Why Postmodern Theory may be a Problematic Basis for Therapeutic Practice: A Feminist Perspective

Both poststructural and social constructionist thinking are imbued with a masculine bias. First, I demonstrate that Foucault's theory of power and knowledge fails to take into account the female experience of power and the gendered nature of knowledge production. With the support of psychoanalytic theory I also claim that Foucault's theory of the ‘social’, ‘discursive’ production of ‘selves’ omits the contribution of the prelinguistic but no less ‘social’ mother–infant relationship, and in so doing obscures the prelinguistic foundations of emotionality. This poststructural reduction of ‘selves’ to, and subsequent subsuming of emotionality within, the instance of ‘language’, ‘discourse’ or ‘narrative’, is, I claim, replicated in the social constructionist thinking of Gergen and Bruner. Finally, I consider some of the consequences of a therapeutic practice which has its foundations in these two interrelated bodies of thought, suggesting, from a feminist perspective, that a major shortcoming of this narrative practice is its failure to attend to emotionality.     

Ties That Bind: Public Foundations in Dyadic Partnerships

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Public Ancillary Funds (PubAFs) are grantmaking philanthropic foundations, largely held to be independent. However, some...     

Transactions between older people and the hospital environment: A social ecological analysis

PurposeTo illuminate how problems arise between older adults and the hospital environment through examination of the transactions between the two rather than a focus on one or the other.Design and methodsA critical ethnographic study that used constant comparative analysis applied to three data sets: hospital observations, interviews with older adults, and hospital employees.FindingsTwo groups of older people are distinguished: those identified as appropriate older patients and those found to be different or less appropriate. Incongruent relationships emerge only when older people who are inappropriate for the hospital's cultural space confront four areas of poor fit: architectural features, bureaucratic conditions, chaotic atmosphere and hospital employee attitude. These environmental features act in independent and interactive ways to produce a disempowering synergy that erodes independence and confidence; produces stress, worry and anxiety; and enhances disabilities when functional impairments exist. Being different is key to a lack of fit in the hospital environment and the construction of problems. Problem construction with older people is less about age and more about the efficiency of a one-size fits all approach to acute care. Ageism emerges as a bi-product of the pressure on hospital employees to keep the system moving.     

Addressing Career Success Issues of African Americans in the Workplace: An Undergraduate Business Program Intervention

Career success as measured by the objective, traditional criteria of the composite of high number of promotions, high annual compensation, and high organizational level in corporate America has eluded the majority of African Americans. This article describes an undergraduate business program career success intervention designed to assist African Americans in overcoming the organizational barriers present in corporate America that prevent their upward mobility, examines its effectiveness, and concludes with implications for research and practice in career development and counseling.     

Challenging local orthodoxies

Race and State in Capitalist Development: Comparative Perspectives by Stanley B. Greenberg     

Evidence-Based Evaluation of Staircase Architectural Design to Reduce the Risk of Falling for Older Adults

The impact of an increasingly aging population warrants accommodations in home architectural design. Focusing on the staircase design criteria as part of the home environment, this article presents an integrated evidence-based staircase evaluation for home staircase design to reduce the risk of falling for older adults (those 65 years and older). The staircase evaluation has been developed by dividing the staircase into four design elements: handrail design, step design, staircase geometric design, and lighting. Each element is divided into several features that define its architectural design. For example, the step design element is further divided into four features: going depth, riser height, nosing, and step finishing material. A hierarchical list is provided based on an evidence-based comparison of various scenarios for each feature. The hierarchical list presents the comparative effect of each scenario on reducing the risk of falling for older adults.     

Exploratory analysis of verbal aggression in romantic relationships among unmarried men and women: Predictive patterns by gender and race

This is an exploratory study that examined verbal aggression in romantic relationships among unmarried Black and White women and men as a function of gender and race. We employed an ecological approach to examine the receipt of verbal aggression separately for men and women at the levels of individual, relationship, and community. We also explored whether gender-specific correlates of verbal aggression interacted with race. Analyses were based on a sample of 212 women and 133 men in non-marital romantic relationships recruited from 21 U.S. cities for a larger study. Linear mixed-effects models revealed that factors related to experiencing verbal aggression differed substantially for unmarried women and men in romantic relationships. Interesting racial differences also emerged distinctly for women and men.     

What COVID‐19 could mean for the future of “work from home”: The provocations of three women in the academy

The COVID‐19 pandemic saw academic labor rapidly shift into domestic spaces at the same time as households were “locked down.” In this article, we offer an exploration of our own experiences of working from home as women and mothers in the academy. Inspired by feminist approaches to knowledge production and self‐reflection, we each developed a personal reflective narrative guided by three key questions centered on our experiences of working from home pre‐ and during the COVID‐19 pandemic, and what this may mean for the future of our work. We then collectively analyzed how our personal stories reflected different dimensions of the experience of working from home, and our fears and hopes for the future. We present three distilled themes from our collective experiences here with the aim of entering a dialog with others seeking to live feminist lives during this time, and beyond.     

Life Course Transitions and Housework: Marriage,Parenthood, and Time on Housework

We examine the effects of transitions in marital and parenthood status on 1,091 men’s and women’s housework hours using two waves of data from an Australian panel survey titled Negotiating the Life Course. We examine transitions between cohabitation and marriage, and from cohabitation or marriage to separation, as well as transitions to first and higher‐order births. We find extraordinary stability in men’s housework time across most transitions but considerable change for women in relation to transitions in parenthood. Our results suggest that the transition to parenthood is a critical moment in the development of an unequal gap in time spent on routine household labor.     

‘I Just Couldn’t Fit It In’: Gender and Unequal Outcomes in Academic Careers

This article reports on the findings of two pieces of research that were designed to test and challenge widely accepted theories about the causes of gender inequity in academic employment at the national level, and subsequently in a more detailed case study of one of Australia's largest and most prestigious universities. Both research projects used large‐scale surveys to capture information about levels of human capital, family responsibilities, career preferences, workloads and objective experiences of appointment and promotion. The case study, conducted in 2002, also utilized focus group discussions with particular groups of women who seemed, from the survey data, to be located just under the glass ceiling. The case study research confirmed the earlier national survey research which concluded that discrimination or bias in appointments, promotions and workloads were not significant in explaining men's domination of the senior levels. It also confirmed the significant gender differences in some kinds of human capital (particularly possession of a Ph.D.). But it also pointed to a quite particular explanation for the failure of women to progress to Level D (associate professor/reader) which involved other more general demographic changes — particularly, high rates of separation and divorce, far higher rates of partnering among men than women and the impact of older children's needs.