College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Mothers as Agents of Social Change in the Movement Against Sexual Violence(2023) Drotning, Kelsey J.; Cohen, Philip N; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation examines how the #MeToo movement is changing generational understandings of sexual violence. Through this research, I examine how sexual violence is both a cause and a consequence of systemic gender and race inequality. Using eighteen in-depth semi-structured interviews of mothers with at least one child aged five-years or older, I investigate three sets of questions. First, how are mothers evaluating their own experiences with sexual violence post #MeToo movement? Second, how is sexual violence part of mother-child conversations about sexual behavior? Third, how do mothers; social location contribute to how they feel about the #MeToo movement and how they teach their children about sexual violence? My findings suggest mothers are transmitting new understandings of sexual violence to their children. Specifically, mothers are teaching their children that appropriate touch, sexual or nonsexual, cannot be determined using a binary yes or no standard of consent. Their approach to sex education is driven by their own experiences with sex that was violating and/or nonconsensual and consideration of their own and their children's social location. Overall, my findings demonstrate the #MeToo movement and other associated events have ushered in a change in mothers' rape consciousness which is facilitating change in children's sex education. If successful, mothers will have contributed to decreased prevalence of sexual violence as these children age into adolescence and adulthood.Item When Guardians Become Capable: An Analysis of Social Bias and Situational Context in Bystander Intervention(2021) Wy, Gabrielle Cabrera; Xie, Min; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey in the 1990s indicate that bystanders were present in two-thirds of violent victimizations; however, a bystander who is present may not necessarily intervene. The present study posits that there are two major types of factors that may influence the likelihood of intervention across incidents: factors related to the severity of the crime, and factors that reveal social bias related to race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and crime type. Using NCVS data from 2012-2018, the present study finds statistically significant associations between presence of a firearm, a victim being female, the crime being sexual assault or rape, and the crime being intimate partner violence, and the outcome of bystander intervention. Results add to the social psychology and sociology literature on helping behavior and inform policy and practice regarding the need for programs that target bystander intervention in violent victimization.Item Sex Cam Modeling: Labor, Intimacy, and Prosumer Porn(2021) Patella-Rey, PJ; Ritzer, George; Korzeniewicz, Patricio; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation begins with the assumption that the porn industry has radically changed in ways we are yet to fully understand. Drawing on interviews and auto-ethnography, it attempts to offer three distinct theoretical lenses through which these changes can be observed. First, I examine what is bought and sold in cam rooms, concluding that the work of cam modeling (both on camera and behind the scenes) has many dimensions that are not captured by reductionist tropes about selling one’s body. Second, I argue that camming fits a broader pattern in online content, where clear divisions between producer and consumer begin to break down. I conclude that camming (and especially custom content/shows) can best understood as prosumer pornography (i.e., as a co-creation of model and viewer). Finally, I explore the ways in which sex cam models actively develop intimacy with clients in spite of the fact that the interactions are defined by social and spatial distance; technological mediation; asymmetry; gendered expectations; and commercial transaction.Item Inequality in the College-to-Career Transition: Self-Scarring and Underemployment(2020) Dernberger, Brittany Noel; Kleykamp, Meredith; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A recent college graduate working as a coffee shop barista, earning minimum wage and carrying thousands of dollars in student loan debt, is a familiar trope in conversations about the value of a bachelor’s degree. In the college-for-all era, young people are encouraged to attain a bachelor’s degree to bolster their labor market opportunities (Rosenbaum 2001), yet 42 percent of recent college graduates, and 35 percent of all college graduates, are working in jobs that do not require a college degree (Federal Reserve Bank of New York 2020). The American Dream posits that individual perseverance will lead to increased economic security. Young people invest in college as a pathway to a good job. Why does a degree not equally benefit all graduates, and how do graduates respond when their college investment does not pay off? I employ restricted-access Monitoring the Future panel data (1976 – 2015) and interviews with 60 recent college graduates to examine how college graduates transition from school-to-work, and how they respond when it does not go as planned. I contribute to studies of underemployment scarring by extending the context from workplace consequences to individual decision-making, unpacking how and why young people make choices related to their post-graduation employment outcomes. By examining how graduates engage as students and connecting that to post-college employment outcomes, I illustrate how graduates self-scar by making choices that diminish their ability to quickly translate their degree into a good job along three dimensions: 1) not engaging in outside-the-classroom activities during college, which are critical for career exposure and career-relevant skill-building; 2) downshifting job expectations in response to underemployment; and 3) making labor market choices that elongate underemployment. However, graduates’ decisions are not made in a vacuum, and preexisting inequalities – in economic resources, first generation student status, and social and cultural capital – are often perpetuated in the wake of underemployment. Graduates often blame themselves for their lack of labor market success. This project illuminates how inequality is replicated during the college-to-career transition through graduates’ self-scarring decisions and contributes to our understanding of who can achieve economic mobility through returns on a college education.Item Support Is Not Enough: The Role of Meritocracy and Sexism in Equal Pay(2020) Gomez Vidal, Analia; Calvo, Ernesto; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since 2015, Argentina has witnessed an unprecedented increase in women’s mobilization around gender issues such as violence against women and reproductive rights. In this context, presidential support for equal pay policy was not enough to bring the issue upfront. This project addresses the determinants of support for equal pay. While support for this policy is high at first, meritocracy and sexism play a key role in our understanding of what is fair and who is deserving in the labor market. I argue that the labor market structure relies on gender biases that make it a misogynistic environment, even if participants do not individually align with sexist views. In such an environment, meritocratic views as aspirational can increase support for equal pay, but this effect is conditional on sexism. Alternatively, meritocracy serves as a hierarchy-legitimizing ideology, which in combination with modern sexism, reduces support for corrective policies like equal pay. Contrary to theoretical expectations, and popular agreement among respondents, stripping equal pay policy from its gender perspective does not increase support for this initiative. Instead, it reduces it. I present evidence for this theoretical framework using two original online studies administered in Argentina in 2018 and 2019. These studies are the first ones to combine micro-level data on labor market participation and political preferences with survey experiments. Overall, this dissertation represents an empirical and theoretical first step in unpacking attitudes about merit and gender equality and understanding the challenges in promoting gendered economic issues and garnering support around them in the public arena.Item Women's Grief Experiences: The Death of a Close Female Friend(2019) Sauber, Elizabeth Winick; O'Brien, Karen M; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Friendship provides women with a plethora of benefits, including reduced physiological and psychological distress (e.g., Martina & Stevens, 2006; Yang et al., 2016). Yet we do not know what happens when women lose their female friends. Previous work conceptualizes friend loss as disenfranchised, which exacerbates grief reactions (Deck & Folta, 1989). Thus, as informed by the individual differences framework of grief reactions (Mancini & Bonanno, 2009), the purpose of this study was to 1) qualitatively describe the bereavement of women who have experienced the death of a close female friend and 2) test an integrative model of grief reactions predicting complicated grief and posttraumatic growth among female friend grievers. For the qualitative portion of the study, seven women were interviewed in three focus groups. Findings from directed content analysis highlighted common grief reactions (e.g., sadness, yearning for their friends), supportive and disenfranchising interactions related to social support, ways of coping (e.g., rituals to stay connect to the deceased), growth after loss, and ongoing challenges after the friend’s death. For the quantitative portion of the study, a path analysis of online survey data obtained from 148 women was conducted using maximum likelihood estimation in Mplus. Analyses suggested that the hypothesized model demonstrated inadequate fit. Modification indices and additional pathways were reviewed for theoretical plausibility, resulting in three additions to the model. The revised final model was a good fit to the data, explaining 55% of the variance in complicated grief and 43% of the variance in post-traumatic growth. Most strikingly, avoidant emotional coping served as a key mediator and predictor of complicated grief, while problem focused coping served as a key mediator and predictor of post-traumatic growth. This has implications for counseling psychologists regarding theory and practice related to bereaved women—in addition to recognizing the significance of female friend grievers’ losses, the results can be used to advance outreach and intervention efforts among disenfranchised grievers.Item The Jezebel Speaks: Black Women's Erotic Labor in the Digital Age(2019) Brown, Melissa; Ray, Rashawn; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)According to contemporary scholars of sex work in the digital age, information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide sex workers various affordances. Some of these affordances include new ways of business or marketing; greater security; more autonomy; and better wages. Much of this scholarship centers young white women working in specific fields of sex work that cater to young white men clientele. Thus, several questions remain about the affordances and constraints of the internet for sex workers of color. Affordances refer to the functional and relational aspects of objects that create possibilities for human agency through interaction with them. In this present study I use existing theories of the mobile internet and Black feminist thought to intervene into the sociology of sex work and the internet to show how Black women sex workers negotiate controlling images of Black women's sexuality on the social networking application Instagram. This study seeks to address the following broad research questions with respect to embodiment and labor: 1) In what ways, if any, do controlling images of Black women’s sexuality emerge online? 2) How do power dynamics within the matrix of domination shape racial-sexual hierarchies of worthiness and desirability online? And finally, 3) What sexual politics, if any, do Black women exotic dancers use on social networking sites to negotiate controlling images? To answer these questions, I use a mixed methods approach to examine the affordances of digital technology for Black women sex workers. First, I used GIS mapping software to visualize the locations of where Black women exotic dancers based in the Memphis, Atlanta, and D.C. metropolitan areas perform. Second, I distributed an online survey among this group of women to create an exploratory profile. Finally, I conducted a content analysis to explore the erotic labor of Black women sex workers as a form of racial-sexual and gendered embodiment and performance of sexuality. My findings indicate Black women exotic dancers use social networking sites (SNS) and the mobile internet to leverage racialized erotic capital into various entrepreneurial pursuits and forms of self-eroticism beyond exotic dance. Nevertheless, controlling images of Black women’s sexuality popular within the discourse of contemporary rap music shape expectations around their erotic labor. As a result, the innovation of social networking sites on the mobile internet has done little to reshape the racially and economically marginalized landscape of strip clubs wherein Black women exotic dancers perform.Item Future Chore Division Ideals and Expectations: Validating a Measure with Undergraduate Women(2018) Silberberg, Ayelet; O'Brien, Karen M; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)College-aged women expect to disrupt their future careers, earn less, and be responsible for more household and childcare chores than their future spouses. This unequal division of labor has been linked to inequality in the workforce between women and men with women earning less and being concentrated in low pay, low prestige occupations. The current investigation sought to improve understanding of this phenomenon by exploring the factor structure and psychometric properties of a measure of chore division ideals and expectations in a sample of undergraduate women. Exploratory factor analyses suggested separate measures of ideal and expected chores, each comprised of two factors: traditionally feminine chores, and traditionally masculine chores. Confirmatory factor analyses did not reach satisfactory cutoff levels, but the scores on the preliminary scales showed evidence for convergent validity, internal reliability, and test-retest reliability. Results also supported hypotheses regarding relationships between the subscales. Tentative implications of these findings, future directions for research, and clinical implications are discussed.Item The Demobilized Body: Transgressions of Personal Space and Political Participation(2016) Abdo, Carla Beth; Calvo, Dr. Ernesto F; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Grounded in the intersection between gender politics and electoral studies, this dissertation examines the demobilizing effects of violations of personal space (in the form of domestic violence, control over mobility, emotional abuse, and sexual harassment) on the propensity to vote. Using quantitative methods across four survey datasets concerning Lebanon, the United States, Morocco, and Yemen, this research concludes that cross-regionally, familial control over mobility reduces the propensity to vote among women. Conversely, mechanisms of empowerment such as education and employment increase the propensity to vote.Item Violence against Women Policy and Practice in Uganda - Promoting Justice within the Context of Patriarchy(2016) Gardsbane, Diane; Freidenberg, Judith N.; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The goal of this study was to understand how and whether policy and practice relating to violence against women in Uganda, especially Uganda’s Domestic Violence Act of 2010, have had an effect on women’s beliefs and practices, as well as on support and justice for women who experience abuse by their male partners. Research used multi-sited ethnography at transnational, national, and local levels to understand the context that affects what policies are developed, how they are implemented, and how, and whether, women benefit from these. Ethnography within a local community situated global and national dynamics within the lives of women. Women who experience VAW within their intimate partnerships in Uganda confront a political economy that undermines their access to justice, even as a women’s rights agenda is working to develop and implement laws, policies, and interventions that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. This dissertation provides insights into the daily struggles of women who try to utilize policy that challenges duty bearers, in part because it is a new law, but also because it conflicts with the structural patriarchy that is engrained in Ugandan society. Two explanatory models were developed. One explains factors relating to a woman’s decision to seek support or to report domestic violence. The second explains why women do and do not report DV. Among the findings is that a woman is most likely to report abuse under the following circumstances: 1) her own, or her children’s survival (physical or economic) is severely threatened; 2) she experiences severe physical abuse; or, 3) she needs financial support for her children. Research highlights three supportive factors for women who persist in reporting DV. These are: 1) the presence of an “advocate” or support 2) belief that reporting will be helpful; and, 3) lack of interest in returning to the relationship. This dissertation speaks to the role that anthropologists can play in a multi-disciplinary approach to a complex issue. This role is understanding – deeply and holistically; and, articulating knowledge generated locally that provides connections between what happens at global, national and local levels.