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Three Essays on Female Labor Force Participation, Commitment to Work and Intra-household Time Utilization
No full textThis dissertation focuses on women’s labor market outcomes and their utilization of time. Essay 1 analyzes the degree of Saudi married women’s commitment to work and the factors that shape their commitment, given that there is a retention problem of mothers in the Saudi labor force. The share of married women in the total Saudi female labor force has been decreasing (from 67.5 percent in 2014 to 63.7 percent in 2016). The essay follows a mixed-method study, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The quantitative part of the study is based on data collected in Jeddah City through questionnaires, which resulted in a sample size of 200 married working women. The qualitative part of the study is based on data derived from 10 interviews with working mothers in Jeddah City. Using an ordered logit model, I observed that Saudi working mothers display a relatively high commitment to work. The study findings provide evidence that education, family financial background, husband’s education, and father-in-law education, work factors such as low income, lack of productive jobs, discrimination, and lack of childcare services, and social norms and attitudes towards women’s work are the major variables associated with married women’s work commitment, which if tackled could increase their retention in the labor force. The results provide empirical evidence on the points raised by the Ministry of Labor and Social Development of Saudi Arabia regarding the areas that must be addressed to increase female retention in the workforce.The second essay investigates the determinants of female labor force participation in Egypt. It mainly focuses on the impact of patriarchy and social conservatism in the family setting. It has been noted by many researchers who study labor market outcomes in Egypt that these outcomes are mainly affected by religion and culture. Cultural factors could be a significant factor that negatively affects female labor force participation. Egypt suffers from very low and stagnant female labor force participation compared to other countries in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region, which I point out is due to in addition to patriarchy that is found in many of these countries, Egypt is much more conservative. Using data from Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (2012) I measured patriarchal culture using an index variable constructed from variables reflecting whether the woman participates in decision making regarding household purchases, their own purchases and health, and their children’s health and schooling decisions, while social conservatism was constructed from variables reflecting whether women need to get permission to go outside the home. Using a probit model, I tested the conditional labor supply model and included demand-side factors, in addition to the cultural variables and found that patriarchy and social conservatism are significantly and negatively associated with women’s labor force participation in Egypt. The third essay examines the factors associated with Mongolian men and women time use. Mongolia transitioned from a centrally planned economy to a market-based economy, that increased poverty throughout the country. Despite the low income of the households, female labor force participation was declining in Mongolia. Researchers noted that the heavy burden on women in household and care work has affected their ability to be involved in employment work. This is further exaggerated by the poor economic conditions of the families that prevent them from substituting home-produced goods that heavily depends on their labor. Further, the lack of basic infrastructure lengthens the time women spend in household and care work. Further, labor market participation and the use of time differ based on the region. Thus, this essay examines the relationship between participation and time spent in employment work with household and care work based on Mongolian Time Use data for 2011 for rural and urban subsamples. The study finds that women in Mongolia spend as much as double the time that men spend on housework and care activities. The study also finds that men and women participate in and spend the same amount of time in employment work in rural areas. However, participation in and time performed in employment work are statistically different between men and women in urban areas. Thus, the study focus on urban areas. Using a Probit model to examine the probability of participating in employment work, I observed that higher wealth is associated with a higher probability of women to participate in employment work. Further, using a Tobit model to examine the determinants of time in employment work, I observed that care responsibilities are not significantly associated with women’s time in employment work. However, the household work burden is significantly related with women’s ability to perform more employment work. The main conclusion of this essay is that improved infrastructure is associated with more time to be devoted by women on employment work. This suggests that access to adequate infrastructure is associated with a reduction in the time spent on household work, which in turn, is associated with an increase in the time spent in employment work. Further, improved economic conditions that increase the ability of households to obtain market substitutes for home-produced goods and services and purchase time-saving appliances reduces time spent in household work, which in turn is associated with an increase in women’s ability to perform more employment work.EconomicsEconomicsDegree Awarded: Ph.D. Economics. American Universit
The Legality Under International Human Rights Law of Rehabilitation of Detainees Imprisoned for Terrorism
No full textThe study focuses of legal issues related to rehabilitation programs that have been adopted by some governments as part of their counter-terrorism strategy. Individuals who harbor radical ideologies are placed, by executive order, in these programs in order to be deradicalized. The establishment of such programs arose from the recognition that fighting homegrown terrorism by means of police power alone is insufficient. The police power only treated the symptoms but not the disease. Furthermore, granting the police extraordinary power to detain individuals will result in an extreme increase in the number of detainees under security detention and tip the balance between liberty and security too far in the direction of security. Rehabilitation programs are seen as a solution to these various problems. These programs are designed to counter toxic ideology and provide a means of releasing detainees and safely reintegrating them into society. This study finds that subjecting suspected terrorists who have done nothing but believe in an extremist ideology; or who have been imprisoned for a terrorism-related crime and served their sentences but are deemed to be too dangerous to be released; or who have been charged with terrorist crimes but have not yet been sent to trial, to terrorist rehabilitation programs without judicial due process or habeas corpus violates the standards of lawful detention as it prescribed in the international human rights law and amounts to arbitrary detention. However, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Malaysia have not ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), therefore they cannot be held in violation of any treaty obligation regarding the ICCPR. Nevertheless, arbitrary detention may constitute a violation of customary international law. The author presumed that the prohibition against arbitrary detention has acquired the status of a customary norm of international law. On the contrary, the research has found that legal opinion is mixed concerning the question of whether the prohibition against arbitrary detention is a customary norm of international law. There seems to be no scholarly consensus on the question. The question as to whether the prohibition against arbitrary detention is a customary norm of International Law has not been definitively settled.International lawArbitrary detention Prohibition against arbitrary detention Right to liberty, Human rights Customary international law, Radical Islamism Political Islam Salafism Salafist Jihad, Radicalization Denazification Rehabilitation programs, Saudi Arabia Singapore Malaysia, Security detention Preventive detention Administrative detentionWashington College of LawDegree Awarded: S.J.D. Washington College of Law. American Universit
Digital Margins: Digital Technology Use, Social Change, and the Empowering Strategies of Domestic Workers of Color in Brooklyn, NY
No full textToday, digital technologies are reshaping well-established norms of sociality; they are changing the way we think about space and time and, in turn, problematizing our understanding of mobility. Overlooked in much of the growing body of work exploring this emergent phenomenon is a deeper understanding of how marginalized communities with less visibility are making use of technology in their day-to-day lives. The women at the center of this current research occupy a unique space in the social and political fabric of the United States. Their status as women of color, immigrants (including many undocumented immigrants), and mainly low wage workers, functioned to create intersectional experiences of disempowerment, and historically, limited social mobility This research seeks to understand this complex reshaping in the context of domestic labor in the USA. Ultimately, this study is looking at the interplay of identity, empowerment and community for domestic workers. Combining interviews and participant observation, this ethnographic study examines the use of digital technology among a community of domestic workers from various parts of the African diaspora living and working in Brooklyn, New York City. Data was collected in Brooklyn, NY over a 14-month period beginning in May 2013 and ending in July 2014, with the majority of the data collection and observation taking place over a six-month period, in which I shadowed and worked alongside a group of 29 key informants. This work examines the ways that domestic workers have used digital technology to overcome daily barriers traditionally associated with their status as domestics, exploring the strategies they create for themselves. It asks how these strategies are articulated through digital technology use, how domestic workers make sense of their actions, and in so doing, what is the potential of digital technology for both individual and collective empowerment? Furthermore, it interrogates how domestic workers see themselves within the rights movement, that is, whether narratives of domestic workers rights and wider social justice discourse circulating online and in the media are being adopted in the day-to-day interactions and social relations of workers themselves. It argues that, while domestic workers have been designated to be in a marginal position within American society, they have begun to use digital technologies in culturally and socially enhancing ways. Collectively, their practices offer new insights into the potential everyday digital technology use presents for positive social change at the local and interpersonal level.CommunicationBlack studiesInformation technologyAfrican Diaspora, Digital Technology, Domestic Workers, Ethnography, Internet, New YorkSchool of CommunicationDegree Awarded: Ph.D. School of Communication. American Universit
Body Positive Media Exposure and College-Aged Women: Impacts on Body Image, Self-Worth, and Body Dissatisfaction
No full textThe present study assessed the impact of body positive (BP) social media content on body image (BI), self-worth (SW), and body dissatisfaction (BD) using a pre-post design. Female college students (n = 140) filled out Time 1 questionnaires 1-2 weeks prior to the lab session, in which they were randomly assigned to view a) the body positivity (BP) blog or b) control blog for 10 minutes before filling out the Time 2 questionnaire. Researchers hypothesized that participants in the BP condition would have greater improvement on outcome measures, compared to the control condition. Researchers also hypothesized that any improvement observed in the BP condition would be moderated by current ED symptomatology and previous ED history, as a result of social identification theory. Results showed that while both conditions demonstrated improvement for BI, the BP condition showed significantly greater improvement. Among women of color in the BP condition BD also improved significantly, but we did not see this same effect with whites in the BP condition. Subsequent analyses demonstrate that current ED symptomatology accounts for a statistically significant amount of the variance (3.9%) in BI scores for those in the BP condition. Overall, results suggest that exposure to BP content can improve body image for college females, and that this improvement is impacted by current ED symptomatology.Psychologybody dissatisfaction, body image, body positivity, media exposure, media use, social mediaPsychologyDegree Awarded: M.A. Psychology. American Universit
Mapping the Fault Lines: A Study of Seismic Activity in Matthew's Gospel
No full textMatthew’s Gospel is unique among its canonical counterparts in its predilection for seismic activity. Matthew alone records an earthquake when Jesus calms the sea (8:24), when Jesus dies (27:51/54), and when Jesus is raised (28:2). Matthew alone records the shaking of Jerusalem when Jesus enters the city (21:10) and the shaking of the tomb guards at the resurrection (28:4). These unique references, which form the heart of Matthew’s seismic motif, are supplemented by additional references to earthquakes (24:7; cf. Mark 13:8; Luke 21:11) and cosmological shaking (24:29; cf. Mark 13:25; Luke 21:26) in the eschatological discourse. While the first Gospel’s unparalleled fondness for seismic language has certainly not gone unnoticed in scholarship, it has yet to be treated in a comprehensive manner. Discussion has largely been confined to the earthquakes (8:24; 27:51/54; 28:2) and has proceeded in atomistic fashion, with the earthquake references isolated from each other and from the overall narrative. This is unfortunate, for beyond the shared lexical cord that binds the unique seismic references together, there is additional tethering in the form of an interrelated christological question-and-answer motif (8:27; 21:10; 27:54) as well as other thematic correspondences. This study attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of the role that seismic language plays within the Matthean narrative. After reconstructing what connotations seismic language likely carried in Matthew’s cultural context (chapter two), it utilizes an historically informed author-oriented narrative criticism that is complemented with redaction criticism to analyze the relationships that Matthew’s seismic references display with regards to each other and to the overall narrative (chapters three through six). The overarching thesis of the study is that Matthew’s seismic references collectively indicate that Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection together represent the partial fulfillment of the OT eschatological Day of the Lord.Biblical studiesDay of the Lord, Earthquake, Gospel, Matthew, Narrative criticism, ShakingBiblical StudiesDegree Awarded: Ph.D. Biblical Studies. The Catholic University of Americ
Understanding the Experience of Infertility Following Cancer Treatment Among Female Cancer Survivors
No full textMany women of reproductive age who survive cancer discover the additional challenge of infertility caused by their cancer treatment. This study sought to understand the simultaneous crises of cancer and infertility that require invasive medical treatment relating to life and legacy among young adult female cancer survivors. This reproductive trauma has the potential to affect approximately 70,000 women of reproductive age (15-39) diagnosed with cancer annually in the United States. For women who are newly diagnosed with cancer, considerations related to the impact of cancer treatment on their ability to have children add to the complexity of emotion and decision-making around their treatment. For some women, the loss of their fertility is just as, if not more, important than their cancer diagnosis and can result in distress, depression, anxiety, anger, loneliness, and regret. Those who are able to find meaning in their traumatic loss, however, may experience posttraumatic growth, which has significant implications for survivorship. Data were collected from interviews, a demographic and background survey, and participant collaboration on a preliminary results report. Eleven women were interviewed and seven women participated in analyzing the results. Thematic analysis was used to examine the data, after which six themes were identified that describe the experience of iatrogenic infertility among young adult female cancer survivors. The themes pertain to fertility loss; emotional strain; liminality and identity shifts; relationship tension; systemic comparisons between cancer care and infertility sectors; and infertility openness and advocacy. Among the five domains of posttraumatic growth, spirituality was the domain least identified with change among women currently experiencing infertility.This research has implications for all professionals who work with young adults with cancer and assist in the process of meaning-making after trauma and loss. It raises awareness of what women with cancer confront after going through cancer treatment in their quest to have children in survivorship. It reveals gaps in service, areas of retraumatization between the cancer and infertility sectors, and the deep concern that women have regarding their fertility and the great loss that is felt once it is eradicated from cancer treatment.Social workOncologyCancer, Infertility, OncofertilitySocial WorkDegree Awarded: Ph.D. Social Work. The Catholic University of Americ
Faith Mitchell Interview, October 26, 2019
No full textFaith Mitchell of Whitman-Walker Health talks about why she attended the 5K and why she thinks talking about safe sex is important. She shares why she thinks it's important to be part of the activist community, and the work she does as a Prevention Programs Coordinator with Whitman-Walker. Faith discusses her own experience leaning about safe sex as a gay-identifying woman growing up, and why parents and teachers need to talk to more kids about the importance of safe sex
NaZir Howard Interview, August 24, 2019
No full textFourth grader NaZir Howard discusses what he likes about Anacostia Park. He's been coming for about a month, and enjoys skating, the events, and the basketball courts. He likes to skate because it allows him to express himself and it's okay to make mistakes. He talks about how the Park should include more go-go in the music they play. He ends with a word to his friends: "if you ever feel the need to come skating, this is the spot!
Bruce McKelton Interview, June 22, 2019
No full textBruce McKelton, a longtime DC resident, describes his experiences with go-go music. He started going to go-gos in the DC area around the age of 13, and reflects upon his favorite artist (Little Benny) and experiences. He shares how he thinks go-go has changed over the years, and explains how it's still going strong today. Bruce tells the importance of go-go to the city: "go-go is the sound of DC ... go-go is everything to DC.
Denise Berry, Tonya Cauley, Sabrina Spurlock Interview, September 14, 2019
No full textDenise Berry, Tonya Cauley, and Sabrina Spurlock grew up together in the Petworth neighborhood. They all lived on the same block, attended school together, and spent free time together, as their mothers were close friends. The Petworth of their youth felt like “one big family,” and they traveled by foot to local shops, school, and the park, without fear of safety. Tonya Cauley closed the interview with a powerful call for the members of the community to love and take care of one another