Gendered Organizations: Progress and Prospects

In this paper, we explore the context for the emergence of a theory of gendered organizations and define the basic features of the approach, noting the explosion of scholarship in the area and the now firmly established trend toward understanding gender, race, class, and sexuality as aspects of social structures. We focus on three of the most important emerging areas in research on gendered organizations: the study of intersectionality, the increasing emphasis on the importance of organizational context, and the exploration of mechanisms for organizational change. We conclude by briefly noting prospects for the further development of research on gendered organizations.     

Older Carers of Adults with a Learning Disability Confront the Future: Issues and Preferences in Planning

The Valuing People White Paper (Department of Health, 2001)requires services to secure a plan for all service-users withlearning disabilities living with older carers and promisesthem and their families more choice and control over how andwhere they live. This paper examines the views of the oldercarers (aged over seventy) of sixty-two adults with a learningdisability about planning for the future. Fifty-six took partin interviews in their own homes and six completed a questionnaire.All carers were white and recruited from one local authorityin response to the requirements of the White Paper. Findingsindicate that a significant proportion (thirty-four—55per cent) is either not ready or is unwilling to make futureplans. Barriers to planning include a perceived lack of needdue to the existence of two carers, a lack of awareness of timescalesinvolved in securing housing, difficulties in letting go, alack of confidence in available housing options, and the existenceof mutually supportive relationships. The findings show a needfor a proactive approach to information and support provisionto enable these families to work through a process of makingplans for the future. This is essential to prevent the needfor emergency placements in response to crisis and in turn toensure that adults with learning disabilities have genuine choiceand involvement in how and where they live.     

Family comes first or open all hours?: How low paid women working in food retailing manage webs of obligation at home and work

This paper draws on qualitative findings from a study exploring work-life balance issues amongst female employees within food retailing. Whilst female employment is fundamental to this sector, there is limited evidence on employees' experiences of reconciling relatively low-paid work and the particular demands of food retailing with domestic and caring responsibilities. Managing competing discourses and demands at home and work is a feature of many women's lives. For those in low-paid jobs, with fewer material resources to fall back on, such webs of obligation, often stretching over the lifecourse, may be particularly difficult to navigate or escape. In food retail work, as in caring/domestic emergencies, timeframes may be tight and demands made on workers at short notice and outwith the standard working day. The study showed that sustaining their moral identities both as good mothers/daughters/family members ('family comes first') and as good and reliable workers ('the store must be staffed') was, therefore, an everyday practical accomplishment for these food retail employees. We explore women's accounts against the backdrop of particular familial, workplace and socio-cultural expectations and constraints, identifying overlapping sets of values between home and work as well as points of contradiction and tension.     

Exponential Family Models for sampled and census Network data

Much progress has been made on the development of statistical methods for network analysis in the past ten years, building on the general class of exponential family random graph (ERG) network models first introduced by Holland and Leinhardt (1981) . Recent examples include models for Markov graphs, "p*" models, and actor‐oriented models. For empirical application, these ERG models take a logistic form, and require the equivalent of a network census: data on all dyads within the network. In a largely separate stream of research, conditional log‐linear (CLL) models have been adapted for analyzing locally sampled ("egocentric") network data. While the general relation between log‐linear and logistic models is well known and has been exploited in the case of a priori blockmodels for networks, the relation for the CLL models is different due to the treatment of absent ties. For fully saturated tie independence models, CLL and ERG are equivalent and related via Bayes' rule. For other tie independence models, the two do not yield equivalent predicted values, but we show that in practice the differences are unlikely to be large. The alternate conditioning in the two models sheds light on the relationship between local and complete network data, and the role that models can play in bridging the gap between them.     

To live an ordinary life: resource needs and additional costs for people with a physical impairment

Disabled people face increased risks of living in poverty largely due to lower incomes and extra resource requirements compared to non-disabled people. This study incorporated the social model of disability with an economic approach to costing to estimate the additional costs required by people with a physical impairment to achieve an adequate standard of living in New Zealand. Budgets estimating the additional equipment, modifications, transport, support and time required to achieve an adequate standard of living were developed and validated through focus groups with community members. The findings suggest that reducing barriers involves substantial costs ranging from NZ$645–$2,348 per week.     

(Im)perishable Pleasure, (In)destructible Desire: Sexual Themes in U.S. and English News Coverage of Male Circumcision and Female Genital Cutting

Under what conditions do sexual pleasure and desire get addressed in news coverage of sexual health issues like female genital cutting (FGC) and male circumcision (MC)? In this study we employed an embodied ethnosexuality approach to analyze sexual themes in 1,902 items published from 1985 to 2009 in 13 U.S. and 8 English newspapers and news magazines. Journalists' discussions of sexual pleasure, desire, control, problems, and practices differed in quantity and quality depending on the practice and nation to which they pertained. News coverage in both nations presented FGC as impeding female sexual pleasure, desire, and activity in ways that reinforce (hetero)sexist understandings of sexuality. The English press depicted MC as diminishing male sexuality, whereas U.S. papers showed it as enhancing male sexuality. These patterns are influenced by, and serve to reinforce, cultural norms of embodiment and ethnosexual boundaries based on gender, race, and nationality. They may, in turn, shape public understandings of FGC and MC as social problems.