Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2023, Geography

In the face of past, present, and future environmental injustice in central Appalachia, mothers have been on the front lines of resistance to extractive industry. Scholars have acknowledged this pattern, yet no substantive research on why motherhood is invoked so often as a discursive tool has been completed. This thesis examines the factors which have led central Appalachian women activists to use motherhood in their activism and analyze the discourse's strengths and weaknesses.

Committee: Anna Rachel Terman (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Justice; Environmental Studies; Geography; Regional Studies; Womens Studies

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2022, Leadership and Change

This qualitative research aimed to study the experiences of Kenyan female leaders and explore Kenyan maternal influence in their lived experiences. It examined how maternal influence shapes female leadership in Kenya by embodying relational and transformational leadership qualities and proves that maternal influence makes women congruent with leadership roles. Despite global advances recognizing the principle of women's political, economic, and social equality, Kenyan women continue to be marginalized in many areas of society, especially in leadership and decision making. Kenyan women also continue to rank very low in their communities' social hierarchy, yet they play a critical role in their homes and societies and deserve attention as leaders beyond the nurture and childbearing topics. One-on-one interviews were used in a narrative inquiry approach and a constructivist worldview; this research developed an understanding of Kenyan maternal influence and constructed the meaning of its role within female leadership in Kenya. The analysis of the interview transcriptions revealed 12 significant traits in the participants' perceptions of their early leadership development, as observed from their mothers. Mothers are indirect leadership scholars in a patriarchal institution that is oppressive to women. Central to this research is recognizing that mothers and daughters benefit when the mother lives her life and practices mothering from a position of authority, authenticity, and autonomy. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

Committee: Lize Booysen DBL (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Holloway PhD (Committee Member); Faith Ngunjiri PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Studies; Personality; Social Research; Sub Saharan Africa Studies; Womens Studies

Artium Baccalaureus (AB), Ohio University, 2020, Political Science

Maternalism as a political strategy has been frequently used in US politics. I analyzed maternalism through its use in two groups from the 1960s and 1970s: Women Strike for Peace and the National Welfare Rights Organization. In analyzing these groups, the limitations of maternalism are revealed. Maternalism proves to be an exclusive, sometimes racist strategy that allows white women more success in using it. However, maternalism also offers some benefits in creating a pathway into politics for people otherwise excluded, as well as mobilizing large groups as WSP and NWRO both demonstrate. To conclude, I discuss the ways maternalism can adapt to include an ethic of care that allows for the maintenance of the benefits of maternalism while discarding the problematic gendered and racist elements.

Committee: Kathleen Sullivan Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Political Science

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2015, History

When Mormon suffrage leaders of Utah, such as Emmeline B. Wells, called for a meeting of suffragists to be held in the Salt Lake Assembly Hall on January 10, 1889, they were soon overwhelmed by the number of women in attendance. The meeting resulted in the formation of the Utah Woman Suffrage Association, which sought to restore the franchise to the women of Utah who had lost the vote two years prior as a result of the Edmunds-Tucker Act. Not only would they inevitably achieve re-enfranchisement through Utah's statehood campaign, Mormon women also participated in the reintegration of the national woman suffrage movement, which reunified in May 1890. Throughout this process, Mormon women continually reconciled and renegotiated their identities, which were complicated by ideas about religion, gender, sexuality, and civic duty in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. In “`The Key to All Reform': Mormon Women, Religious Identity, and Suffrage, 1887-1920” I contend that the Mormon women's suffrage movement was inextricably linked to developing gender ideologies within the Latter-day Saint Church. Using Mormon women's publications, this study traces the evolution of female Mormon activism and intellectual thought as Mormon suffragists adapted to changes within the national suffrage movement, ultimately reintegrating themselves into the nation-wide battle for the ballot. Complicated by nationwide debates about polygamy and driven by social reform, the Mormon suffrage movement became a catalyst for the debate about “woman's sphere” – which was forever transformed by suffrage. With persecution seemingly in their past and developments towards statehood as early as 1894, Mormon women increasingly positioned themselves as civic beings in a newly adopted state.

Committee: Kim Nielsen (Advisor); Todd Michney (Committee Member); Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; History; Religious History; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2013, International and Comparative Politics

The theory that women gain rights during the social upheaval of war has not held universally. While the debate has traditionally centered over women's participation in fighting and entry into the workforce this paper explores the topic from the form of mobilization, motherist or feminist, that women's organizing takes during war through the use of a longitudinal, comparative study of Lebanon and Liberia. Lebanese women's organizations overwhelmingly employed motherist mobilization and tackled practical gender interests that made no attempt to end women's subordination. In contrast, during the Liberian civil war women's groups were more apt to focus on strategic gender interests which acknowledged hierarchical gender relations. This paper addresses whether a motherist approach allows women a culturally acceptable space from which to make demands or if, in fact, the motherist approach limits opportunities to increase women's rights.

Committee: December Green Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Laura Luehrmann Ph.D. (Committee Member); Awad Halabi Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: International Relations