Masters in Public Administration - MPA / It is often contended that many barriers deter women from reaching the academic ladder in terms of hierarchy. Publication records are important in promotion criterion to become Professors, it is therefore imperative that females become engage in academic activity for their successful progression and recognition in the academia. This can be achieved through the extension of strategies and practices that women use to attain Professorship. Against this background, this study examined possible challenges female Professors encounter within their Departments, Faculties, and the Institution. The study explores qualitative research method within a feminist paradigm, face to face in-depth interview with academic female Professors was administered to get an insight and understand their experiences; how they cope with such challenges; policies that promotes gender equality and institutional responses to these challenges. The findings to this study revealed that networking groups amongst women where they are able to share their challenges are not available. In addition, the university does not have policies that support females in general and Professors in particular in their struggle to combine their personal and academic role. The study therefore recommends a strong need for a networking group amongst females and female Professors to assist each other; future studies that will include female black Professors, and institutional intervention in terms of policies that would develop and support academic females in their publishing at UWC.

This dissertation examines the concept of underrepresentation as deployed in scholarly and gray literature to describe the paucity of women in elite research and senior administration positions in Canadian universities. I explore the meaning of underrepresentation, drawing from research in organization studies, feminist and gender studies, philosophy, and political studies, to discuss the different ideas and assumptions that converge to define the parameters of women’s underrepresentation. I demonstrate how underrepresentation arises as an unproblematized claim in gender and organization theorizing and holds significant implications for women in its partial and reductive descriptions. This dissertation proposes a conceptual revisioning based on views of representation that allows for a more holistic consideration of women in organizations—in the context of my research, women in elite research and senior administration positions in academe. I adopt a dual-study research design to determine the shape and measure of women’s representation from the field. Using thematic analysis (TA), I review institutional texts pertaining to the Canada Research Chairs program (CRCP) and transcripts from my interviews with women in senior administration roles in Canadian universities. My findings confirm the need to augment the conceptual framework to include views of representation in order to achieve greater alignment between gender and organization theorizing and women’s lived experiences. I conclude that views of representation hold the potential to disrupt the problematic claim of underrepresentation, thus allowing for a more holistic and multifaceted understanding of women in organizations. My dissertation is an interpretivist-feminist project that exposes a conceptual problematic for the purpose of producing and advancing theory that is critically constructive rather than critically reactive, rooted in women’s experiences, self-aware and committed to supporting social action in favour of women’s full participation and gender equity across all facets of academic organizational life.

Less than 25% of superintendent positions, the highest level of educational leadership, are occupied by women. This is in sharp contrast to the fact that over 75% of the nation’s teaching force are women. A significant barrier cited in the literature is that there is a deficiency in the support needed for women to successfully promote into higher-level administrative positions. Although mentoring has been shown to be key factor for female administrators’ success in educational administration, this study provides quantitative data to demonstrate the need for quality mentoring opportunities for school site administrators.The purpose of this research study was to examine associations between the quality of mentoring relationships and school administrators’ competency in instructional leadership, specifically as perceived by female educational leaders in contrast to male educational leaders. While there is research to support that mentoring provides many benefits for new administrators and evidence that school site administrators must possess competency in the area of instructional leadership, research investigating the potential impact of mentoring on the instructional leadership effectiveness of educational administrators is limited. This quantitative study utilized multiple regression analyses and found evidence to suggest that the quality of the mentoring experience is related to instructional leadership effectiveness based on self-reports of educational school site leaders. Moreover, when the relationships were investigated by gender, an association was found for women, but not for men. Additional analyses based on gender pairings of mentee with mentor also revealed gender-specific differences. When measuring overall instructional leadership effectiveness, and the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale dimension of developing the school learning climate, there was evidence to suggest that the gender of the mentor may matter for male mentees although there was insufficient evidence to suggest that the gender of the mentor mattered for female mentees. Collectively, the findings of this study provide quantitative data to demonstrate the need for quality mentoring opportunities for school site administrators, particularly for female educational leaders in the area of instructional leadership effectiveness. Additional research is needed to determine whether the gender differences observed in this sample are replicable, and if so, to better understand their source and possible strategies to reduce them.

This qualitative study examined the lived experiences of Queer students at ABC Community College. Using phenomenology as its guiding framework, transcribed interviews were analyzed in order to seek the phenomenon of the experience. Examination of the literature suggested that Queer students’ experiences of discrimination could have a negative impact on academic achievement and that inclusive and affirming spaces have the opposite effect. Further, Queer students search for affirming spaces from their faculty and peers, and the engagement these spaces provide may be good prognosticator academic achievement. When students are provided with inclusive spaces, they may be more likely to come out, live openly, and represent themselves authentically (Kosciw J. G., Greytak, Palmer, & Boesen, 2014). Other researchers are encouraged to replicate the study with a larger number of participants, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Magister Educationis - MEd / This study seeks to investigate barriers to participation in adult learning among Somali refugees in Cape Town. It draws on scholarship around various conceptual frameworks on migration perspectives, and barriers to participation in adult learning, as lenses to understand and explain the experiences of the Somali refugee community. The Refugee Act of 1998 was promulgated post-democracy in South Africa. One of the objectives of this Act was to redress past inequalities by providing access to education for all the people of South Africa including foreigners who are refugees or immigrants legally settled in the country. Due to various challenges, not all refugees and migrants have access to education that would provide them with the necessary skills to enter the job market. Without access to the formal labour market, they resort to informal activities that enable them to generate cash and sustain livelihoods. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the gender dimension is important since women particularly are subject to prejudices and disadvantages that deny them entry into the labour market, both informal and formal. This study therefore investigated barriers to participation in adult learning among refugees. One of the main purposes of the research was to examine the impediments, which inhibit both men and women refugees from access to a decent education and opportunities for adult learning in South Africa. The methodology adopted was a qualitative research design. Through focused, in-depth interviews with a sample grouping of a Somali refugee community, insights were obtained into the challenges and blockages to learning access that are prevalent. The sample size comprised 50 participants: 25 males and 25 females, which were arrived at using the snowball sampling technique. An in-depth interview protocol guided the discussion, which was intended to elicit personal narratives. The findings of the study revealed that both men and women experience institutional, situational, dispositional and academic barriers, which prevent them from participating in adult learning programmes and other learning opportunities in spite of their willingness to do so. However, women particularly suffer from a lack of access due to cultural and religious norms, which limit their participation as women learners. This additional barrier proved to be a substantive situational barrier that did not affect Somali men. This study makes several recommendations that are based on the research findings. Participants generally desired sufficient access to adult learning programmes, harmonious living and integration within communities, and to employment opportunities, education funding support, and increased public awareness of such learning opportunities through seminars and workshops.

In recent years, there has been an increase in women securing leadership positions across Canadian sport. However, when compared with their male counterparts, there continues to be an imbalance of women in these roles. The purpose of this doctoral dissertation was to evaluate a social learning initiative implemented in the province of Alberta to address these existing gender disparities by increasing gender equity, leadership development/diversity, and knowledge transfer across sport systems. The Alberta Women in Sport Leadership Impact Program (AWiSL) was framed using Wenger’s (1998) concept Communities of Practice and consisted of 12 sport leaders (from various PSOs, clubs, and other sport organizations) and six mentors (with leadership expertise). Each sport leader planned and implemented a project in their home sport organizations to support the increase of gender equity and leadership development/diversity. The mentors were responsible for supporting the sport leaders in achieving their project goals and facilitating leadership development opportunities to inspire growth in the sport leaders. Accordingly, an evaluation was conducted using the Value Creation Framework (Wenger-Trayner et al., 2011) to examine the perceived value of participating in this social learning initiative. Data were collected over a year and a half period, from the 18 members who made up the AWiSL group and other important stakeholders. The data included in-depth interviews, informal conversations, observations, surveys, and collecting organizational documents resulting in over 700 pages of transcribed data. The findings are presented in four articles and an additional findings section. The first article focuses on one of the sport leader’s projects which aimed to foster a collaborative women-only training program for 10 women to become certified coach developers. The second article examines the development of the AWiSL mentors’ social learning leadership capabilities during their first attempt at facilitating a CoP to promote gender equity and leadership development/diversity, through an action learning approach. The third article delves into the sport leaders’ perceptions of their leadership skill development through their participation in the two and a half year social learning initiative, specifically a CoP of femininity. Finally, the fourth article highlights the 12 sport leaders’ projects to examine the impacts of the AWiSL in terms of moving gender equity forward across the province. The additional findings section touches on the knowledge transfer outcome of the AWiSL, including the development of a how-to model for organizations wishing to implement a similar initiative and the overall perceived value of this initiative. The dissertation is concluded with a general discussion highlighting the theoretical contributions and practical implications, along with future recommendations for research.

The purpose of this study was to examine the participation, perceptions, and preferences of seventh- and eighth-grade girls in coeducational and gender-separated physical education classes in five schools in East Tennessee. The participants in this study were seventh- and eighth-grade girls attending public schools in two East Tennessee counties. Participants completed a questionnaire pertaining to their physical education classes. Although 465 students were invited to participate in this study, only 241 students returned the permission form. This resulted in a 50% response rate. The findings were descriptive in nature, although basic analyses were calculated to identify any relationships among the different variables. The literature review examined adolescents' activity patterns, adolescents' self-esteem, gender equity issues, coeducational physical education versus same-gender physical education, and physical educators and their roles. The study revealed that most seventh- and eighth-grade girls dressed out for physical education and participated in coeducational physical education classes. A majority of the seventh- and eighth-grade girls preferred having a female physical education teacher. Seventh- and eighth-grade girls' participation rates did not decrease in a coeducational class setting. There was not a significant relationship between the gender of the physical education teacher and seventh- and eighth-grade girls' participation in physical education activities. Seventh- and eighth-grade girls agreed their physical education teachers were fun, fair, and easy to talk to. Seventh- and eighth-grade girls also agreed that their physical education teachers explained things well and motivated them to do their best. Having boys in physical education classes was not a major factor for girls in dressing out for physical education classes or in their participation rates.

The focus of this research was to investigate the effects of gender and level of prior access to athletic programs sponsored by school, community, church, student or civic groups, and informal programs on level of first-time-in-college (FTIC) freshmen’s interest in participating in intercollegiate athletics. To this end, 1,196 respondents (682 females and 514 males) who were admitted to the University of Central Florida and attended freshman orientation sessions in May and June of 2007 at the UCF-Orlando campus completed the face-to-face survey. Participants ranged in age from 18 years of age to 25 years of age, representing varied racial/ethnic backgrounds, with a majority being registered as full-time students at time of the survey. The FTIC freshmen anonymously and voluntarily completed a modified version of The Student Interests in Athletics, Sports, and Fitness Survey (National Collegiate Athletic Association, 1995). Quantitative data gathered through analysis of closedresponse questions provided information on their demographics, general interest in athletics, prior access to school and non-school sponsored sports, and interest in participating in college athletics. Survey responses suggested that a gender difference exists in FTIC freshmen when taking into account prior access to school and non-school sponsored athletics in predicting level of interest in participating in intercollegiate sports. FTIC freshmen males reported having more access to athletics than did FTIC freshmen females prior to attending freshmen orientation sessions in May and June of 2007. In addition, more FTIC freshmen males than females reported being interested in participating in iv intercollegiate athletics. Lower interest and participation rates by females in intercollegiate sports may, therefore, be an artifact of less access to opportunities to participate in sports during high school. Although almost four decades have passed with the expectation of gender equity within school settings in effect, most educational institutions are not in compliance with Title IX legislation. Females have not been afforded the same opportunities to participate in sports as males, and this appears to have influenced their interest in participating in sports. The findings of this study demonstrate the need for increased enforcement of Title IX legislation at all levels of education for true gender equity and athletic interest to be realized.

Black women face barriers to higher education that include systemic racism and sexism that lead to self–doubt, discrimination, and familial and community support. They battle barriers to and within academia through the intersectionality of their sex and racial identity groups. As a response to the barriers they face in higher education, the purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of Black women navigating a doctoral program in education at a California State University. To explore the experiences of the participants, I used a qualitative study with a Heideggerian phenomenological approach and a Black feminist lens. A three­–question interview, which asked about the application process, admissions process, and first–year experience was used to explore the experiences of five Black women at two California State University campuses. The results of this study could be used to address the racial and gender equity gaps within the California State University system.

This thesis explores the intersection of shared micro-mobility services and genderwith a focus on the nighttime in Stockholm, Sweden. Research has found agender gap in user characteristics, with safety, affordability, and vehicle qualityaffection adoption. This study explores the differences in motivations and barriersto usage, contributing to sustainable and inclusive transportation. This wasachieved through a quantitative-qualitative approach that combined responsesfrom 164 people, 60 open comments, and 15 interviews. The research found PublicTransport and socializing as the primary mode and purpose of night trips amongmen and women, with women having a slightly higher preference. Time-saving,convenience and reliability, ease of access and use, and the complementarity ofother modes of transport are relevant for users regardless of gender. Womenseem to be more regular users than men. Women also seem to be more sensitiveto pricing and safety issues, both positive and negative aspects of the services.Among users who avoid the service at night, parking restrictions, unusefulnessand impracticality, expensiveness, owning a bike, consuming alcohol, andsocio-political aspects are the main motivations for doing so. The last three alsoapply to non-users. Men seem to be more sensitive to parking restrictions andwomen to unusefulness and impracticality and carrying bags and travelling withchildren. Finally, this document suggests strategies to increase overall, nighttime,and female usage of this service, focused on the shared micro-mobility operatorsand municipalities.