Filtering by
- All Subjects: Women
- Creators: School of Social Transformation
Women’s roles in society have changed significantly throughout the years. The movement to support the rights of women has been ongoing throughout the evolution of society but has been especially prevalent in the last century. The 1960s are when women began to enter the workforce instead of being limited to presuming roles as homemakers. Since that point in time, women have continued to thrive in the workforce and have pursued a larger variety of positions in various fields. Even though the opportunities for women continue to grow, there still seems to be an underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related fields. The underrepresentation of women pursuing physician and entrepreneurship roles in STEM will be analyzed and the challenges this group of people specifically encounter will be examined. Our first proposal to encourage women to enter STEM focuses on middle-school initiatives and incubator programs. The second proposal, based on commonalities females face within the workforce, is finding a better work/home life balance with the development of new maternity/paternity leave policies. Through these initiatives, we believe that the gender gap in STEM can be bridged.
In the last decade, California’s imprisoned population of women has increased by nearly 400% (Chesney-Lind, 2012). The focus of this thesis is to discuss the treatment—or lack thereof—of women within California’s criminal justice system and sentencing laws. By exploring its historical approach to two criminal actions related to women, the Three Strikes law (including non-violent drug crimes) and the absence of laws accounting for experiences of female victims of domestic violence who killed their abusers, I explore how California’s criminal code has marginalized women, and present a summary of the adverse effects brought about by the gender invisibility that is endemic within sentencing policies and practice. I also discuss recent attempted and successful reforms related to these issues, which evidence a shift toward social dialogue on sentencing aiming to address gender inequity in the sentencing code. These reforms were the result of activism; organizations, academics and individuals successfully raised awareness regarding excessive and undue sentencing of women and compelled action by the legislature.
By method of a feminist analysis of these histories, I explore these two pertinent issues in California; both are related to women who, under harsh sentencing laws, were incarcerated under the state’s male-focused legislation. Responses to the inequalities found in these laws included attempts toward both visibility for women and reform related to sentencing. I analyze the ontology of sentencing reform as it relates to activism in order to discuss the implications of further criminal code legislation, as well as the implications of the 2012 reforms in practice. Through the paper, I focus upon how women have become a target of arrest and long sentences not because they are strategically arrested to equalize their representation behind bars, but because the “tough on crime” framework in the criminal code cast a wide and fixed net that incarcerated increasingly more women following the codification of both mandatory minimums and a male-oriented approach to sentencing (Chesney-Lind et. al, 2012).
This report attempts to understand the effects of the many aspects that pertain to a woman’s path into the construction industry and their role in limiting women’s overall representation in the construction industry. More specifically, it aims to understand how upbringing, background, and culture impact women that do pursue careers in the construction industry. This paper presents some of the current and prominent issues being faced by women in in the construction industry, including those in the trades. These issues then contribute to their lack of representation and forceful exit. Additionally, it assesses personal narratives from a localized group of women who are currently employed at a large construction company. This information and these narratives are analyzed jointly to try and gain a better understanding of the current challenges being faced by women in comparison to those reported previously. This joint comparison allows for a deeper understanding of women’s perception of the construction industry as a whole.