This thesis investigates and contextualises as a historical subject a woman textile artist, Annie Gamett (1864-1942). It explores her personal writings, in particular the diary which she kept between the years 1899 and 1909. The use of autolbiographical writings requires a reflexive methodology. In recognising this I engage with the fragmentary material in the archive using feminist theories and discourses to produce an 'intellectual biography', within which the elements of Annie Gamett's life, revealed through her own words, interact with the cultural narratives which challenged and impinged on her individual life. In engaging with Annie's subjectivity, as a historical 'site', I aim to reveal the subtle complexities of 'real' lived experience, and show how a woman, who was inspired by her love of nature and troubled by the effects of industrialisation, was able to develop her creative skills and run a successful textile business within the remit of the Arts and Crafts Movement. My approach to this historical subject unites a feminist perspective with an endorsement of the discipline of Women's History and its central commitment to the recovery of lost vOIces.

Changes in women’s relationship to caring labour, and changes in societal attitudes towards women as nurses during the period when they became union members and aspiring professionals, are revealed in thirty-seven oral history interviews with women who became nurses between 1958, a pivotal time in the development of the publicly funded health care system, and 1977, when the last residential school of nursing closed in Calgary. This study challenges the historiography that suggests that nursing programs of nursing in the 1960s and early 1970s were sites of unusual social regulation, and that nursing was a career choice that women made because of a lack of other more challenging or rewarding alternatives. This study also challenges assumptions that women in nursing were unaffected by the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s and instead passively accepted a position of gendered subservience at home and in the workplace. Instead, I argue that nurses skilfully balanced work and other social responsibilities, primarily domestic caregiving, and also were active in unionization and professionalization in advance of other Canadian women workers. The ability of nurses to maintain a prominent position in health care, to advocate for the conditions needed to provide the best nursing care possible, while also fighting for improved working conditions and higher professional status is an impressive story of how women in these decades used gender, and class, as tools to enact social change. These efforts are all the more impressive when considered within the context of social opposition faced by nurses as they both resisted and conformed to expectations that their primary role was as wives and mothers. Nurses negotiated this challenging political terrain by framing their work in terms of its practical necessity and gendered suitability as women’s paid employment. In making these claims, I position nursing and nursing education as a form of women’s labour that exemplifies employed women’s struggles to promote fairer wages, better working conditions, and access to the full benefits of economic and social citizenship for all women. This challenge to the prevailing assessment of nursing during this period establishes the main thesis of this dissertation. / Graduate / 2015-06-17 / 0334 / 0569 / 0453 / mrgrtscaia@gmail.com

Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianpolis / In 1936, Clarence J. Gamble, heir to the Proctor & Gamble fortune, established the Mountain Maternal Health League (MMHL) in Berea, Kentucky. Gamble had a strong interest in testing the effectiveness of simple birth control methods as a means to reduce the birth rate of impoverished and rural people and he would fund the organization for nearly six years as an experiment to test a jelly-and-syringe method of birth control in rural Kentucky. After his financial support ended, however, the organization continued. The women activists who worked with Gamble shifted the organizational focus, models of operation, and available methods to accommodate changing perspectives and expanding communities.

Early Utah history was characterized in part by a period of journalistic controversy and abuse that clearly reflected the differences between the Latter-day Saint and Gentile populations of the Territory. This thesis is a study of the differences between the Mormon and Gentile presses concerning the subject of woman suffrage.

By focusing on women workers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, this study seeks to understand why women were initially congregated in certain occupations such as clerical work and later moved into non-traditional jobs such as engineering and the sciences. Such an investigation requires careful examination of the changing attitudes towards female workers in technical or non-traditional fields and why and how those attitudes changed over time and the extent to which this occurred. It also attempts to identify areas of continuing concern. The study reveals that several factors contributed to the women's progress in the workplace. These included the rise of the second wave of feminism, the federal government's support for the new feminism, favorable U.S. Supreme Court decisions and the willingness of officials at NASA's Kennedy Space Center to implement federal decrees. In addition, the women's movement expanded its efforts to encourage women to gain the skills and education that were necessary to move women into scientific and technical fields, although recently that effort has reached a plateau. The research for this study includes employee data from NASA and KSC, oral histories with female KSC workers, articles from KSC's official employee newsletter, Spaceport News, websites, and other secondary sources about women in technical fields, women in the workplace, and the recruitment of women into the labor force. Data from NASA and Spaceport News articles was also compared with information obtained through oral histories, to determine if the official policies of KSC influenced the behavior of its employees. Attention is also given to the legislation and court cases that opened doors for women seeking new avenues of advancement and the extent to which these outside factors influenced changes in women's employment and opportunities at KSC. This study shows that the status of women at KSC changed along with the larger women's movement in America. Supreme Court cases and Equal Employment Opportunity laws helped women gain headway in fields traditionally occupied by men. Women received token representation at first, but later moved up in their fields and even became senior managers. This change took place over a long period of time and is still ongoing. At the same time, there is still strong evidence of backlash and some weakening on the part of federal government in terms of its willingness to support women's drive for equality.

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Throughout the eighteenth century the Age of Enlightenment transformed public discourse across Western Europe. In France, the salons of Paris became the primary institutions of Enlightenment thought. Hosted by women, the salons possessed a unique atmosphere in which men and women were regarded as intellectual equals. My thesis focuses on the role the female hostesses, salonnières, had in initiating French movements for gender equality that continued with great momentum throughout the French Revolution. By using popular artwork, literature, and memoirs I show how the efforts of French women to achieve gender equality helped give early rise to feminism.

Christine Jorgensen is the first known American citizen undergo sexual reassignment surgery. After her medical operations in Denmark in 1952, during which George Jorgensen Jr., a twenty-six year old man from the Bronx, New York, became Christine Jorgensen, an attractive, feminine woman, Jorgensen returned home to face the curiosity and scrutiny of the American public. As the “first celebrity transsexual," Jorgensen sparked public controversy by questioning the gender expectations that structured society in mid-twentieth century America. Jorgensen’s gender presentation closely aligned to the idealized standards of womanhood reinforced by institutional forces during the 1950s. Due to the amount of public scrutiny she faced after her transition, Jorgensen had to conform to these expectations entirely in order to achieve social acceptance. Examining Jorgensen’s gender expression critically exposes the social limits for expression of gender as well as what forces were responsible for placing these limits on women.

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Master of Arts / Department of History / Andrew Orr / Women have been in integral part of history that has been decidedly left out of the picture until the last few decades. As history has been re-casted to include the contributions of women, this work examines the struggles endured by the American women who joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and/or the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. Using a limited investigation into the newspaper coverage in the New York area and personal comments WAAC/WAC veterans, this report argues that early press coverage of women soldiers belittled and humiliated them, thus discouraging women from enlisting. Over time, coverage became more positive as journalists gradually accepted the importance of women’s contributions to the military. By 1943, coverage was increasingly positive and articles about WACs received more prominent placement in newspapers. This shift occurred at the same time the number of women enlisting grew, suggestion the two are related. It was through the changes in the expected traditional proper place of women to a more realistic acknowledgment of the legitimacy of women’s work in the military that helped lay the platform to more permanent positive changes for women in the workplace, society, and at home.