This dissertation is geared toward a deeper understanding of the complexity of the multiple positions of women in the "Third World," and on how these positions create, sustain, and reproduce inequalities. I examine class inequality among employed women in the Philippines in the context of mistress-maid employment relationship. Using feminist fieldwork approaches, my gatekeeper, Merly, and I conducted extensive interviews and focus groups with thirty-one maids and ten mistresses between May and August 2000 in a medium-sized city in the Philippines. Recorded interviews were transcribed and processed using QSR NUD*IST N4. Domestic workers, who started as child laborers, live in their mistresses' homes where they perform household chores and carework. Aside from their "job description," they carry out additional tasks within and outside the household. The maids' relationship with their mistresses is based on maternalism, in which the mistresses integrate them into the family, engage in gift giving, provide educational support, but at the same time, control their bodies, times, spaces, and relationships. Except in cases where maternalist behavior becomes violent, both maids and mistresses approve of maternalism. In looking at the factors that may contribute to the mistresses' maternalist behavior, this study found that mistresses who are subordinate relative to their spouses and their workplaces are more likely than those who are not subordinate to engage in maternalist behavior with their maids. As maids prefer maternalist relationship with their mistresses, they accommodate their mistresses' dominating tendencies. When reprimanded, they respond through culture-specific rituals of subordination. However, when their threshold of tolerance is breached, they apply a combination of subtle and blatant resisting strategies. Younger maids perceive domestic work as a stepping-stone toward a more comfortable future, while older maids view it as a dead-end occupation. From a global standpoint, class mobility is examined based on the domestic workers dialectic positions within the international division of reproductive labor. Throughout this dissertation, women's inequality in the context of mistress-maid relations were analyzed from various angles, shifting the analysis from micro to macro dynamics; from class to the intersection of gender, ethnicity, age, and class; and from local to global. In addition to providing a sociological understanding of this phenomenon, I put the varied voices of "Third World women" at the forefront of this study. / Ph. D.

The female education is said to be a vehicle that break the shackes of poverty thereby leading to transformation,development and progress.

Sweden has long been lauded for its efforts to promote equality since the 1970s, but there is still work to be done in terms of gender equality in the labor market. Specifically, the Swedish labor market exhibits horizontal gender segregation, with men and women working in professions that are often gender-coded. To shed light on this issue, a study was conducted to examine vocational teachers' experiences with gender equality. The study draws on Connell's concept of gender order and gender regime, as well as the Swedish state's definition of gender equality (Jämställdhet). Results show that experiences with gender equality are varied, with shortcomings within the teaching profession and school organization making it difficult for teachers to uphold the core values of a “jämställd” education. Interestingly, the study also found differences between non-authorized and authorized vocational teachers, with the latter group identifying greater inequality issues within education and taking more active steps to promote gender equality in their classrooms.

Many immigrants arrive in Canada from countries with different degrees of gender inequality. While Canada has relatively high levels of gender equality, many immigrant-origin countries are characterized by high levels of inequality between men and women. Studies show that source-country gender inequality negatively impacts immigrant women's socioeconomic outcomes in the host society. However, little is known about how source-country gender inequality impacts social aspects of immigrant adjustment in Canada. This dissertation examines how source-country gender inequality impacts acculturation, structural integration and identification. My analyses of data from the Ethnic Diversity Survey and General Social Surveys find that source-country gender inequality can benefit identification when measured by sense of belonging to Canada. In other cases, it can be a barrier when acculturation is measured by financial decision-making. Further, source-country gender inequality can have little impact on the structural integration of immigrants when measured by sport participation. The results suggest that source-country gender inequality affects immigrant men and women in complex and multifaceted ways. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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No description available.

This exploratory research is a case study of a public university in Thailand. The research examines whether gender inequality exists in the pay raise process at Khon Kaen University over a two-fiscal year period (FY2002 and 2003). It also considers what factors might account for differences between male and female faculty in pay raises at this university, looking at factors such as productivity and family responsibilities. The research develops and tests measures of the Southeast Asian concepts of kinship, patronage, turn-taking and seniority systems. Three data sources are used, university personnel records, self-administered surveys and the annual evaluation report. Results show that raises tend to be equitable and faculty are equally productive, regardless of gender, discipline, academic rank, or position cluster. When significant differences are identified in this study, female faculty frequently reported that they received higher pay raises than their male colleagues. The well-established rules and regulations regarding pay raises (minimum requirements for productivity and pay raise steps) at this university prohibit any kind of systematic bias in pay raises. One of the other goals of this research was to test the Southeast Asian concepts of kinship, patronage, turn taking and seniority, and the extent to which each may be a factor in performance and pay raises. The research indicates these four may play a role, but their actual influence is not entirely clear and will require additional study. To address some of these issues, future research would explore the same public university with a longer time frame and then compare the result at KKU with other universities in Thailand and other universities in Southeast Asia. Interviewing both male and female faculty members in terms of their actual workloads, productivity, assigned tasks, and their perceptions of the impact of age and administrative position is recommended. Interviewing only female faculty members in different disciplines (female-dominated, male-dominated and balanced disciplines) concerning their experiences of inequality and how they deal with family responsibilities that affect productivity is also important for future research. / Ph. D.

In this dissertation, I study the role of local markets and firms in explaining labor market inequality across genders, and across workers. My results show that local labor markets have a relevant role in accounting for differences in labor market outcomes across genders. The dissertation is structured in three chapters, each containing a stand-alone paper. In the first chapter I show large and persistent differences exist in women’s labor force participation within multiple countries. These persistent differences in employment can arise if where women grow up shapes their work choices. However, they can also arise under endogenous sorting, so that women who want to work move to places where more women work. In this chapter, I use rich data from Indonesia to argue that the place women grow up in shapes their participation in the labor market as adults. To do so, I leverage variation coming from women moving across labor markets to estimate the effect on women’s labor force participation of spending more time in their birthplace. My strategy is similar to that of Chetty and Hendren (2018) and compares the labor supply choices of women who currently live in the same location, but who emigrated from their birthplace at different ages. My results indicate that birthplace has strong and persistent effects on adult women’s labor supply. By the time they turn sixteen, women born in a location at the 75th percentile of female employment will be 5 percentage points more likely to work than those born in a 25th percentile location. Place is particularly important during the formative period between 9 and 16 years old. These results suggest that between 23 percent of the current spatial inequality in women’s employment is transmitted to the next generation growing up in these locations. The second chapter studies the relationship between city size and gender inequality in the United States. It is well known that living in a larger cities is associated with a wage premium, but there is growing evidence that this premium has declined since the 1980s. (Autor, 2019). In this paper, I use data from U.S. Commuting Zones for the period between 1970 and 2020 to document that the decline in the urban wage premium affected men and women differently. While women were relatively isolated from the premium decline, men with lower education experienced the brunt of the impact. This caused a large relative increase in the urban wage premium for women: it went from being on par with the urban premium for men to being 44% larger in 2016. I argue that these differential trends result from a combination of gender specialization and the evolution of urban skill premiums. Urban premiums declined the most in those skills men without a college degree use more intensively. Finally, the third chapter I study the role of universities in explaining earnings inequality in U.S. academia. Previous applications from the Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis (1990) method –AKM– found that the best firms pay workers over and above their own productivity. These firm rents contribute to overall wage inequality. In this paper, we apply the AKM model to measure whether there are significant firm (university/college) effects on faculty earnings in academia. We apply the model to measure the pecuniary rents associated with working as tenure-track faculty at a more prestigious university or college in the United States. To do so, we take advantage of matched employer-employee data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients. We find little evidence of pecuniary university premiums in the most prestigious US academic institutions. Once we control for urbanicity, the effect of university/college rankings on institutions’ fixed-effects on earnings is statistically insignificant and sufficiently precisely measured that we can rule out anything larger than modest effects.

The lives of Palestinian refugee women are complex and layered, embedded in the constraints and dictates of a patriarchal class system within a conservative culture that has been shaped by resistance to the Israeli military occupation since 1948. Over six decades of Israeli military occupation, ongoing national resistance, poverty and a maledominated society are a few of the forces that continue to shape the lives of refugee women today. The Israeli occupation has obstructed the development of a viable Palestinian economy and legal institutions that could serve as a framework for attaining women’s rights. In addition, Palestinian women, especially refugee women have limited employment and education opportunities due to the military violence which serves to strengthen patriarchal norms that discourage women seeking either higher education or work outside the home. Military occupation and traditional patriarchal society are therefore two inter connected processes central to the formation of gender identities and roles for women living in refugee camps. Palestinian refugee women are also part of a unique experience of being refugees on their own land. A central question arises as to whether, in the absence of an independent Palestinian state, refugee women can be agents of transformation in their personal, familial and community relations. I t is necessary to explore the potential for resistance and empowerment at the local level as defined and expressed by women and men in Jabaliya camp in an effort to assist in responding to this question. The everyday experiences of women explored in this study from the standpoint of women and men in Jabaliya refugee camp and their interpretations and perceptions of those experiences, are the basis for identifying everyday acts of resistance and potential avenues of empowerment among women in the camp. Everyday resistance and the process of empowerment are evident in the lives of women. The data show both subtle and open acts of defiance to oppressive ideas and social structures as well as a clear development of a critical understanding of women’s roles and status in the camp.

<p>This thesis is an analysis of how international policies on HIV prevention can be understood through a postcolonial perspective and how these prevention strategies are reflected nationally and locally in Babati, Tanzania. To gain knowledge of these aims I have focused on UNAIDS and the US’ government policies to get an idea of where the international discourse about HIV prevention stands. My empirical data in Babati is collected by semi-structural interviews with people who work with HIV prevention. I have used Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s understanding of Third World women, together with Jenny Kitzinger theory about women in HIV discourses and Karen M Booth’s view of how international policies are trying to empower women to reduce their risk of HIV infection. To assist my analysis I have focused on three notions, which are recurring in the HIV prevention discourse, these are: empowerment of women, condom use and sexual behaviour. These notions help to establish the HIV discourse and later I have compared the results with my theoretical framework and empirical findings. My final conclusion is that international policies on HIV prevention can be seen as imperialistic as they are promoting a certain change in sexual behaviour, such as reduction of partners and abstinence until marriage.</p>