Impact of low fertility and early age at sterilisation on women’s formal education and skill development in South India

This paper examines the impact of low fertility and early age at sterilisation on women’s formal education and skill development in South India. Multilevel ordered-logit modelling of pseudo-cohort data re-organised from the three rounds of National Family Health Survey, and thematic analysis of qualitative data collected from Tamil Nadu and Kerala states showed no evidence of women’s resumption of formal education or uptake of skill development training in the post-sterilisation and post-childcare period. While resuming formal education in the post-sterilisation and post-childcare period is harder to achieve for various individual, household, community and policy reasons, there is greater preparedness and support for women to undertake skill development training. As low fertility and early age at sterilisation are widely regarded as the emerging reproductive norm in India, post-sterilisation and -childcare women will be a significant population group both in number and in proportional terms. No government policies or programs have so far recognised this group. India’s new government should consider targeted skill development programs for post-sterilisation and -childcare women appropriate to their social, economic and educational levels. An important contribution of the family planning program, particularly female sterilisation, for the economic and social development of the family and the wider society will otherwise be lost.     

Ethnic segregation in context: Social discrimination among native Dutch pupils and their ethnic minority classmates

Social discrimination, defined as the relative preference for intra-ethnic over inter-ethnic relationships, was studied in pupils’ networks in Dutch secondary school classes. While native Dutch pupils (ethnic majority members) mainly named fellow majority members, ethnic minority members reported ties with as many majority as minority members. Considering the ethnic composition of the classroom, however, majority members discriminated less than minorities. No strong effect of classroom ethnic composition on social discrimination was found, whereas neighborhood composition was shown to clearly influence social discrimination: ethnic minority members were more, and majority members less inclined to discriminate in neighborhoods with more ethnic presence.     

Atos Healthcare withdraws from the Work Capability Assessment: a comment

In March 2014 Atos Healthcare withdrew a year early from its contract to provide the UK’s health assessment – the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) – that is supposed to sort disabled people into administrative categories according to their adjudged capability to do paid work. This move was welcomed by political elites, with, for example, UK Coalition Government Minister for Disabled People Mike Penning using it to criticise previous Labour governments for the contractual arrangements they put in place – although while the Coalition may have been concerned with the contractual arrangements soon after being formed, it extended the contract for five years. For the UK disability movement, the withdrawal of Atos Healthcare early from the WCA contract was a victory and, at least in part, a consequence of disabled activists’ resistance to the Employment and Support Allowance generally, and the WCA in particular.     

Women Auto Know: Automotive knowledge,auto activism,and women's online car advice

Although women influence nearly 85 percent of new car sales, their experience at automotive dealerships differs significantly from that of men. Not only are women subject to sexist and patronizing behavior from automotive personnel, but they also often wind up paying considerably more for a vehicle than a male customer. In the past two decades, the Internet has evolved as a significant source of automotive information and advice. While the majority of car advice websites offer guidance to the general public, a handful address the automotive concerns of the female driver. These sites are significant not only for the information they make accessible to female visitors, but for what women gain—as drivers, consumers, and political actors—by reading them. This paper examines four popular websites that cater specifically to the woman driver. Calling upon feminist epistemologies, it demonstrates how such online locations empower women to become more informed drivers and consumers through the accumulation and distribution of women's automotive knowledge. Not only does this automotive knowledge aid women as negotiators, but it also provides them with the tools necessary to radically transform the hostile auto dealership culture, ultimately benefiting all in the market for an automobile.     

Estimating a frequency distribution when the sampling is biased

A simple random sample on a random variable A allows its density to be consistently estimated, by a histogram or preferably a kernel density estimate. When the sampling is biased towards certain x-values these methods instead estimate a weighted version of the density function. This article proposes a method for estimating both the density and the sampling bias simultaneously. The technique requires two independent samples and utilises ideas from mark-recapture experiments. An estimator of the size of the sampled population also follows simply from this density estimate.     

An Empirical Approach to Sufficient Similarity: Combining Exposure Data and Mixtures Toxicology Data

When assessing risks posed by environmental chemical mixtures, whole mixture approaches are preferred to component approaches. When toxicological data on whole mixtures as they occur in the environment are not available, Environmental Protection Agency guidance states that toxicity data from a mixture considered “sufficiently similar” to the environmental mixture can serve as a surrogate. We propose a novel method to examine whether mixtures are sufficiently similar, when exposure data and mixture toxicity study data from at least one representative mixture are available. We define sufficient similarity using equivalence testing methodology comparing the distance between benchmark dose estimates for mixtures in both data‐rich and data‐poor cases. We construct a “similar mixtures risk indicator”(SMRI) (analogous to the hazard index) on sufficiently similar mixtures linking exposure data with mixtures toxicology data. The methods are illustrated using pyrethroid mixtures occurrence data collected in child care centers (CCC) and dose‐response data examining acute neurobehavioral effects of pyrethroid mixtures in rats. Our method shows that the mixtures from 90% of the CCCs were sufficiently similar to the dose‐response study mixture. Using exposure estimates for a hypothetical child, the 95th percentile of the (weighted) SMRI for these sufficiently similar mixtures was 0.20 (i.e., where SMRI <1, less concern; >1, more concern).     

Specific Organizational Citizenship Behaviours and Organizational Effectiveness: The Development of a Conceptual Heuristic Device

Organizational citizenship behaviour has generally been associated with organizational effectiveness. However, recent research has shown that this may not always be the case and that certain types of organizational citizenship behaviour such as compulsory citizenship behaviour, may be inimical to the fulfillment of formal goals and organizational effectiveness. Using military historical and business organizational secondary data, the paper maintains that extreme variance in either organizational (task) or personal (social psychological) support organizational citizenship behaviour generates entropic citizenship behaviour which derails completely the effective accomplishment of formal organizational goals. A general model of organizational citizenship behaviour with entropic citizenship behavior as its novel conceptual boundary is developed in the paper, and four specific propositions with implications for future empirical research are delineated.     

Essay: The Role of Participatory Listening in Collaborative Discourse: Insights from Studies of Engineering Design Teams

In this article, we summarize evidence from observations of engineering teams for the importance of active listening in collaborative design problem solving. We focus on the way speakers use freehand sketching to convey complex design ideas, and how listeners support them whilst they do this. We argue that listeners temporarily redistribute the shared cognitive load of discourse production and comprehension within design teams: whilst speakers are engaged in sketch construction they are unable to take account of listener understanding, and listeners respond intuitively by anticipating and avoiding difficulties in this process. We conclude that this cooperativeness emerges naturally from the operation of effort conserving principles underlying collaborative social interaction, and show that by focusing on the contribution of the listener to the production of creative engineering discourse, this principle can be thrown into sharp relief.     

Gorbanevskaia and Poland: From Pol’sha to Novaia Pol’sha

Natal’ia Gorbanevskaia is primarily known as a poet and leading human rights activist, as well as for her role as author and editor at Kontinent and Russkaia mysl’. One important and substantial aspect of her life that is not well known outside of limited circles is the formative influence of Polish culture and thought on her as well as her extensive contribution to Polish culture and its dispersion, and the promotion of mutual understanding between Poles and Russians. This article traces this relationship and situates it within the context of a broader pattern of Polish influence on Russian culture beginning in the mid-1950s as well as connecting Gorbanevskaia to the seminal figure of Giedroyc, both directly and by virtue of shared concerns and interests. The period beginning with her emigration to Paris in 1976 sees her fully committed to expanding access for Russians, in exile and at home, to cultural, political, social and other texts and information about Poland. Chronologically, the nominal limits of this narrative are the popular interest journal Pol’sha which had a huge appeal for many Soviets beginning from 1956, and the journal Novaia Pol’sha of which she is a member of the editorial board, and which has been published in Russian in Warsaw since 1999 with the goal of establishing thoughtful dialogue between Poles and Russians.