Feminists Say

ABSTRACT

With appropriated objections by Cassandra Seltman, Vanessa Place cross-examines the #MeToo movement.     

Addressing obesity in pregnancy: The design and feasibility of an innovative intervention in NSW,Australia

ObjectiveObesity amongst women of child bearing age is increasing at an unprecedented, rate throughout the Western world. This paper describes the design of an innovative, collaborative, antenatal intervention that aims to assist women to manage their weight during pregnancy and, presents aspects of the programme evaluation.Data sources/study settingThe programme was introduced at two sites, one in South East Sydney and, the other on the Central North Coast of NSW. Data were drawn from both sites and pooled for analysis.Study designThis evaluation used mixed methods drawing on qualitative and quantitative data.Data collection methodsFocus groups were held with staff in the antenatal clinic, who were, responsible for recruiting to the new service. Members of staff were also asked to record BMI for all women offered the service and using a simple questionnaire, record the reasons women gave for declining the new service.Principle findingsThe recruitment rate to the new service was 35% though this result should be treated with caution. Those women with a BMI of >35 were twice as likely to elect to participate in the new service as women with a BMI of less than 35. Focus groups with midwives in the antenatal clinic responsible for recruitment identified three themes impacting on recruitment to the service; ‘finding the words’, ‘acknowledging challenges’ and ‘midwives’ knowledge’.ConclusionsAntenatal clinic midwives were unprepared for talking to women about their weight. Increasing the confidence and skills of staff in offering service innovations to eligible women is a major challenge to be met if new models of care are to be successful in addressing overweight and obesity in pregnancy.     

The front lines of domestic violence. Training model for rural EMS personnel

1. Domestic violence is a major public health problem requiring committed, coordinated community response. 2. Domestic violence is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality for women and children in the United States. 3. EMS personnel play a frontline role in the critical response and prevention of domestic violence. 4. EMS education and training are requisite for safe, effective responses to domestic violence in rural communities.     

An objective measure of fatigue derived from a set of brief tasks

Seventy-three soldiers who had lost three nights sleep and 45 unfatigued soldiers completed a 25-minute computerized set of tasks derived from the pencil-and-paper kit of factor referenced ability tests. The fatigued soldiers produced more long-reaction times than die unfatigued group, but their accuracy was unaffected, in accordance with the 'lapse hypothesis' of sleep-loss effects. Two scores were derived from the data, one representing accuracy, and the other fatigue. A second study using 21 unfatigued students showed that differences in ability affected both of these scores, but that practice effects from repeated administration of the tasks improved only the fatigue score, not the accuracy score. The set of tasks could, with refinements, be used to obtain an objective measure of fatigue if used with experimental and control groups drawn from the same population.     

Cost pressures will force sharper definition of quality.

Much of the turmoil in the health care field is a direct result of pressures for reductions in health care costs. Many, particularly physicians, are concerned about the impact of cost-driven changes on the quality of care. The author of this article proposes five criteria that can serve as a structure on which to build a consensus for defining quality.     

Race Talk and Local Collective Memory among African American Men in a Neighborhood Tavern

This article examines how African American men, through face-to-face conversation, create individual and collective memories around issues of race. I use ethnographic data collected in an African American neighborhood tavern in Chicago to argue that tavern patrons' race talk: 1) generates a collective memory of negative interracial interaction that gives reported racial encounters a compounding effect; and 2) empowers patrons through catharsis and gives them an opportunity to re-create themselves with a positive racial self-identity. Consequences of this microlevel collective memory for interracial interaction are discussed.     

Aspects of workplace flexibility and mothers' satisfaction with their husbands' contributions to household labor

This article explores whether mothers’ perceived control over their own workplace flexibility options has any relationship to their satisfaction with their husbands’ contributions to household labor in the United States. We hypothesize that flexibility enhances their ability to more adeptly engage in role management in multiple life areas, thus enabling them to be more satisfied with their partners’ domestic input as well. We use a unique data set of 1,078 randomly sampled women involved in mothers’ organizations that generally attract members based on their current level of participation in the paid labor market. We then link nine distinct workplace flexibility policies with mothers’ satisfaction related to their husbands’ participation in all household tasks, as well as a subset of female-typed tasks. We find that across both arrays of tasks, mothers with more perceived control over work-related schedule predictability and those that had the ability to secure employment again after an extended break had higher levels of satisfaction with their husbands’ participation in household labor. In addition, short-term time off to address unexpected needs was important for all tasks considered together only.     

Analysis of teacher's workspace in a child care center

This paper presents one Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) done in a child care institution in the city of Florianópolis, in south of Brazil. The objective of this work is to analyze the environment's performance of the child care center considering the well-being of all of its users, with the mainly focus in the teacher's work. For this analyze, was used a multi methods approach, using consecrated evaluations in the area of environmental psychology and ergonomic. The methods used were: Exploratory Visit, Walkthrough, Questionnaires, Observations, Ergonomic Analyze and Poem of Wishes. The methodological procedures used enabled the identification of the main problems that committed the interaction between environment, user and task, which in addition to serve as an argument to the recommendations done to the analyzed Institution, form a repertory that can serve as a base to future projects in institutions with the same character.