Heterosexism and social work education: The invisible challenge

This paper is concerned with the new discourse in social work education with its emphasis on anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice. This directive is examined critically in relation to sexual orientation, suggesting that the contemporary climate is confusing and far from straightforward. The ideological, theoretical and legislative contexts in which social work as a profession has developed are reviewed, and their heterosexist bias exposed. In contrast to developments in relation to racism and sexism, little attention has been given to heterosexism - yet the heterosexual hegemony needs challenging with urgency if we are to truly work in an anti-oppressive way with lesbians and gay men.     

Bringing Women's Voices into the Dialogue on Technology Policy and Globalization in Asia

This article documents an innovative research project 'Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women's Employment in the Asian Region'. Initiated in 1994 by the United Nations University Institute for New Technologies (UNU/INTECH), the project sought to democratise the dialogue around technological changes and globalization by bringing together NGOs active among women workers, academic researchers and policy makers. It was guided by the assumption that those affected by the impact of new technologies should play a major part in making and implementing policy. Women workers, for example, should be able to lay claim to the knowledge which circulates through international organizations, while national and international policy makers stand to gain by listening directly to groups such as these who frequently are excluded from the benefits of globalized technological changes. Twenty-eight trade union and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worked alongside experienced researchers, covering eight countries and holding a series of both country-based and international workshops. The first research project to attempt direct inter-communication on such an extensive scale, 'Monitoring the Impact of Technological Changes in Women's Employment in the Asian Region' shifted the debate on gender and technology onto the terrain of the actual problems and possibilities currently faced by women workers rather than adopting positions for or against technology. The collaborative research process highlights several priority areas of policy dialogue which have been neglected and indicate ways of organizing which could secure better conditions of work. The evidence uncoveredandthe concerns expressedraise fundamental questions about whose interests and values are shaping the emerging techno-economic paradigm.     

AUSTRALIAN WELFARE REFORM: FROM CITIZENSHIP TO SOCIAL ENGINEERING

This paper examines the changes in the terms of citizen‐state relations that are coded in Australia's current program of welfare reform. It argues that welfare reform entails a shift from welfare as a limited social right of citizenship to welfare as a form of support conditional upon completing specified obligations, and from the provision of support as a cash payment to support coupling cash with personal services. Together, these shifts have the scope transform the relation between citizen and state fundamentally. This is no less than a shift from social policy citizenship in which claimants are presumed to act on their own behalf to paternalistic support and care directed to reforming character and values as well as to meeting need. The paper argues that this shift violates the fundamental equality essential to social policy citizenship.     

Conserving Habitus: Home,Couplehood and Dementia

ABSTRACT

Compared to research on home in circumstances of aging, place and care, our knowledge about home in relation to couplehood is limited despite increases in the percentage of married and cohabiting older people in the UK. Specifically, our understanding of the experience and meaning of home for couples where one partner has dementia remains under-explored. This article presents a scoping review of published empirical literature to examine older couples’ experiences of home in dementia. The literature identified and reviewed through searching academic databases and Google Scholar is interdisciplinary and a thematic analysis suggests interactions of couplehood, home and dementia. To discuss these interactions, we use Bourdieu’s framework of field, capital, practice and habitus. We observe that habitus may gradually alter and fracture. But, in locating and supporting the performance of (adapted) everyday relationships and domestic practices, home has a distinct role in contributing to conserving habitus and in turn continuity of relationships and home. The gradual fracturing of habitus with the progression of dementia however also suggests that the continuity of relationships and home remain contingent, but this needs further investigation. It is an element of home futures that cannot remain invisible.     

Wait Until Your Mother Gets Home! Mothers' and Fathers' Discipline Strategies

From a traditional viewpoint, fathers are seen as the main disciplinarian in the family. However, recent studies suggest that these traditional family role patterns may have changed. In this study, we observed discipline strategies of mothers and fathers toward their sons and daughters. Participants included 242 families with two children (1 and 3 years of age). Findings revealed that parental discipline varied by the age of the children, but that mothers disciplined their children more often than fathers. Fathers, conversely, showed more laxness in response to child non‐compliance. Gender of the children was only related to physical interference, with mothers using more physical interference with boys than fathers, irrespective of birth order. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of parent gender for parent–child interactions in early childhood, but also suggest that child age should be taken into account as important explanatory factors.     

Legitimacy as Property and Process: The Case of an Irish LGBT Organization

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This study provides insight into the changing normative judgements of civil society organizations over time through the...