Do Schooling and Work Empower Women in Developing Countries? Gender and Domestic Decisions in Sri Lanka

Our work challenges and points out the limitations of the theoretical presumptions underlying the relationship between empowerment, education, and employment that have been emphasized in both the exiting literature and the current rhetoric to empower women in developing countries. We use survey, life history, and focus group data to empirically examine the relationship between schooling, paid work, and power in domestic decision making for young, married women in Sri Lanka. We argue that the relationship between education, work, and women's control of household decisions is conditioned by the larger social context, and as such, it is likely to reflect the extent to which the division of labor and access to information and economic resources are the bases of domestic power in the society under consideration. Our results make a strong case for the need to move away from broad-based conceptualizations of women's empowerment to a consideration of the specific arenas and dimensions along which women can have power. In focusing on the domestic arena alone, we find that there are important differences in both the nature and determinants of the financial as opposed to the social and organizational dimension of power in Sri Lankan households. Women who control one of these aspects of family decisions do not necessarily control the other, and while education and employment play an important role in determining women's input in financial decisions, they are largely immaterial in determining household decisions related to social and organizational matters. Our results also demonstrate the importance of going beyong simplistic and limited measures of schooling and work to consider more fundamental structural factors involving family, social, and economic organization.     

Do childbirth grants increase the fertility rate? Policy impacts in South Korea

In response to a low fertility rate, a number of municipalities in South Korea have been providing family benefits in the form of childbirth grants and child allowances. Using panel data for 230 municipalities that spans the years 2001–2014, this paper examines the impacts of family benefits on the fertility rate in Korea. I use the fact that different municipalities began providing the family benefits at different times to estimate the impact of family benefits on fertility rates using a difference-in-differences approach. This study finds a positive effect of family benefits on total fertility rate. Moreover, it finds little evidence of an anticipatory response within municipalities that adopted the policy. Given that a 10 million Korean won increase in family benefits is associated with a 3.5% increase in the total fertility rate, an increase in family benefits of about 44 million Korean won per child would be required to raise the total fertility rate to a safe zone above 1.5 children per woman, where population declines are gradual and easily reversed.     

Why Do Men Report More Opposite-Sex Sexual Partners Than Women? Analysis of the Gender Discrepancy in a British National Probability Survey

In a closed population and defined time period, the mean number of opposite-sex partners reported by men and women should be equal. However, in all surveys, men report more partners. This inconsistency is pivotal to debate about the reliability of self-reported sexual behavior. We used data from the third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3), a probability sample survey of the British population, to investigate the extent to which survey sampling, accounting strategies (e.g., estimating versus counting), and (mis)reporting due to social norms might explain the inconsistency. Men reported a mean of 14.14 lifetime partners; women reported 7.12. The gender gap of 7.02 reduced to 5.47 after capping the lifetime partner number at the 99th percentile. In addition, adjusting for counting versus estimation reduced the gender gap to 3.24, and further adjusting for sexual attitudes narrowed it to 2.63. Together, these may account for almost two-thirds of the gender disparity. Sampling explanations (e.g., non-U.K.-resident partners included in counts; sex workers underrepresented) had modest effects. The findings underscore the need for survey methods that facilitate candid reporting and suggest that approaches to encourage counting rather than estimating may be helpful. This study is novel in interrogating a range of potential explanations within the same nationally representative data set.     

How Do We Communicate About Pain? A Systematic Analysis of the Semantic Contribution of Co-speech Gestures in Pain-focused Conversations

The purpose of the present study was to investigate co-speech gesture use during communication about pain. Speakers described a recent pain experience and the data were analyzed using a ‘semantic feature approach’ to determine the distribution of information across gesture and speech. This analysis revealed that a considerable proportion of pain-focused talk was accompanied by gestures, and that these gestures often contained more information about pain than speech itself. Further, some gestures represented information that was hardly represented in speech at all. Overall, these results suggest that gestures are integral to the communication of pain and need to be attended to if recipients are to obtain a fuller understanding of the pain experience and provide help and support to pain sufferers.     

A review of school-based suicide prevention interventions in South Korea, 1995–2015

Adolescent suicide behavior is a serious social concern in South Korea, and there is a current lack of knowledge regarding the overall strengths and weaknesses of school-based suicide prevention interventions (SPI) for this group. The aim of this study was to review the benefits of and barriers to effective implementation of existing SPI for adolescents in South Korea. A review of school-based SPI was performed using the PsycINFO, PubMed, ERIC, KoreaMed, RISS, KISS, and NDSL electronic databases. Among the identified publications, 18 were subsequently included in this review and were classified into three approach types: universal (seven studies), selective (four studies), and indicated (seven studies). Major health outcomes associated with adolescent suicide have been suggested, but different outcomes from SPI have been found. The health-related benefits of these interventions were decreases in suicide risk from depression, aggression, and suicide ideation, and increases in the protective factors of self-esteem, confidence, social relationships, and respect for the value of life. Barriers to successful implementation of SPI included less consideration of the effectiveness of SPI treatment duration, minimal or no follow-up monitoring, low participation due to parents' prejudices against mental health, and underdeveloped referral systems. The findings from this review suggest that there is a need to revise existing SPI programs in the future to take into account of cultural sensitivity. The resulting programs should be useful to researchers, therapists, school staff, parents, and legislators in South Korea.     

How Do Intergroup Grievances Develop in the Absence of Oppression? Revolutions and Political Parties in Nineteenth‐Century Uruguay

Political sociologists often assume that widespread grievances require a long legacy of intergroup oppression. Yet in nineteenth‐century Uruguay, supporters of the White and Red political parties developed intense grievances against each other even though a legacy of oppression was missing. For explaining this puzzle I present an alternative perspective. It states that grievances first originate among political elites, which mobilize the masses through selective incentives in order to impose their will. If elites and masses are bound by close ties, sustained mobilization facilitates cross‐class group identification and allows grievances to “trickle down” from the top to the bottom of the social structure.     

Rise of the social?: Socialization of care and gendered social economy in South Korea

This paper sheds light on the recent increase in social enterprises and cooperatives in the care services sector, in particular, in the context of socializing care from the family in South Korea. This paper pays attention to the dynamics between marketization and social protection and the emancipatory efforts to build rich market relationship. In this paper, first I explore the changes in the care regime and the development of the care labor market with a focus on Long Term Care Insurance for the elderly in South Korea. Then I review the care provision through Social and Solidarity Economy and various attempts to build rich market relations. Finally, I evaluate the range of efforts for socialization of care with gender perspective by using the framework which is derived from Fraser's (2013) scenario for emancipation.     

How Political Is the Personal? Gender Differences in the Level and the Structure of Political Knowledge

ABSTRACT

In this research note we report on the results of an experimental study among 469 respondents in Belgium. The study shows that the familiar gender differences in political knowledge can be substantially reduced when including more questions on female politicians. Using confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory measurements, we can observe that the structure of political knowledge is identical for women and men implying that women and men do not have different conceptions of what constitutes the political domain. Both for women and men, “personal items” (in this case: The correct name of the new baby of the female vice-prime minister) were shown to load strongly and one dimensionally with the more traditional institutional political knowledge questions. It seems that women and men respond in the same manner to information about the personal lives of politicians.     

Till Porn Do Us Part? A Longitudinal Examination of Pornography Use and Divorce

As pornography use becomes more commonplace in the United States, and increasingly so among younger cohorts, a growing literature is considering its potential connection to key social and cultural institutions. The current study examined the relationship between pornography use and one such institution: marriage. We drew on three-wave longitudinal data from 2006 to 2014 General Social Survey panel studies to determine whether married Americans’ pornography use predicted their likelihood of divorce over time and under what social conditions. We employed a doubly robust strategy that combines entropy balancing with logistic regression models. We found that the probability of divorce roughly doubled for married Americans who began pornography use between survey waves (N = 2,120; odds ratio = 2.19), and that this relationship held for both women and men. Conversely, discontinuing pornography use between survey waves was associated with a lower probability of divorce, but only for women. Additional analyses also showed that the association between beginning pornography use and the probability of divorce was particularly strong among younger Americans, those who were less religious, and those who reported greater initial marital happiness. We conclude by discussing data limitations, considering potential intervening mechanisms and the possibility of reverse causation, and outlining implications for future research.     

How Effective is Peer Education in Addressing Young People’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Needs in Developing Countries?

This review article questions the assumptions at the core of peer education interventions adopted in young people’s sexual and reproductive health programmes in developing countries. Peer education is a more complex and problematic approach than its popularity with development agencies and practitioners implies. Its rise to prominence is more indicative of the desire to find effective tools to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic, than of peer education’s proven effectiveness. The often simplistic model of social relations that underlies peer education interventions leads to the reinforcement of gendered power relations, and a failure to take account of the social dynamics of poverty. The dominant rationales for peer education are examined and contested. In spite of the mismatch between rhetoric and experience, the appeal of the approach remains powerful, stemming largely from the objective of engaging young people in health interventions in a way that increases their autonomy and capacity .     

Do Therapists Address Gender and Power in Infidelity? A Feminist Analysis of the Treatment Literature

Sociocontextual factors such as gender and power play an important role in the etiology of affairs and in recovery from them, yet it is unclear how current treatment models address these issues. Drawing on feminist epistemology, this study utilized a grounded theory analysis of 29 scholarly articles and books on infidelity treatment published between 2000 and 2010 to identify the circumstances under which gender and power issues were or were not part of treatment. We found five conditions that limit attention to gender and power: (a) speaking (or assuming) as though partners are equal, (b) reframing infidelity as a relationship problem, (c) limiting discussion of societal context to background, (d) not considering how societal gender and power patterns impact relationship dynamics, and (e) limiting discussion of ethics on how to position around infidelity. Analysis explored how each occurred across three phases of couple therapy. The findings provide a useful foundation for a sociocontextual framework for infidelity treatment.     

An Analysis on Political Participation Behavior of American Interest Groups—— A Case Study of the National Rifle Association

In American democracy politics, interest groups has been an indivisible part of American political system and the existence and development of them often has been closely associated with social problems. America is a free country which allows people to hold guns. Consequently, the free trading of firearms leads to frequent violent incidents, which has already become the main social chronic illness in the American society. However, the US gun-control movement makes less progress primarily due to the obstruction of the National Rifle Association. Hence, the studying of the NRA's political participation behavior can help readers to get a clear understanding of the interest group's influence on the development of American democratic politics and the nature of American democracy.     

Does National Identification Always Lead to Chauvinism? A Cross-national Analysis of Contextual Explanations

This study examines the premise that national identification inevitably leads citizens to endorse chauvinism in the international arena. It argues that the relationship between national identification and chauvinism is affected by three contextual factors: globalization, inter-state conflict, and social division. A multilevel analysis of cross-national survey data from the International Social Survey Program National Identity II (2003) was employed in order to observe these three contextual effects, the sample consisting of 33 countries. The results demonstrate that closer relations exist between national identification and chauvinism in more globalized countries. The effects of inter-state conflict vary according to the indices used to measure conflict. Those countries that experienced a large number of deaths during the 2000s and mobilized resources and personnel evinced a higher level of chauvinism. This effect is not evidenced by other measures of conflict, however. Social division did not affect the level of chauvinism or its relation with national identification. These findings are used to critically evaluate the notion that citizens who identify with their nation tend to be nationally chauvinistic.     

Do Female Colleagues and Supervisors Influence Family Role Attitudes? A Three‐Level Test of Exposure Explanations Among Employed Men and Women in 27 European Countries

This study examines the relationship between various aspects of female labor participation and people's family role attitudes. Following exposure theory, we expect that individuals may adopt more egalitarian family roles as they are more often exposed to employed women because it dispels negative ideas about women's capabilities and brings them into contact with nontraditional networks. This study provides an elaborate test by examining the role of exposure to female colleagues and supervisors in three contexts: workplaces, occupational sectors, and countries. We found that the number of female colleagues at work and in occupational sectors was positively related to egalitarian family roles of employed men. Our study further showed that this positive relationship between exposure to female colleagues at work and men's egalitarian family roles was weaker in female‐dominated sectors. Remarkably, exposure to national female labor participation was not significantly related to the family roles of employed women.     

How Will Reforms of Marital Institutions Influence Marital Commitment? A Theoretical Analysis

Many recently policy proposals are intended to alter the incentives to establish or terminate family relationships, often with the goal of encouraging marriage. This paper develops a model of family structure decisions and uses it to argue that some such reforms may actually have the opposite effect. A pro-marriage reform raises both the value of marrying ones current partner and the value of search. When the latter effect dominates, singles are less likely to form a match, and couples are more likely to separate and optimally make fewer commitments to their relationships.This paper has benefitted from conversations with Gary Becker, Robert Michael, Victor Lima, Janice Compton, Emek Basker, Shoshana Grossbard-Shechtman (the editor), several anonymous referees, and the participants of workshops at the University of Chicago and the Midwest Economics Association. I also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the University of Chicago and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (Grant number T32HD07302). Any remaining deficiencies are solely my responsibility.