Browsing by Author "Holtmann, Catherine"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    A coordinated community response to domestic and intimate partner violence experienced by immigrant and newcomer women in new Brunswick - needs assessment report
    (2016) Holtmann, Catherine; Torri, Maria Costanza; Rickards, Tracey; Matta, Crestina
    This 36 month project aims to improve service responses for immigrant and newcomer women who are victims of domestic and intimate partner violence (D/IPV) in New Brunswick. Through partnerships, a coordinated community response will be developed between provincial government departments, domestic violence support-service providers, immigrant serving organizations and community partners, incorporating the lens of immigrant and newcomer women’s experiences throughout the project. The learnings from this project will be integrated into future provincial strategies to address D/IPV experienced by immigrant and newcomer women.
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    “He was taught that by purity culture”: sexual purity codes and attitudes toward sexual assault among evangelical young adults
    (University of New Brunswick, 2020) Robinson, Emma Viola; Holtmann, Catherine
    Challenging harmful attitudes toward sexual assault, such as rape myths and victim blame, is an important part of dismantling rape culture. Evangelical Protestant communities offer a unique context for this work as sexual purity codes, which mandate abstinence outside of heterosexual marriage, may contribute to victim blame among Evangelicals. Guided by feminist theories of sexual violence and a lived religion lens, this thesis uses two qualitative data sources to explore the impact of sexual purity codes on attitudes toward sexual assault in the Evangelical context: content analysis of Evangelical abstinence books (n=6), focus groups with Evangelical young adults (n=13), and follow-up interviews (n=4). Findings from the content analysis show that Evangelical abstinence books promote the traditional heterosexual script, engage in victim blame, and frequently fail to label sexual assault narratives as such (particularly when the victim is not purity adherent). In contrast, focus group participants tended to accurately label sexual assault narratives regardless of the victim's purity adherence and generally did not engage in victim blame. Most focus group participants were critical or ambivalent toward the concept of “purity”, which they associated with the traditional heterosexual script. Sexual purity codes seemed to be associated with attitudes toward sexual assault to some degree, but only for purity supportive and some purity ambivalent participants, who engaged in victim blame when the victim was not purity adherent, and for purity supportive participants, who excused the perpetrator regardless of the victim's purity adherence. For Evangelical young adults, critiquing “purity culture” appears to be a religiously meaningful way to critique the presence of rape culture in Evangelical communities.
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    The complexities of structure and agency :: social networks among Canadian immigrant women
    (University of New Brunswick, 2013) Holtmann, Catherine; Nason-Clark, Nancy
    This is a mixed methods study of ethno-religious immigrant women and their social networks during the early years of the settlement process. Immigrant women’s social networks are the locus of the interplay between structure and agency. The study uses a feminist intersectional framework to explore how immigrant women make strategic choices in the face of pressures from multiple structures. Statistical analysis of the Longitudinal Study of Immigrants to Canada shows that ethno-religious diversity as well as differences in main activities lead to variability in women’s mental health trajectories throughout the settlement process. The results of growth modeling indicate that Muslim immigrant women struggle to create the social capital necessary for overcoming structural barriers. The qualitative portion of the study is a comparison of Muslim and Christian women who settled in the Maritimes in the past decade. Eighty-nine immigrant women from twenty-seven countries took part in focus group discussions and individual interviews. Twenty-two service providers from community organizations were also interviewed. Analysis of the qualitative data focused on the impact of ethnic origins, as well as the particular stage in the settlement process, on immigrant women’s social networks. The qualitative findings provide a rich description of the resiliency and vulnerability of ethno-religious minority women. Settlement agencies, universities and Christian evangelical churches play key roles in the women’s creation of social capital in the early months and years. Christian immigrant women benefit from established institutional infrastructures in the region but there are differences in support according to ethnicity and denomination. Muslim women’s social networks are still in the early phase of formalization and one of the challenges they face is a wide range of ethno-religious diversity. The settlement experience offers religious immigrant women opportunities to learn that the interlocking structures of gender, ethnicity and class are movable and that together they can forge pathways in a new society through participation in social networks.
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    The social construction of masculinity and intimate partner violence: Understanding men’s perspectives
    (University of New Brunswick, 2023-11) Meng, Alison Marie; Holtmann, Catherine
    This thesis investigates the impact of social constructions of masculinity on men's use of intimate partner violence (IPV), addressing two questions: (1) How do social constructions of masculinity and gender influence men’s use of IPV? and (2) Based on their exposure to patterns of gender interaction, how do men learn and internalize processes that inhibit or encourage using IPV? Using Connell's (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005), theory of hegemonic masculinity, this study analyzes the Canadian White Ribbon Campaign's "Boys Don't Cry" video through content analysis and employs it as a visual method for qualitative interviews with 16 men aged 19 to 25. Findings reveal some men make conscious choices not to use violence despite social pressures and learn through sensitizing experiences and gendered interactions with men and women that using violence leads to negative consequences. This study allowed for participants to gain more awareness about their conceptualizations of masculinity and IPV.