Lability of prenatal stress during the COVID-19 pandemic links to negative affect in infancy

The association between prenatal stress and children's socioemotional development is well established. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a particularly stressful period, which may impact the gestational environment. However, most studies to-date have examined prenatal stress at a single time point, potentially masking the natural variation in stress that occurs over time, especially during a time as uncertain as the pandemic. This study leveraged dense ecological momentary assessments from a prenatal randomized control trial to examine patterns of prenatal stress over a 14-week period (up to four assessments/day) in a U.S. sample of 72 mothers and infants. We first examined whether varied features of stress exposure (lability, mean, and baseline stress) differed depending on whether mothers reported on their stress before or during the pandemic. We next examined which features of stress were associated with 3-month-old infants' negative affect. We did not find differences in stress patterns before and during the pandemic. However, greater stress lability, accounting for baseline and mean stress, was associated with higher infant negative affect. These findings suggest that pathways from prenatal stress exposure to infant socioemotional development are complex, and close attention to stress patterns over time will be important for explicating these pathways.     

Vulnerable but Aloof Versus Naughty and Nice: Contrasting the Presentation of Male and Female Nude Models in Viva and Playboy

The current research examined contested meanings of nudity by comparing images of nude men and women that appeared in Viva, a 1970s women's magazine founded with the intention of foregrounding male nudity, to corresponding issues of Playboy. A major difference was obtained between male models and Playboy Playmates regarding direction of gaze and nudity. Although gaze aversion is often interpreted as a sign of submission and direct gaze is seen as a dominance cue, men in Viva displayed a high level of gaze aversion and women in Playboy often gazed directly at the camera, especially when their pubic area was exposed. Additional content analysis examined the personality characteristics attributed to male models in Viva and Playmates in Playboy in their biographical sketches. In Viva, men were presented as possessing “bad boy” traits that may have been intended to compensate for the loss of power associated with male nudity. Playmates could be viewed as being naughty (by virtue of posing nude) and nice in the characterization of their personalities.     

Bringing Women's Voices into the Dialogue on Technology Policy and Globalization in Asia

This article documents an innovative research project 'Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women's Employment in the Asian Region'. Initiated in 1994 by the United Nations University Institute for New Technologies (UNU/INTECH), the project sought to democratise the dialogue around technological changes and globalization by bringing together NGOs active among women workers, academic researchers and policy makers. It was guided by the assumption that those affected by the impact of new technologies should play a major part in making and implementing policy. Women workers, for example, should be able to lay claim to the knowledge which circulates through international organizations, while national and international policy makers stand to gain by listening directly to groups such as these who frequently are excluded from the benefits of globalized technological changes. Twenty-eight trade union and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worked alongside experienced researchers, covering eight countries and holding a series of both country-based and international workshops. The first research project to attempt direct inter-communication on such an extensive scale, 'Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women's Employment in the Asian Region' shifted the debate on gender and technology onto the terrain of the actual problems and possibilities currently faced by women workers rather than adopting positions for or against technology. The collaborative research process highlights several priority areas of policy dialogue which have been neglected and indicate ways of organizing which could secure better conditions of work. The evidence uncoveredandthe concerns expressedraise fundamental questions about whose interests and values are shaping the emerging techno-economic paradigm.     

Legitimacy as Property and Process: The Case of an Irish LGBT Organization

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This study provides insight into the changing normative judgements of civil society organizations over time through the...     

AUSTRALIAN WELFARE REFORM: FROM CITIZENSHIP TO SOCIAL ENGINEERING

This paper examines the changes in the terms of citizen‐state relations that are coded in Australia's current program of welfare reform. It argues that welfare reform entails a shift from welfare as a limited social right of citizenship to welfare as a form of support conditional upon completing specified obligations, and from the provision of support as a cash payment to support coupling cash with personal services. Together, these shifts have the scope transform the relation between citizen and state fundamentally. This is no less than a shift from social policy citizenship in which claimants are presumed to act on their own behalf to paternalistic support and care directed to reforming character and values as well as to meeting need. The paper argues that this shift violates the fundamental equality essential to social policy citizenship.