Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item UNCOVERING THE SILENCES: GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE AT A LARGE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY IN INDIA(2024) Saini, Ruchi; Klees, Steven Professor; Zaharia, Zeena Associate Professor; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Gender-based violence in universities is a complex and persistent problem that is under-reported and under-researched across the globe. Despite scholarly, advocacy-based, and policy consensus around the need to provide safe learning environments to college students, in-depth qualitative evidence about GBV in universities exists in an amorphous form, particularly when it comes to India. My dissertation is a narrative inquiry that employs an intersectional feminist framework to address this research gap. It draws on two years of field study involving focus group discussions with women bystanders (n=50), and art-based narrative interviews with self-identified victim-survivors (n=10) of GBV at a large public university in India, henceforth called the Indian University. Study I, “What do we know about gender-based violence in formal education institutions in India? A scoping study” is a scoping review that maps the key themes and synthesizes the policy/prevention recommendation within existing empirical qualitative literature on GBV in formal educational institutions in India. Findings show the critical role played by intergenerational hierarchies, gendered sociocultural norms linked to masculinity and femininity, conservatism within families, and intersections of caste and class with gender in shaping both the actions of perpetrators and the experiences of victim-survivors. The findings demonstrate the need for scholars and policymakers to go beyond theoretical conceptualizations of GBV that exclusively focus on interpersonal manifestations of abuse to also include within it structural and cultural manifestations of violence. Study II, “Manifestations of Gender-Based Violence at a Large Public University in India: Voices of Women Students from India” investigates the diverse manifestations of GBV at the Indian University. In the study, I employ the frameworks of the continuum of violence (Kelly, 1988) and structural/cultural violence (Galtung, 1986) to show how students experience a range of abusive behaviors within interpersonal relationships, public spaces, and inside classrooms. Based on the findings, I assert the need for scholars and policymakers to adopt a model of “continuum thinking” that acknowledges and address the “grey areas” of student’s experiences with GBV. I also theorize how specific institutional characteristics, such as the omission of mental health services for queer students, encompass a form of structural violence because it exacerbates the harm suffered by those already marginalized, thereby translating into unequal life opportunities for them. Study III, “How Universities Shape Students’ Experiences with Gender-Based Violence in India: An Intersectional Decolonial Narrative Inquiry” adds to the growing conversation about how universities’ structural and cultural characteristics shape students’ experiences with GBV. In the study, I employ the theoretical framework of “institutional betrayal” (Smith & Freyd, 2014), and foreground the perspectives of bystanders and victim-survivors of GBV at the Indian University. Findings reveal that cultural aspects linked to high-power distance (Hofstede, 1985), the influence of Hindutva politics on the campus, and the prevalence of a chalta hai (literal translation: “anything goes”) attitude sustained GBV on the campus. At the structural level, the findings illuminate that the hiring practices linked to the employment of ad-hoc professors, along with the lack of formal guidelines around the establishment of student-led societies and the tokenistic nature of GBV prevention and redressal services sustained GBV. Study IV, “A Creative and Art-Based Approach to Narrative Inquiry: Decolonizing Gender-Based Violence” explicates how I employed creative and art-based methods in tandem with narrative inquiry in my research to foster a decolonial ethics of care geared towards minimizing participant harm, fostering participant agency, and facilitating co-construction of knowledge. In the study, I make use of participant testimonies and my own observations to demonstrate how the use of vignettes in the FGDs, and art-based research in narrative interviews helped prevent re-traumatization of my participants, facilitated a deeper exploration of the hidden power structures, and supported creative avenues for the dissemination of findings. I end the dissertation by highlighting six key lessons derived from these studies. These lessons focus on the need to 1) identify and name those unspoken and unheard-of forms of GBV that are often shrouded in secrecy, 2) recognize and address the stunning adaptability of GBV 3) prioritize primary prevention strategies, 4) diversify and strengthen secondary and tertiary interventions, 5) disrupt generational and workplace hierarchies, and 6) hold institutions accountable without ignoring individual complicity.Item A Healthy Relationship? The Entanglement of State, Corporate, and Labor Interests in Gender-based Violence Sport Policies(2023) Drafts-Johnson, Lilah; Jette, Shannon; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Gender-based violence (GBV) within professional sports made headlines in 2014 following the Ray Rice domestic violence incident, prompting a Congressional hearing with the four major men’s sports leagues in the United States. This hearing resulted in the implementation of several sport industry-wide policies addressing off-field conduct for players and employees, including ones specifically focused on interpersonal relationships. Despite the cultural prominence of corporate sport entities such as the National Football League, National Basketball Association, and Major League Baseball, in addition to the fervor for institutional accountability in the wake of the #MeToo movement, there has been limited academic scholarship examining the scope and efficacy of these policies (see Brown, 2016; Augelli & Kuennen, 2018) Drawing upon the findings of a thematic analysis of Senate Hearing 113-725: Addressing Domestic Violence in Professional Sports, this thesis utilized a governmentality analytic to critically analyze the motivations, assumptions, and tensions which underpinned the institutionalization of GBV policies in corporate sport. The findings demonstrate that while the parties present at the hearing problematized sport culture at large as a producer of GBV, their remarks characterized professional male athletes as perpetrators, reifying the idea of the “violent (Black) male athlete” and violence as an inherent trait in professional sport more generally. Instead of critically interrogating the structure of professional sport, legislators instead focused on expanding the governing capacity of sport leagues, and effectively the state, to discipline and punish perpetrators of GBV by encouraging the implementation of new extra-legal policies. I argue that this hearing reinforced the neoliberal entanglement of state, corporate, and non-profit actors in the movement to reduce GBV in society, strengthening the dependency that the state has on corporate social responsibility to solve leading public health issues, and compelling GBV advocates, activists, and scholars to engage with corporations in order to receive critical funding and legitimacy in their work. Meanwhile, suggested legislation to improve economic and workplace conditions for survivors was ignored as labor issues were positioned as oppositional to GBV accountability efforts. Through articulation and radical contextualism, this thesis sheds new insight into the origins and methods of corporate GBV policies in sport as well as the intricacies of contemporary neoliberal governance, and ultimately argues that the state response to GBV must shift from one of punishment and surveillance to one of preventative care through improved economic and labor conditions for all workers.Item Negotiating the “F word”– Croatian Women’s Movements and the News Media(2022) Ujcic, Gea; Vasudevan, Krishan; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)By applying qualitative thematic analysis to mainstream media coverage of three hashtag (online) feminist initiatives in Croatia– Prekinimo šutnju, #spasime, and Nisam tražila, this thesis explored how initiatives addressing gender-based violence were covered in the Croatian news media. Findings indicated tabloidized approach to the coverage, various forms of symbolic annihilation of women, personalization of movements, and avoidance of terms "gender and feminism" in the coverage. This master thesis contributes to the scarce existing research on online feminist activism and its media portrayals in Croatia.Item The Cultural Ecology of Youth and Gender-Based Violence in Northern UgandaGANDA(2015) Lundgren, Rebecka Inga; Whitehead, Tony; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Twenty years of conflict in northern Uganda has resulted in high rates of gender-based violence, unintended pregnancy and a generation exposed to a lifetime of violence. Understanding gender socialization is critical because gender role differentiation intensifies during adolescence, and hierarchies of power in intimate relationships are established. Life histories with 40 adolescents in transitional life stages; puberty, older adolescents, newly married and new parents give voice to gendered experiences of puberty, sexuality, reproduction and violence. 35 in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals nominated by youth as significant in their lives. The Cultural Systems Paradigm (CSP) offers an organizing framework to understand the intersectionality of the components of cultural systems within which youth develop. Social settings, systems and processes shape the acquisition of gender identities. Adolescents depend on others for care and resources, and their networks play influential roles manifesting idea systems and imposing or mediating historical and economic context. Boys and girls recognize that social norms are gendered and identify mechanisms for "learning" gender. Less evident enculturation processes include gendered time and space, experiences of violence, kinship systems and political and historical influences. Social sanctions maintain gender norms/roles, making it difficult for youth to forge new ways of interacting. Study results elucidate the ways masculine and feminine identities are shaped by observation and experience of intimate partner violence and harsh physical punishment. The experience of internal displacement solidified inequitable gender norms, fostering masculinities rooted in violence. Results also suggest that gender is stamped on the bodies of developing boys and girls during puberty. This stage also marks the beginning of vigilant enforcement of increasingly rigid gender roles by family, peers and community. Recognition of the power of hidden influences and social sanctions for gender role transgressions informed an intervention which encourages youth to reflect critically on the examples in their lives and amplifies the voices of gender equitable role models. Building on pathways of resistance to hegemonic gender identities identified during the research, a life course approach was developed to provide differentiated, yet complementary, interventions at key transition points.