Sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls is a major challenge across the world which requires engaged and sustained action to see change (Abramowitz and Moran, 2012). Communication for Development approaches are often used in GBV-prevention programmes because they provide a means of engaging people at a community-level, whether that is through one-way behaviour-change messages on mass media or through participatory community projects engaging people in dialogue. Through analysis of the Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) Project on ‘Engaging Faith-Based Organizations to Prevent Violence Against Women & Girls and Increase Survivors’ Access to Services (2015-2017)’, this degree project explores the question of whether engaging with the faith-realities of communities will increase the depth of participation amongst participants. The ERD project focusses on equipping faith leaders, both Muslim and Christian, to engage in activity which shares GBV-prevention messages with their congregations and points victims and survivors to relevant support services. From the available data, it is not possible to conclusively argue that engagement with the faith context enhanced the depth of participation. However, applying three of Freire’s concepts, namely conversion to the people, dialogue and context, I argue that the ERD project aligns with Freire’s conceptualisation of participation more closely than similar projects that are ‘faith blind’.

This thesis examines how preparatory, policy and review documents of the Participatory Rangeland Management (PRM) in East Africa, problematize and represent the ‘problems’ which resulted in the design of the development program. The focus is on how these problematizations can hinder or facilitate participation, influence and empowerment of women and marginalized groups in decision-making processes. The findings are based on a gender-based policy analysis undertaken of five documents written by the NGOs involved in the planning and implementation of PRM in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. A conceptual framework measuring the level of participation, empowerment and influence was constructed to assess the policies and their possible outcomes. The document analysis showed that the implicit ‘problem’ themes identified appeared to be that communities were unmodern, undeveloped, and had under-representation of women and pastoralists in rangeland management. These problematizations seem to originate from a development discourse characterized by solutions focussing on ‘modernization’ and ‘technical fixes’. These pre-conceived ideas of the ’problems’ call for more communication and inclusion of community groups in problem formulation and program design. The analysis further revealed that expert-assisted and gender-mainstreaming initiatives such as the PRM could have a positive impact on the level of participation, influence, and empowerment of women. When training was carried out for both women and men by the PRM to raise awareness of women’s rights, it resulted in an increased number of women participating in activities. However, gender-mainstreaming should not stop with participation, it should be further developed towards influence and empowerment. The PRM could consider promoting a change of power relations by combining efforts to demonstrate the benefits of meaningful consultations to decision-makers and efforts to enhance the knowledge and skills of marginalized groups so that they can better engage with these decision-makers. Furthermore, there is a need to expand the discussion on how to design gender-mainstreaming policies and practices, without labelling women as one.

Rape culture permeates the landscape of post-secondary education throughout Canada. In recent years, student-survivors and advocates have been influential in the creation of provincial legislation mandating colleges and universities to develop stand-alone sexualized violence policies. In British Columbia these policies are to be institutionally reviewed every three years, but there is no clear legislative direction as to how these reviews should be conducted, or how survivors and advocates voices will be included. My thesis examines the impacts of campus sexualized violence and the integral role that student-survivors and their stories play in transforming rape culture. Through the voices of nine University of Victoria student-survivors and five community-based service providers, I demonstrate that student-survivors and those who support them act as both change-agents and subject matter-experts regarding campus rape culture; as such, their inclusion in policy development and review is essential. However, my thesis also demonstrates that student-survivors and advocates navigate an increasingly corporatized post-secondary environment, whereby the stories of student-survivors are considered dangerous to the campus brand and reputation. In taking seriously the trauma associated with sexualized violence and the consequences of the corporate campus, my thesis offers a Trauma Informed Consultation Guideline. This guideline provides a trauma-informed and community based approach to consulting student-survivors in policy review with the intention of creating safer opportunities for story to inform future policy directions. / Graduate

The Afghan Women’s Writing Project (AWWP) emerged in 2009 as a platform through which Afghan women could express their lived experiences and perspectives on a range of culturally relevant issues while retaining their anonymity. The purpose of this research was to understand poetry as a conflict resolution tool that Afghan women are using to be active participants in the social, political and cultural dialogue that is determining their rights. This research focused on three questions: 1) How do Afghan women describe the state of womanhood in Afghanistan? 2) How do Afghan women describe the conflict they experience in their everyday lives? 3) How might poetry and narrative be used to manage the conflict that Afghan women are facing? This research presents a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of one hundred published poems from the AWWP poetry database. Data analysis included open coding, thematic analysis, and the use of van Dijk’s six-step CDA model to evaluate the semantic macrostructures, local meanings, linguistic markers, global and local discourse forms, linguistic realizations, analysis of context, and the researcher’s own interpretive analysis. The findings identify and explain the major themes derived from the study as well as describe how Afghan women feel about womanhood and conflict. The major themes included: child brides/forced marriage, hijab/burqa/niqab, women’s resistance, parents as protectors and/or perpetrators, the power of writing and stress as a result of conflict. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of implications for sustainable norm change using poetry, directions for future research, and recommendations for policy and programming.

This research focuses on unaccompanied or separated adolescent girls who have survived gender-based violence and have sought asylum in Greece. It seeks to explore the interpretations and identities that asylum and psychosocial professionals assign to the girls and to research whether and how the process of the asylum interview may shape the narrative of violence and victimhood of the girls and predefine their self-representation.  The research draws from different theoretical frameworks in exploring the power of the state as reflected in the official discourses on vulnerability and the legal processes of granting asylum; the stereotypical ideations of victimhood and the gendered character it often entails; the intersection of gender, age, migration, and the lived experience of violence.  Two methodological approaches are implemented; semi-structured interviews conducted with five professionals and autoethnography. The data from the interviews were thematically codified and analyzed, while the autoethnographic data fed the construction of two case studies. The recurring themes identified commonly shape a set of concluding remarks and make apparent the need for further research in the field.

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Despite the amount of studies conducted in the field and actions taken, gender-based violence continues to be rampant in both Afghanistan and Armenia. This study investigates potential causes and factors as to why the two societies look and function the way it does. By conducting a comparative case study by using a most similar system design, the aim with the thesis is to gain a broader understanding of why the women of Afghanistan and Armenia are suffering to these levels. Experiences of Afghan and Armenian women will be studied together with the legal and social construction of the countries. The study is primarily based on the theoretical framework of factors contributing to gender-based violence. The combination of sources that have been selected and used have done so in order to create as fair and representative a picture of Afghan and Armenian society and the experiences of the women living there as possible.

This thesis aims to investigate the phenomenon popularly referred to as the pink tax, otherwise known as gender-based price discrimination in the Swedish hygiene product market. The subject is thoroughly researched in markets like the United States and the United Kingdom, where evidence has been found that a pink tax does exist. Thus, women tend to pay more for initially the same product than men, where seemingly, the only difference between the two is packaging and/or fragrance. The sample collection consists of five different product categories: razor blades, razors, shaving cream, deodorant, and soap. The samples have all been collected manually from 16 different locations, distributed at a 38 km radius between the area Skövde to Mariestad in Västra Götaland, Sweden.  Inspired by previous research, this study starts examining the market using a t-test. To further the investigation, two types of regression models are used. The findings support the possibility of a pink tax existing in the Swedish market. Where the largest and most stable regression showed a 4,1% difference in prices for female versus male products. Hence, women tend to pay 4,1% more for hygiene products and the research can conclude that prices are not statistically equal. From this result, we recommend the Swedish customer protection agency- Diskrimineringsombudmannen, to further work on the laws against price discrimination by clarification of guidelines and construction of a stricter legal environment to prevent gender-based price discrimination in the future.

One of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world is Violence Against Women and Girls. It is estimated that 1 in 3 women, which is equal to 736 million women, have been experiencing sexual and/or physical violence in her lifetime since the age of 15. Previous research states that women with intellectual disabilities are more vulnerable to Gender Based Violence (GBV) than other women in Tanzania. A minor field study was done in Tanzania with the ame to; finding how women with intellectual disabilities are more vulnerable than other women in Tanzania, understand how the society's support for abused women with disabilities can be improved in Tanzania and to find how stakeholders perceive that violence against women with intellectual disabilities can be prevented. The study has been carried out by holding key informant interviews with employees of NGOs, lawyers and teachers that work for these women's rights in different ways in Tanzania. To analyze the empirical material, the Human rights based approach has been made made into an analytical framework by identifying and defining the key concepts: capability, functionings and freedom and with the perspective of Leave no one behind. The findings show that poverty, cultural beliefs and beliefs in witchcraft, among other things contribute to the fact that women with intellectual disabilities are extra vulnerable in Tanzania. They are at great risk of being locked up, become victims of human trafficing, subjected to rape and murder.  Society should raise awareness that GBV is illegal and wrong to improve the situation of women with intellectual disabilities. The police and healthcare workers should be better trained to respond to women with special needs who have been subjected to violence or sexual violence. The government could also give these women support to be able to work on their own terms. Through work, the women get a better life and meaning, which reduces the risk that she will be exposed to GBV. To prevent violence against these women the government should offer availability to adapted and inclusive schools with trained staff who know the needs of disabled children. If these kids can go to school with others, people with disabilities will be normalized and the stigma will reduce. To conclude, women with intellectual disabilities are extra vulnerable in Tanzania and much can be done to improve their situation.

Discovery of Novel Serum Biomarkers for Diagnosing and Staging Alzheimer’s DiseaseDipti Jigar ShahDepartment of Chemistry and Biochemistry, BYUDoctor of PhilosophyAlzheimer’s disease (AD) is an untreatable neurologic disease affecting more than 5 million Americans, most over 60 years of age. Protein plaques and neurofibrillary tangles typify AD brain pathology and are thought to cause the progressive dementia and brain shrinkage observed in AD. Currently there are no methods to diagnose the disease at a time before damage becomes irreversible.Biochemical tests for AD using cerebrospinal fluid analysis or neuroimaging are not yet sufficiently sensitive and specific, and they are invasive. This points to a need for a more easily applied and more sensitive diagnostic test. Although the gross anatomical changes are localized to the brain, AD is likely to involve changes throughout the body. As a result of this, changes in the abundance of certain biomolecules present in the circulation system are likely to occur. Consequently, a serum proteomics approach able to measure such changes, when applied to AD, would likely find quantitative changes in relevant molecules that can help diagnose the disease correctly, ideally early in the disease process. The goal of this work was to discover and validate novel diagnostic serum biomarkers for AD. For biomarker discovery and validation, we used a novel serum proteomics approach involving reversed phase capillary-liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry. Our samples were protein depleted, which helped us survey low molecular weight species in the serum without ion suppression from larger proteins like albumin. We were able to observe more than 8000 molecular species in a single run. The overall project was comprised of four studies: (i) discovery of novel potential serum AD markers, (ii) blinded validation of diagnostically promising biomarkers found in the initial study, with their further chemical identification, (iii) exploring gender-based serum AD biomarkers, and (v) discovery of biomarkers that distinguish early versus moderate stage AD. In the first study, the approach found 38 significant (p < 0.05) biomarkers and 21 near significant (p = 0.05 to 0.099) biomarkers. On using the forward selection approach, we built multi-marker panels with specificities and sensitivities higher than 80%.The second study reports on a blinded validation study that was performed on a new set of serum samples. We focused on the 13 most promising AD biomarkers found as part of the initial study. We successfully validated 4 of these biomarkers that showed highly significant statistical p-values. As part of this study, research was conducted to identify these 4 biomarkers, which was accomplished using tandem mass spectrometry with fragmentation experiments. The third study used data from the initial study but looked at gender specific biomarkers. We found 31 significant and near significant serum AD biomarkers for women, 16 for men, and 25 that were gender independent. Multi-marker panels of AD biomarkers for women or men had sensitivities of >60% and specificities >85%.In the fourth study, cases with moderate AD were compared to cases with very mild or mild AD to find novel biomarkers that could be used for staging. We found 44 significant and near significant biomarkers that were quantitatively different between mild and severe AD. In conclusion, we were successful in accomplishing the goal of this work of finding, validating and identifying novel serum biomarkers that diagnose AD.