Problems and Countermeasures of Town Women's Employment

THE employment of women living in towns is a substantial problem in China. Introduction to Town Women's Employment Issues Today, the Chinese workforce is undergoing tremendous changes. When rural residents poured into the cities or shifted to the local manufacturing and service industries, the number of unemployed people and town-dwellers without a state-run unit increased. The employment of women also has become a serious issue. According to     

Are Men and Women Equal in Employment?

EQUALITY was one of the themes of the Fourth World Conference on Women. The motto of the Conference was "Action for Equality, Development and Peace." But is there a real possibility for equality between men and women? Equality in employment remains an important concern. Recently, Zheng Yefu, research worker of the Beijing Academy of Social     

Seminar on Employment and Development of Town Women

IN October 1994, the All-China Women's Federation held a seminar on the employment and development of town women in Shanghai, China's largest city. The seminar was also a preparatory meeting for the '95 NGO Forum on women's employment. More than 70 people, including the presidents of the provincial women's federations, the municipal women's federations and some leaders of the state departments concerned attended this meeting. Chen Muhua, Vice-Chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the NPC, the     

Parental Employment,Shared Parent–Child Activities and Childhood Obesity

We examine the effect of parental employment on child health as measured by children’s percentile body mass index (pBMI). Our investigation reveals that hours of parental employment are important determinants of child health. We find a highly significant role for the influence of fathers’ hours of work on the pBMI. Given that work hours of both mothers and fathers impact child health, ignoring parents’ joint decision making in child health production may lead to biased results. Additionally, we conclude that parental work hours may impact both the quality and quantity of time that parents spend with their children. Specifically, we find that shared parent–child activities such as building or repair work, and reading influence childhood obesity.     

Welfare,Intergenerational Cohabitation Penalties,and Single Mothers’ Employment

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 changed welfare programs by increasing state income maintenance programs emphasis on employment. Following reform, several states paid reduced welfare benefits to single mothers who resided in their parents homes, compared to those single mothers who lived independently. This paper evaluates whether the benefit reductions lower the probability of intergenerational cohabitation or the employment of single mothers recognizing that family support might facilitate single mothers labor market attachment. The results suggest that family cohabitation penalties reduce the likelihood single mothers live in their parents households and work. Despite several empirical limitations, the results offer evidence that intergenerational living arrangements positively influence employment.*The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Federal Reserve Board or its staff. Thanks to the Urban Institute and staff, in particular Gretchen Rowe for discussing policy collection and information. Beneficial comments have come from the editor, Shoshana Grossbard, two referees, Donna Gilleskie, David Guilkey, William Grant, Carolyn Heinrich, Thomas Mroz, and Wilbert van der Klaauw.     

Beyond Employment and Income: The Association Between Young Adults’ Finances and Marital Timing

This study tested an extension of the theory of marital timing (Oppenheimer, Am J Sociol 94:563–591, 1988) by assessing whether visible and less visible financial assets and debt mediated the relationship between employment and the likelihood of marriage. We conducted these prospective, longitudinal analyses using a sample of 1,522 never-married young adults from the National Survey of Families and Households. For participants who were not cohabiting at Wave 1, financial issues such as car values predicted marriage but did not mediate the relationship between work hours, occupational prestige, and the likelihood of marriage. For cohabiting participants, employment factors were the strongest predictor of marriage.     

Natural Awareness:Environmental Protection Supervisors and Their Guide

ZHOU Youhong works to inform students about environmental protection. Enthusiastic about her work, she spreads knowledge to element college and secondary school students. She said only when she began studying in university did she realize the harm of industrial pollution. She said she hopes through her efforts she can help the younger generation realize the value of environmental protection.     

Environmental Maintenance

Children learn about the environment at an early age. photo by WANG JIKU3435Environmental Maintenance     

Environmental social science: human–environment interactions and sustainability

Visual methods with children have gained interest as social researchers search for participatory methods that align with the current conceptualisation of children as social agents. This paper describes the reflections and experiences of using the home movie as an innovative vehicle allowing access to children’s everyday life. This method was adapted and used to encourage high levels of child-led participation and minimise researcher input. This paper explores practical and methodological strengths, challenges, and ethical questions arising from the production of home movies by the children and suggests that the home movie is an acceptable means for generating insight into children’s perspectives and to produce and reflect visual representations of children’s social worlds.     

Employment mobility or turnover? An analysis of child welfare and protection employee retention

This article challenges the commonly held assumption that there is a high level of occupational turnover of social workers in all child protection and welfare agencies. By analysing occupational mobility patterns (turnover, retention and attrition) in five child protection social work teams, the article demonstrates how occupational mobility is a complex phenomenon and needs to be understood within wider shifts in employment patterns and the gendering of professions. In this paper we argue that it is important to distinguish between employee turnover and employee mobility, and that an examination of the posts taken up after leaving, at least in Ireland, may provide a different perspective on the narrative of high turnover of workers in this sector. Within the five teams, it is estimated that there was a turnover rate of 8 percent in 2006 and 11 percent in 2010, with 72 percent of child protection workers in post at the end of 2005 being retained and still in post at the end of 2010. While this should not lead to complacency, or a failure to recognise and respond to the stressful nature of child protection, it does raise questions for employers about how they might plan for occupational mobility within a stable workforce made up of largely women, aged between 25 and 35, frequently newly-qualified, who are often the main carers for children and adults outside the workplace.     

Environmental justice in South Africa: tools and trade‐offs

Despite constitutional commitments to environmental justice in South Africa, evidence indicates that the poor and the natural environment continue to be marginalised in decision making. This paper examines the role of environmental assessment procedures, specifically Environmental Impact Assessments, in shaping outcomes at the local level to understand how injustices are perpetuated and maintained. Injustices are understood here by examining the relationship between power, knowledge and rationality, and the effects these have on including the public in decision‐making processes. In the revamping of environmental assessment regulations in South Africa, much attention has been paid to streamlining the process of assessment. However, this paper argues that environmentally just decisions cannot be made in a context where debates are centred on process. Instead, debates need to be redirected to qualities of outcomes, foregrounding the need for an approach grounded in questions of value. Recognising that the poor and the natural environment tend to systematically lose out in a context where environment is pitted against development, environmental assessment must be able to take into account the distributional consequences of decisions. Furthermore, the paper makes a case for the need to challenge the broader political context within which environmental assessments are conducted, as environmental assessments cannot replace broader strategic and policy debates. In the absence of this broader institutional challenge, political power will continue to work through decision‐making tools to perpetuate and maintain systems of injustice.     

The Times are Changing Women's Employment

IN the mid- and late-1980s a debate was held in China concerning the issue of women's employment. It was a time when economic reform involved both the management and labor force of the country's state-rum enterprises. What the Chinese women in the workforce had experienced from the late 1980s to the early 1990s in many ways differed from our predictions about the debate. Perhaps we can make a closer analysis of the trend in Chinese women's employment by learning the differences. Both the employment rate and the population of Chinese women in urban and rural areas have steadily grown as the economy has developed. In 1982 the Chinese workforce was     

Does High School Employment Develop Marketable Skills?

While decades of academic research have consistently demonstrated a positive relationship between high school employment and adult earnings, the literature is empirically silent in regards to why this association exists. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to examine the hypothesis that high school employment develops “marketable skills” in the form of occupation-specific human capital. By analyzing wage variation attributable to the commonality of skill portfolios across respondents’ high school and adult (age 20 and 23) occupations, this study fails to find consistent evidence that the types of skills utilized in high school employment are correlated with adult earnings. Within the framework of the human capital model, this would suggest that the positive, post-school economic gains of in-school work are largely attributable to increases in general human capital (e.g., workplace socialization, character building).     

A Historical Perspective on High School Students’ Paid Employment and Its Association with High School Dropout

Discussions about the role of paid employment in high school students’ lives usually involve untested assumptions about historical trends in the frequency, intensity, and selective nature of students’ employment behaviors. Using several nationally representative data sources, we find few changes in rates of employment or hours worked per week among adolescents since 1940 or among students since 1980. We observe important changes in recent decades in racial/ethnic and gender differences in employment and intensive employment. Finally, we observe that the relationship between students’ intensive employment and high school completion has been stable and persistently significant since the late 1960s.

Australian Workers’ Narratives about Emergency Relief and Employment Service Clients: Complex Issues,Simple Solutions

This paper illuminates two under-investigated, and often intersecting, frontline services accessed by unemployed people. It reports on the narratives of 32 Australian service providers working in emergency relief or employment services during 2012, including perceptions of clients’ presenting issues and problems, and rationale for intervention. Workers tended to use reductionist and individualistic terms to describe complex client issues suggesting self-motivation and personal responsibility were key to gaining employment or alleviating poverty. Clients were often viewed as having the power to change their circumstances, while workers appeared unaware of their positional power and drew from dominant conservative discourse about welfarism and unemployment to fortify their compliance requirements. The findings are discussed in relation to service delivery and reform.     

Do Pathways Matter? Linking Early Immigrant Employment Sequences and Later Economic Outcomes: Evidence from Canada

Employment mobility is a critical feature of immigrants’ settlement experiences and longer‐term life chances. While current research typically treats mobility as a singular outcome, becoming established in a new labor market is a complex process that can entail multiple transitions in and out of employment and between different types of jobs over time. This article advances understanding of the process of immigrant labor market incorporation by engaging with its potentially multidimensional, cumulative, and path‐dependent aspects. Using data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada, I test the impact of an empirically derived typology of month‐by‐month immigrant employment trajectories on the odds of occupational degradation and on weekly wages. I find that the pathways immigrants take through the labor market in their first four years constitute a distinct and important mechanism shaping later employment outcomes.