Experiences of Women Elite Leaders Doing Gender: Intra‐gender Micro‐violence between Women

This paper responds to the dearth of research into women's negative intra‐gender relations and lack of understanding as to why and how these relations manifest. Through a qualitative study of women elite leaders' experiences in UK organizations, the research considers how gendered contexts, women doing gender well and differently simultaneously, intra‐gender competition and female misogyny may explain negative intra‐gender social relations between women. We consider micro‐aggression research and women's abjection and offer a unique conceptualization of intra‐gender micro‐violence with themes of disassociating, suppression of opportunity and abject appearance. The themes illustrate how the masculine symbolic order shapes and constrains women elite leaders' social relations with other women. We conclude that raising consciousness to intra‐gender micro‐violence between women is important as a means of disruption; to facilitate women and men's acceptance of intra‐gender differences between women; and to open up opportunities and possibilities for women in organizations.     

Women's Work,Dirty Work: The Gynaecology Nurse as ‘Other’

This article seeks to explore the world of the gynaecology nurse. This world defines the gendered experience of nursing; that is, women in a women's job carrying out ‘women's work’. It is also a world that receives scant public recognition due to its association with the private domain of women's reproductive health. Many issues dealt with on a daily basis by gynaecology nurses are socially ‘difficult’: cancer, infertility, miscarriage and foetal abnormalities; or socially ‘distasteful’: termination of pregnancy, urinary incontinence, menstruation and sexually transmitted disease. The ‘tainted’ nature of gynaecology nursing gives it the social distinction of ‘dirty work’ but does not deter the gynaecology nurse from declaring her work as ‘special’, requiring distinctive knowledge and skills. Qualitative data collected from a group of gynaecology nurses in a North West National Health Service hospital displays how they actively celebrate their status as women carrying out ‘dirty work’. Through the use of ceremonial work that continually re‐affirms their ‘womanly’ qualities the gynaecology nurses establish themselves as ‘different’, as ‘special’, as the ‘other’.     

SEX ROLE CONSIDERATIONS AND BEHAVIORAL MARITAL THERAPY: EQUAL DOES NOT MEAN IDENTICAL*

Despite the egalitarian position espoused in behavioral marital therapy, little attention has been paid to sex role issues and female-male differences. This paper explores advantages and disadvantages of behavioral marital therapy vis à vis the treatment of women and men. Features of behavioral marital therapy implicated as important in the consideration of sex role issues include underlying assumptions of egalitarianism, assumptions of external causality, and orientation toward action, as well as specific procedures such as goal setting, behavioral exchange and training in communication and problem-solving skills. Each of these features is evaluated with respect to clinical considerations as well as to research findings on female-male differences in marriage. The paper concludes with recommendations as to how behavioral marital therapy could become more sensitive to sex role issues.     

Qualitative sociology in New Zealand

Conclusion It can be argued that qualitative research has become more popular in New Zealand in recent years. If this is so, then researchers in diverse subfields of sociology may come to develop an awareness of their common interests, thus fostering the growth of qualitative sociology as a basis of occupational identification. However, many of the developments which have bearing on the state of qualitative sociology in New Zealand (e.g., a local journal, funding agencies and research centres) have only been recently established. It is therefore too early, perhaps, to assess the future role of qualitative sociology in New Zealand scholarship. Nevertheless, the preceding discussion has demonstrated the existence of a lively research scene, much of it qualitative, which exists in New Zealand at present.     

Family violence: A microeconomic approach

A model of violence between adult family members is developed by integrating material from the sociological theories of family violence and social exchange, and the economic theories of crime and the family. Based on this model a decrease in the dictator's internal sanctions against violence would be expected to increase the amount of time allocated to violence by the dictator. Further, if the level of fines and other monetary costs imposed by external agencies (e.g., the courts) as a result of the family violence do not vary with the level of violence, then the model indicates that an increase in such monetary sanctions will cause a reduction in the amount of time the dictator allocates to violence. If both the dictator and victim are risk neutral, an increase in the probability of external intervention will decrease the time allocated to violence. In addition, it is found that increases in the opportunities available to the victim outside the marriage will tend to improve the well-being of the victim in the marriage even if it has no effect on the time allocated to violence by the dictator. The model also provides insights for empirical work in family violence such as (1) suggestions of relevant independent variables, (2) the specification of a functional form for estimation, and (3) the specification of an error structure for the empirical model.     

Effects of dependency among causes of death for cause elimination life table strategies

A study is made of the effects of associated causes of death, and of dependency among causes of death, by observing the relative importance of one cause of death when another is eliminated under various competing risk models. Two disease pairs, cancer and infectious disease and stroke and ischemic heart disease, are selected for analysis because they represent different types of disease dependence. Crude probabilities of death for each disease are calculated for the U.S. white male population in 1969. Next, the effects of the complementary disease in a pair are hypothetically eliminated in one of three ways: (a) a standard competing risk adjustment for cause elimination when deaths are singly caused (Chiang, 1968), (b) lethal defect-pattern of failure computations for multiply caused death when no causal order is inferred (Manton et al., 1976), and (c) relative susceptibility, computations for multiply caused deaths when causes are ordered (Wong, 1977). The paper closes with a discussion of the relative merits of the three types of adjustments.     

Wages and Fertility in Australia

This paper applies a simple economic model to explain short run movements in Australian fertility, abstracting from social and cultural conditions. It shows that Australian fertility can be modelled with some success using only wages and employment data, once we allow for the different effects of changes in men’s and women’s wages for the period 1966–90. The elasticity of the total fertility rate over this period is found to be negative with respect to women’s wages and positive with respect to men’s wages. As well as having the expected sign, the estimated elasticities are similar in magnitude to those for the United States over the period 1948–75.