There is a lack of female police officer representation in police departments nationwide. Women's position, or lack thereof, in law enforcement is a topic of discussion in many police literature reviews. However, there were minimal studies detailing female police officers' personal experiences in the law enforcement profession. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe and understand the perceptions and lived experiences of female police officers, as well as the impact those experiences had on their careers. Female participants from 3 police departments formed the purposive sample that included 8 full-time female police officers. The feminist theory helped to clarify the constructed meanings the women attached to their experiences. In-depth interviews were conducted, and the data analysis was guided by the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method. The findings revealed that all of the women pursued law enforcement careers and remained in the profession for reasons similar to what they perceived to be the reasons among the male police officers in their respective departments. The participants also suggested that the perceived intentional institutional barriers did not impact the female police officers' job satisfaction. This study contributes to social change by raising awareness about the current status, concerns, and accomplishments of women in law enforcement. Additionally, findings may assist police administrators and legislators in creating policies and procedures that incorporate the needs of female officers.

Despite decades of important contributions by male nurses, nursing is still viewed as a feminine profession. Moreover, male nursing students continue to experience gender bias and gender-based educational barriers within schools of nursing. This has led to failure and drop-out rates much higher than those experienced by their female counterparts. The purposes of this quantitative survey study were to (a) explore the relationship between perceived gender bias, gender-based educational barriers within nursing education, and resiliency in recent male nursing graduates; and (b) to identify those gender-based barriers that were considered to be most prevalent and most important. A view of gender from a social constructivist approach framed the study. Two previously validated data collection tools, the Inventory of Male Friendliness in Nursing Programs-Short(c) (IMFNPS(c)) and the Brief Resilience Scale(c) (BRS(c)) were used to gather data from recent male nursing graduates (N = 97). The results demonstrated no significant correlation (Spearman rho = 0.1025, p = 0.3178), between mean scores on the IMFNPS and the BRS; however, overall mean resilience scores were high (M = 3.90, SD = 0.62). The gender-based educational barriers identified as being most prevalent and most important included (a) curriculum did not include a discussion of the historical contributions of male nurses, (b) clinical experiences were limited during the obstetrical rotation; and (c) male students feared that they would be accused of sexual inappropriateness when providing nursing care for female patients. Positive social change can occur for male nursing students if the most prevalent gender-based barriers are minimized or eliminated, men are provided with the appropriate skills to care for female patients, and resilience education is included within all nursing curricula.

The emerging phenomenon of Western women Islamic converts learning radicalized ideology through social media constitutes a challenge to cyber policy makers hampered by a lack of gender-nuanced radicalization research. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative case study was to develop a greater understanding of how the differential reinforcement tenet of social learning theory may help to explain the conversion and radicalization of Western women towards a fundamentalist Islamic ideology through their participation in the social media. Key research questions explored how participation in online social media may create vulnerability towards radicalization and exploitation. The blogs of 3 different Western women converts were selected from the social media website Tumblr for the period of January 2014 through September 2015. Approximately 21,700 posted entries were subjected to a deductive coding process and thematic analysis. Key findings indicated that fervent activism, strong commitment to the digital community, and a tepid response to world terrorist attacks were potential vulnerabilities for targeted radicalization. Additionally, authors increased the number of their ideology-related posts in response to increased reader interactions. Finally, reader responses did not appear to alter the bloggers' static and strongly held positions on cultural gender roles. The positive social change implications stemming from this study include a starting point for the development of a formal adolescent cyber educational program, new metadata delimiters for the identification and engagement of vulnerable women, and as an example of the use of public policy theoretical frameworks for homeland security research.

This feminist oral history project records, interprets, and analyzes the educational experiences of seven Ismaili college women in Chitral, Pakistan. Chitral is a part of the world where educating girls and women is not a priority. Yet in the scarce literature available one can observe an increase in the literacy rates, especially amongst the Ismaili Muslims in the North of Chitral District. This thesis introduces students' accounts of their personal educational journeys. I argue that the students' accounts exemplify third space feminism. They negotiate contradictions and social invisibility in their daily lives in quiet activism that shadows but changes the status quo of the society. Through their narratives the narrators see themselves as devout Muslim women who are receiving Western-style education through which they have learned to be women's rights advocates. The narrators now wish to pay forward their knowledge and help their families financially. Analysis of the oral histories revealed six themes: (1) distance from educational institutions, (2) sacrifices by the family, (3) support from family, (4) narrators as the first generation of women to attend school, (5) early memories of school including severe winters and corporal punishment, and (6) feminist touchstones. While honoring their families and communities, the narrators plan to become educators and advocates to empower girls and women in their own villages. In response to these oral histories, I recommend that the government of Pakistan, non-government organizations working in Pakistan, men and women, and teachers in schools work together to improve the educational journeys of future Chitrali women. Education for women needs to be introduced as a universal human right in Chitral so women, too, can get financial and psychosocial support from their families as well as communities to achieve their educational goals.

Although, the histories of forced sterilizations and eugenics practices have been all but forgotten by most, these subjects gained national attention again when the state of North Carolina repealed its sterilization law in 2003. The history of forced sterilization in the United States began with a eugenics based demand to wipe out populations that were constructed as inferior. The evolution of who was sterilized shifted in accordance to changing national social perception of who was ‘unfit’ to reproduce, from the developmentally disabled to ‘immoral’ and ‘irresponsible’ women. North Carolina has also taken unprecedented steps towards providing reparations for the living victims of the statute. The history, current sentiments, and unique components of compulsory sterilization in North Carolina help to illustrate why the government has taken such proactive steps in offering restitution while others have not. What happened in North Carolina and throughout the eugenics movement in the United States are poignant examples of the power of social constructions. Social constructions allows those with power, in this case the state, to enforce them, using policy and other mechanisms, to divide up members of society. With this power to divide groups of people comes the ability to use this constructed sense of otherness as a means to control and mistreat these populations.

This thesis problematizes early cyberfeminist claims that heralded the Internet as a liberating space for women. Cyberfeminism emerged in the early 1990s, at the dawn of the “Internet Age,” and is heavily influenced by Donna Haraway’s 1985 “A Cyborg Manifesto.” Haraway theorized a new way of looking at the nature of female identity, using the figure of the cyborg found in science fiction literature and films. Traditionally, women have been explained in terms of sexual difference and have been forced to uphold a gender binary that privileges men. By contrast, Haraway argues that the cyborg, a hybrid of human and machine, escapes binary logic, thereby resisting categories and hierarchies, and embraces a more fluid understanding of identity. This model contains powerful ramifications for women. Every day, we become more like Haraway’s cyborgs as our physical bodies become increasingly intertwined with modern technologies, specifically in our ever-growing relationship with the Internet. In online interactions, users are no longer confined to their physical bodies and are free to play with identity. Early cyberfeminists believe that this leads to a more fluid understanding of identity and, more importantly, allows for the deconstruction of gender. These claims, however, do not apply in practice as well as they do in theory. From the anonymous text-based spaces that early cyberfeminists describe to social networking sites like Facebook, Internet spaces tend to polarize the gender binary rather than blur it, and women are now colonized on a new front. This becomes increasingly dangerous as the boundaries between our virtual and real lives continue to blur.

This thesis explores the way popular culture imitates and reinforces a sentimentalized reading of sonogram images that has been established by the conservative Right as the proper way to view this image. It analyzes several popular culture texts to expose the way their use of sonogram images personifies the fetus. It aims to problematize the way this image has become a symbol of fetal personhood and initiate a discussion about our roles as consumers of popular culture and images. Finally, it connects the use of this image to recent legislation surrounding mandatory ultrasounds and personhood initiatives, and argues that the public’s acceptance of fetal personhood is dangerous for women’s personhood and citizenship.

Since the late 1950s, Russian-American novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand has been “the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right.” Her philosophy – “Objectivism” – combined militant atheism, libertarian natural rights, and a philosophical commitment to what she called “the virtue of selfishness,” and earned her the admiration of such luminaries as Alan Greenspan: a remarkable achievement for an immigrant woman who learned to speak English in her late 20s. What is less-often observed is that Rand’s work, especially her mature novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), bear a close stylistic resemblance to the Soviet Socialist Realist novel. This thesis identifies these similarities and attempts to answer the question of why a heavily Soviet-inflected writer was able to reach such cultural and political prominence in, of all places, America.

This thesis examines the evolution of feminist praxis within the riot grrrl movement, focusing on two specific riot grrrl demographics - founding riot grrrls in the early 1990s and currently active riot grrrls in southern California. This thesis argues that riot grrrl activism is still thriving but in diverse, strategically modified ways. Using José Muñoz’s concept of “disidentification,” it analyzes how contemporary riot grrrls have appropriated and adapted the original movement’s tenets to allow for greater accessibility and diversity.

This study examines the coverage of women's athletics at USF provided through photographic representations on the university's Athletics Internet home web page during the 2009-2010 academic year. Findings revealed that, consistent with recent research on coverage of female athletes and women's athletics on university web pages, women, compared to men, were underrepresented in the majority of the five areas of the home page analyzed. Studies such as this can be beneficial because, if gender coverage inequities are brought to the attention of university administrators and Athletics personnel, actions could be take to reduce the inequities, thereby setting the tone for how we see and think about female athletes.