UVicSpace | Institutional Repository
UVicSpace is the University of Victoria’s open access scholarship and learning repository. It preserves and provides access to the digital scholarly works of UVic faculty, students, staff, and partners. Items in UVicSpace are organized into collections, each belonging to a community.
For more information about depositing items, see the Submission Guidelines.
Recent Submissions
Smoking room: cigarettes and the creation of community among girls who smoke
(1999) Tonn, Heidi Marie; Brown, Leslie Allison
Five adolescent girls who smoke were interviewed using a feminist/critical research methodology. It was found that smoking must be considered in the context of the growing up process for these adolescent girls. Smoking is central to their social lives. Because smoking facilitates the formation and ongoing life of the relationship communities they create, girls who smoke find it difficult to quit while they are part of such a group. The disintegration of a social group appears to offer a window of opportunity for smoking girls to quit. Connections were made between the activities of the tobacco industry and the everyday lives of girls who smoke. Implications for practice and further research were explored.
The economics of U. S. reproductive policies: Evidence across five decades
(2026) Reinsch, Emma M.; Feir, Donn
In 2022, the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned federal abortion protections established by Roe v. Wade (1973). Within hours, eleven states began enforcing total abortion bans, expanding to 13 by summer's end. During the Dobbs proceedings, an amicus brief argued that abortion access had no meaningful effect on women's economic participation. This dissertation challenges that claim through three studies examining how reproductive policies—specifically, policies governing access to abortion services and contraception—shape women's labor market outcomes from the 1970s to the present. Chapter 2 reviews existing scholarship on abortion access, labor market outcomes, and intimate partner violence; the review demonstrates how these factors operate as interconnected barriers to U.S. women's economic participation and identifies key data limitations and methodological concerns that subsequent chapters address. Chapter 3 applies modern difference-in-differences designs to study the effects of accessing abortion in late adolescence during the 1970s on women's earnings among employed women. While recent research finds no significant labor market effects from contraceptive access during the same period, I find that teenage abortion access generated substantial long-run earnings returns for some women. Effects concentrate among white women, while Black women's early gains are eroded by subsequent legal restrictions on abortion access that had a disproportionate impact. Chapter 4 examines state-level abortion bans enacted fifty years later, after \textit{Dobbs} overturned federal protections. Using a synthetic difference-in-differences design, I find that bans are associated with an increase in childbearing, a reduction in educational attainment and work intensity, and lower high-skill occupation probability. Effects vary substantially across demographic groups and cannot be explained by interstate travel or out-migration. Together, these chapters provide new evidence that reproductive policies across U.S. states shape women's economic trajectories across policy regimes and time periods.
A fresh look at smoking and cessation
(1998) Schultz, Annette Susan; Dawson, J. Isobel
This study approaches smoking and cessation from a unique stance. I capture stories of smoking, cessation, attending a cessation program and continuing or resuming smoking from people currently smoking. The methodology used in-depth interviews to capture personal stories of the lived experience. The result of a series of interviews is a co-created narrative which captures each person's stories about smoking and cessation. I describe my personal meaning making process. I came to this study as a smoker for over a fourteen year period, who has not smoked in five years. My process includes influences from the narratives, which then directed me to current pertinent literature. Themes from the narratives include: paradoxes about smoking, pervasiveness of smoking, perceived barriers to quitting, the multi-layered issue of control, impact of the tobacco reduction strategies, and a wish list for smoking cessation programs. After discussing each theme I then speak from related literature.
Health and homelessness: a landscape of living death
(2000) Sansom, Anthony; McCann, L. D.
This thesis reports the results of a research project designed to investigate the health and health care experiences of street people living in Victoria, British Columbia. Previous geographical research has addressed many facts of the street community but the health of this group has received little attention. However, recent directions in medical geography and the geography of homelessness, including the use of structuration theory, provide the framework for exploring how the street community experiences and perceives health in the landscape. The research is based on data collected through semistructured interviews in 1995, street journals and elite interviews in 1999, and document surveys. All data were analysed and five major themes were identified. First, Becoming Homeless includes the causes leading to living on the streets. Second, Existing on the Streets incorporates daily activities and the conditions of street life, and how they relate to health. Third, Street Community Facilities and Services refer to the attitudes of the street people towards these facilities in addition to their function and purpose in the street community. Fourth, Street Health examines the health concerns of this group, along with accessing and utilizing health care. Finally, Personal Empowerment and Getting off the Streets considers the measures needed for street people to improve their health and their lives. It was found that the street community's interpretation and experiences of health were shaped by the landscape. This landscape can best be described as a pathological landscape, in particular, a landscape of living death. Policy recommendations are mentioned, along with suggestions for future research.
The social ecology of Malawi orphans
(1999) Okumu, Christopher; Cook, Philip
This is a study of HIV/ AIDS orphans in Malawi. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world but with one of the highest HIV seroprevalence. Peace Corps (1998) approximates that 13% of the Malawi population are infected with HIV/AIDS. All Africa News Agency (AANA) states that as of June 1998 there were over 600,000 orphans in Malawi. This is a doubling in three years of the 300,000 number reported in 1995. This study used a descriptive research design to outline the social environment of Malawi orphans using Bronfenbrenner's (I 979) Socio-ecological Perspective and Erikson's (1997) Life Cycle frameworks. The study used archival data from the Malawi project "Starting from Strengths" 1996-1998. The research methodology for the study was Content Analysis within the critical social science paradigm. The question in this research is "Who are the prominent individuals and institutions in the "social ecology" (Bronfenbrenner 1979) of orphans in Malawi and what is their impact on the development of these orphan-children?" The unveiling of the identity of individuals and institutions active in the social environment of Malawi orphans exposed the orphan-care social network and the key problems affecting orphan care in Malawi today. Orphans in patrilineal Malawi were found to be more "at risk" than those in the matrilineal cultural setting due to the differences in: the ages of care providers, the access to inheritance, and the prevalence of polygamy in the patrilineal cultural setting. Advocacy work for Malawi orphans grounded on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) is one intervention strategy that can empower orphan-families to take ownership of the fight against the HIV/ AIDS carnage. This study provides the leadership that is urgently needed in the fight to mitigate the plight of HIV/ AIDS orphans in Malawi and elsewhere and provides the stepping stone from which to launch future ecological studies.