<p> The nonprofit sector is the third largest employing industry in the United States and impacts almost 10% of the economy (Roeger, Blackwood, &amp; Pettijohn, 2012; Salamon, Sokolowski, &amp; Geller, 2012). Women comprise over 75% of the nonprofit workforce, yet men hold over 80% of leadership positions (Bronznick &amp; Goldenhar, 2009; McInnes, 2008). The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to examine the work-life balance practices of women leaders in nonprofit organizations and determine experiences impacting their life course. The ultimate goal was to gain insight from women leaders in nonprofit organizations to identify strategies for more women to advance into leadership roles. The researcher utilized a qualitative methodology with the life course theory developed by Giele (2008). </p><p> The research questions were: 1. What demographic factors, if any, are related to work-life balance issues for women leaders in nonprofit organizations? 2. How is the life course for women leaders in nonprofit organizations impacted, if at all, by experiences, identity, motivation, adaptive and relational style? 3. What strategies, if any, are women leaders in nonprofit organizations utilizing for work-life balance? </p><p> 20 women leaders in nonprofit organizations served as the study population. The women held positions of vice president or above or positions equivalent to vice president if the organization did not use such titles. Participants provided socio-demographic data and responses to 5 sets of questions regarding early adulthood, childhood and early adolescence, current adulthood, future adulthood and coping strategies. </p><p> The key findings and conclusions revealed challenges with work-life balance associated with diverse demographic factors. Experiences related to identity, relational style, drive and motivation and adaptive style influenced life courses and are anticipated to influence the future life courses of participants, specifically regarding decisions on educational attainment, partnerships, family, careers, and social involvement. Work-life balance strategies were discovered in 4 areas: self-care, partners, professional skills, and social support. </p><p> Overall, the research provided a composite of the participants as women leaders in nonprofit organizations, including their backgrounds and life stories. The research demonstrated that work-life balance continues to be an issue and an interest for women leaders in nonprofit organizations. </p>

<p> This case study explores the dynamics of a small long-term leaderless group of five, Jungian-oriented, women therapists. The group, meeting from 1992 to 2005, was originally convened to explore how women's initiatory journey is distinctive from men's. Refusing to adopt a leader, its non-hierarchical structure merited further exploration. The research questions were as follows: What are the individual and collective meanings given to a successful, long-term leaderless women's group? What aspects of the group contribute to its meaningfulness, vitality and longevity? </p><p> The dissertation adopts the metaphor and meta-framework of the Father's House and Mother's House, referring to two distinct ways women's consciousness develops. The Father's and Mother's House form a continuum that ranges from women's adaptation to conventional values and structures to women's ways of knowing and being. Extensive literature reviews describe consciousness in The Father's House, The Mother's House and Women in Groups. </p><p> Case study data illuminate both individual and group perspectives on the group's life. They include audio-taped individual interviews and group sessions, including typical and crisis sessions, along with researcher observations and reflections. The researcher conducted the study as a participant member. </p><p> Narrative analysis reveals three phases in the group's life: an initial phase exploring the dreams and visions of Christiana Morgan and Jung's <i> Visions Seminars;</i> a second phase of moving into a void with an unfolding emergent process; and a third phase following 9/11 in which the group attended to psychological trends manifesting in collective consciousness. </p><p> The Weaving chapter relates the group's experiences to the literature on women's groups, noting a key challenge faced by the group and by women generally&mdash;the dynamic of connection, disconnection, and re-connection. </p><p> The final chapter presents major conclusions drawn from the research: Women's groups serve a developmental function for women and can impact the collective in transformative ways. The Visions group found that the prevalent archetypal drama of saviour, victim, and persecutor must give way to new ways of relating. This study adds to our understanding of groups that learn organically and shows how a group functions when it lives in the Mother's House.</p>

A leader of the student movements in 1968, a pioneer of homosexual liberation in the 1970s, and a lifelong critic and polemist of French society, Guy Hocquenghem published some twenty books and literally hundreds of articles before his premature death in 1988. This dissertation is a biography of Guy Hocquenghem. However, although it makes ample use of personal interviews and other biographical information, its chief aim is not to psychologize but to contextualize. Its primary orientation is that of the history of ideas, an approach that is more concerned with the relationship between ideas and society than with the logical consistency of the ideas themselves. The present work endeavors, first of all, to explain the evolution of Hocquenghem's ideas and assess his impact as both a philosopher and a militant on French society after 1968. In addition, because Hocquenghem's career is, in many respects, emblematic of the journeys of the French '68ers, it uses his intellectual and political trajectory to describe general patterns that he shared with his generation. More specifically, it relies on Hocquenghem's career to illuminate a critical but often overlooked and misunderstood dimension of the May '68 revolt and its legacies: the eruption of "everyday life" into French politics. Finally, this dissertation aims to contribute to the rehabilitation of Hocquenghem's reputation as key militant, significant philosopher, and consummate polemist of the French '68 generation. In doing so, it is not Hocquenghem's ideas themselves that it seeks to redeem so much as his unique utopian perspective.

This thesis explores the experiences of women in the military using narratives published by military servicewomen from Canada and the United States. The success of traditionally “female” bodies in combat-related trades in the military destabilizes the binary opposition between “male” and “female” in western society. Nevertheless, women are still excluded from identifying with the “soldier ideal” that is emphasized in western militaries and must make alternative “hybrid” identifications in order to articulate their understanding of their experiences in the military. Gender integration needs to be rethought in hyper-masculine military institutions. Since “hybrid” identities can be seen emerging in military servicewomen, members of the military have a unique opportunity to rethink the “soldier ideal” in order to make room for bodies that express gender identifications other than “male.” While military servicewomen adapt to their roles by generating “hybrid” identifications in the “Third Space” between the “soldier ideal” and feminine identities, military men are excluded from accessing the benefits of women’s “hybrid” identifications. Men, women, and other emergent gender identities need to engage in a theatrical exploration of their experiences to investigate the possibility of generating new military ideals that resist social constructions that oppose gender integration. It is crucial that research about the experiences of women in the military involve bodies in order to acknowledge that these women experience resistance to their presence because their bodies visibly differ from the masculinised “soldier ideal.” Some of this experience cannot be articulated verbally. I work toward creating the conditions for bodies to engage with my research by combining a theatrical script with an accompanying analytic essay. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-09 14:50:32.334

This dissertation explores how the male body is utilised and visualised by a selection of gay male artists working within the post-Apartheid South African context. The male body is the means by which they represent these concepts of sexuality and identity. The complexity of contemporary visual arts is, in this dissertation, viewed as a signifier of cultural change. The visibility of gay males in South African society (read as a sign), is also reflected in the foregrounding of male bodies in artworks after 1994. Queer theory and theories of representation are used as a conceptual framework, in which readings are presented of how the male body is interpreted and represented as a site of contestation and convergence of power. The politics of sexuality and identity are represented and discussed in this project through the mediums of painting, photography and installation. These different mediums are linked conceptually, in the same way that sex, gender and sexuality are interlinked; influencing, yet not predetermining each other. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal,Durban, 2006.

<p> Society attaches gender stereotypes to musical instruments, which may influence students&rsquo; selection of an instrument for study. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of model gender on instrument preference of beginning band students during the selection process. I used two research questions to guide the study: 1. Do student instrument preferences prior to an instrument demonstration reflect typical trends in gender stereotypes of instrumental performers? 2. Does the gender of the person modeling the instruments during a demonstration and selection process affect the instrument choice preference of the student? </p><p> Participants (N = 171) from six schools with five instructors from the Northeast were grouped into four treatment groups. First, I designed a questionnaire containing a pretest and posttest. In the pretest, the participant responded with demographic information consisting of grade, sex, and whether or not a parent played an instrument, and if so, which one. Next, participants rated their preference for six band instruments on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 representing no desire to play the instrument and 5 representing a strong desire to play the instrument. After observing the instrument demonstration, the participants rated their preferences for the instruments in the identical format as the pretest. Participants next answered an open-ended question that asked why they most preferred the instrument they did. </p><p> I conducted a pilot study with 23 participants and determined that the research instrument was suitable. Next, I administered the research instrument to four treatment groups. Treatment 1 (n = 76) observed all instruments demonstrated by a female modeler. Treatment 2 (n = 30) observed all instruments demonstrated by a male modeler. Treatment 3 (n = 23) observed all instruments demonstrated by typically associated gender stereotype modelers. Treatment 4 (n = 42) observed all instruments demonstrated by atypically associated gender stereotype modelers. </p><p> I determined the internal reliability of the research instrument with Cronbach&rsquo;s Alpha (? = .68). After determining a mean gain score by subtracting the pretest preference score from the posttest preference score, I performed a series of ANOVA tests. Students preferred instruments along typical gender stereotype lines initially with females preferring flute and males preferring trumpet most. I determined that there was no effect of model gender on instrument preference of beginning band students. While some changes in preference existed from pretest to posttest, especially for trumpet, none of the changes were significant. I determined in the posttest that while males continued to prefer trumpet most, females most preferred trumpet and clarinet equally with flute their next choice. Instruments played by parents followed typical gender stereotype assignments with most mothers playing flute followed by clarinet and most fathers playing percussion followed by trumpet. The majority of participants who responded to the open-ended question (66%) stated that tone was the reason for their instrument preference. By addressing the gender stereotyping of instruments, music educators may lead students to have more successful and satisfying experiences as instrumental performers. </p>

<p> Three dances, <i>On This Day, Panties and Pathologies </i>, and <i>Naked Spotlight Silver</i> were choreographed and performed in fulfillment of the requirements to complete an M.F.A. degree in dance. The performances took place at the Martha B. Knoebel Dance Theater located on the campus of California State University, Long Beach. <i> On This Day</i> premiered October 2012, <i>Panties and Pathologies </i> premiered March 2013, and Naked Spotlight Silver premiered October 2013. </p><p> This thesis examines how each project investigates choreographic approaches used in concert dance to communicate issues of gender and sexuality as well as participate in a discourse on identity politics. The three dance pieces attempted to confront themes of marriage equality, representation and the marketing of femininity, and queer identity representations in performance. Each piece was unique in its methodologies and served as an explorative approach to political communication and artistic development.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-06, Section: A, page: 2438. Adviser: Peter Mortensen. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-242) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thèse (M.A.)--Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), 2008. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 1 février 2007). In ProQuest dissertations and theses. Publié aussi en version papier.

Thèses (M.A.)--Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), 2007. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 1 février 2007). In ProQuest dissertations and theses. Publié aussi en version papier.