Purpose: The Women in Leadership Development (WLD) Initiative is a year-long, multifaceted co-curricular leadership development opportunity created to support the unique developmental needs of emerging women leaders. WLD was intentionally designed around the context of second-generation gender bias with a firm grounding of research and theory on…

In light of recent protests at Drag Queen Story Hour events, this essay offers a critical examination of the role of gender performance in secondary schools and English lessons through a personal exploration of how I perform gender as a queer English teacher. I show that schools perpetuate a model of gender that is binary and heterosexist; that…

Postsecondary institutions of education, similar to the broader society in which they are embedded, are steeped in and further trans* oppression. In addition, the knowledge produced at these institutions is inflected with trans* oppression, and continues to reify the notion that trans* lives and experiences are abject, abnormal, unintelligible,…

The lived experiences of queer and trans people of color (QTPOC) youth are significantly influenced by the various environments they navigate -- including but not limited to their families, schools, neighborhoods, communities, and workplaces. QTPOC youth -- or queer and trans youth who identify as Asian American, Black/African American,…

This chapter discusses and unpacks the ways in which gendered racism impacts African American female academics. An understanding of gendered racist realism exposes dominant racist ideologies in the academy, in general. Ontological beingness, specifically the "ontological we," affords African American women the opportunity to confront and…

Bell's (1992) thesis of racial realism, in concert with the work of Wilderson (2007), Hartman (1997), and Sharpe (2016), positions the afterlife of slavery as an irreconciled event that is ongoing and permanent. If the assumption is that racism exists and, subsequently, racial battle fatigue is and will be an enduring embodied experience that…

This paper provides a rationale for understanding personal/professional identities to support personal/professional learning and positioning in academe and higher education. It explains the importance of women writing and speaking out the stories of their lives (everyday and academic), having their voices heard and responded to, and using embodied…

In this autoethnographic article, I explore my experiences as an early career Academic of Color. Drawing on previous theoretical constructions such as the Strong Black Woman schema (SBW), I present these experiences through the lens of DC Comics' Vixen, a Black female superhero. This research highlights systemic disparities in the treatment of…

Considerable research has been published on society's expectations and attitudes toward females. Men think the most important qualities in the ideal woman are attractiveness, sexiness, and kindness. The media suggests females should value physical beauty and marriageability. Girls should be obedient, caring, pretty, and polite. These unreasonable…

School and life achievement patterns for girls and women differ from those of boys and men. While girls have made dramatic progress in school, they need to be inspired to connect to lifelong achievement. Both research and clinical work at the Ohio-based Family Achievement Clinic find that more boys than girls underachieve in school. There is much…

This article elaborates on three themes related to Szymanski, Moffitt, and Carr's major contribution aims. First, the article describes the promise of objectification theory as a grounding framework in research and practice, outlining how this theory integrates key aspects of several other important theoretical models. Second, this article…

This article focuses on the implications of theory and empirical research on the sexual objectification of women. Drawing largely from the American Psychological Association's 2007 "Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Girls and Women," the 2007 "Report of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls,"…

Visual culture permeates women's everyday lives, affecting how they see themselves, the world, and their relationships with others. Increasing women's opportunities to recognize the power and problem of visual culture and subsequently to create new meanings through visual culture is an important teaching goal of the author. The author considered…

The early gender bias experiences that children encounter can shape their attitudes and beliefs related to their development of interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships, access to education equality, participation in the corporate work world, as well as stifling their physical and psychological well being. For early childhood educators, being…

In this paper I locate portaging as a site of contradiction where convoluted meanings about the self, ability, gender, and class surface. Disability theory and feminist theory of the body elicit various readings about what sort of identities are being produced in the pedagogical space of adventure learning and the canoe expedition. (Contains 4…