This study examined the status of women in Southwestern Nigeria from a legal perspective. It scrutinized the three legal infrastructures in the Nigerian legal system. The study is based on the premise that the huge disparity in the socio-economic development of the women in South-western Nigeria is a consequence of inadequate legal protection. Four independent variables were considered, and three intervening variables were identified. Workshops, interviews and surveys were conducted. A document analysis approach was used to examine the three legal infrastructures in the Nigerian legal system—the Common Law also known as the English Law, the Statutory Laws which are a culmination of ordinances, bills, and decrees and the Customary laws which evolved through tradition. The study found that constitutional and statutory laws do indeed provide substantial protection for women; however, some Statutory laws exclude women married under the customary laws. The conclusions drawn from this finding is that factors including but not limited to the inadequacy of legal protection, are key elements to which the socio-economic and political backwardness of women may be attributed. The factors include a lack of gender specific legislation to emancipate women from the shackles of patriarchy; ignorance and lack of awareness of existing protection; biased customary laws which are pro-male and which inhibit the socio-economic and political advancement of women and customs which reinforce gender inequality.

Media play an important role in transmitting information for citizens in a country as large as Canada. Much of what Canadians know about the larger country comes to them through the media they view. What then, is the information that media carries forward. How do the media depict political movements and political actors who are not politicians? This thesis explores the implications of media coverage for feminist organizations in Canada, using as a case study media’s response to the cuts to the Status of Women Canada by the Harper government in the fall of 2006. This analysis specifically focuses on the image of feminism created in media and the importance (or lack thereof) communicated by media about such organizations. / Thesis (Master, Political Studies) -- Queen's University, 2007-10-23 20:03:09.21

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Sociology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 335-361). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004 & res_dat=xri:pqdiss & rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation & rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR11605.

This paper deals with social status of women in the world. Using specific indicators it attempts to approach worse women's position in the society as a whole and it describes inequalities between women and men. The first part of this paper shows main problematic areas in which women struggle with discrimination. These problems are related with worse access to services (health care and education), violence, armed conflicts, women situation in economics and weak power to take decision. Second part of this paper is focusing on three areas -- poverty, education and labour market. Gender analysis of these three areas shows how big differences between both genders are. The main focus of the last part is on the changes of the social role of women in world regions in time. At the end of the paper all three areas are interconnected to summarize the differences.

Scholars including Christine Fell, Pauline Stafford and Catherine Cubitt have tried to explain the status of women in Late Anglo-Saxon England in a variety of ways. Some, such as Fell, have framed the earlier Anglo-Saxon period as a golden Age which saw greater freedoms; others, like Stafford, Cubitt and Patricia Halpin, have argued for a more complicated reading, one that acknowledges the impact of the tenth-century monastic reform and the changes in types of religious life open to women. Occasionally studies draw on the art of the period to demonstrate their claims, but none foreground the visual evidence in the exploration of women's status in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Art historical studies, such as Catherine Karkov's examinations of Junius 11 and the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, which include discussion of the portrayal of women tend to examine the images in relation to various concepts ranging from the manuscript's audience to issues of female speech, as well as in isolation from the extant corpus of images of women known from Late Anglo-Saxon England. This study will focus on three distinct, yet related, case studies that typify the ways in which women are presented to different Late Anglo-Saxon audiences. These case studies emerge through a statistical analysis and survey of patterns of representation of over twenty illustrated manuscripts. The first focuses on the miniature of St Æthlthryth in the Benedictional of Æthelthryth, exploring how the image of Æthlthryth was utilised to communicate ideals, such as virginity, key to Æthelwold's view of reformed English monasticism. The second case study focuses on the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch and the ways in which women were utilised in demonstrating (un)righteous behaviours. The differences between the manuscripts while seeking to demonstrate how personifications, like the historical and biblical women of the first two case studies, can reveal the ways in which women were conceived in Late Anglo-Saxon society. Ultimately, this study will show that when women were portrayed in the art of the period, it is with specific ideals in mind that speak to acceptable behaviour, religious constructs, and the place and function of the woman in contemporary society.

This dissertation analyzes how transnational feminist advocacy and ideas about gender shaped modern human rights doctrines that remain central to this day. After World War II, United Nations delegates drafted and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). During this process, international feminist activists disagreed about how to incorporate women's long-standing rights claims into the emerging human rights framework. Fiery interwar debates about laws and standards that regulated female labor persisted, prompting influential U.S. feminists to oppose the inclusion of gender-specific rights. To challenge U.S. opposition, key delegates to the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) forged an unofficial coalition. Despite the fact that these CSW delegates held competing ideas about gender and represented distinct national governments, they collectively crafted a significant but little-known women's human rights agenda and lobbied UDHR drafters to adopt it. Their proposals not only included political and civil rights, but also promoted particular economic and social rights for women as a group. They maintained, for instance, that child care and maternity leave should be obligations of the state. Indeed, the CSW insisted that recognition of their women's human rights agenda was essential to building a socially-just postwar order. While Anglo-American women dominated interwar NGOs, the CSW showcased myriad international voices and won critical allies among liberal and conservative UN delegations by linking the advance of women's human rights to notions of modernity and democracy. As a result, the CSW made substantial political and civil rights gains, such as the guarantee of equal rights in marriage and divorce. Yet feminist delegates had to juggle their internationally-minded agenda with the interests they were to serve as national representatives. This task was further complicated by nascent Cold War politics and a growing anti-feminist backlash at the UN. In this context, UDHR drafters ultimately rejected the CSW's call for women's economic and social rights--a "social revolution" for women--in favor of the perceived stability of the "traditional" family. By the early 1950s, anti-communist pressures led the CSW to sever the pursuit of women's rights from the developing human rights framework at the UN. Feminists' absence from the UN human rights debates over the next several decades removed a forceful challenge to U.S.-led efforts to privilege political and civil rights over economic and social rights, and fostered a tacit hierarchy of rights that persists to this day. This dissertation places the CSW's competing vision of universal human rights at the center of the postwar human rights project, and expands our understanding of the history of international women's activism and human rights. By analyzing official UN records, delegates' papers and memoirs, and the records of governmental and non-governmental organizations, it reveals that postwar human rights advocacy was critically shaped by women's activism of the interwar period. Furthermore, this dissertation demonstrates that the CSW's demands for women's rights shaped the context from which the universal human rights framework emerged. Indeed, feminist activism and debates about the rights of women influenced UDHR drafters' views about human rights in ways that expanded, but also significantly curtailed postwar human rights standards. As a result, feminist activists continue to fight today for full recognition of women's rights as human rights.

This study documents a process of planned social change. In 1967, the Canadian government appointed the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW) following a campaign mounted by a coalition of women's groups to promote women's rights. The Commission helped to define the status of women as a legitimate social problem, recommended changes in social policy, and helped to mobilize a constituency which pressed the government to implement the recommendations. The existence of an organized and vocal women's movement strengthened the Commission's demand for "simple justice." / The Report of the Commission was tabled in 1970, and the government responded to it by creating a federal policy system for promoting women's rights. The study assesses the different outcomes of the 167 RCSW recommendations over a ten-year period and it discusses the relationships between the women's movement, a governmental commission of inquiry (RCSW), and public policy on the status of women in Canada.

Diss. av båda förf. Luleå : Luleå tekn. univ., 1999. / Även tillg. med tryckår: 3. uppl. 1999.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 548-564).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1974. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography : leaves 208-223.