Tesi sul tema "Womenʹs studies"

For decades, there has been a concern with the negative framing of black women in the media. Historically, black women are placed into four stereotypical frames: The Mammy, The Jezebel, The Sapphire and The Matriarch. However, in 2008, a new image of black women arose through Michelle Obama. She was well rounded — beautiful, intelligent, insightful, humorous, strong, yet soft all at the same time. This study seeks to understand the changes in the framing of black women since Michelle Obama’s time as First Lady.

More specifically, this study focuses on the medium of magazine journalism, which seems to be largely ignored in the realm of media studies. Thirty articles from a mainstream (Glamour) and a black women’s magazine (Essence) were analyzed for the presence of historical frames along with the emergence of new ones. The study employs the qualitative method of textual analysis as a way to determine frames and their meanings through a grounded theory approach.

The primary outcomes of this study are a greater understanding of how historical frames still affect how magazines, mainstream and black, frame black women, and the revealing of new frames that depart from those historical representations. Furthermore, this study will be used as a foundation for editors, writers, educators and students alike, to create more authentic and multifaceted stories about black women.

Demonstrations in response to the harsh austerity budget in Greece which cut valuable government services, and the civil unrest in Athens specifically, are an outward, visible response to economic crisis. In an androcentric society such as Greece, women are disproportionately affected by the austerity measures because of the feminization of budget cuts. This ethnographic study explores how middle class women in Athens are coping economically, politically and socially in a national and global financial crisis. Through studying middle class Greek women, one can intensively illustrate the faults of neoliberal economic policies that pride themselves on the creation of the so-called middle class while simultaneously eliminating it. This research examines the survival strategies and adaptation methods of middle class women in Athens as well as placing them within the global economic context further displaying the fallacy of neoliberal economic policies as an economic growth agenda.

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins are two of the bestselling series of our generation. These series are meeting widespread popularity just as the contemporary feminist debate of: "Can women have it all?" is occurring around the country. Although Twilight and The Hunger Games are not considered overtly feminist texts, they have emerged in a time when women are reexamining the possibility of empowering themselves both in the public and the domestic sphere. Meyer and Collins have introduced female protagonists that deal with precisely this issue.

First, I will be outlining why cultural studies are important to discussions of popular literature, as argued by both Jane Tompkins and Cathy N. Davidson, especially in terms of female readers and writers. I will also be exploring the bestselling works of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls which emerged during the first and second waves of feminism and how they expressed a hesitation to give women a happy ending outside domesticity within their respective historical contexts. Next, I will review the current "lean in" culture of the third wave of feminism. I will also show how both Twilight and The Hunger Games continue the pattern of female protagonists that cannot be empowered unless they are wives and mothers. Finally, I will analyze how my own creative writing has been affected by cultural debates involving women's roles. Popular women's writing that emerges in the context of major feminist moments in American history shows ambivalence towards empowering women outside the home. This ambivalence is also reflected in my own writing through poetry. By first examining the work of best-selling women writers in the last two centuries and then analyzing my own writing in concurrence with the evolution of feminist ideals, I will show that women writers display a hesitant feminism despite emerging alongside progressive cultural moments in American history.

Institutions of higher education have a glass ceiling: women are underrepresented in the college presidency with 30% of college presidents as women, 83% white and 17% women of color. By nature, the culture of higher education has been traditionally male centered, with female professors and researchers struggling to advance in their careers. Contributing factors that may lead to the lack of women college presidents may be linked to long-held systemic views of women and gender biases that create barriers in career advancement. The objective of this qualitative study is to explore the ways in which women, from their perceptions, navigated opportunities and managed obstacles as they advanced into the college presidency. For the women who did advance to the highest level of leadership in IHE—the college presidency—what did they experience as they advanced in their career, and what enabled them to navigate the system and transcend the barriers? Qualitative data were analyzed using an inductive thematic analysis process through convergent and divergent coding tools. Four key findings emerged from this study: (1) Women were intelligent, talented, successful, savvy, and brave; (2) Servant Leadership; (3) Gender Fluid Characteristics; and (4) Support and Well-Being for current college presidents. This study offers an increased awareness of barriers that are limiting women from progressing to the college presidency in institutions of higher education. It also offers an increased awareness of the phenomenology of women college presidents and the ways that they managed obstacles and took advantage of opportunities as they advanced in their careers.

The under-representation of women in higher hierarchical positions and company boards today is a fact that affects not only the women striving for these positions but also the companies that face a loss of competent personnel in their companies. We found it interesting to find out whether or not women are striving for leading positions, in the first place and what factors motivate and discourage them to strive for a career and what incentives companies could offer to increase their motivation.

We adopt a company perspective in this thesis since we want to study this matter for the benefit of companies. If they knew more about what women want, they would be able to emphasize these conditions and motivate more women to strive for a career. Motivation theories as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Herzberg’s two-factor theory are used to give us a basic understanding of motivation and they also function as a foundation for our survey. Consequently, we follow a deductive approach.

This study is focusing on Swedish female business students and a survey among the female students of the USBE has been carried out to generate emprical data. We defined career in this thesis as: “striving for high hierarchical positions with high responsibility and decisive power”. The majority of respondents stated to be striving for a career but not everyone was striving according to our definition. We found almost half of the respondents to be to some extent striving for a career according to our definition and 42 percent agreed to completely strive for a career.

The most important motivating factors were found to be “to have a stimulating job” and “to be financially independent”. The strongest factors that have a negative influence on the respondents’ career motivation were “to have little time for family” and “to have a low salary in relation to work effort”. Furthermore, “equal salary for both men and woman”, “professional training” and “good promotion possibilities” were ranked the highest of the alternatives for incentives that companies could offer.

As the data suggested that the vast majority of our respondents can be encouraged in their career striving, companies should consider offering incentives and improving the general job conditions. The most promising strategies are adjusting the women’s salaries to those of their male colleagues, providing full-time day care near the workplace and offering professional training. The Swedish government could contribute in this field by enforcing the law that requires equal salries for both sexes, by stronger controlls and more severe punishments.

Suggestions for further research are, for instance, to study what companies actually do today to motivate women in their career striving.

Previous research indicated that women’s advancement into the leadership and administrative ranks in higher education has stalled over the past twenty years. Studies highlighted the socio-cultural and structural barriers that create challenges for women’s advancement in the academy. This study focused on the use of women-only leadership development programs (WLDPs) as a potential resource for women in the pursuit of advancing their careers. Few research studies to date assess the outcome for women who have attended WLDPs.

This study was an in-depth case study of the Women in Higher Education Leadership Summit (WHELS) held at the University of San Diego, School of Leadership and Education Studies. Using a sequential transformative mixed methods design, 95 WHELS alumnae were contacted to answer the research question “How do women from various social locations understand the influence of WHELS on their career plan/trajectory?” Using a quantitative survey (37% response rate), followed by qualitative interviews, five main hypotheses were tested to determine if WHELS alumnae reported improved leadership identity, improved leadership ability, improved understanding of effective leadership styles, whether they had advanced in their career, and if alumnae attributed WHELS to their advancement.

Based upon the findings all five hypotheses were supported by the quantitative data. Qualitative data also supported the quantitative findings, but it provided clarification into how women experienced WHELS. The qualitative findings revealed that women reported benefitting from attending WHELS, it confirmed the leadership ability and style the women already possessed. WHELS built women’s self-awareness and self-confidence, allowing women to adopt a leadership identity. Women benefited from this leadership identity as it built their self-efficacy and agency.

This study confirmed that women do face socio-cultural and structural barriers in institutions of higher education, which create barriers to their advancement into leadership roles. However, through the completion of WHELS, the participants of this study built self-confidence in their leadership abilities, adopting a leadership identity. Through this process the women in this study returned to their institutions with self-efficacy and agency. The study concludes with a discussion of the findings, limitations, recommended future research, and implications for action.