MY TICKET,MY "SELF": LOTTERY TICKET NUMBER SELECTION AND THE COMMODIFICATION AND EXTENSION OF THE SELF

According to the research literature, college‐educated women provide the most consistent support for nontraditional sex‐role attitudes. Conversely, working‐class males are supposedly the most ambivalent toward changes in gender roles. The present study involves a direct comparison of the attitudes of two different samples: one employed in blue‐collar occupations and the other enrolled in a small, private university. Some of the responses to an eleven‐item scale of sex‐role attitudes are consistent with the results of previous research. For example, women are generally more nontraditional than men. However, most surprising is the finding that male college students are the most conservative subgroup included in this study. By the senior year of college, students have become more liberal, but the “gender gap” persists. Parents’ educational status and fathers’ occupational status are statistically significant variables for female but not for male students. The authors conclude that the uncertain but dynamic relationship between socioeconomic status and sex‐role ideology will require further clarification and specification.     

The adoption of women’s legislative caucuses worldwide

Recent decades have witnessed the rise, across a wide range of countries, of political institutions designed to promote gender equality and women’s political representation. Existing studies have shown how international diffusion processes have contributed to the adoption of two kinds of such institutions – gender mainstreaming and gender quotas. Mounting evidence suggests that institutional reforms within legislatures constitute the latest wave of gendered institutional reform. This article identifies and explains trends in the adoption of one kind of gender-focused parliamentary institution – women’s legislative caucuses (WLCs). We use a discrete time duration model to assess the effect of several factors on WLC establishment. While there is theoretical room to expect diffusion, structural and institutional variables to affect the likelihood of caucus adoption, we find the strongest empirical support for diffusion and institutional factors. A parliament’s likelihood of adopting a WLC rises when sub-regional peers have created WLCs, when women’s international non-governmental organizations are active in the country and when the country has implemented a gender quota. Understanding the factors that affect the adoption of gender-focused parliamentary institutions is critically important, we argue, since such bodies provide space to confront masculinized institutionalized rules and norms.     

Gender and Women's Employment in the Male-dominated Profession of Dentistry: 1867–1917*

Cet article porte sur les expériences des femmes qui ont pratiqué la dentisterie - profession dominée par les hommes - en Ontario entre 1867 et 1917. L'auteure examine l'entrée des femmes dans cette profession et leurs expériences quant à la formation et à la pratique. La situation des femmes qui entraient en dentisterie et de celles qui optaient pour la médecine était différente: les femmes n'ont jamais été exclues de la profession dentaire. Tant en médecine qu'en dentisterie, une fois dans la pratique professionnelle les femmes étaient marginalisées et incitées à adopter des comportements et des rôles propres à leur sexe. This paper explores women's experiences in the male-dominated profession of dentistry in Ontario between 1867 and 1917. It examines the entrance of women into the dental profession, and their experiences in dental education and dental practice. Circumstances surrounding women's entrance into dentistry were different from those surrounding the entrance of women into medicine: women were never excluded from the dental profession. Nevertheless, once in professional practice, women in the two professions shared experiences of marginalization and of encouragement to pursue sex-typed behaviour and roles.     

Enhancing Critical Reflection amongst Social Work Students: The Contribution of an Experiential Learning Group in Care Homes for Older People

As part of a Practice Learning Centre, representing a partnership between an English University social work department and a non-governmental organisation, 12 students were placed in care homes for older people for their first period of assessed practice. The aims of this initiative were to facilitate: development of critical reflection; deployment of social work skills in a care home setting; and opportunities for social work students to work with care home residents. The learning was captured via four Experiential Groups facilitated by the Practice Educator with responsibility for assessing the students' practice. On-site supervisors also participated. Key learning included understanding of: the importance of critical reflection as a key social work skill; the influence of organisational norms and care home culture on the quality of care practice; the complexity and emotion-rich nature of person-centred care; and the pivotal role of relationships in work with people with dementia. Links made in the Groups—between the experiential and theoretical, the emotional and cognitive, and the structural and personal—demonstrate their value as learning platforms. Placements in care homes have considerable potential to enrich practice education; this is especially important in the context of an ageing population.     

Five-Hundred Life-Saving Interventions and Their Cost-Effectiveness

We gathered information on the cost-effectiveness of life-saving interventions in the United States from publicly available economic analyses. "Life-saving interventions" were defined as any behavioral and/or technological strategy that reduces the probability of premature death among a specified target population. We defined cost-effectiveness as the net resource costs of an intervention per year of life saved. To improve the comparability of cost-effectiveness ratios arrived at with diverse methods, we established fixed definitional goals and revised published estimates, when necessary and feasible, to meet these goals. The 587 interventions identified ranged from those that save more resources than they cost, to those costing more than 10 billion dollars per year of life saved. Overall, the median intervention costs $42,000 per life-year saved. The median medical intervention costs $19,000/life-year; injury reduction $48,000/life-year; and toxin control $2,800,000/life-year. Cost/life-year ratios and bibliographic references for more than 500 life-saving interventions are provided.     

Positive Outcomes in Families Following Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

In an earlier paper, the relationship between spirituality, science and therapy was explored. In this paper spirituality is discussed in a more clinical context. Family response to trauma is outlined, concentrating on the area of Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), and several models of adaptation are reviewed. There appear to he commonalities in response to different types of trauma. However in the area of ABI, positive outcomes have been under-reported in the literature which has focussed for various reasons on maladaptation. In viewing response to trauma as involving both the potential for positive transformation as well as suffering and burden, concepts of Frankl and Jung, spiritual belief and ‘near death experience’ are discussed. Examples of how families find meaning and positively appraise their experience of ABI are given.     

Challenging the colonisation of birth: Koori women’s birthing knowledge and practice

Background

The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination for social and cultural development. This fundamental right has been impeded worldwide through colonisation where many Indigenous peoples have had to adapt to ensure continuation of cultural knowledge and practice. In South East Australia colonisation was particularly brutal interrupting a 65,000 year-old oral culture and archives have increasing importance for cultural revival.