A New Paradigm for Understanding Women's Sexuality and Sexual Orientation

Major scientific findings about women's sexuality and sexual orientation are reviewed. Sexual orientation is unrelated to mental health. There is no inherent association between gender conformity and women's sexual orientation; masculinity and femininity are linked to sexual orientation in some social contexts but not in others. Research has so far failed to identify major biological or childhood antecedents of women's sexual orientation. Women's sexuality and sexual orientation are potentially fluid, changeable over time, and variable across social contexts. Regardless of sexual orientation, there are important commonalities in women's sexuality. In particular, women tend to have a relational or partner-centered orientation to sexuality. Together, these findings provide the basis for a paradigm shift in the conceptualization of women's sexual orientation.     

Environmentalism and Public Policy: Environmental Justice: Grassroots Activism and Its Impact on Public Policy Decision Making

A growing body of evidence reveals that people of color and low-income persons have borne greater environmental and health risks than the society at large in their neighborhoods, workplace, and playgrounds. Over the last decade or so, grassroots activists have attempted to change the way government implements environmental, health, and civil rights laws. Grassroots groups have organized, educated, and empowered themselves to improve the way government regulations and environmental policies are administered. A new movement emerged in opposition to environmental racism and environmenttal injustice. Over the last decades or so, grassroots activists have had some success in changing the way the federal government treats communities of color and their inhabitants. Grassroots groups have also organized, educated, and empowered themselves to improve the way health and environmental policies are administered. Environmentalism is now equated with social justice and civil rights.     

Intergenerational Relations with In-Laws in the Context of the Social Convoy: Theoretical and Practical Implications

Intergenerational relations among in-laws are involuntary ties emerging as a consequence of marriage. As such, these relations provide a window through which the dynamics involved in restructuring social networks following life transitions may be observed. A questionnaire, based on the social convoy model, was given to an ethnically diverse sample of adults with living in-laws (N = 170), married 2–15 years. About half of the respondents included in-laws in a concentric circle network diagram of persons close and important to them. The strongest unique predictors of convoy placement for the mother-in-law were support, frequency of contact, relationship quality, and length of marriage, and for the father-in-law were support, relationship quality, and value similarity. This study sheds light on the dynamics of an intergenerational relationship that has been largely ignored in the literature, laying the groundwork for conceptualizing ways to foster positive in-law relationships as a necessary tool in managing the care of the growing numbers of elderly in the new millennium.     

Life Years Lost at Hazardous Waste Sites: Remediation Worker Fatalities vs. Cancer Deaths to Nearby Residents

We present a hypothetical case study using the Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL) metric to compare cancer risks incurred by residents living near a Superfund site to occupational fatality risks incurred by workers employed in that site's remediation. Since cancer occurs late in life, and because we assume its mortality rate is 60%, each case results in 8.8 YPLL. Each occupational fatality, which typically occurs earlier in life, results in 38.1 YPLL. In our case study, the residential population of 5000 incurred 1.3 YPLL, compared to 5.7 YPLL incurred by the 500 workers. Several uncertain assumptions may influence our calculations; moreover, occupational risks may be viewed as more "voluntary" than risks incurred by residents. However, because the magnitude of the YPLL incurred by workers and residents may be comparable, risk managers should consider occupational risks when evaluating remedial alternatives.     

Statistical Inference Based on Pooled Data: A Moment-Based Estimating Equation Approach

We consider statistical inference on parameters of a distribution when only pooled data are observed. A moment-based estimating equation approach is proposed to deal with situations where likelihood functions based on pooled data are difficult to work with. We outline the method to obtain estimates and test statistics of the parameters of interest in the general setting. We demonstrate the approach on the family of distributions generated by the Box-Cox transformation model, and, in the process, construct tests for goodness of fit based on the pooled data.     

Social Work and Blood Vengeance: The Bedouin-Arab Case

Correspondence to Alean Al-Krenawi, Department of Social Work, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Summary The practice of blood vengeance, the obligation to kill in retributionfor the death of a member of one's family or tribe, is illegalin most countries of the world; however, many traditional culturesstill demand this form of maintaining honour. This paper outlinesthe cultural and historical contexts of the practice of bloodvengeance among the Bedouin of the Negev of Israel. It considersthe consequences for the targeted family and details the copingstrategies adopted by the family, especially the children, underconditions of extreme social, emotional and economic deprivation.It discusses social work intervention, from initial contactto partial resolution; strategies of cultural sensitivity arealso outlined.     

Social workers in private practice: What are they really doing?

At one level, private practice may represent a fairly evolved manifestation of the expanded professional growth and sophistication of the individual social worker who embarks upon this highly individualized proprietary enterprise. However, on a larger scale, this widespread shift toward private practice may indicate a collective disenchantment with agency practice per se and represent a concerted attempt to redefine the fundamental aims and values of social work practice.