Theses (Gender Studies)
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In 2016, the name changed from Department of Women's Studies to Department of Gender Studies.
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Item “A Lifetime of Activism”: doing feminist men’s work from a social justice paradigm(2017-10-04) Rosenberg, Isaac; Garlick, Steve; Lepp, Annalee E.This thesis focuses on the projects and experiences of social justice organizers who place an emphasis on working to address heteropatriarchy and its impacts, work that I call men’s work. In particular, these are organizers who take an intersectional, social justice approach to this work. In order to recognize who organizers are and the kinds of projects they engage in, I describe four major project themes within men’s work and briefly explore their potentials and pitfalls according to those who are involved in them. I then analyze a number of the various considerations, tensions, and difficulties that arise for these organizers, particularly the personal and interpersonal components. In order to support organizers to be resilient and successful when faced with these issues, I conclude by sharing a variety of ways they may choose to navigate the various complexities they encounter in their organizing and in their communities.Item All the Resistance That's Fit to Print: Canadian Women Print Journalists Narrate Their Careers(2013-04-24) Smith, Vivian; Van Luven, Marlene A. D. Lynne; Clover, Darlene E.Canadian women print journalists both protest against and acquiesce to the patriarchal culture of newspapering in their daily work. Utilizing narrative analysis and the feminist theory of intersectionality, this dissertation argues that other social characteristics interact with gender as practitioners negotiate the multiple hegemonies of their workplace, and that the impacts of these characteristics change over time. The purpose of the qualitative study was to do fieldwork needed to respond to scholarly uncertainty about journalists’ individual motivations on the job and their perceived impact on the socio-political agenda. Individual interviews and focus groups were conducted over 2010-2011. Participants included 26 Canadian women print journalists in five newspapers across Canada, as well as one former journalist, now an academic. Key generational differences appeared when participants’ stories were examined with age and gender intersecting as an organizing theme. Senior participants tended to see themselves as lucky survivors in frustratingly gendered newsrooms; those in mid-career were self-sacrificing, hard workers who needed, but were not getting, workplace flexibility; and the most junior ones presented themselves as individual strategists, capable of handling whatever routine injustices were thrown at them. They wanted to stay in the business long enough to “choose” between careers and parenthood, with technological proficiency as a lifeline. Participants’ narratives revealed how the most senior tended to combine their multiple identities and externalities into a coherent whole, while younger participants experimented with and exploited aspects of their complex identities and larger societal influences to survive in a high-stress, gendered environment. This study produces evidence that the participants’ career paths are influenced in fluid and often hidden ways by other characteristics as they intersect with gender. Assumptions about these characteristics, such as age, race, parenthood status and class, further complicate the shaping of participants’ experiences in their workplaces, offering them other possible positions from which to either reinforce or resist the newsroom culture. The participants take up navigating these confused seas in ways that often leave them frustrated and angry, but ultimately most say they feel they make a difference in the socio-political agenda because of their complex identities and as voices for those deemed “voiceless.”Item Multiple exposures: Racialized and Indigenous women exploring health and identity through Photovoice(2008-07-23T21:46:44Z) Sum, Alison Joy; Naylor, Patti-Jean; Lee, Jo-AnneThis study explores the health and well-being of eight racialized and Indigenous women between the ages of 21 and 28, who live in Victoria, BC. Participants use Photovoice, a participatory research strategy, to examine and discuss their intersecting everyday realities in the contexts of health, well-being and identity. Through this project, I aim to provide an in-depth understanding of social exclusion, as a social determinant of health, and investigate the micro-social processes that occur at the intersections of race, class and gender, among many other social relations. I draw upon transnational feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial theories to shed light on the complexity of our shifting and emergent identities. The stories that participants share indicate that historical processes of colonization, daily forms of racism, migration, nationalism, citizenship and cultural essentialization are key contributors to their processes of identity formation and subsequently, their experiences of health and wellness.