While research on sexual violence, rape crisis centres and volunteers is extensive, there are very few empirical studies that draw specifically on the experiences of rape crisis volunteers. Instead, most of the literature pertaining to rape crisis work focuses on the efforts of social workers or other paid staff. When rape crisis volunteers are examined, the focus is primarily on the context through which their work is performed, for instance, how a rape crisis centre operates in relation to other community organizations (Campbell, 1998) or whether a specific rape crisis centre upholds feminist philosophies (Maier, 2008). Studies are also usually restricted to the negative effects of rape crisis work (for example, how rape crisis workers experience anxiety, social withdrawal and vicarious trauma) or focus on what sustains rape crisis workers while working in a stressful environment (Baird and Jenkins, 2003; Hellman and House, 2006; Thornton and Novak, 2010; Wasco and Campbell, 2002). Using the life history approach, this study builds on previous research and explores the experiences of volunteers at rape crisis centres across Ontario, Canada. In particular, the following issues were examined: motivations to volunteer, personal challenges and tensions, as well as challenges with respective centres. Findings indicate that all participants in the study have directly and/or indirectly experienced a range of different kinds of violence. Also, participants noted a range of complex and interconnected motivations for their initial and ongoing involvement in rape crisis work, most notably, self-healing. Finally, most participants expressed hesitancy towards identifying as feminists and did not associate feminism and the anti-violence movement as being strictly related to women. Theorizing the experiences of rape crisis volunteers through the lens of standpoint theory offers a new approach to knowledge construction in the area of rape crisis work and points towards the way that services, including training, can be improved for volunteers. Furthermore, the life history approach offers a unique way to understand the experiences of rape crisis volunteers in greater depth and breadth, since attention was placed on the volunteer process as well as other life experiences.

While research on sexual violence, rape crisis centres and volunteers is extensive, there are very few empirical studies that draw specifically on the experiences of rape crisis volunteers. Instead, most of the literature pertaining to rape crisis work focuses on the efforts of social workers or other paid staff. When rape crisis volunteers are examined, the focus is primarily on the context through which their work is performed, for instance, how a rape crisis centre operates in relation to other community organizations (Campbell, 1998) or whether a specific rape crisis centre upholds feminist philosophies (Maier, 2008). Studies are also usually restricted to the negative effects of rape crisis work (for example, how rape crisis workers experience anxiety, social withdrawal and vicarious trauma) or focus on what sustains rape crisis workers while working in a stressful environment (Baird and Jenkins, 2003; Hellman and House, 2006; Thornton and Novak, 2010; Wasco and Campbell, 2002). Using the life history approach, this study builds on previous research and explores the experiences of volunteers at rape crisis centres across Ontario, Canada. In particular, the following issues were examined: motivations to volunteer, personal challenges and tensions, as well as challenges with respective centres. Findings indicate that all participants in the study have directly and/or indirectly experienced a range of different kinds of violence. Also, participants noted a range of complex and interconnected motivations for their initial and ongoing involvement in rape crisis work, most notably, self-healing. Finally, most participants expressed hesitancy towards identifying as feminists and did not associate feminism and the anti-violence movement as being strictly related to women. Theorizing the experiences of rape crisis volunteers through the lens of standpoint theory offers a new approach to knowledge construction in the area of rape crisis work and points towards the way that services, including training, can be improved for volunteers. Furthermore, the life history approach offers a unique way to understand the experiences of rape crisis volunteers in greater depth and breadth, since attention was placed on the volunteer process as well as other life experiences.

Women in the United Methodist Church (UMC) were officially granted full clerical rights over 50 years ago, and the church’s official stance is that women and men are to enjoy fully equal rights throughout all aspects of life and society, religious and otherwise. Despite these policies, however, women’s and men’s opportunities and experiences in professional ministry in the church remain far from equal. Women continue to be underrepresented in the leadership of the UMC, especially in more prestigious appointments and positions, and face challenges to their work, leadership, and authority throughout their ministries. In fact, national statistics from the UMC show that as of 2010, only 24.6% of the clerical leaders are women. In the Kentucky Annual Conference (KAC), the focus of the present study, women are even more sparsely represented, constituting only 13.56% of the leadership as of 2010 appointments, with few serving at larger churches and only one currently serving as a district superintendent; only four have ever served in that role in the Conference’s history. Using qualitative, semi-structured interviews, I collected data from 36 of the 118 clergy women of the 2010 Conference, including women serving in all types of positions in the Conference as well as all current and former district superintendents and many of the earliest pioneers in the KAC. The goal of this study is to understand from the perspectives of these clergy women their paths into and through ministry, the support and resistance that play such key roles in their lives and work, how their families affect and are affected by their work, and the symbols and symbolic actions that they use to claim and demonstrate the authority they have been given and to navigate some of the obstacles in their paths. In order to provide a theoretical framework for this study, I used primarily social constructionism and standpoint theory and related methods.

Using an institutional ethnographic approach, this research explores the everyday experiences of women living with Multiple Sclerosis and the work they do to understand and manage their illness. Starting with the women's own accounts of their everyday experiences with MS, this research analyzes and explicates the social relations that are involved in their everyday taken-for-granted lifework. An exploration of the ruling institutions coordinating with the everyday work of these women provides insight to some of the struggles and problems people with MS encounter. This project explicates and problematizes the disjuncture between the actual lived experience of having MS and the biomedical institution's authority over the illness. / Graduate

Pela análise comparativa dos romances Ventos do apocalipse (1999) e Niketche: uma história de poligamia (2004), da moçambicana Paulina Chiziane, esta dissertação discute as representações e o papel social da mulher em romances que se pautam na intensa força das relações sociais que informam a maneira de agir de homens e de mulheres em Moçambique. Mostramos como as mulheres especialmente as moçambicanas , antes personagens majoritariamente representadas por uma construção estético-literária masculina, alcançam na escrita feminina de Paulina uma representação da mulher sobre a mulher. Assim, procuramos consolidar um pensamento crítico em torno da hipótese de investigação pela qual se efetiva no espaço literário a desconstrução da subalternidade instituída para as mulheres e enraizada na ordem capitalista patriarcal. / Through a comparative analysis of the novels Ventos do apocalipse [Winds of the Apocalypse] (1999) and Niketche: uma história de poligamia [Niketche: A Story of Polygamy] (2004), by Mozambican writer Paulina Chiziane, the present dissertation discusses the representations and the social role of women in novels based on the intense strength of the social relations that guide the behavior of men and women in Mozambique. We shall show how women especially those from Mozambique characters who used to be mainly represented by a male aesthetic-literary construction, acquire, in Paulinas female writing, a womans representation of women. Thus, we attempt to consolidate a critical thinking to support the investigation hypothesis according to which the subalternity instituted for women and rooted in the patriarchic capitalist order is deconstructed in the literary space.

Globally workplace violence is a pressing concern. It is an ever increasing problem and thus an extensive field to research. Despite an increase in interest, there are specific areas of workplace violence that remain relatively unexplored, and this is further compounded because workplace violence is not clearly defined and neither is it readily understood (Dolan 2000, Webster et al 2007). Women’s experiences of workplace violence have been overlooked, primarily because women exist within a patriarchal society, and many are deemed of a lesser value than men. A patriarchal society has elevated men into positions of power whilst women have more generally remained subordinate, and it is this which has led to many of the experiences of working women going unrecognised as violence and abuse (Morgan and Bjokrt, 2006). Subsequently, these encounters have remained unexplored and under-researched (Dale and Acik 2005). To address this imbalance my study has adopted a feminist standpoint. It is therefore based on in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with working women from a diverse range of occupations and backgrounds, and who have endured the lived reality of a working woman’s life. By taking such an approach this study has identified many of the patterns and trends of physical, psychological and sexual violence that are relevant to the suffering of working women. Further, the findings identify how working women face supplementary risks to those generically posed to the workforce. Additionally, this study identifies ‘risky traits’ that are pertinent to the experiences of women, including systems of male power and dominance, for example, male solidarity. These are systems that exist to the detriment of women, in that many women feel fearful, believing they are isolated and indeed vulnerable in the workplace. Moreover, the workplace offers workers minimal support, if any, to female victims of workplace violence which also impacts on the health and wellbeing of working women more generally.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to enrich the understanding of the counselling and psychotherapy experiences of women who have previously or currently worked in the Canadian sex industry. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 6 participants ranging in age from 19 to 52 who described an individual counselling experience in which they revealed their sex work employment status. I analyzed the interview drawing from a Gadamerian hermeneutic phenomenological approach grounded in feminist standpoint theory. The results revealed 17 themes organized in 5 categories: (a) seeking counselling, (b) the therapeutic relationship, (c) disclosure of sex work, (d) counselling outcomes, and (e) recommendations for counsellors working with sex workers. The results shed light on indoor sex worker clients’ heterogeneous counselling needs, expectations, and experiences, providing valuable considerations for culturally responsive and socially just practice with sex workers. The discussion of the results reflects previous research studies, clinical implications, and suggestions for future research.

Aim – The paper aims to acknowledge female microentrepreneurs' situation, using a feminist perspective, by identifying affecting aspects and factors when relying on borrowing a smartphone in order to run their business. Further, the study will have the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals number 8. Decent work and economic growth, and number 10. Reduced inequality, as an overall guideline.  Design / methodology / approach – To acknowledge the female microentrepreneurs' situation, we used feminist standpoint to understand the female mictroentreprenuers. The method for the data collection was a qualitative approach, conducting semi-structured interviews in the urban area of Accra, with a total of 15 female microentrepreneurs. The data were analysed and generated five concepts; relation to the mobile owner, feelings about borrowing, limitations with borrowing, impact of smartphone use in the microenterprise and impact of smartphone use for the female.  Findings – The findings of this paper point to the importance and positive aspects of using a smartphone when running a business, but also how smartphones have become a symbol of power when borrowing, as the female microentreprenuers are in reliance of the mobile owner. The study found six salient aspects affecting the social relations when borrowing a smartphone; relationships, mutual understanding, compensation, attitude, control and dependence. Further, four factors; customer relations, marketing, self-empowerment and financial empowerment, had an impact on the female microentrepreneurs and their businesses.  Originality / value – By using a feminist standpoint, this study extends the existing knowledge of the usage of smartphones in order to run a business and how operating a business empowers females. It also expands the current understanding about how borrowing a smartphone affects female microenterprises.

MGS / Institute for Gender and Youth Studies / ‘Gonyalelwa lapa’ is a form of a marriage whereby a family marries a woman to a deceased son who passed on without having biological children, for the purpose of restoring or reviving the deceased’s name. The woman is married with her existing children, or to bear children who will take the surname of the deceased man. Women find it difficult to leave such marriages for the fear of losing their children whom they signed off by accepting to be married under this type of marriage. This study employs the feminist standpoint methodological approach in order to explore experiences of women who are married for ‘lapa’. The study purposefully selected a sample of 8 women who are married under ‘Gonyalelwa lapa’ as well as 4 key informants. Findings demonstrate that women marry for ‘lapa’ mainly for economic reasons, to escape stigmatization, for the acquisition of the marital surname, which is tied to being acknowledged, respected and recognized by the community. Nevertheless, these women face multidimensional challenges within their in-laws’ households: they receive no support from the inlaws; their girl-children suffer discrimination based on ‘sex-preference’, boys are given more value on the basis that a boy will be able to perpetuate a deceased man’s name. Most women married under this type of marriage suffer from emotional and economic abuse at the hands of their in-laws. The study reveals that these challenges are attributed to lack of physical presence of the husband in the family. The study recommends that a large scale study be conducted on this or related topic, to build knowledge and create an awareness of such a marriage as to facilitate its inclusion in Customary Marriage Act.

Abstract WHY WOMEN GIVE TO WOMEN: A PORTRAIT OF GENDER-BASED PHILANTHROPY AT A PUBLIC COLLEGE IN VIRGINIA By Amy Gray Beck, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2019 Chair: Katherine Cumings Mansfield, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations, School of Education, UNC Greensboro The cost of public higher education is steadily increasing, with state and federal government cutting its support year after year. Students are having to pay more out of pocket for classes and tuition, and institutions rely on private funding support to provide educational opportunities to students in need. Historically, fundraising operations in higher education have focused on a traditional solicitation model, focusing on fundraising from men in households, but savvy institutions have begun to focus on philanthropy from specific populations, including women, to increase dollars raised. Research shows women are more philanthropically generous than their male counterparts, especially when giving to education. The main purpose of this qualitative case study was to highlight the successes of a women and philanthropy program at William and Mary, a public college in Virginia, as it is the first and only women and philanthropy program in the country where the funds donated are given back to benefit women, as well as add to the growing body of literature on women and philanthropy, and the lack of literature that exists on women giving to women in higher education. The alumnae initiatives endowment funded by the Society of 1918 offers alumnae leadership development, networking opportunities, continuing education, empowerment, and more. Private funding in this case is enabling a social justice program to exist that otherwise would not be funded through tuition and state and federal funding. Interviews, observations, and document analysis were utilized to examine contextual factors contributing to the development of the Society of 1918 and motivations for members joining the Society at a $10,000 level. A feminist standpoint theoretical framework helped to develop meaning-making of alumnae’s motivations for joining the Society of 1918. Utilizing portraiture as a qualitative method, findings showed how gender and timely social justice movements played a role in influencing alumnae motivations to join the Society of 1918. Finally, best practices are shared for institutions considering a comprehensive women and philanthropy program whose private gifts benefit women.