradition and created fiction embodying her conservative philosophy. This thesis will examine five pieces of her short fiction, 'The Petrified Woman," "Tom Rivers," "One More Day," "The Brilliant Leaves," and "The Presence," to explore gender relationships and how Gordon's background and personal beliefs impacted her body of work.

“Spaces of Visibility and Identity” is an exploration on how being immersed in constant visibility has an effect on an individual’s identity. Visibility is not a narrow term meant to signify solely observation; rather, visibility is the state of existing within a world that does not allow for total isolation. To exist within the world is to be visible to others, and this visibility is inescapable. Visibility can be seen as a presentation or a disclosure of oneself to other beings. Existing within the world inevitably implies that one is presenting oneself to others, whether or not the presentation is deliberate. I will be going over two different spaces of visibility throughout this paper: “space of surveillance” and “space of appearance.” The “space of surveillance,” discussed by Michel Foucault, is the space where normative standards of identity are created through discursive acts. This space is meant to control, coerce, and normalize. The “space of surveillance” is important for an exploration of identity formation, because it cannot be ignored that each individual is disclosing themselves in the context of a pre-existing world. This ‘pre-existing world’ is full of normative standards that affect identity formation, but it does not have to ultimately determine an identity. The “space of appearance,” as articulated by Hannah Arendt, is meant to be a supplement to the dogmatic normative standards created within a “space of surveillance.” The “space of appearance” gives those that do not, or do not want to, adhere to the normative standards created by the “space of surveillance” a space to disclose an identity that can challenge and rearticulate what is consider normal or culturally intelligible in the first place. The “space of appearance” is not meant to replace the “space of surveillance;” rather, it has the “space of surveillance” as a contextual background that can be challenged. I have found that both spaces of visibility are necessary for an exploration on identity formation, and I have used gender identity as a concrete example to exemplify both spaces.