Who Gets to ‘Work Hard,Play Hard’? Gendering the Work–Life Balance Rhetoric in Canadian Tech Companies

This article is based on an exploratory study of the implicit gender norms in work–life balance (WLB) rhetoric in ten Canadian information and communication technologies (ICT) organizations. Interviews with human resources (HR) managers and preliminary company website analysis revealed a masculinist and heterosexist bias in the implementation of WLB practices, legitimized by the gender composition of the workforce and the demanding yet inherently rewarding nature of the ICT sector. Participants deliberately separated care (read: childcare) from WLB (read: flexible hours and working from home), reproducing the assumption that an ‘ordinary’ worker is a man with a female partner who assumes primary responsibility for the reproductive realm. The study concludes with: (i) recommendations to increase HR's role in providing functional support for WLB practices and (ii) three future directions for research. This article contributes to a general call in feminist scholarship to apply a gendered lens to WLB practices.     

Generalized Wald-type tests based on minimum density power divergence estimators

In testing of hypothesis, the robustness of the tests is an important concern. Generally, the maximum likelihood-based tests are most efficient under standard regularity conditions, but they are highly non-robust even under small deviations from the assumed conditions. In this paper, we have proposed generalized Wald-type tests based on minimum density power divergence estimators for parametric hypotheses. This method avoids the use of nonparametric density estimation and the bandwidth selection. The trade-off between efficiency and robustness is controlled by a tuning parameter β. The asymptotic distributions of the test statistics are chi-square with appropriate degrees of freedom. The performance of the proposed tests is explored through simulations and real data analysis.     

Block Designs Robust Against the Presence of an Aberration in a Treatment-Control Setup

The author considers the problem of finding designs insensitive to the presence of an outlier in a treatment-control block design setup for estimating the set of elementary contrasts between the effects of each test treatment and a control treatment. The criterion of robustness suggested by Mandal (1989 Mandal , N. K. ( 1989 ). On robust designs . Cal. Stat. Assoc. Bull. 38 : 115 – 119 . [Google Scholar]) in block design setup for estimating a full set of orthonormal treatment contrasts is adapted. A new class viz. partially balanced treatment incomplete block designs (PBTIBD) is introduced and it is shown that balanced treatment incomplete block designs (BTIBD) and PBTIB designs, under certain conditions, are robust in the previous sense. Such designs are important in the sense that the inference on the treatment contrasts under consideration remain unaffected by the presence of an outlier.     

A class of tests for exponentiality against decreasing mean residual life alternatives

A class of tests is proposed for testing Exponentiality against the Decreasing Mean Residual Life (DMRL) class of non-exponential probability distributions. These tests are consistent and asymptotically unbiased against all continuous DMRL alternatives. They are U - statistics and hence asymptotically normally distributed. The asymptotic relative efficiency (ARE) with respect to other tests for DMRL are quite high. Small sample powers are also comparable with small sample powers of the competitors.     

An investigation of Kendall's τ modified for censored data with applications

To accommodate testing for independence in bivariate data subject to censoring, several modifications of Kendall's τ are discussed. An extensive computer simulation is done to investigate power properties of these modifications under alternatives of the bivariate normal or bivariate exponential types. The statistics are then applied to available heart pacemaker patient survival data.     

ROBUST INFERENCE IN PARAMETRIC MODELS USING THE FAMILY OF GENERALIZED NEGATIVE EXPONENTIAL DISPARITIES

We examine robust estimators and tests using the family of generalized negative exponential disparities, which contains the Pearson's chi‐square and the ordinary negative exponential disparity as special cases. The influence function and α‐influence function of the proposed estimators are discussed and their breakdown points derived. Under the model, the estimators are asymptotically efficient, and are shown to have an asymptotic breakdown point of 50%. The proposed tests are shown to be equivalent to the likelihood ratio test under the null hypothesis, and their breakdown points are obtained. The competitive performance of the proposed estimators and tests relative to those based on the Hellinger distance is illustrated through examples and simulation results. Unlike the Hellinger distance, several members of this family of generalized negative exponential disparities generate estimators which also possess excellent inlier‐controlling capability. The corresponding tests of hypothesis are shown to have better power breakdown than the Hellinger deviance test in the cases examined.     

Testing whether survival function is bivariate new better than used

We present statistical procedures to test that a life distribution is bivariate exponential against the alternative that it is bivariate new better than used (BNBU).     

Weibull accelerated life tests when there are competing causes of failure

Accelerated life testing of a product under more severe than normal conditions is commonly used to reduce test time and costs. Data collected at such accelerated conditions are used to obtain estimates of the parameters of a stress translation function. This function is then used to make inference about the product's life under normal operating conditions. We consider the problem of accelerated life tests when the product of interest is a p component series system. Each of the components is assumed to have an independent Weibull time to failure distribution with different shape parameters and different scale parameters which are increasing functions stress. A general model i s used for the scale parameter includes the standard engineering models as special This model also has an appealing biological interpretation     

Minimum disparity estimation based on combined disparities: Asymptotic results

The maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is asymptotically efficient for most parametric models under standard regularity conditions, but it has very poor robustness properties. On the other hand some of the minimum disparity estimators like the minimum Hellinger distance estimator (MHDE) have strong robustness features but their small sample efficiency at the model turns out to be very poor compared to the MLE. Methods based on the minimization of some combined disparities can substantially improve their small sample performances without affecting their robustness properties (Park et al., 1995). All studies involving the combined disparity have so far been empirical, and there are no results on the asymptotic properties of these estimators. In view of the usefulness of these procedures this is a major gap in theory, which we try to fill through the present work. Some illustrations of the performance of the estimators and the corresponding tests are also provided.     

Spatial variation in contraceptive use in Bangladesh: Looking Beyond the borders

This article promotes a more complete understanding of social change by analyzing spatial patterns of contraceptive use in Bangladesh and the contiguous state of West Bengal in India. Multilevel analyses that control for variations in individual- and household-level correlates show an important role for cross-border influences only in those districts that share a common language across the border. The districts that are positive outliers in contraception hug the Bangladesh-West Bengal border. A map of outliers shows that the positive outliers form a contiguous band in a manner suggestive of a role for contagion.