Which pension?: women,risk and pension choice1

This paper investigates women's perceptions of choice and risk in the field of pensions. It extends on a paper published in a recent edition of this Journal in which Alan Aldridge applied Pierre Bourdieu's notions of cultural capital and habitus to the field of personal finance. Since the late 1980s the marketisation of pensions has resulted in an expansion of pension options. According to Anthony Giddens the expansion of choice is one of the positive aspects of living in a ‘risk society’. However, the expansion of pension choice has passed pension risks onto consumers. Using qualitative interviews this paper investigates the perceptions of 45 employed women aged 40–59 of the risks associated with choosing a pension. At the theoretical level the paper seeks to demonstrate the need to qualify notions of reflexive decision‐making put forward by Giddens by emphasising the role of habitual action in decision‐making, as put forward by Bourdieu. The paper shows that material circumstances, cultural capital, extent and quality of pension information and habitus affect perceptions of pension choice and pension risks. The paper concludes that the expansion of pension choice has been, in many ways, negative rather than positive and thus is likely to lead to increasing poverty among many women in later life.     

Gamesmanship for internal evaluators: Knowing when to “hold 'em” and when to “fold 'em”

This article discusses the ethical conflicts between an internal evaluator's altruistic social reform motivation and an organization's practical survival motivation. The internal evaluator might encounter (a) pressure to downplay negative and emphasize positive findings; (b) reinforcement for nonthreatening, routine evaluation activities; (c) greater interest in making the evaluation unit visible than in using evaluation results; or (d) reduced access to privileged information.     

Reviews

Abstract

The chronological entries in Weblogs or blogs record musings, opinions, news or other information supplied by individuals or groups. The nature of blogs is ephemeral in that the content is closely tied to the time period of the posting. The author examines the library and information science blogs listed on Susan Herzog’s “BlogBib: Select Librarian/Library Blogs” to see if they were being updated thirteen months after Herzog stopped maintaining the Web site.¹ Active, inactive, ceased, and blogs with changed URLs were recorded. Extra content was noted.     

Mothers and work–life balance: exploring the contradictions and complexities involved in work–family negotiation

This article presents data from a project exploring women's experiences of work and care. It focuses primarily on work–life balance as a problematic concept. Social and economic transformations across advanced post-industrial economies have resulted in concerns about how individuals manage their lives across the two spheres of work and family and achieve a work–life balance. Governments across the European Union have introduced various measures to address how families effectively combine care with paid work. Research within this area has tended to focus on work–life balance as an objective concept, which implies a static and fixed state fulfilled by particular criteria and measured quantitatively. Qualitative research on women's experiences reveals work–life balance as a fluctuating and intangible process. This article highlights the subjective and variable nature of work–life balance and questions taken-for-granted assumptions, exploring problems of definition and the differential coping strategies which women employ when negotiating the boundaries between work and family.     

The artistry of leadership: An exploration of the leadership process in voluntary not-for-profit organizations

Recent efforts in research on leadership in voluntary not-for-profit organizations, research that has influenced the education and training of leaders, have been concentrated on identifying the behaviors or competencies of effective leaders. This article, while recognizing the value of competence typologies, questions the dominance of that approach and proposes that more research attention should be paid to the wisdom, creativity, and insight of leaders of voluntary organizations, focusing on their theories-in-use, which they use to create the meaning of their own and others' experience and action.     

Teacher training and multiculturalism in a transitional society: the case of the Slovak Republic

The authors explore a number of issues surrounding multicultural education in “societies in transition”, emerging from their experiences during a TEMPUS project that took place in the Slovak Republic. The TEMPUS project entailed the development of a multicultural education curriculum for teacher trainers, as a response to the conditions for entry into the European Union. The paper provides background information on the position of ethnic minorities in Slovakia, in particular the Hungarian and Roma population and the development of policies, especially in education, for combating racism. In examining the challenges to educators in developing a more open system than the command education of the recent past, issues such as the predominance of traditional pedagogies, multiculturalism and antiracism, the problems of “other isms” and of giving voice to minorities are considered.