Restructuring Pay Equity for A Restructured Work Force: Canadian Perspectives

The province of Ontario, Canada, has developed innovative pay and employment equity legislation. The legal challenges over the pay equity legislation have established some important precedents, especially in the area of gender bias and job evaluation schemes. The Employment Equity legislation established important new principles but was repealed only a year after it was passed by a new Conservative government. The government and economic restructuring, however, are rapidly altering both the legislation and the context in which it operates. This paper considers not only the impact of such legislation in the long and short run, but also the possibilities for future legislative intervention in the new political and economic climate. One of the authors has been centrally involved in developing the legislation, in mapping alternatives and in bringing legal challenges under the legislation. The other author has been researching and writing about women’s work for more than twenty years and has served as an expert witness in numerous cases related to the issues of concern here.     

Introduction to the special issue: Sociology and feminist scholarship

Feminist writers in the seventies angrily criticized the work of male academicians, arguing that what scholarship presented as the norm was in fact white male experience. That critique generated a body of interdisciplinary theory and scholarship. This introduction examines what feminist sociologists mean when they talk about feminist theory—how they use the interdisciplinary theories, and how they apply a feminist methodological stance to generate feminist theory within sociology. It provides a context for understanding the articles that follow in this special issue as examples of feminist research in sociology and as statements of some of the current issues and as problems of concern to feminists in sociology. She is interested in gender, culture, religion and feminist theory. She wroteCharisma and Community: A Study of Religious Commitment within the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and is currently studying witchcraft traditions and the communities that support them.     

Index of Authors Volume 52, 2000

Authors Index

Index of Authors Volume 52, 2000     

Tests for a simple tree order restriction with application to dose–response studies

Summary.  We propose 'Dunnett-type' test procedures to test for simple tree order restrictions on the means of p independent normal populations. The new tests are based on the estimation procedures that were introduced by Hwang and Peddada and later by Dunbar, Conaway and Peddada. The procedures proposed are also extended to test for 'two-sided' simple tree order restrictions. For non-normal data, nonparametric versions based on ranked data are also suggested. Using computer simulations, we compare the proposed test procedures with some existing test procedures in terms of size and power. Our simulation study suggests that the procedures compete well with the existing procedures for both one-sided and two-sided simple tree alternatives. In some instances, especially in the case of two-sided alternatives or for non-normally distributed data, the gains in power due to the procedures proposed can be substantial.     

Track three diplomacy and human rights in Southeast Asia: the Asia Pacific Coalition for East Timor

Transnational networks of non‐government organizations are increasingly becoming a fixture in international relations, particularly their contribution to traditional notions of diplomacy and its objectives. Less noticed, however, is the involvement of transnational NGO networks in alternative channels for diplomatic exchange, which have been referred to as ‘track three diplomacy’. Described as a form of civil society that transcends borders and nationalities, track three networks and activities involve NGO networks that are movement based, and concerned primarily with raising public consciousness over issues. While their direct influence on formal processes of foreign policy‐making has been limited, they have contributed to expanding both the scope of debate in international relations and the breadth of participation in those debates. Track three networks provide a forum for those communities marginalized by an international system that gives primacy of place to states and their officially‐declared concerns. Their impact is limited, however, by their lack of institutionalization and their reluctance to cooperate with government agencies – an issue that goes towards both their effectiveness and their identity in the long‐term.     

Cultural value orientations, internalized homophobia, and accommodation in romantic relationships

In the present study, we examined the impact of cultural value orientations (i.e., the personally oriented value of individualism, and the socially oriented values of collectivism, familism, romanticism, and spiritualism) on accommodation (i.e., voice and loyalty, rather than exit and neglect, responses to partners' anger or criticism) in heterosexual and gay relationships; and we examined the impact of internalized homophobia (i.e., attitudes toward self, other, and disclosure) on accommodation specifically in gay relationships. A total of 262 heterosexuals (102 men and 162 women) and 857 gays (474 men and 383 women) participated in the present study. Consistent with hypotheses, among heterosexuals and gays, socially oriented values were significantly and positively related to accommodation (whereas the personally oriented value of individualism was unrelated to accommodation); and among gays in particular, internalized homophobia was significantly and negatively related to accommodation. Implications for the study of heterosexual and gay relationships are discussed.     

Nationalism in America: The case of the Populist movement

As a marker of national identity, the term American is culturally meaningful but also difficult and contradictory. In the first part of this article, we develop the claim that analyzing nationalism as discourse provides a meaningful lens for the study of this boundary-making process. In particular, the distinctions between civic/ethnic and inclusive/exclusive forms of nationalism have proved nettlesome for a consideration of American nationalism. In the second half of the article, we use data from the Southern Populist movement of the late nineteenth century to provide both relational and cultural analyses of the use of the term American. Although its use was primarily civic, it had important but complex racial implications.     

The composite abuse scale: further development and assessment of reliability and validity of a multidimensional partner abuse measure in clinical settings

Absence of a well-validated comprehensive partner abuse questionnaire has been a major methodological issue in domestic violence research. A new multidimensional measure of partner abuse, the Composite Abuse Scale (CAS), has four dimensions: Severe Combined Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse, and Harassment. A general practice patient sample (N = 1,836) has been used in the development and testing of CAS. Factor analyses in this current study confirmed the four dimensions from a preliminary nurses sample study and resulted in a final scale of 30 items consisting of acts of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. These four factors exhibited good internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha > 0.85) and the corrected item-total correlations were high (> 0.5). Evidence of criterion and construct validity is presented.     

Women’s Voluntary Organizations in Canada: Bridgers,Bonders, or Both?

Using a sample of 645 voluntary organizations in Canada, this study explores the differences between women’s voluntary organizations and gender-neutral organizations in their propensity to form a bridging or a bonding interorganizational relationship. The results suggest that not only do women’s organizations in Canada collaborate more than gender-neutral organizations, but also the tendency to have bridging or bonding relationships is significantly different. The factors predisposing women’s organizations to have collaborators inside or outside their network seems to be affected by how much the environmental changes in Canada impact their survival and whether the nature of the causes they support makes them an attractive partner. For gender-neutral organizations the tendency to bridge or bond seems to relate more to traditional organizational characteristics, such as size and staffing efficiency.