Gender and Health Inequalities: What Are They and What Can We Do About Them?

The subject of gender and health inequalities is contested territory in health policy, research and practice. Yet there is a dominant approach which I describe as a form of technocratic rationality. Its application imposes significant limitations because it represents the problem of gender and health in terms of measurable sex differences in relation to health service access and health outcomes. In doing so, it fails to address and explain the social dynamics that generate the problem. I propose an alternative approach that originates in Australian women's health policies of the 1980s. These emphasised the inequalities between men's and women's participation in mainstream health policy, planning, management and delivery of services, and women's concomitant marginalisation. Recent sociological study offers support for this perspective suggesting that the endogenous organisational dynamics (or logics) within public health institutions provide a better way of understanding what the problem of gender inequalities in health is, and how we might fix it.     

Multiculturalism or Cosmopolitanism: How Can We Describe and Understand the Diversity of the World?

过去数十年来, 多元性的文化、社会和政治图景演变甚巨; 然而我们却仍未找到 一种话语来描述、界定、理解、解释和研究当代世界的超级多元性。关于多元性的社 会思想和政治行动大多受制于民族主义方法论和多元文化主义框架; 然而, 对此应该 提出质疑。和民族主义方法论相对的世界主义方法论, 是观察多元性问题富有前景的 视角。另外, 对规范的、哲学意义上的“世界主义”和作为一种结构现象及社会科学 研究项目的“世界化”进行区分是非常必要的。我们可以把哲学及规范意义上的世界 主义与世界性社会科学结合起来, 构建一种世界性的现实主义。

关键词: 超级多元性 民族主义方法论 多元文化主义 世界主义 世界化

Over the last decades the cultural, social and political landscapes of diversity are changing radically, but we do not even have the language through which contemporary superdiversity in the world can be described, conceptualized, understood, explained and researched. Many of the social thoughts and political actions on issues of diversity are now dominated by methodological nationalism and multiculturalism which, however, have to be called into question. As opposed to methodological nationalism, methodological cosmopolitanism is a promising lens through which to look at questions of diversity. And it is essential to draw an essential distinction between “cosmopolitanism” in a normative philosophical sense and “cosmopolitanization” as a structural phenomenon and as a social scientific research programme. Philosophical and normative cosmopolitanism can be combined with cosmopolitan social science to create a cosmopolitan realism.     

Fit for Work? The Influence of Sick Pay and Job Flexibility on Sickness Absence and Implications for Presenteeism

Recent developments in UK policy on health and employment have sought to change perceptions about what constitutes ‘fitness for work’. With the aim of reducing the incidence and duration of sickness absence, a range of initiatives, including the introduction of the ‘fit note’, are challenging the belief that it is necessary to be 100 per cent well in order to be at work. However, this article suggests that contextual factors independent of health may also influence people's decisions about whether or not to attend work at times of reduced wellness. Drawing upon data from a qualitative study of mental health and employment, this article illustrates how the terms and conditions of a person's employment may influence sickness absence decisions in a number of ways. It is argued that sick pay provisions, size of employer and nature of work may influence both decisions to take time off and decisions about when to return to work. The degree of flexibility to manage one's workload around times of poorer health may also have a bearing on whether people feel able to carry on with their work without recourse to sickness absence. Therefore, it may be important for policy interventions to consider not only health circumstances but also structural/contextual influences on conceptualizations of being ‘fit for work’. The implications of such contextually‐influenced decision‐making for ‘presenteeism’ are also considered. It is suggested that current conceptualizations of presenteeism are somewhat ambiguous; employees coming to work despite ill health is simultaneously presented as a problem and an aspiration.     

The Healthcare Systems of the USA and Canada: Forever on Divergent Paths?

Over all OECD healthcare systems, we identify increasing similarities and common trends, especially with regard to the role of the state. Yet two countries, the USA and Canada, have 'parted at the crossroads' since the 1960s and therefore are quite frequently cited as examples for the opposite trend, i.e. for divergence. According to our position, it is far from evident that this trend has still been dominant in the past 15 years. In our contribution, we show that the USA and Canada have become more similar regarding the role of the state in financing, service provision and the regulation of healthcare systems. Furthermore, the article investigates potential explanations. We find that a most influential explanatory factor is the healthcare system itself, its deficiencies and functional requirements as reflected in the specific system type. As the system types of the USA and Canada vary, so too do their adaptive responses to problem pressure. By systematically acquiring non-system-specific elements, i.e. characteristics which were originally less developed or completely absent, the systems grow more similar and therefore converge.     

The May Fourth Spirit:Re-evaluate or Reiterate?─Comments on a Seminar on the May Fourth Spirit and Traditional Culture

Inrecentyears,underthebannerof"de-ideologization,"ahistoricalcriticismoftheolddemocraticrevolution,thenewdemocraticrevolution,andrevolutioningeneral,hassunginharmonywithculturalconservatisminChinaandabroad.Providingfertilegroundforthisculturalconservatism,variousdifficultiesandspiritualperplexitiesinreallifearecleverlybeingusedasevidencethatrevolutionandMarxism,whichspreadtoChinaaftertheMayFourthMovement,arewrong.Againstsuchabackground,theChineseAssociationofContemporaryCulture,theChineseL…     

The impact of fiscal shocks on real GDP and income inequality: What do Australian data say?

This paper examines the impact of three fiscal policy shocks on per capita real GDP and income inequality in Australia during the period 1965–2014. A small structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model is constructed for an open economy for contemporaneous identification and estimation purposes. Based on the evidence of one cointegrating vector among the variables, a structural vector error correction (SVEC) model is specified for the long run. Direct taxation, indirect taxation receipts and government spending are identified as permanent fiscal policy shocks. The convergent use of two different models (SVAR & SVEC) strengthens the credibility of the results. The results have three key policy implications. First, a reduction in direct taxation receipts increases per capita real GDP without increasing income inequality. Second, a reduction in government expenditure significantly increases income inequality. Third, the adverse effect of indirect taxation receipts on income inequality is greater than the redistributive effect of government expenditure, which questions the widely held fiscal policy strategy of using indirect taxation to finance redistributive expenditure.     

Integration and Innovation:The Avenue of Cultural Development─Review of a Symposium on“Integration and Innovation:A Cultural Concept,”Macao 1995

SponsoredbytheChinesePhilosophySocietyincooperationwiththeInsti-tuteofPhilosophy,CASS,thesymposiumwasheldinMacaofromthe28thto30thDecember1995.Thirtyscholarsfromthemainland,MacaoandHongKongpresentedmorethantwentypapersonthesubject.I.TheDefinitionofCultural…     

Partisan ideology,veto players and their combined effect on productive and protective welfare policy: how the left still matters after all?

Quantitative analysis of the question whether ‘parties still matter’ has largely focused on the dynamics of aggregated expenditure-based dependent variables or protective welfare policies such as unemployment, sickness and family benefits. This article develops a series of pooled time-series cross-section regression specifications predicting changes in disaggregated protective welfare policies alongside productive welfare policies, namely family services, active labour market programmes and public education, across 17 Western democracies (1971–2010). In so doing, it employs the latest Comparative Manifesto Project [Volkens, A., P. Lehmann, N. Merz, S. Regel, and A. Werner. 2014. The Manifesto Data Collection. Manifesto Project (MRG/CMP/MARPOR). Version 2014b. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB). Accessed January 2015. https://manifestoproject.wzb.eu/information/information] and Veto Player [Jahn, D., T. Behm, N. Düpont, and C. Oberst. 2012. Parties, Institutions & Preferences: Veto Player (Annual), Version 2012–02. Accessed January 2015. http://comparativepolitics.uni-greifswald.de/data.html] data to explore the effect of the ideological position of prime ministers’ parties, veto players and their combined effect on these welfare policy areas. The article confirms that Left and Right governments ceased to make any substantive difference for protective welfare policies from the early 1980s onwards. Yet, it also finds that positive Left partisan effects have largely persisted for productive welfare policies. In the era of global competition, Left party ideology has continued to be an important factor in realising a social investment perspective in practice; in terms of the expansion of family services, its effects have been contingent on the veto power Left prime ministers faced.     

Commentary on “Economic Preferences or Attitude Expressions?: An Analysis of Dollar Responses to Public Issues” by Kahneman,Ritov and Schkade

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty -     

The Time‐related Underemployment of Lone Parents during Welfare Reform,Recession and Austerity: A Challenge to In‐work Conditionality?

Reforms to UK social security benefits introduced between 2008 and 2012 that increased lone parent obligations to enter employment coincided with economic crisis and government austerity. Increases in underemployment in the broader population during this period both in terms of unemployment and time‐related underemployment raise questions regarding the extent to which lone parents not only managed to enter paid work but obtain a sufficient number of employment hours. Activation policies have increased labour market exposure at a time of greater underemployment. At the same time, high levels of economic hardship, in the context of stagnant real wage growth and benefit cuts linked to broader austerity policy, could place additional pressures on lone parent time‐related underemployment where a desire for greater employment hours to improve household income is not met by availability. We present findings showing disproportionately high growth in time‐related underemployment among lone mothers with, at peak, around one in five employed lone mothers with a youngest dependent child aged over five experiencing such underemployment. The implications to in‐work conditionality policies and the roll out of the UK's new working age benefit Universal Credit are highlighted.