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.

Expectation for college attendance in the United States continues to rise as more jobs require degrees. This study aims to determine how parental expectations affect high school students in their decision to attend college. By examining parental expectations that were placed on current college students prior to and during the application period, we can determine the positive and negative outcomes of these expectations as well as the atmosphere they are creating. To test the hypothesis, an online survey was distributed to current ASU and Barrett, Honors College students regarding their experience with college applications and their parents' influence on their collegiate attendance. A qualitative analysis of the data was conducted in tandem with an analysis of several case studies to determine the results. These data show that parental expectations are having a significant impact on the enrollment of high school students in college programs. With parents placing these expectations on their children, collegiate enrollment will continue to increase. Further studies will be necessary to determine the specific influences these expectations are placing on students.

This is a multimedia project that is comprised of a short form documentary, a digital article and a reflection essay. The main part of this thesis project is a documentary shot, edited, voiced and produced by Nicole Shinn. The documentary focuses on the CROWN Act, a piece of legislation created in 2019 meant to ban natural hair discrimination. Since 2019, the CROWN Act has passed in over 14 states and 10 cities, including Tucson and Tempe, Arizona most recently. The six minute and 30 second long documentary seeks to educate people on the CROWN Act, what it does, what natural hair discrimination is, how this act has been impactful in Arizona and what national implications it has for legal protections against natural hair discrimination, as well as social acceptance of hair that is different from the Eurocentric standard. The documentary is accompanied by a digital news style article. The article focuses on the stories of a natural hair stylist in Tempe, and two activists in Tempe and Tucson who were instrumental in getting the CROWN Act passed in those cities. The article looks further into why natural hair is so important to the Black community, the struggle Black Americans have faced regarding this discrimination and how members of the Black communities in Tucson and Tempe worked to fight for the right to express themselves through their hair free of discrimination. Lastly, the reflection essay is meant to preface the entire project. To give the viewer a better understanding of how and why I pursued this topic and these mediums for my thesis/creative project. The reflection also walks through what I struggled with, what I learned and what this project means to me and other people that look like me.

For this thesis, I analyzed the discourse and content of Proposition 22, a California law which defined all workers utilizing gig-based apps to sell services as independent contractors meaning they were not legally entitled to certain protections such as minimum wage. The law was overturned in court in 2020, however, the advertisements in favor of and discourse behind the law has had a continued impact on all workers. Because of this it is important to examine and conceptualize the ideologies behind the law in order to understand how it was able to pass in a state which tends to vote in favor of increasing employee rights and regulation of industries. To do so, I utilized two methods of analysis, a discourse analysis of legal documents and a content analysis of advertisements. The former revolves around analyzing the discourse and ideologies around two versions of the legislation which were shown to the public, while the latter analysis categorizes and examines the implications of various advertisements utilized by companies to support the proposition. Ultimately, gig companies created an effective campaign that was able to repackage neoliberal deregulation for the general public while actively misrepresenting information around the law leading to long lasting effects that continue to harm workers while lining the pockets of investors despite its overturning.