Background/Purpose: This study aims to better understand attitude formation since attitudes influence behavior. I explore opinion on gay marriage, the gender gap in regard to this issue, and trends in attitudes toward gay marriage. I also explore how gender intersects with other identities in forming these attitudes so that we can better understand the opinions of men and women. Methods: I start by using simple percentages for men's and women's attitudes to determine if there is a gender gap and examine whether these gender differences exist within different subgroups. From there, I use multivariate equations to discover reasons for these gender gaps. Results and conclusions: People's attitudes in support of gay marriage versus support for civil unions or no legal recognition are shaped by gender and a host of other demographic traits and attitudes. A small but consistent gender gap exists, with women being 6 percentage points more likely to support gay marriage, while men fall slightly more often in the other two categories. I found evidence of intersectionalities between gender and other demographic traits. One intersectionality exists between gender, race and religiosity. Black women's opinions on gay marriage are split, falling both in greater support for gay marriage and greater opposition. The religiosity of black women accounts for this split. I also found evidence of intersectionality with regards to education, but here it appears that it is men's attitudes that are shaped by this factor. As education levels increase, the gender gap in support of gay marriage disappears as men's attitudes become more similar to that of women.

The susceptibility of individuals to illness and disease is greatly influenced by context specific social determinants of health (SDH), yet there is a dearth of literature pertaining to SDH among refugees, particularly those residing in urban areas. The purpose of this study was to identify and generate empirical evidence on SDH among female refugees in Malaysia. It focused specifically on Rohingya refugees, a stateless and persecuted Muslim minority from Myanmar. Intersectionality formed the theoretical foundation of the study, which utilized a qualitative research design and employed an exploratory, applied research approach. Document review provided background and contextual information for primary data, which were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. The study was undertaken in affiliation with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and had two primary outputs: it provided UNHCR with information and recommendations to inform context-specific program and policy development, and it generated rich empirical findings that contribute to the nascent evidence base on SDH in the context of forced migration. Results indicate that key factors affecting the health and wellbeing of Rohingya women include: their journey from Myanmar to Malaysia, income, employment, food security, transportation, the physical environment, UNHCR, security issues, education, religion, healthcare, and social capital/the social safety net. These interacted, overlapped and compounded each other, forming a ‘web of interrelated factors’ that affected participants’ health. Findings provide insight into the instrumental role of the sociopolitical context in structuring the lives of urban refugee women, and emphasize the importance of extending current discourse beyond refugee women’s needs and vulnerabilities to consider their resilience and agency in situations of significant hardship. / Graduate / 0573

The purpose of this narrative study is to understand the experience of ESL female teachers in postsecondary education. The ESL female teachers will be defined as female teachers who speak English as a second language. The study asks the following research questions: What are the lived experiences of ESL female teachers in postsecondary education? How do ESL female teachers in postsecondary education narrate their experiences and negotiate their teacher identities? How can the above understanding contribute to the inclusion of ESL female teachers in an increasingly diversified educational landscape? The researcher adopts an intersectional stance and a poststructuralist understanding of subjectivity and positioning to study identity. Life story interviews and narrative inquiry are utilized as methodology to collect stories from ESL female teachers teaching in postsecondary education and to retell the same so as to achieve an informed understanding of the phenomenon under study. The study reveals that the participants have experienced an intersection of multiple identities which collectively function to marginalize them under the discourse of difference as deficit. Apart from efforts to adapt to the dominant discourse, the participants have also acted to utilize their multiple identities so as to resist negative positioning. The participants’ experiences have posed questions concerning what institutional and systemic changes are needed in order to help their inclusion in postsecondary education. / Graduate / fuhong2015@gmail.com

In this study I use semi-structured interviews and participant observation, in an intersectional and post-colonial theoretical framework, to look at one specific aspect of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory: the restrictions of movement that are a result of the occupation, and how these influence different groups of the population in different ways, more specifically by analysing intersections of gender and age.  I consider not only restrictions caused by physical barriers, but also barriers caused by fear of violence or detainments and arrests. In the second part of the study I analyse strategies of resistance against the issues caused by the restrictions of movement and their gendered aspects. I show how the effects of the Wall, barriers and restrictions of movement are gendered and age-related, identifying multiple vulnerable locations at different intersections of gender and age. I also demonstrate how both individual strategies of resistance and the possibilities to participate in organised forms of resistance are gendered.

The susceptibility of individuals to illness and disease is greatly influenced by context specific social determinants of health (SDH), yet there is a dearth of literature pertaining to SDH among refugees, particularly those residing in urban areas. The purpose of this study was to identify and generate empirical evidence on SDH among female refugees in Malaysia. It focused specifically on Rohingya refugees, a stateless and persecuted Muslim minority from Myanmar. Intersectionality formed the theoretical foundation of the study, which utilized a qualitative research design and employed an exploratory, applied research approach. Document review provided background and contextual information for primary data, which were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. The study was undertaken in affiliation with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and had two primary outputs: it provided UNHCR with information and recommendations to inform context-specific program and policy development, and it generated rich empirical findings that contribute to the nascent evidence base on SDH in the context of forced migration. Results indicate that key factors affecting the health and wellbeing of Rohingya women include: their journey from Myanmar to Malaysia, income, employment, food security, transportation, the physical environment, UNHCR, security issues, education, religion, healthcare, and social capital/the social safety net. These interacted, overlapped and compounded each other, forming a ‘web of interrelated factors’ that affected participants’ health. Findings provide insight into the instrumental role of the sociopolitical context in structuring the lives of urban refugee women, and emphasize the importance of extending current discourse beyond refugee women’s needs and vulnerabilities to consider their resilience and agency in situations of significant hardship. / Graduate / 2015-03-28 / 0573

The experience of transgender people provides a unique opportunity to further our understanding of intersectionality, experienced and expressed through multiple axes of social location. Transpeople change genders in relation to androcentric, middle-class, whitenormative, and heterocentric cultural narratives. My dissertation contributes to our understandings of the interconnections of the social structural contexts of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and of how they shape the meanings we attribute to our experiences of self and identity. In addition, I show how the case of transpeople illuminates how all people draw upon hegemonic cultural constructions of intersecting social locations in processes of creating and understanding themselves. Thus, I provide insights into how individuals actively perform ("do") their own multiple social identities (such as race, class, gender, and sexuality) and how they incorporate their perceptions of others' attributions of multiple dimensions of social location. Finally, I suggest how the collective identities of identity-based social movements, such as the Transgender Movement, are rooted in racialized gendered meanings.

Women of color who are also sexual minorities face an interesting position of being marginalized on multiple dimensions of their identity. Psychological health and well being can be negatively impacted by having a minority status, so it is imperative that psychologists are aware of cultural differences and are competent in addressing them (APA, 2002). For persons with marginalized racial, gender, and sexual identities, identity is crafted in ways that create meaning for the individual despite experiences of racism, sexism, or homophobia. The purpose of this study was to give voice to the lived experiences of African American women who are sexual minorities. Ten interviews were conducted using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and used frameworks of Queer Theory and intersectionality to study the experience of having multiple marginalized identities (i.e., racial, sexual, and gender identities), in addition to the meaning that individuals derive from the experience of their identity. Eight Emergent Themes were identified: (1) Dichotomy of Identity, (2) (Dis)Comfort in Communities, (3) Cultural Expectations, (4) Power and Oppression, (5) Movement between Categories, (6) Congruence, (7) Challenges to Identity, and (8) Expression and Performance of Self.

The Russian Orthodox Church is seeking to reestablish a leadership role in the spiritual health of the citizenry in post-Communist Russia via a concerted effort to forge an alliance with the Russian government, regardless of the secular constitution. Commencing with perceived preferential legislation, the Church has risen to heightened influence that is subsequently being used to disenfranchise non-traditional sexual communities. This paper offers an extensive cross-examination of legislation and intersectionality that highlights the incongruities of this alliance via international, federal, and religious documents, legal case law, polling data and more to purport that the Church encompasses a higher degree of complexity than was previously assumed, including non-religious self-identification. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the Church, in its current form, functions more as an agency of the State than as a religious entity. Lastly, this paper neither defends nor anathematizes the merits of any theological tenet.

This autoethnographic research project explores how a first-generation Canadian Ismaili Muslim, grapples with the tensions of belonging and identity while living in the in-between spaces of multiple social locations. Using an intersectional third-wave feminist approach, a method I term “third-wave dervish”, I metaphorically spin in a similar manner to a whirling dervish. Each spin provokes a round of critical reflection grounded in a node of intersect. Throughout the dance, how each node of intersect – religion and spirituality, geographical location, ethnicity and culture, and gender – implicates the in-between spaces I find myself located within, on the periphery of, and wavering between is explored. Narratives from my early years, adolescence, as a young adult in a graduate classroom, and as a young practitioner serve as data. For the first time, during re-iterations of memories, experiences of being minoritized and racialized are acknowledged and I begin to challenge gender binaries and offer insight into how I unknowingly negotiated and navigated complex social spaces. Personal experiences and reflections are then translated beyond the self to offer insight into how human and social development practitioners can use the key findings of how a brown-bodied female moved through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. The dissertation offers suggestions for practitioners to actively engage in, understand, and respond to children and youth’s verbal and non-verbal responses to experiences they are having. In addition, the text outlines the benefit of and ways in which practitioners may encourage difficult conversations with clients who are minoritized, and how to foster safe spaces for children, youth, and young adults to explore their sense of belonging and identity. / Graduate

Video games are often written off as juvenile or frivolous, but they are actually vehicles of socialization and hegemonic ideologies. Because of this, video games are deserving of research and critique. In video games, women are often underrepresented or hypersexualized, while men can be hypermasculinized. Many times, racial and ethnic portrayals in video games paint the person of color as victims of violence, villains, or sports athletes, while white characters take the role of hero or protagonist. Heterosexuality typically goes unmarked and is considered the default sexuality, and homophobic sentiments and slurs are prevalent in the gaming community. Because game developers still adhere to the belief that gamers are a homogenous group of white, cisgender, heterosexual men, LGBT+ representations generally fall into stereotypes—if they are included in the first place. With the lack of marginalized representation, gamers can queer video games through role-playing, queer readings, and in-game modifications. Furthermore, an intersectional analysis of video games is a missing gap in the literature, and this research aims to fill this gap. Through the deployment of critical discourse analysis, I analyzed the critically acclaimed video game The Last of Us Remastered and its accompanying side story The Last of Us: Left Behind for hegemonic or subversive representations of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and intersectionality. I discovered that although the game may incorporate diverse characters, the story ultimately centers on masculinity, heteronormativity, and whiteness through deployment of hegemony.