The tournament careers of top-ranked men and women tennis professionals: Are the gentlemen more committed than the ladies?

We ask whether top-ranked male tennis professionals are more dedicated or commit-ted to their careers than the top-ranked female professionals. We find no evidence that this is the case in the 1979–1994 period. Despite substantially lower real earnings, the women pros competed for as many years as did the men and just as intensely in terms of annual number of tournaments played.     

Migrant women,place and identity in contemporary women’s writing

While recent scholarship on migration has reflected growing attention to gender and to the intersectionality of race, gender and sexuality, there has been little focus on women’s emotional and bodily responses to migration in the context of larger structures of sexism, racism and the legacies of colonialism. In this paper, I examine some literary portrayals of how migrant women’s relationships with specific places of origin and settlement, both steeped in structural relationships of unequal power and experienced on an immediate, psychological and bodily plane, are fundamental to migrant women’s changing sense of belonging and identity. Jamaica Kincaid in her novel Lucy, Tsitsi Dangarembga in her novel Nervous Conditions and Dionne Brand in the opening poems of her volume No Language is Neutral evoke some of the complex ways in which migration can affect women’s lives and identities, thus both complementing and critiquing some contemporary theorisations of migration and migrant identities.     

Why do men get more heart disease than women? An international perspective

Biological, behavioral, and psychosocial contributions to the gender gap in coronary heart disease (CHD) are discussed. Although CHD is the Number 1 cause of death for both sexes in the industrialized world, CHD mortality rates between these countries are larger than those between men and women, suggesting that biological factors are not the sole influences on the gender gap in CHD. Traditional coronary risk factors cannot explain the rapid increase in CHD mortality among middle-aged men in many of the newly independent states of eastern Europe. However, eastern European men score higher on stress-related psychosocial coronary risk factors (e.g., social isolation, vital exhaustion) than men living in the West. Comparisons between the sexes also reveal gender differences in psychosocial and behavioral coronary risk factors, including excessive alcohol consumption and smoking, favoring women. Overall, it appears that men's coping with stressful events may be less adaptive physiologically, behaviorally, and emotionally, contributing to their increased risk for CHD.     

Stronger women,better men? Family bargaining and public policy in contemporary Russia

Review of Economics of the Household - The paper investigates the effects of Russia’s 2007 ‘Maternal Capital Law’, a non-cash subsidy awarded to mothers with the birth of their...     

Work–family conflict among Black,White, and Hispanic men and women

Are there racial/ethnic differences in work–family conflict? Using a nationally representative survey of Americans, we analyze differences in work–family conflict among Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics and then utilize an intersectional approach, disaggregating men and women within each racial/ethnic group. Using structural equation modeling, we find that the usual predictors of conflict – family and work characteristics – have varied effects on work–family conflict among men and women of different racial/ethnic groups. Nonstandard schedules were uniformly linked to increased work-to-family conflict among all respondents, regardless of subgroup. Our findings reveal the merits of intersectional approaches, and suggest the need for theoretical models of the work–family interface that better reflect the experiences of men and women of color.     

Sexual Orientation,Unemployment and Participation: Are Gays Less Employable than Straights?

This paper is the first attempt to assess, in a unified econometric framework, the existence and the magnitude of both the sexual orientation participation gap and the sexual orientation unemployment gap. Having identified male same-sex couples using the Employment Survey, we use a bivariate probit selection model where the labor supply and the employment equation are jointly estimated for the French labor market. The results show that both participation and employment probabilities are significantly lower for gay employees compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Further investigations indicate that young gay workers, particularly, are more exposed to the unemployment risk than older ones. The beginning of a professional career and the subsequent entry to the labor market appear to be difficult steps to overcome for gay workers who spend more time than their heterosexual counterparts to find the good job.     

Are people in the South less intelligent than in the North? IQ and the North–South disparity in Italy

Socioeconomic disparity between North and South Italy has been recently explained by Lynn (2010) as the result of a lower intelligence quotient (IQ) of the Southern population. The present article discusses the procedure followed by Lynn, supplementing his data with new information on school assessments and per head regional income. Genetic North–South differences are then discussed on the basis of the most recent literature on the subject. The results do not confirm the suggested IQ-economy causal link.     

Parenting and Family Structure After Divorce: Are They Related?

Children are raised in various family structures after a parental divorce. Currently, research including both repartnering and the custodial arrangement when investigating parenting is scarce and mainly proceeds from a maternal perspective, ignoring potential partner effects. Consequently, we investigate differences in parenting after divorce according to family structure (repartnering and custodial arrangement), analyzing a dyadic subsample of the multiactor Divorce in Flanders data set (616 children and parents) using a structural equation model. We conclude that living with a partner has a positive effect on parenting, whereas not living with the child has a relatively negative effect on parenting, regardless of the parental gender.     

Are COVID fatalities in the US higher than in the EU,and if so,why?

Review of Economics of the Household - The COVID crisis has severely hit both the United States and Europe. We construct comparable measures of the death toll of the COVID crisis suffered by US...     

Carved in flesh? Inscribing body, identity and desire

This paper opens up questions regarding the ways in which reading the body leads to limited and limiting notions of identity. These questions are based around a critique of an ethnography of lesbian body-modification which I problematize in a number of ways. I suggest that reading the body of another is both methodologically and politically problematic. I reflect on how this approach confuses the complexity of body and identity and the ways in which this relates to establishing problematic boundaries of lesbian identity. I suggest an embodied identity cannot be fully understood or incorporated within any notion of the body as fixed or finite, and that neglecting the variability and mutability of the body is antithetical to political strategies of inclusion and equality.     

Gender and social conformity: Do men and women respond differently to social pressure to vote?

In this paper, we re-analyze data from a large-scale field experiment (N = 344,084) on voter turnout in order to determine whether men and women respond differently to social pressure aimed at voter mobilization. To date, there have been mixed results regarding the interaction between a person’s gender and receptivity to social influence. On the whole, our analyses confirm prior findings that social pressure increases voter turnout but uncover little to no evidence of gender differences in receptivity to social pressure cues in the context of political participation.     

Race, gender, and sexual orientation in hate crime victimization: identity politics or identity risk?

This study examined the impact of hate crimes upon gay and lesbian victims, reviewing 1538 hate crimes committed in Los Angeles County. Differences between sexual orientation and other hate crime categories were considered for offense severity, reportage to law enforcement, and victim impact. The type of offense varied between crimes classified for sexual orientation (n=551) and other bias-motivated crimes (n=987). Assault, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and stalking were predictive of sexual orientation hate crimes. Sexual orientation bias crimes evidenced greater severity of violence to the person and impact upon victim level of functioning. More violent forms of aggression were predictive of gay and lesbian victim's underreportage to law enforcement. For sexual orientation offenses, victim gender and race/ethnicity differences were predictive of the base rates of crime reportage as well. These findings are considered in terms of a group-risk hypothesis, encountered by multiple outgroup persons, that influences help-seeking behavior and ingroup identity.     

Intact or in tatters? Family care of older women and men in urban Mexico

This article asks how family relationships affect the living conditions of low-income elderly people in urban Mexico. The existence of so many elderly women living alone in the country is at odds with cultural beliefs portraying mothers as the archetypal recipients of family charity. It is evident that there is little state provision of accommodation for the elderly, forcing older people to rely on their families for care. Living with family is usually thought to be a better option for older people. Yet many poorer families cannot afford to provide care, and some are not willing to do so. In addition, families treat elderly men and women differently, with significant consequences for housing conditions and well-being of men and women in later life.     

Does subliminal exposure to sexual stimuli have the same effects on men and women?

Three studies explored gender differences in explicit and implicit components of sexual arousal following brief exposure to a sexual stimulus. Whereas Study 1 assessed reports of sexual arousal following subliminal exposure to a sexual or a neutral picture, Studies 2 and 3 examined the effects of the same priming procedure on accessibility of sex-related thoughts assessed with a pictorial judgment task and a lexical decision task. The subliminal sexual prime did not have an effect on men's reports of sexual arousal, but caused women to report lower levels of sexual arousal. In contrast, the same subliminal sexual prime led to higher accessibility of sex-related thoughts in both men and women. It is therefore suggested that the subliminal sexual prime causes women to activate sex-related mental contents but to experience the result as somewhat aversive.     

Tsotsitaal,global culture and local style: identity and recontextualisation in twenty‐first century South African townships

Tsotsitaal is a linguistic phenomenon which is inseparable from a style adopted by many youth living in urban townships in South Africa. The style is signalled by the unique and innovative lexicon of Tsotsitaal, and additionally indicated by clothing and other identity markers. Features of the style are ‘urban‐ness’, consumerism (in terms of brand names) and cultural iconography, such as music and sports. While many of these items are influenced by, or even drawn from, global cultures (particularly in the diaspora), they are transformed into uniquely South African cultural currency by a process of recontextualisation in township spaces and between individuals. There has been a dialogue between the Tsotsitaal style and the global since at least the 1940s, which should put to rest fears that increased global influence since the end of apartheid will diminish the integrity of local South African cultures.     

What's better than the pill,vasectomy, celibacy and rhythm?

A report of a new technique of male contraception involves the use of heat which lowers the sperm count. Early reports of lowered sperm counts in men wearing jockstraps or increased sperm counts in men whose testicles have been cooled several degrees have led to the experimentation in the male rat of the effects of heat and ultrasound on the sperm count and the ability to fertilize the female. 250 male rats were divided into 5 groups: 1) control, 2) a 60 degree C water circulating testicle cup with 15 minutes exposure, 3) exposure to radiant energy for 15 minutes and raising scrotal temperatures to 60 degrees C, 4) exposure to microwaves of varying powers, and 5) exposure to ultrasound of 1 w/cm to 2 w/cm for 1 minute. Group 2 results indicated that libido was uninhibited, testosterone levels undisturbed a nd organ sizes unaffected by the hot-water treatment. It took 30-35 days for any pregnancies to occur after a single treatment. In group 3, results were substantially the same except that it took 60-75 days for any pregnancies to occur. In group 4, a 20% exposure to radiation for 5 minutes impaired fertility for 65-80 days, while those exposed to 20% for 15 minutes were still infertile at the end of the 10-month study. In these cases libido was also unimpaired. Animals in group 5, exposed to 1 w/cm for 1 minute had impaired fertility for 150-210 days although testicular temperature rose to only 38 degrees C. When exposure to ultr asound was doubled, fertility was impaired throughout the study. In all cases where fertility was restored, resulting offspring appeared normal and were themselves capable of reproducing normal-appearing offspring. Ultrasound was considered the most promising heat source. In all cases the germinal epithelium function is arrested. Future research should be directed to making the ultrasound technique more finely tuned to a contraceptive function.