Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies - Theses, Dissertations, and other Required Graduate Degree Essays

For the past decade unionized teaching assistants in Canada have secured tuition rebates through collective bargaining. Graduate student bargaining is rooted in public sector regulation, social organization, and state formation. I examine how ruling relations coordinate teaching assistants’ inability to secure a tuition waiver in the negotiation of the Teaching Support Staff Union’s latest contract which is dated from 2004-2010. In this thesis, I examine two texts that were influential in bargaining. First, I look at a Labour Relations Board decision over a TA strike at the University of British Columbia. Second, I will examine a leaked document from the Public Sector Employer’s Council dictating the bargain process to the University. Dorothy Smith’s “Institutional Ethnography” and “Mapping the Social Relations of Struggle” as methods of inquiry allow me to see how texts are coordinated in University bargaining and what teaching assistants can do to resist them.

Selling the Menopausal Body: Over time, what role has physician targeted, North America, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) advertising played in the medicalization of menopause? How have these ads constructed HRT knowledge for physicians and women? Employing close textual analysis, I examine several decades of medical journal HRT advertising and place this analysis within existing critical feminist critiques of HRT. I show how these ads systematically and negatively portray women, their bodies and menopause. Community-University Co-operative Model Case Study: Can university involved community-based research (CBR) be useful to communities? To what degree can individuals from universities participate in CBR? From a critical perspective, challenging existing models and the current state of university-centred CBR, I present a detailed case study of a community-university collaborative CBR project, Three Days in the Fire Pit, arguing a strong case for a model that successfully navigates CBR and avoids university control.

The identity “gay Asian male” (GAM) is proposed and contested in online personal ads, where ethnicity and other visible traits are used to describe individuals as attractive suitors and request or refuse potential partners. This paper explores the relationship between identity and desire, focusing on representations of GAM in craigslist ads, a site where men seek men for sexual encounters. In particular, it considers GAM as constructed by cultural meanings derived from characteristics set by HIV/AIDS prevention literature. Existing historical geographies of gay communities in North America, including local media representations of Vancouver’s gay community, follow an identity politics metanarrative of gay liberation and subculture formation. This paper challenges this metanarrative, reframing Vancouver’s gay community’s formation by considering real estate events, key community relationships—highlighted in 1981, and nostalgic memory. The interaction of these components contributes to the maintenance of the community’s political visibility and concentration along Vancouver’s Davie Street.

In March 2004, Canadian obstetrician Mary Hannah published a controversial article about elective caesarean sections in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Hannah argues that “a growing number of women are requesting delivery by elective caesarean section without an accepted ‘medical indication’” and suggests that physicians should support women’s requests (2004: 813- 814). Despite a paucity of research surrounding elective caesarean sections, many print media journalists and authors throughout Canada accept Hannah’s claim, and allege that “too posh to push” women are responsible for high rates of caesarean sections and birthing interventions. I situate media representations of elective caesarean sections in the context of Canada’s evolving maternity system, and explore how media reporters manage birthing “uncertainties” through the construction of “truths” about women’s birthing choices. Media authors’ insistence on blaming mothers in media representations of elective caesarean sections obscures the broader cultural, social and economic contexts in which women give birth.