Segregation and Supply: Preferences and Plans among ‘Self-Made’ Women

Recently, Hakim (1991) has argued that women's choices and decisions are a key determinant of labour market behaviour and patterns of gender segregation. Drawing on a case study of women scientists and engineers, this paper examines the extent to which horizontal segregation is the product of preference and planning. The evidence suggests that the women's choices were a significant factor in entering the technical professions. However, from predominantly middle-class families, coming from single-sex schools, the women were able to specialize in technical subjects and to withstand pressure to change their decisions. Their subsequent occupational positions were the product of these educational choices rather than well-formulated career plans. Their involvement in their employers' schools/industry liaison policies highlighted that the majority of young women do not consider professional science and engineering as an appropriate job for them. The findings of the study illustrate that preferences and plans are made in ‘gendered’ social contexts in which women face different opportunities and constraints in exercising their decisions. While the study of women's attitudes and behaviour should not be neglected, sociologists should be wary of voluntaristic accounts of gender segregation which rely on rationalistic notions of labour market behaviour.     

The economic effects of large industrial undertakings on rual economies

This paper uses an adaptation of the input-output method to test the impact of large-scale industrial undertakings on comparatively small and sparsely-populated areas. It explains how, firstly, a model was built based upon a specimen rural area and including a series of vectors which allow local demand to change as incomes change. The model was then generalized so that data could be inserted to simulate any similar area. The paper then explains the results obtained from inserting a large-scale industrial activity into the model.     

Distress in Emerging Adults: Further Evaluation of the Painful Feelings About Divorce Scale

Young adults from divorced families experience clear emotional distress despite most not meeting diagnostic criteria for emotional disorders. Laumann-Billings and Emery (2000) developed the Painful Feelings About Divorce (PFAD) scale to assess the emotional distress emerging adults feel regarding childhood parental divorce. The study sample is undergraduates predominately between the ages of 18 and 22. This study adds to the literature by (a) further demonstrating the PFAD scale reliability and validity, (b) including participants with both divorced and separated but never married parents, and (c) assessing generalizability of the PFAD with a more diverse socioeconomic sample.     

Changing the risky beliefs of post-partum women about therapeutic sun-exposure

BackgroundMany post-partum women hold risky beliefs about perceived therapeutic benefits of sun-exposure in the post-partum period and infancy.QuestionCan a maternity hospital based educational intervention reduce the prevalence of such beliefs among post-partum women?MethodsIn this outcome evaluation of an interventional study, two groups of healthy post-partum women (hospital inpatients) were interviewed, 1–4 days following delivery. The first cross-section (106 women) was recruited prior to in-services for maternity staff; the second (203 women) was recruited after completion of the in-services. Data were compared between the groups.FindingsMore pre-intervention than post-intervention women reported they would expose their baby to sunlight to treat suspected jaundice (28.8% vs 13.3%; p < 0.001) or help his/her skin adapt to the sun (10.5% vs 2.5%; p = 0.003); or use sunlight to manage breastfeeding-associated sore/cracked nipples (7.6% vs 2%; p = 0.026).ConclusionThis simple, effective educational intervention could be implemented in programmes for parents, health professionals and students.     

Capitals, assets, and resources: some critical issues

This paper explores the potential of Bourdieu's approach to capital as a way of understanding class dynamics in contemporary capitalism. Recent rethinking of class analysis has sought to move beyond what Rosemary Crompton (1998) calls the 'employment aggregate approach', one which involves categorizing people into class groups according to whether they have certain attributes (e.g. occupations). Instead, recent contributions by Pierre Bourdieu, Erik Wright, Aage Sorensen, and Charles Tilly have concentrated on understanding the mechanisms that produce class inequalities. Concepts such as assets, capitals and resources (CARs) are often used to explain how class inequalities are produced, but there remain ambiguities and differences in how such terms are understood. This paper identifies problems faced both by game theoretical Marxism and by the rational choice approach of Goldthorpe in developing an adequate approach to CARs. It then turns to critically consider how elements of Bourdieu's approach, where his concept of capital is related to those of habitus and field, might overcome these weaknesses. Our rendering of his arguments leads us to conclude that our understanding of CARs might be enriched by considering how capital is distinctive not in terms of distinct relations of exploitation, but through its potential to accumulate and to be converted to other resources. This focus, we suggest, sidesteps otherwise intractable problems in CAR based approaches.     

Being Confined within? Constructions of the Good Childhood and Outdoor Play in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings in Ireland

This study is based on a study of the experience of the outdoors in early childhood education and care settings in Ireland. Central to the analyses are the inter‐linkages drawn between constructions of a ‘good’ childhood, and children’s ‘need’ for outdoor play, as well as the contradictions which arise around competing discourses of safety and protection versus play and autonomy in the structuring of children’s everyday lives. The findings indicate that the outdoors is increasingly marginalised in young children’s everyday experiences. Conclusions are drawn with reference to the implications for the development of real and meaningful outdoor play experiences for children in early childhood education and care settings.     

Development and Validation of the Social Worker’s Attitudes Toward Disability Scale

Interdisciplinary doctoral education is being strongly encouraged by government agencies (e.g., the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health) and universities. This position is predicated on the idea that integrating the perspectives of different disciplines is necessary for developing meaningful answers to complicated social problems. The purpose of this brief teaching note is to describe the development of a new interdisciplinary PhD program at Tulane University. The program is called City, Community & Culture, and it confers degrees in social work, sociology, and urban studies.     

Alternative approaches to researching social capital: A comment on van Deth's measuring social capital

This paper responds to van Deth's overview of empirical research on social capital and the difficulties of measuring the concept. We entirely agree with many of the problems that he identifies with the dominant mode of enquiry to date: namely survey and polling methods of attitudinal data. We are sure there are ways of improving on such quantitative methods although we are of the view that qualitative research is especially helpful for exploring the processes of social capital formation and the relationship between networks and norms so crucial to Putnam's use of the concept. Briefly, we discuss our own qualititive work involving intensive interviews with 120 activists drawn from a Citizens Audit of Britain. We address the importance of pre-existing trust and informal processes of mobilization, the significance of experiences of group involvement for generating norms of trust as well as distrust and the extent to which evaluations of such experiences influence wider views of participation and democracy in Britain. In sum, we totally endorse van Deth's call for the greater use of 'multi-methods and multi-level srategies' in empirical research by extending his plea to consider the valuable role of qualitative methods in the study of social capital.     

Social identities, class identity and political perspectives

There has been considerable controversy over the extent to which class is a salient social identity, and the importance of other social identities Marshall and his colleagues (1988) argue that class identity remains a salient frame of reference in people's daily lives while Saunders (1989;1990) and Emmison and Western (1990) argue that class identity is not as strong as they claim, and the importance of other social identities cannot be denied. However, proponents and opponents in the debate are agreed that the salience of social identities depends upon the context in which they are found which cannot be fully explored in highly-structured interviews. Drawing on data from a ‘qualitative re-study’ of the Affluent Worker series, it will be argued that people have many different identities, including a strong class identity, which co-exist at the same time. That said, their class identity is the most important influence on the formation of political perspectives. This finding concurs with the Essex team and Saunders even though he has sought to distance himself from this conclusion.