<p> The nonprofit sector is the third largest employing industry in the United States and impacts almost 10% of the economy (Roeger, Blackwood, &amp; Pettijohn, 2012; Salamon, Sokolowski, &amp; Geller, 2012). Women comprise over 75% of the nonprofit workforce, yet men hold over 80% of leadership positions (Bronznick &amp; Goldenhar, 2009; McInnes, 2008). The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to examine the work-life balance practices of women leaders in nonprofit organizations and determine experiences impacting their life course. The ultimate goal was to gain insight from women leaders in nonprofit organizations to identify strategies for more women to advance into leadership roles. The researcher utilized a qualitative methodology with the life course theory developed by Giele (2008). </p><p> The research questions were: 1. What demographic factors, if any, are related to work-life balance issues for women leaders in nonprofit organizations? 2. How is the life course for women leaders in nonprofit organizations impacted, if at all, by experiences, identity, motivation, adaptive and relational style? 3. What strategies, if any, are women leaders in nonprofit organizations utilizing for work-life balance? </p><p> 20 women leaders in nonprofit organizations served as the study population. The women held positions of vice president or above or positions equivalent to vice president if the organization did not use such titles. Participants provided socio-demographic data and responses to 5 sets of questions regarding early adulthood, childhood and early adolescence, current adulthood, future adulthood and coping strategies. </p><p> The key findings and conclusions revealed challenges with work-life balance associated with diverse demographic factors. Experiences related to identity, relational style, drive and motivation and adaptive style influenced life courses and are anticipated to influence the future life courses of participants, specifically regarding decisions on educational attainment, partnerships, family, careers, and social involvement. Work-life balance strategies were discovered in 4 areas: self-care, partners, professional skills, and social support. </p><p> Overall, the research provided a composite of the participants as women leaders in nonprofit organizations, including their backgrounds and life stories. The research demonstrated that work-life balance continues to be an issue and an interest for women leaders in nonprofit organizations. </p>

<p>Between 2004 and 2014, healthcare jobs were among the fastest growing occupations in the U.S, adding 4.3 million positions and expected job growth of 30.3%. The majority of the healthcare workforce is overwhelmingly dominated by women. However, when it comes to leadership positions, especially executive and board levels, females are considerably underrepresented. Interestingly, though, women, more than men, are reported to demonstrate traits such as transparency, compassion, and support for teamwork, which would benefit organizations as they venture into the future of healthcare delivery. In recent years, women have made minimal entry into the highest ranks of managerial positions of healthcare in American corporations. The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to identify experiences, barriers, and obstacles that women in healthcare organizations have overcome in their efforts to obtain successful leadership positions. Ten women in varying capacities of healthcare leadership positions from across the United States engaged in open-ended interviews to discuss what obstacles and adversities they have faced and conquered to advance to their levels of leadership. The data focused on career paths, obstacles, leadership qualities, demographics, and experiences. The participants identified their perceived leadership styles to be centered around the importance of communication and what they deemed soft skills, suggesting a different style from their male counterparts. The results of this study confirmed that even in the 21st century, career barriers such as family responsibilities, gender, lack of self-confidence, and current career challenges continue to exist for women seeking executive leadership positions in the healthcare field. Keywords: women?s leadership, healthcare, leadership barriers, obstacles

Research was carried out to explore and describe student-patient accounts about communication at the health appointment. The intent was to develop improved understanding about the patient-provider communication process from the patient's point of view. A multimethods design was used to address: (1) How do student-patients perceive the communication in a health interview? and (2) Do student-patient accounts of the physician or nurse practitioner interview differ? Subsequent to a scheduled yearly or revisit appointment, one hundred upperclass and graduate student women completed The Communication Satisfaction Scale and The Medical Interview Satisfaction Scale. Further, twenty-five women were interviewed about their perceptions of communication at the appointment. Symbolic interaction and accounts literature guided the overall effort. Survey outcomes indicated that participants perceived high levels of communication satisfaction. Further, sample subgroups showed no statistically significant differences; however, suggestive directions were noted. In the older (versus younger) participant subgroup, somewhat more favorable mean ratings of communication satisfaction were seen. In the subgroup by provider gender, very slightly more favorable mean communication satisfaction ratings were seen between student-patients and female physicians and nurse practitioners (than male physicians). Qualitative data suggested that the symbol of provider gender held the greatest meaning for participants. On biographical data sheets, participants cited minimal preferences related to choice of provider by gender; however, interview transcripts reflected the opposite. The qualitative data were assessed using a recently developed framework which examines womens' ways of knowing (Belenky et al, 1986). In younger interviewees, woman-to-woman communication more frequently depicted "connected" knowing, and woman-to-man communication, "separate" knowing. In older interviewees, more variable differences were noted. Assessment of provider symbol by role showed that younger participants hardly differentiated physician and nurse practitioner. For older participants, however, provider symbolism was of moderate influence in their communication. Overall, both quantitative and qualitative data showed high levels of communication satisfaction. Discussion illuminated the challenge faced by student-patients and providers alike in interpreting words in context, identifying their respective meanings, and managing the overall communication process.

Television is our most pervasive representation of a shared "cultural space" within which the allocation of social value is negotiated. This study traces the efforts of one social group, Viewers for Quality Television, in their attempts to contest the distribution of cultural space on television. Data collection included a survey of 1107 members, a series of focus groups, participant observation, and textual analysis. Since the group is composed of television fans, the project also develops a theoretical framework within which to view fandom: what produces fandom, what its role in popular culture is, what practices distinguish fans from each other, and who is likely to be a fan. Using a sociology of culture perspective, fandom is reconceptualized as a spectrum of practices engaged in to develop a sense of personal control or influence over the object of fandom (such as a star or text). Fans may be seen as members of subordinated social groups who try to align themselves with meanings embodied in stars or other texts that best express their own sense of social identity. However, there are widely varying degrees of involvement in fan practices oriented toward this alignment, and this variance is associated with different outcomes. The most important finding is that for these fans, the more involved one is in fan practices, the more one comes to feel one is empowered with a sense of control over the television industry, regardless of whether or not one's efforts to influence the object of fandom have been successful. In addition, how much one enjoys television is positively and significantly associated with degree of involvement in fan practices as well as one's perception of influence. The process of asserting one's social values and "tastes" within the television programming structure is politicized and class-driven. If social values (therefore, tastes) are expressed via social identity, one would expect to see this demonstrated in cultural preferences. The membership of VQT (and of most fan groups) is overwhelmingly female, and inasmuch as this comprises a specific form of social identity for members, not surprisingly the group has a strong implicit taste agenda oriented toward protecting and enlarging representations of women on television.

The traditional hierarchical relationship between nurses and physicians negatively influences nurse's job satisfaction, stress, empowerment, retention and productivity and the outcomes of health care services to patients. While a major goal of professional nursing is to establish a more collaborative relationship through changes in nurses' relationship behaviors with physicians, findings in regard to these behaviors are mixed. Because nurses' intergroup behavior with physicians is influenced by their formulations of the meaning of that relationship, it is important to understand the nature and content of those formulations. The purpose of this study was to explore the meaning of the nurse-physician relationship from the perspective of practicing nurses in order to see the world of nurse-physician relationships as nurses do. This process called for a long qualitative interview approach which allowed the nurse to speak for herself and allowed the researcher to develop an understanding of the categories and logic through which the nurse sees the nurse-physician relationship by means of thematic analysis of the interview data. The study found that nurses viewed the nurse-physician relationship as a team. Through collegial interaction, physicians showed respect for nurses' knowledge by seeking, listening to and acting upon nurses' recommendations. Nurses believed that they contributed important information to medical decision-making through their knowledge of individual patients, their clinical experience and their scientific training, without which, the medical decision would be incomplete. The findings suggest a new paradigm for the nature of the nurse-physician relationship: nurse participation in medical decision making based on nurses' knowledge. The findings further suggest the applicability of intergroup relations theory as a frame of reference for understanding and improving nurse-physician relations.

Recent new historicist accounts of the theatricality of power in early modern culture have often neglected issues of gender and sexuality despite the fact of four decades of female rule and the pervasiveness of images of female sexuality in cultural discourses on theatricality and power. This study of four early Jacobean Shakespearean tragedies--Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus--reveals intimate connections between early modern culture's conceptions of power and its notions of female sexuality. Specifically, early modern constructions of the state as a family together with the concept and practice of a theatrical monarchy aligns the women in these tragedies with contemporary definitions and practices of power. In addition, reading these plays against a variety of other cultural discourses on women reveals glaring contradictions between various discourses on women and the possibilities for female power signalled by those inconsistencies. Reversing current notions of discontinuous identity or postmodern subjectivity as disempowering in denying agency, this dissertation seeks to redefine female agency and asserts that the intrinsic contradictions in representations of women open up the possibilities for female power. By highlighting their constructedness as theatrical creations, the discontinuities inherent in female characters in these plays signals a subversive site for empowerment in a culture which saw inconsistency and theatricality as constitutive of power.

In my dissertation I appropriate the insights of Theodor Adorno to critique identity logic in feminist theories of knowledge and representation. I do not argue we can "escape" identity or that we should reject it as a salient moment of cognition that shapes our political and sentient life. Rather, I question the privileged place of identity logic in feminism and elaborate a dialectical theory of experience and interpretation using Adorno's theory of negative dialectics. Adorno anticipates post-modern critiques of identity logic and theories of representation while sustaining a normative commitment to the quality of experience in the social world. Negative Dialectics elaborates a method of interpretation that contributes to realizing new forms for self-other relations in modernity. It is a resource feminism can draw upon to intervene in epistemological and post-modern arguments about identity and representation in modernity. In his philosophy, Adorno shows us that modes of representation and historical social relations interact in a negative dialectic that never allows us to realize, much less to tell, the final truth of experience. The relationship between form (representation) and substance (experience) is complexly mediated through the object world as are inter-subjective relations. In light of his insights, I critique the work of materialist feminists who assert that material experience offers epistemological privilege. I argue they obscure the contradictory effects of representation and the remainders left by efforts to conceptualize difference (in material experience) in modernity. I also explore the work of post-modern feminists who argue that because the "truth" cannot be told we must focus only on the politics of representation. I argue they defer attention to the qualities of experience that drive oppositional political struggle. Adorno's philosophy of experience and negative dialectics guides me in these readings and critiques of contemporary feminisms.

In 1930, the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham proclaimed the arrival of "dance as an art of and from America." Doris Humphrey, Ted Shawn, Katherine Dunham, and Helen Tamiris joined Graham in shaping a new art form: modern dance. Confrontational and experimental, modern dancers questioned their own roles in society, the role of art in America, and the place of America in the world. This dissertation is about how modern dance developed in the midst of debates about national identity. In the wave of cultural nationalism of the 1930s, modern dancers attacked ballet because of its elitist roots in European courts. Influenced by communist and socialist politics, they danced in bare feet, with unadorned costumes, and privileged individual expression and portrayals of abstract concepts over fairytale narratives and escapist entertainment. White women (many of whom were Jewish), gay men, and some African American men and women populated modern dance. Separate chapters explore how each of these groups negotiated what it meant to be an American through dance. Challenges to gender, sexual, racial, and class norms coalesced in idealized visions of American democracy and pluralism such as Graham's 1938 "American Document." Dancing American heretics, pioneers, and workers toppled corps of European swans, sylphs, and snowflakes. The convergence of these marginalized groups in modern dance demonstrates the critical role that social identities played in this movement of cultural nationalism. Modern dancers found in dance the medium through which they could explore what set them apart from the white male so often depicted as the consummate expression of American individualism: their bodies. The case of modern dance highlights the interplay of different identities--as women, Jews, or African Americans--that undercut a unified national identity. In this art form that attracted physically distinct groups of people, those distinctions, particularly of race, fractured ideas of a national culture. In the wake of World War II, Merce Cunningham led a new phase of modern dance that rejected nationalist themes and social purpose. In dancing America, modern dancers exposed the physical and social dimensions of nationalist beliefs in 1930s and 1940s American society.

This dissertation considers the problem that maternal difference represents inequality and inferiority--either a stigma as mothers are forced to compete on abstractly "equal" terms with others (as if they were the same as others), or seen to represent a special condition in need of protection. It argues that maternal difference is the result of cultural representations of mothers as nurturing, selfless, and always available to whoever needs them. These images are crucial aspects of the process by which mothers constitute their selves and their lives and come to establish goals, aspirations, and relationships. Using the work of Michel Foucault and Luce Irigaray, the dissertation shows that these goals and aspirations may appear necessary, natural, and personal, but in fact are constructed by the symbolic meanings and values that create and regulate society and culture, and so are contestable. It is the symbolic meanings and values that create maternal difference as inequality and inferiority. The dissertation distinguishes three body concepts: the sexual, the pregnant, and the nonpregnant/maternal body with daily responsibilities for children. It focuses on the third body concept to show how "experts" shape the habits, behaviors, and attitudes of mothers by disciplining mothers and imposing cultural scripts on them that shape the material practices of mothers, the series of practices through which mothers are governed and come to govern themselves. When mothers try to match the prescriptive ideals of self-control, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice, they follow rules and regulations that make them socially adapted and useful. This changes the way they and others think about their bodies and their possibilities. Feminist, black, and lesbian mothers offer models of practices and attitudes that challenge the hegemonic norms of motherhood when they refuse many of the disciplinary practices of motherhood and establish such practices as cooperative and collective rather than privatized mothering, or egalitarian parenting. Future challenges involve reinventing the subject positions of mothers, in part by reconceiving notions of time and space to take into account the material variety of embodiment among mothers as well as new relationships between mothers and others.

From 1962 to 1973 approximately 11,000 military women and an unknown number of civilian American women served in Vietnam during the war. Despite an ongoing fascination with the war, there has been little interest in the war stories of women veterans. Academic research in this area is shamefully lacking. This study was designed to focus attention on the war stories of women Vietnam veterans. It is motivated by the striking lack of resources or attention paid to the development of treatment models which can be helpful to women veterans who suffer with posttraumatic stress disorder as a result of their involvement in the war. This study was designed to explore the potential of storytelling as a way to help women who were in Vietnam heal from trauma. A narrative research methodology was used to record the war stories of five women Vietnam veterans. The stories which are included in this dissertation are those of three military nurses, one Red Cross worker, and one other civilian woman who worked in an "in country" refugee camp. The stories, including the author's own, are told in each woman veteran's authentic voice. The women veterans' war stories serve as the centerpiece of this dissertation. Of equal interest to the researcher was the interactive process of story making and the relationship between the storyteller and the witness which resulted in a resonating gestalt. Storytelling is healing when told in an empathic environment. Healing is relational. Narrative research methodology is mutually empowering for both the researcher and subject. Each of the women spoke of her repeated attempts to tell her story which went unheard, ignored or distorted. The principle factor which contributes to the efficacy of the model explored in this research is the quality of the witnessing.