Voice and Identity in a Bicultural/Bilingual Environment

Researchers have noted that with the onset of adolescence, girls' voices become muted and school achievement drops. Girls learn that the expression of strong feelings leads to distance from others, and that full use of their bodies and minds cause others discomfort. Self-esteem suffers and girls become at risk for destructive behaviors. Most studies have been done with middle class Caucasian girls. Those few studies done with young girls of color speak of girls on the margin who seem to resist losing their voices and their self-esteem. This article describes a study involving 5th–8th grade girls participating in an Advisory group program at a grammar school in a predominantly Mexican community of a large city. Group sessions were taped and analyzed for common themes including voice and self-esteem. Focus was directed to the influence of the bicultural/bilingual environment in analysis of group content. Implications for practice are included.     

Physical exercise and improvements in mental health

1. Walking groups provide activity and support for their members. 2. Exercise competes with anxiety and depression and may diminish these negative affects. 3. Most YMCAs provide financial aid by reducing fees for people with disabilities.     

Contextualizing the Employment Decisions of New Mothers

This paper suggests that the employment behavior and stated preferences of new mothers are not simply a product of choices that individual women make or characteristics that they have. Rather, using qualitative interview data from a sample of new parents, this paper illustrates some of the interactional and institutional contexts in which new mothers' approaches to paid work are embedded, with a particular focus on gender. Among the themes explored are the influence of husbands' preferences on women's decisions, the role of economic processes in structuring parenting arrangements, as well as the prominence of gendered cultural imagery in new parents' accounts about their work and family arrangements.     

Dependency or Self-Reliance? The Contradictory Case of Work in UK Small Business Families

The focus of this article is a relatively neglected area of social and family policy: its relationship with small business. Economic policy makers have encouraged enterprise, particularly in the form of small business, as a solution to problems of competitiveness and economic growth. The article uncovers what an enterprise culture actually means for some of those families who first embarked upon business ownership in the 1980s in the UK Using data from a qualitative study, it contends that, in contradiction to the enterprise rhetoric, for micro-businesses owners and their families, values of self-reliance and dependency often are found as opposite characteristics necessary for the success of a small business. A recent survey of micro-businesses in contrasting British regional economies suggests that such experiences are likely to be found amongst a substantial proportion of micro-businesses.     

The Changing Experience of Australian Female Entrepreneurs

The study of female entrepreneurship is a dynamic field, with more women than men engaging in self‐employment in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Prior research in this field has identified a series of factors which characterize entrepreneurs. This paper examines the extent to which the experiences of Australian women entrepreneurs are reflected in the prior research. In particular, emphasis is placed on whether the personal characteristics, educational levels, motivations for starting business and resource acquisition behaviour of contemporary Australian women entrepreneurs are reflected in the prior research. While many of the key findings of prior research were found to describe accurately the experience of Australian women entrepreneurs, three new factors have been identified. First, Australian women entrepreneurs have increasingly come from business education backgrounds compared to the predominantly liberal arts backgrounds reported elsewhere. Second, the reasons for establishing small business differ insofar as they represent a greater proportion of general business needs as well as personal internal needs. Third, Australian women entrepreneurs are moving away from traditional ’female industries‘ into sectors identified as ’male industries‘ such as manufacturing. Overall, Australian women entrepreneurs demonstrate similarities in their identifying characteristics; however, significant shifts are occurring in their behaviours.     

Ethno-Religious Mobilisation and Citizenship Discourse in the People's Republic of China

In the post-Cold War world, 'identity politics' is seen by many as posing the greatest threat to peace and political institutions, liberal or otherwise. In light of the carnage of Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda and former Soviet republics, cultural identity politics would seem to be a politics, or antipolitics, of the most virulent and savage sort. Yet research conducted among three Chinese minority nationalities - the Dai, Bai and Muslim Hui of Yunnan Province - reveals that the relationship between cultural activism and minority nationalist sentiment is not always so clear-cut. I show that such activism, which includes linguistic promotion and religious education, can in fact express claims derived from a national political identity, a conception of minority membership in the Chinese national community. Certain instances of minority cultural activism are efforts to put teeth into the party-state's promises of autonomy and to reject the stereotype of shaoshu minzu as backward and uncivilised. Such activism is thus a means of asserting minorities' rightful place in the contemporary Chinese body politic. At the same time, such cultural activism may cement cross-national ethnic and religious identities, thereby consolidating the material and ideological resources that make anti-state behaviour more feasible. Even when cultural activism shows acceptance of inclusive nation-state norms, minority inclusion may be limited by the behaviour and attitudes of the state, or by the content of national identity itself. In discussing these issues, minority cultural activism will also be juxtaposed with a very different sort of ethnic mobilisation, one which does pose a serious threat to the integrity of Chinese boundaries and the ability of the state to enforce its rule. The paper thus also shows how ethnicity within Yunnan Province can be a resource for anti-state behaviour, even when the aims of such actions are not ethnic in content.     

Measuring the Prevalence of Sector-Specific Problem Gambling: A Study of Casino Patrons

This study is the first attempt to measure the prevalence of problem gambling attributable to a specific sector of the gambling industry. One thousand, one hundred and five casino patrons in 40 casinos in the UK were interviewed, face-to-face. Respondents were screened for problem gambling using a multiple response version of DSM-IV (DSM-IV-MR). The study found support for Eadington's (1988) hypothesis, that UK casinos could be largely sustained by regular players, among whom the prevalence of problem gambling is high. The study also found support for the hypothesis that, to the extent different gambling sectors are patronised by demographically different client groups, so the problem gamblers associated with them will reflect these client groups. The problem gamblers among the regular casino patrons were demographically distinct from the problem gamblers in the sample who showed a preference for other gambling forms. Other key findings support those found in other jurisdictions. Sector-specific prevalence studies may be the next step forward in epidemiological research on problem gambling. They have the major advantage of netting significantly more problem gamblers from much smaller samples than similar studies in the general population. They also have the potential to reveal the proportion of problem gamblers attributable to each sector, along with their demographic characteristics. Such information would result in more specific information being available for regulators seeking to minimise the social impact of problem gambling and those involved in the development of prevention and treatment strategies.     

Business Legitimacy among Business Students in the United States, Great Britain, and South Africa

This study compares attitudes toward business legitimacy in three countries. Positive attitudes toward business legitimacy exist when there is a congruence between organizational activities and societal expectations. Businesses are concerned about the extent to which negative attitudes toward business legitimacy will lead to increased government regulation. The results suggest that business students in all three countries are similar in their attitudes toward business legitimacy; however, blacks have more negative attitudes toward business legitimacy than do whites. This study resulted in the validation of a scale that can be used to measure attitudes toward business legitimacy on a cross-cultural basis. Business legitimacy is a major concern in South Africa as the predominately white business community seeks to give the emerging black majority a stake in the existing economic system. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.