Women inventors in Canada in the 1980s

Les femmes inventrices sont rares. Elles sont redéfinies, reformées et rendues invisible par des structures patriarcales et de genre. Dans cette étude, les expériences et réalités de 21 femmes inventrices contemporaines canadiennes, des femmes qui sont dans des occupations inusités même pour des hommes, sont rapportées. Les femmes inventrices, n'importe leur degré de succès, ont souvent de la répugnance à reconnaître qu'elles sont, de fait, inventrices. Un inventeur, dans notre imagerie culturelle, est un pionnier mâle qui est eccentrique, incompris, mais qu'on estime talentueux. Les femmes semblent être moins voulante ?accepter le stigmate associéà ces images. Les personnes qui sont proches des femmes inventrices, incluant leurs maris, font collusion en trivialisant les tentatives des femmes à inventer. Plusieurs forces entrelacées sont en opérations parmi les expériences des femmes inventrices. Les contributions des femmes ont tendance àêtre rendues invisibles dans une société patriarcale qui redéfinie tout ce que les femmes font en terme mâle. ?idéologie masculin prédomine ?en terme dont elle contribue à reformer ?expérience vécue des femmes dans un moule qui renforce les mythes de ce que la femme est et fait. Les femmes ne sont pas percues comme jouant un rôle actif dans la création et le contrôle de la technologie, mais plutôt comme étant contrôlé par celle-ci. Women inventors are rare. They are redefined, reshaped and rendered invisible by patriarchy and gender structure. In this study, the experiences and realities of 21 contemporary Canadian women inventors, women who are in an unusual occupation even for men, are related. Women inventors, no matter how successful, are found to be reluctant to acknowledge that they are, indeed, inventors. An inventor, in our cultural imagery, is a male pioneer who is eccentric, misunderstood but ultimately brilliant. Women seem less willing to accept the stigma associated with these images. People who are close to women inventors, including their husbands, collude in trivializing women's attempts to invent. Several interwoven forces are operative in the experiences of women inventors. Women's contributions tend to be rendered invisible in a patriarchal society which redefines all of what women do and are on male terms. Male ideology predominates in such a way as to reshape women's lived experiences to fit myths of what women are and do. Women are not seen as playing an active role in creating and controlling technology but in being controlled by it.     

Race, Gender, and Opinion Toward Black and Female Presidential Candidates

Using data from the 1974 and 1978 General Social Surveys, publicopinion toward blacks and women as presidential candidates wasexplored. We tested the hypotheses that white males would beleast likely to support presidential candidates from both groups,while black females would be the most likely to express thissupport. We found that although blacks in general were moresupportive of black candidacies than were whites, women werenot consistently more supportive of female candidates. Whileblack women were more likely than black males to support femalecandidates, among whites few gender differences were found.     

The "More for Less" Paradox: Public Attitudes on Taxing and Spending

Using a statewide random sample of over 900 respondents, attitudestoward taxing and spending are examined in order to try to explainthe seeming paradox of a public that wants more spending butless taxation. We investigate the possibility that the publicwhich wants more spending is willing to pay for it by meansother than taxes, such as through reallocation or increasednontax revenue. Moderate support for this expectation is found.Overall, the desire fora "free lunch" is not as widespread asa simple comparison of taxing and spending preferences suggests.     

DELIVERY GUARANTEES AND THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF MARKETING AND OPERATIONS

Delivery guarantees are an important element in a customer satisfaction program. When setting delivery guarantees, a firm must consider customer expectations as well as operational constraints. We develop a profit‐maximization model in which a firm's sales organization, with incomplete information on operations' status, solicits orders and quotes delivery dates. If obtained, orders are processed in a make‐to‐order facility, after which revenue is received, minus tardiness penalty if the delivery was later than quoted. We specify conditions for an optimal log‐linear decision rule and provide exact expressions for its effect on arrival rate, mean processing time, and mean cycle time.     

The Significance of the Early Stage of Illness as a Focus for Social Work Help

Summary This paper considers the experience of illness as a series ofinterrelated phases, in which the beginning phase which is thetransition from health to illness is shown to have special significance.The common responses to this stage of illness are denial, welcomeor inertia, each of which may give some forewarning of problemsthat may be encountered later in the illness. Traditionallysocial work help has focused onto the acute or convalescentstages, but it is suggested here that the beginning phase ofillness offers a rewarding point for intervention, not onlywhen opening new cases, but also among clients who are alreadyknown and where health problems may interact with other problems.The implications of this are explored both for agency policyas well as an added dimension of diagnostic understanding ofindividual clients no matter what the agency     

Public Attributions for Poverty in Canada*

Les auteurs de cet article décrivent les caractéristiques sociales de la pauvreté en utilisant des données d'interviews téléphoniques effectuées en 2002 au moyen d'un échantillon aléatoire d'adultes sélectionnéà partir de huit voisinages à Toronto et Edmonton, enrichi par des données d'interviews. Une régression logistique multivariée a été utilisée afin de prédire l'attribution des caractéristiques structurelles, individualistes, intergénérationnelles et fatalistes à la pauvreté, en se servant de variables démographiques et de la variable exposition à la pauvreté. Les participants étaient plus susceptibles d'expliquer la pauvreté par des causes structurelles et moins susceptibles de favoriser une explication individualiste. Le revenu a été associé négativement à des déterminants individualistes, fatalistes et à une des causes structurelles, et lié positivement au facteur intergénérationnel.
This paper describes public attributions for poverty using data from telephone interviews conducted in 2002 with a random sample of adults from eight neighbourhoods in Toronto and Edmonton, supplemented with interview data. Multivariate logistic regression was used to predict support for structural, individualistic, intergenerational and fatalistic attributions for poverty by demographic and exposure-to-poverty variables. Participants were most likely to attribute poverty to structural causes and least likely to favour individualistic attributions. Income was negatively associated with individualistic, fatalistic and one of the structural attributions, and positively related to the intergenerational attribution.     

USING PAID ADVERTISING TO MODIFY RACIAL STEREOTYPE BELIEFS

This is a pilot study to determine the feasibility of usingmass media to modify beliefs underlying discrimination againstAborigines in a small country town in Australia. A mass mediacampaign was developed utilizing primarily paid advertising.The 2-week campaign centered around the concept of an Aboriginalemployment week, ostensibly designed to encourage Aboriginesto seek employment and, at the same time, to encourage the communityin general (including employers) to give Aborigines seekingemployment "a fair go." However, a major aim of the campaignwas an attempt to neutralize some of the negative beliefs aboutAborigines and employment. The specific stereotypical beliefstargeted with respect to Aboriginal employment were: (1) veryfew Aborigines hold jobs; (2) most Aborigines who hold jobshold them for a very brief period of time; and (3) most Aborigineswho do hold jobs hold unskilled rather than semi-skilled orskilled positions. These beliefs were targeted because qualitativeresearch revealed that they formed the basis for the more evaluativebeliefs that Aborigines are lazy, irresponsible, and unreliableand that it is these evaluative beliefs that inhibit Aboriginalemployment. A pre-post independent samples design was used.The results showed significant changes in beliefs about theproportion of Aborigines in paid employment and in the proportionof employed Aborigines remaining in a job for an extended periodof time.