In this study I qualitatively explore how women who choose not to have children account for this choice in the South African context. I consider the reasons for women to remain childfree and the changing discourses of femininity that enable women to make the choice not to have children. I am also concerned with the possible implications of this choice for women’s interpersonal relationships. This study is conducted from a feminist social constructionist framework. Dominant discourses of femininity revolve around motherhood, which is considered to be the most important role. Motherhood is believed to be a “natural” identity. Mothers are highly regarded in most societies; they are perceived to be devoted to the care of others and to be self-sacrificing. Although most societies consider motherhood to be an essential feature of femininity, it can also cause ambivalent feelings and not all women wish to take on the role of motherhood. The number of women who choose to remain childfree is growing in various societies. Women increasingly have the power to choose whether they want to remain childfree. Through resisting discourses that meld femininity with motherhood, childfree women create alternative discourses that have the potential to change constructions of femininity. I used feminist social constructionism to endeavour to understand the ways in which women’s realities inform their decision not to have children. I also explore how society serves to either problematise or promote this decision. Finally, I attempt to gain a deeper understanding of how being female and childfree impacts on women’s beliefs about themselves. Interview data from semi-structured interviews conducted with women who choose to remain childfree are analysed using thematic analysis. The women interviewed were white and middle class and were found via convenience and snowball sampling. The women participating in the study report various reasons for remaining childfree. Freedom from childcare responsibility and the resulting greater opportunity for self3 fulfilment is shown to be one of the strongest reasons for remaining childfree. Other important reasons include unequal labour division in the family, concerns about the physical aspects of childbirth and recovery, life partners’ acceptance of the choice to remain childfree as well as early socialising experiences. Other reasons cited less frequently include the negative impact of childrearing on women’s emotional well-being, concerns regarding the overpopulation of the planet and a general dislike of children. Two of the themes identified in the text are not evident in the existing literature. The first of these relates to the fact that the women participating in the study do not regard motherhood as the central feature of femininity. Instead, they tend to associate femininity with the act of nurturing, rather than with the act of mothering. These women are able to strongly identify with the female role, as they do not believe that choosing to remain childfree conflicts with their female gender role. The second theme relates to the belief that the world is an evil or unsafe place and that it is therefore better to remain childfree. This belief appears to be context dependent and is based on the women’s perceptions of the crime situation in South Africa. This study contributes to the expansion of the existing literature concerning childfree women, specifically within the South African context. The findings of the research support the findings of previous studies and offer a fresh perspective through the identification of new themes. By exploring reasons women cite for remaining childfree, I argue that some women refute motherhood. The challenging of the dominant discourse that “all women are mothers” is aimed at changing the dialogue about women and thus altering existing dominant discourses. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Psychology / unrestricted

This dissertation argues that representations of masculinity in the Hollywood war/combat films of the Vietnam film cycle reflect the changing and changed mores of the era in which they were made, and that these representations are so prevalent as to suggest a culture-wide shift in notions of masculinity since the Vietnam War. I demonstrate that the majority of the representations of masculinity in the Vietnam War film cycle (an expression that includes all films on the Vietnam War but particularly those produced in Hollywood) have achieved mythic status--accepted truths--but are often exaggerated and/or are erroneous to the point of affecting how historical events are understood by subsequent generations. Such is the power of cinema. This dissertation, then, adopts a cultural-political-historical perspective to investigate Hollywood's virtual re-creation of the Vietnam War and its combat participants as dystopic, anti-mythopoeic figures whose allegiance to patriotism, God, and duty are shown to be tragically betrayed by a changing paradigm of masculinity and has thus created a new mythos of the American male which abides in the American consciousness to this day. All of which is to ask, why was there such a significant change from admirable cinematic representations of America as a nation that represents the ideology of freedom and liberty for all and U.S. soldiers as the hallmark of strength and goodness in the WW II movies to the mostly wretched representations of both in the Vietnam War cycle? While each chapter of my dissertation will attempt to identify plausible answers to these questions, I will also seek to explore why and how these alterations from the regnant traditions of American values--honoring the military, respecting the government and other traditions, such as the nuclear family, marriage as a sacred institution, monogamy as the respected norm, children as inviolable, gender roles as fixed, separation of the races, etc.--came to such a tumultuous head in the 1960s and resulted in the significantly altered constructs of values and masculinity that have become the norm in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. In order to investigate historical cinematic representations effectively, it is necessary to consider the actual events of the times and challenge the subsequent various mythopoeic formations of the Hollywood Vietnam veteran. / A Dissertation submitted to the Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2014. / October 21, 2014. / cinema, film, masculinity, myth, Vietnam, war / Includes bibliographical references. / John Kelsay, Professor Directing Dissertation; Kathleen Erndl, Committee Member; Leigh Edwards, Committee Member.

Though historical scholarship on gender and international relations has grown over the last few decades, there has been little work done on women in the Foreign Service. The main objective of this thesis is to examine the role of women diplomats within the Foreign Service since 1945 and to examine how gender differences related to the low numbers of women within the field during a time when women's representation in other male-dominated fields increased substantially. The study is divided into three chapters that focus on determining how certain factors affected women's marginalization within the field. The first chapter examines the basic statistics of the women diplomats. Chapter two explores the policies of other countries towards accepting female diplomats, and the last chapter investigates how women conducted foreign policy and carried out the goals of the administration. The conclusion provides an analysis of the findings of all three areas and how they relate to women's access to fields both within and outside politics. / A Thesis Submitted to the Department of History in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2009. / December 10, 2008. / Perception, Gatekeeper, Ambassador, Diplomacy, Femininity, Masculinity / Includes bibliographical references. / Suzanne Sinke, Professor Directing Thesis; Charles Upchurch, Committee Member; Michael Creswell, Committee Member.

Cultural Memory and its functions in the case of Božena Němcová The presented thesis is concerned with the topic of the construction of the portrayal of Božena Němcová and its functions in the cultural memory. Regarding the question of Božena Němcová's portrayal, this thesis is focused on the construction of gender identities in the remembering process. The influence of mediality of given representation on the process of gender identity construction is also explored here. The examination of the function of Božena Němcová's portrayal in the cultural memory is based on its intertextuality. The intertextuality is in this thesis understood as a valency plurality of Božena Němcová's portrayal in relation to other figures and themes of the cultural memory canon. The analyses in this paper is based on the concept of Cultural Memory Studies (Jan Assmann, Astrid Erll, Aleida Assmann), and Gender Studies (Judith Butler). There are different types of sources examined in this paper (textbooks, film, literature, press, social media), arranged from the present to the past. Key words: Božena Němcová, canon, cultural memory, mediality, gender identity

A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of D. Litt. In Communication Science University of Zululand, 2001. / In this dissertation, I present the results of an analysis of the role of female body image in the promotion of commercial products in magazines that are available in South Africa at the beginning of the 21st century. The South African legislation is progressive towards promoting gender equality. But the central problem is that there are still gaps between the progressive legislation and the attitudes and beliefs of South Africans towards gender equality, particularly in the use of female body images in magazine adverts by the advertising industry. This gap between de jure and de facto is due to gender differences and stereotypes that have been entrenched in every aspect of our lives (for example, in language, culture, religion, and so on). According to Deacon (1997:376-410) and Pease and Pease (2000:60-61), because of the gendered social environment in the ancestral world, our brains (as females and males) evolved differently within the continuing gendered social environment. So, our fore brain, which is responsible for thinking, reasoning and planning processes, has helped us to reconstruct our gendered social environment by the formulation of legislation that promote human rights including the right to equality. However, the legislation on equality is not sufficient to reconstruct our environment. The evidence is that within the good legislation that has been made in South Africa, the advertising industry is continuing with the biased portrayal of female and male body images in the magazine adverts, in particular. Besides, the female body image is still portrayed in stereotypical roles. For example, the female is presented in passive roles and as objects as well as sex objects. However, the consumers do not adequately challenge the advertising industry about this gendered portrayal of the female body images in magazine adverts because the consumers themselves have a gendered view of the world. Therefore, other social programmes (in schools and communities) should supplement legislation that has been made in order to try and reconstruct the gendered social environment in South Africa. But, there are still areas for further research in the area of gender and body image to try and uncover the effects that the body image has on the consumers.

Over the past years, particularly during 2018, Chilean society has experienced a robust feminist movement led by high school students. At the same time, mainstream society and researchers claim that Chile is experiencing a youth civic and citizenship education crisis, particularly among young women. I address this apparent contradiction by challenging the futuristic approach in citizenship education taken in the country and exploring how young women are currently politically engaged and challenge gender oppression within their high schools and their activist spaces. I have used a post-human and post-colonial feminist theoretical framework to answer the following research question, How do female public high school students in Chile who identify as feminist or politically active produce their gender/political subjectivities in the 2018 context of contentious feminist politics? And, sub questions; How do they do this while engaging with feminist discourses and practices in and outside of school? How do they do this while engaging with historical narratives? Finally, how do they do this while engaging with formal political education in school? A context of contentious feminist politics will be understood as a context where feminism is prevalent in public discourse, which forces people -in this case students- to take a stance concerning this subject. To answer the research questions, I conducted a critical ethnography, observing classes and other activities at Edelbina González High School, a Chilean all-female public high school with an active group of high school feminists. During my fieldwork, I invited six 12th-grade participants to be my focal group of observation and to take part in individual testimonios interviews and collective art-based testimonios workshops. Through these methods, I produced fieldnotes of observations, transcriptions and audio-recordings of the interviews and workshops, and photographs of the school space and students’ art pieces. I analyzed the data through a three-layer process using thematic coding analysis, narrative structural and content analysis, visual analysis, and “plugging in with theory” analysis (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012). This study engages with lengthy discussion regarding education and reproduction of gender regimes; it explores how oppressive systems transform but remain, particularly in regards to citizenship and formal political education through neoliberal discourses of girl empowerment. It also shows how feminist female high school students communally and creatively respond, theorize, and re-imagine political engagement within these frames, providing insights into what is, and what can be education for democratic citizenship and gender justice. The Feminist students in this study produced themselves as nomadic mestiza bodies engaging with pre-existing political frameworks but at the same time built something more. The students assembled themselves within an antagonistic us/them framework within the Chilean Student Movement, which considers the state and school as adversaries attempting to oppress them. Their high school attempted to reproduce them as feminine, successful, conflict-free neoliberal girls. Regardless, the feminist students displaced both the antagonistic and neoliberal model producing their gender/political subjectivities as nomadic, ever-shifting, vulnerable and strong, and connecting themselves with collective memories and historical narratives. The production of the feminist students’ gender/political subjectivities through “affectivism,” resistance, and political caring rendered the participants as nomadic mestiza bodies, always becoming, collectively connected and empowered by one another to produce political change.

This dissertation explores the history of social-constructionist theories of sexual difference through the surprising connection between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the lesbian-feminist writer and theorist Monique Wittig. Wittig developed a social contract theory that radically denaturalized sexual difference, an approach she credited to Rousseau. I offer an interpretation of her appropriation of Rousseau that frames it within the French women’s liberation movement. Then, re-reading him through her lens, I argue that Rousseau too viewed sexual difference as a social construction. Chapter 1 argues that Wittig’s concept of “the lesbian” is modeled after Rousseau’s “natural man.” Wittig used this notion in the “lesbian question” quarrel in the women’s movement to depict human freedom after the abolition of sexual difference. In chapter 2, I show how Wittig interprets the social contract as a political and epistemological concept that encodes the presuppositions, like heterosexuality or race, which shape the social order and knowledge production. Through this concept, she engages in a debate with the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss over Rousseau’s legacy. Chapter 3 demonstrates that Rousseau retooled the naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s methodology and data in order to denaturalize sexual difference. From there, he posited that sex originates in the transition from proper nouns to common nouns, and is therefore a linguistic construction. This construction allows humans to understand virtue, because without it, humans are unable to access their moral sense. In chapter 4, I argue that his novel Julie represents his most sustained effort to harness material science to favor the development of moral sense. The novel synthesizes spiritual exercises’ emphasis on linguistic representations with materialist ideas about language’s influence on the body. It calls on readers to use spiritual exercises to shape their sexual identities in order to conform with rigidly defined gender roles. In the conclusion, I bring Wittig and Rousseau together within a loosely existentialist framework. I argue that by severing the chain of necessity between biology and sex, they posit a meaninglessness underlying our sexual identities; they react differently to this abyss, but it is in their realization of it that their work has a striking relevance today.

Steven Conn recently argued that as museums change from warehouses of artifacts focused on public instruction to a different model of education by engagement, their emphasis on objects will become less necessary. This dissertation directly engages with that idea and argues that for many local museums objects mean as much as they ever did, maybe even more. My idea, the “currency of authenticity,” builds on two strands of scholarship. One that traces the increasing commodification of history. The other that local museums are just as worthy of study as national institutions. Specifically, I analyze how smaller museums use material culture to convince their audience that their textual narrative and/or oral interpretation is just as truthful as its objects. Using institutional records, newspapers, and oral histories, this dissertation examines how the Stephen Foster Museum and Florida Folk Festival, both in White Springs, Florida, and the Georgia Museum of Agriculture and Historic Village portray aspects of Southern culture. Each of these places emphasizes different qualities, objects, or ideas as they construct their own brand of authenticity. Simultaneously, these places also all emphasize their own kind of Southern identity, unique to their regions and the people they want to represent. Their exhibits demonstrate that Southern heritage is vast, complex, and more diverse than some people understand. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2016. / July 8, 2016. / Local History, Memory, Public History / Includes bibliographical references. / Suzanne Sinke, Professor Directing Dissertation; Denise Von Glahn, University Representative; Andrew Frank, Committee Member; Jennifer Koslow, Committee Member; Maxine D. Jones, Committee Member.

This study is a reading of khuswala kumuse (funeral oratory) among the Bukusu from the perspective of contemporary theories of masculinity and gender relations. Funeral oratory performance is an age-old practice performed on the third day after burial (lufu), of honoured males from clans that enjoy respect from other clans because of their leadership qualities. The thesis is about the performances of John Wanyonyi Manguliechi. Focusing on his unique personality and creative oral skills as a performer, the thesis seeks to demonstrate Manguliechi’s artistic contribution to a venerated tradition. This study benefits from ethnography and fieldwork as methods of literary research in order to interrogate concerns of gender, power discourses and performance in a traditional oral text. The study focuses on pre-recorded texts of Manguliechi and critically analyzes them through the prism of masculinity, gender and power discourse. Specifically, our analysis employs masculinity and gender relations theories to study circumcision, ethnicity and elements of power discourses in Manguliechi’s funeral oratories. The notion of ‘textualizing masculinity’ in this study refers to the various ways of being a man as highlighted by Manguliechi in his recitals. The study examines the funeral oratory as a cultural discourse shaped by masculine nuances and an oral literary genre laden with multiple images of power discourses and gender relations. In the Bukusu parlance, ‘khuswala kumuse’ connotes rhetorical excellence, and the genre represents the most elaborate and creative verbal expression. Thus, persuasive public speech is a much-vaunted art form in the community and any man whose oratory skills demonstrate good rhetoric and eloquence is held in the utmost esteem. In this study we argue that although Manguliechi’s performances are essentially funeral rituals, his recitals are rare examples of rhetorical genius with highly expressive and idiomatic creativity that can be subjected to literary analysis. The study interrogates the interfaces between the textual and thematic concerns of Manguliechi’s kumuse renditions on the one hand and the masculine gender constructions and power imaginations within the same texts.

In an overview of research within preschool, there appears a certain ambiguity where the fields “preschool teachers’ attitudes and methods” and “children’s gender identity process” are perceived as separate. The aim of this study is to combine and discuss the relationship between these two separate fields in order to identify patterns that can be applied in preschool practice. The main theoretical framework is Connell’s (2009) gender theory, combined with a didactic perspective that clarifies the pedagogical relationship in children's gender identity process. This study consists of a research overview that includes 24 studies that specifically deal with gender, identity and preschool teachers' didactic methods in preschool. The results of the studies are interpreted and compared both nationally and internationally. Five main patterns are visible regarding preschool teachers' attitudes and methods in children’s gender identity process: Gender stereotypical pattern, Gender equality pattern, Presumed gender neutral pattern, Biological pattern and Compensatory pattern. The central findings in these patterns are discussed, related to previous research, and linked to the pedagogical practice. The results of the study are also discussed in relation to the surrounding society, and suggestions for further research about children’s gender identity are given.