A Seminar on "The Program for the Development of Chinese Women"

THE level of women's development is an important mark of overall social development, and a measure of the degree of social progress. In order to promote women's progress and development, the State Council promulgated "The Program for the Development of Chinese Women 1995- 2000" on July 27 of this year. On August 10 the State Council Work Committee on Women and Children held a seminar on     

The Voice of the Child: A Legal Voice?

This article presents a legal analysis of the 'voice of the child' in family proceedings, both public and private. The evaluation is thus confined to civil law and is not concerned with young offenders within the criminal justice system. There have been significant legislative developments in the last decade arising from UK, European, and UN provisions. The article assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the rights to representation of children in these legal proceedings and in particular outlines the weaknesses in the proceedings of 'private' law about children. Making recommendations for future reform, the article argues that consistent implementation of the provisions requires greater attention to be paid to direct representation and advocacy for the child's views, in contrast to adult presentation of their own views about the best interests of the child.     

The Arab Spring for Women? Representations of Women in Middle East Politics in 2011

This article explores the complex, liminal, and difficult space in which stories of women in “the Arab Spring” were wielded as parts of political narratives of gender, race, class, religion, democracy, and Westernization in Western media as the Arab Spring unfolded. It examines those stories by using the tools of postcolonial feminism. After briefly describing what is meant by (gender and) the Arab Spring, the article outlines a method for evaluating the significations of the media narratives surrounding it. We find two dissonant narratives (of gender as emancipatory and of gender as problematic) and ask what assumptions about gender (and sex and race and culture) have to be made to produce these particular representations. We argue that the dissonant narratives have in common using the situation of women as a barometer for the success of Westernization, liberalization, and democratization. The article concludes by exploring the implications of these findings.     

Pragmatics for the Production of Subjectivity: Time for Probe‐Heads

This article attends to the collaborative project of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and specifically to their concept of “probe‐head” as mapped out in A Thousand Plateaus. Probe‐head names the rupturing of, and production of alternative modes of organisation to, the mixed semiotic of faciality that determines much of our lived life, in fact that constitutes us as “human”. In exploring this alternative “production of subjectivity” the essay attends also to Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “several regimes of signs”, and to the idea of an experimental “pragmatics” of living. The essay goes on to map out what might be called two operating terrains of probe‐heads, in fact two different “times” of the contemporary – the past and the future – and looks at how these might be deployed against the impasses of the present. As far as the latter goes the essay looks at case studies of myth/modern paganism and contemporary art production.     

‘A Full Knowledge of the Subject of Slavery’: The Amistad,Expert Testimony,and the Origins of Atlantic Studies

This article explores the role of testimony, expertise, and the academy in the production of knowledge about slavery in the context of the trials of the Africans aboard the slave ship La Amistad, 1839–1841. Testimony provided by enlisted self-professed experts formed the intellectual architecture to the legal argument as it advanced to the Supreme Court. When considered separately from the trials, and distinctly as a question of the production of knowledge, the role of expert testimony provides crucial insight into the function of the university in antebellum anti-slavery thought and action, the marginalization of the lived African slave experience, and the emergence of Atlantic studies in the contemporary present. Examining the relationship between the university and the marshalling of expertise – broadly understood as linguistic, political and cultural knowledge of slavery and the slave trade – suggests that the early use of expert testimony had an important albeit neglected role in the birth of Atlantic studies.     

The Social Production of Invited Spaces: Toward an Understanding of the Invitational Character of Spaces for Citizens’ Initiatives

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - The rise of citizens’ initiatives is changing the relation between governments and citizens. This paper contributes...     

‘Next Steps’ for Equality?: The Impact of Organizational Change on Opportunities for Women in the Civil Service

The ‘Next Steps’ restructuring programme (1988) has had a fundamental impact on the management and organization of the Civil Service, and on the practice of equal opportunities. The fragmentation of the service into semi-autonomous agencies has resulted in greater managerial autonomy in relation to staffing issues. Equality initiatives such as part-time and flexible working patterns, ‘family friendly’ policies, women-only training programmes and the provision of nurseries are coming under threat due to increased discretion over decision-making in these areas. Other aspects of restructuring — such as ‘downsizing’— have resulted in a reduction of the middle management layer, making it more difficult for women to breach the ‘glass ceiling’ and access senior posts. The persistence of a hostile managerial sub-culture to equal opportunities has been instrumental in pushing equality issues to the bottom of the agenda in the current climate of change because of ‘more important’ organizational pressures. Within this context, equality of opportunity for women in the Civil Service has reached a critical stage.     

“The Motherhood Wage Gap for Women in the United States: The Importance of College and Fertility Delay”

One of the stylized facts from the past 30 years has been the declining rate of first births before age 30 for all women and the increase rate of first births after age 30 among women with four-year college degrees (Steven P. Martin, Demography, 37(4), 523–533, 2000). What are some of the factors behind womens decision to postpone their childbearing? We hypothesize that the wage difference often observed between like-educated mothers and non-mothers (Jane Waldfogel, Journal of Labor Economics, 16, 505–545, 1998a; Journal of Economic Perspectives 12(1) 137–156, 1998b) may be affected by the postponement of childbearing until after careers are fully established. Hence, we focus on college-educated women because they are typically more career-oriented than their non-college educated counterparts and also the group most often observed postponing maternity. We use individual-level data on women from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) in order to control for individual-level unobserved heterogeneity as well as human capital characteristics, such as actual work experience, in our empirical analysis. We estimate wage equations, first producing base-line results to compare to the existing literature. Then, we expand the basic wage equation model to address fundamental econometric issues and the education/fertility issue at hand. Our empirical findings are two-fold. First, we find that college-educated mothers do not experience a motherhood wage penalty at all. In fact, they enjoy a wage boost when compared to college-educated childless women. Second, fertility delay enhances this wage boost even further. Our results provide an explanation for the observed postponement of maternity for educated women. We argue that the wage boost experienced by college-educated mothers may be the result of their search for family–friendly work environments, which, in turn, yields job matches with more female-friendly firms offering greater opportunities for advancement.JEL Codes: J13 and J3     

Burnout: The end of the line or a signal for change?

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to explore my own experiences and professional choices through an examination of the concept of burnout in social work.

I have set out to use some aspects of the research and theory about the concept of burnout and relate them to the particular circumstances of my case. After a brief introduction and examination of what burnout is, I divide the paper into three sections dealing with the social and historical factors in burnout, the individual factors and the organizational factors.

I have attempted to show a connecting thread throughout, linking the various factors through the theme of disillusionment. It appears that the problem of dealing with omnipotence and accepting reality are as germane to this topic as they are to the individual's development. I have also attempted to draw an analogy between the factors that may aid this developmental task and organizational factors which can contribute to or help prevent burnout.     

The Self-Employment of Men and Women: What are their Motivations?

Do men and women carry different motivations for entering self-employment? Earlier researchers have suggested that, as primary care givers for children and families, women face a more stringent time constraint relative to men. Thus, where men see self-employment as a chance for greater financial opportunity, women see a chance to take work that allows more time at home. This paper investigates this hypothesis using unique data that allow analysis of individual self-employment as a function of traditional economic and demographic variables as well as variables that partially capture individuals’ opinions and perceptions of pecuniary and nonpecuniary aspects of entrepreneurism. Results suggest that men who choose self-employment are influenced principally by pecuniary concerns, while women are influenced principally by family concerns and by the opinions of their family, friends, and peers.     

The Scholarship of Difference: A Scholarship of Liberation?

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of new scholarship depicting the diverse experiences of men and women from different classes, races, and ethnicities. This article examines the implications of this new scholarship by comparing and contrasting its core assumptions with those of both Marxism and postmodernism. Particular attention is paid to its potential as a scholarship of liberation. Within this new scholarship of difference, two types of identity politics are critically examined: those that privilege the knowledge of the oppressed and those that focus on multiple realities and polyvocality. Shortcomings of this scholarship are discussed, including the naive pluralism of idealist multiple realities approaches, the underdevelopment of analyses of social class, and the problems that arise from rejecting scientific realism and from ignoring the importance of theory for analyzing structural relations of oppression. Of this new scholarship I ask: Whither social structure? Whither truth? And whither social class?     

“Touching up” Communal Space of a Residential Home Setting: A Comparative Study of Tools for Assessing Changes in the Interior Architectural Space

This study focuses on the interior remodeling of two Swedish residential homes for dependent seniors. A regular maintenance operation was turned into a color intervention project, and the residents stayed during the process. The aim of the study was to assess the changes in terms of supportiveness for elderly individuals with cognitive or functional impairments. The settings were evaluated prior to and after remodeling. Architecture profession method and the Therapeutic Environment Screening Survey of Nursing Homes instrument were used. The conclusion is that a supportive architecture was not achieved, due to a restraining focus on color instead of the relation between aging, color, and homeliness. On the other hand, the architecture profession method and the Therapeutic Environment Screening Survey of Nursing Homes instrument proved to be useful complementary tools for assessing interior changes in architectural space.     

Sexual Health Interventions for Black Women in the United States: A Systematic Review of Literature

Objective: The purpose of this systematic review was to identify and evaluate approaches used in sexual health interventions targeting Black women in the United States. Methods: We conducted a review of 15 sexual health intervention studies for Black women published between January 2000 and May 2017 in the United States. Results: Each intervention focused on HIV/sexually transmitted infection prevention, incorporated an asset and deficit-based approach, primarily used individual-level assets, and was effective in achieving the stated sexual health-related outcomes. Conclusions: Comprehensive sexual health interventions require further development and refinement to include more community and institutional-level assets to improve long-term sustainable change and empower Black women.     

What Has the Marriage Law Done for Women?

LAW has been drawing closer to the lives ofordinary Chinese people since the 1980s. Overthe past 10 years or so China has issued manylaws in rapid succession. Governing the statebased on law was put into the Constitution of thePRC in March 1999, laying a solid foundation forthe realization of the nation's four modernizations. I became a lawyer in 1985. Since becoming astaff member of the All-China Women'sFederation (ACWF), I have consulted on theMarriage Law and other regulations and clausesrelated to it.     

Leadership in Voluntary Associations: The Case of the “International Association of Women”

Three models of leadership in voluntary associations have been proposed in the literature: democratic leadership, oligarchy, and leadership by default. Through an intensive case study of leadership structure, differences in the attitudes of members and leaders at three hierarchical levels, and differences between the attitudes and behaviors of aspirants and nonaspirants to leadership in a women's service association, this article examines the degree of fit between these models and a specific organization. Data is drawn from questionnaires, annual reports, and interviews. The results fail to conform to any of the existing models, suggesting instead a fourth model, leadership for self-development—in which leaders are motivated primarily by a desire to develop administrative and interpersonal skills.     

The Low Status of Female Part‐Time NHS Nurses: A Bed‐Pan Ceiling?

Despite increases in female participation rates into the paid working population of Britain women remain concentrated into particular sectors of the economy. Areas of the labour market where women predominate are also characterized by high levels of part‐time employment. The significance of part‐time work is that it is lower paid and offers fewer employment opportunities for women. This article examines the careers of 643 qualified female NHS nurses. It is found that respondents working part‐time are the least likely to occupy the upper echelons of NHS nursing. Explanations for this centre on the actions and strategies of managers who use negative gender role stereotypes regarding part‐time nurses to inform recruitment and promotion decisions. Managers, however, regard the low status of part‐time nurses as a reflection of their own choice strategies, thus failing to recognize the existence of gender‐based disadvantage. The resultant outcome is one where part‐time nurses are confined to the lowest qualified clinical grades, with little opportunity to progress to the higher grades. Critical labour shortages in nursing, however, may mean that the utilization of part‐timers is re‐examined as NHS management seek to retain more qualified nurses. For such a re‐examination to be successful management attitudes also need to change.     

Why the Gap? Determinants of Self-Employment Earnings Differentials for Male and Female Millennials in the US

We investigated gender differences in self-employment earnings for US Millennials, and whether differences could be attributed to individual characteristics, business characteristics, or factors related to household formation, such as marriage and parenthood. Using a nationally representative dataset of US youth, we found significant earnings differences favoring men and suggestive evidence of a “motherhood earnings penalty” (Budig and England 2001, p. 204–225). After controlling for business characteristics, however, the effect of gender itself was not statistically significant and the effect of motherhood only approached statistical significance, suggesting that gendered choices and paths explain earnings differences, not gender or motherhood per se. Future work would benefit from a larger dataset and should explore the role of work location and education in earnings.     

The Integration of Immigrants in Sweden: a Model for the European Union?

In an overall ranking by the Migration Policy Group of 2006 measuring immigrant integration policies in 28 countries, Sweden scored more points than any other country. This result is especially interesting given that Swedish integration policies differ considerably from integration policies applied in other EU countries. Whereas in countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and France integration conditions have become increasingly restrictive in recent years, in Sweden the participation in integration courses is still voluntary and no integration requirements must be met for long‐term residence or citizenship. Moreover, the Swedish integration programme is characterised by an increasing number of labour‐market related integration measures. Yet, in contrast to the Migration Policy Group ranking, data collected from the OECD and Eurostat seem to indicate unfavourable integration outcomes in Sweden, at least in terms of labour market participation. The gap in employment rates between the native and foreign‐born population in Sweden widened during the 1990s and has not narrowed significantly since then. This means that the outcome of Swedish integration policies is at least ambiguous, which makes the use of Sweden as a model for integration policies in other member states inconceivable.     

A Training Class for Women Cadres on the Nairobi Strategies

DURING the last five days of October 1993, the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) held a training course to realize the goals of the document,"Future Strategies for Women's Advancement Through the Year 2000." (The document is referred to as the "Nairobi Strategies" in the story.) The