In search of the glass ceiling: gender and recruitment to management in Norway's state bureaucracy1

There are still fewer female than male managers in Norway's state bureaucracy. This article asks if there are organizational barriers which prevent women from entering these positions. Is there really a glass ceiling, or must one look outside the organizational environment to find an explanation? Is it rather the case that the scarcity of female managers is caused by women's own preferences or their life situations outside work? Or do both contribute to the situation? The study shows that female managers are treated just as well as male managers in central parts of the state bureaucracy. Employers give equal shares of respect and attention to both genders. Female managers are encouraged to apply for the same number of jobs as men and are offered an equal number of jobs as men when they apply; in fact, women are offered more jobs than men, when one controls for the number of job applications. This indicates that organizational barriers are not the problem. The study also shows that there are no differences in work orientation between male and female managers. Female managers are just as ambitious as male managers. Nor do female managers find it more difficult than male managers to combine work and family life. So, how can one explain the low number of female managers? The study shows that one reason can be that female managers apply for management jobs less often than their male colleagues. The cause of this seems to be anticipated discrimination rather than lack of ambition or self‐confidence. However, this slows down women's movement into higher management positions in the state bureaucracy.     

A hierarchical modelling approach to combining environmental data at different scales

Summary. Long-transported air pollution in Europe is monitored by a combination of a highly complex mathematical model and a limited number of measurement stations. The model predicts deposition on a 150 km × 150 km square grid covering the whole of the continent. These predictions can be regarded as spatial averages, with some spatially correlated model error. The measurement stations give a limited number of point estimates, regarded as error free. We combine these two sources of data by assuming that both are observations of an underlying true process. This true deposition is made up of a smooth deterministic trend, due to gradual changes in emissions over space and time, and two stochastic components. One is non- stationary and correlated over long distances; the other describes variation within a grid square. Our approach is through hierarchical modelling with predictions and measurements being independent conditioned on the underlying non-stationary true deposition. We assume Gaussian processes and calculate maximum likelihood estimates through numerical optimization. We find that the variation within a grid square is by far the largest component of the variation in the true deposition. We assume that the mathematical model produces estimates of the mean over an area that is approximately equal to a grid square, and we find that it has an error that is similar to the long-range stochastic component of the true deposition, in addition to a large bias.     

The relationship between religious education and intercultural education

ABSTRACT

Religious education and intercultural education are seen by some to be in tension with each other, and by others as two sides of the same coin. The explanations for this unsettled relationship may be found in the different histories of the two fields. Intercultural education has become a cross curricular priority, resulting from rather recent developments marked by cultural complexity, following globalisation and migration processes of the last 50 years or so. Religious education has a long history of being a distinct school subject, much influenced by differing national and religious cultural heritages and which, during the last half century, has begun to address the issues of religious and world view diversity. In several countries today, religious education in the publicly funded school is conceived as non-confessional and deals with a diversity of religions and world views. Religious education may be the subject where socio-cultural differences are most visible and where the challenges of diversity are put to the test. This raises a series of challenges to curriculum designers and teachers in classrooms; the article will address some of them and suggest ways forward for teacher education and school practice.     

Complex challenges should be approached by a multitude of theories and models

The ongoing pandemic may be regarded as a wicked problem. Therefore, it should be analyzed by a multitude of theories and models. Approaching the complex set of challenges posed to individuals and society by singular methods, can lead to suboptimal decisions. Good decisions must take into account the large set of uncertainties we are facing, by using well established procedures, as for example health technology assessment (HTA) and a nuanced ethical framework.     

Estimating catch at age from market sampling data by using a Bayesian hierarchical model

Summary.  The paper develops a Bayesian hierarchical model for estimating the catch at age of cod landed in Norway. The model includes covariate effects such as season and gear, and can also account for the within-boat correlation. The hierarchical structure allows us to account properly for the uncertainty in the estimates.     

Shared decision making from the service users’ perspective: A narrative study from community mental health centers in northern Norway

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of shared decision making as an important aspect of user involvement in mental health care from the perspectives of service users. A thematic analysis of interviews with 25 individual service users in three different community mental health centers in Norway identified different understandings of shared decision making. Shared decision making was identified as essential in four contexts: 1) during admission, 2) in individualized treatment, 3) in different treatment contexts, and 4) in user-professional relationships. We consider shared decision making to be intertwined with treatment from the service user perspective.     

The Norwegian police and victims of elder abuse in close and familial relationships

Over recent decades, domestic violence or family violence, violence against women and child abuse has received much attention in the media, in political discourse and in social research. However, abuse of older adults arouses limited interest. In government action against domestic violence and in police guidance manuals, the elderly receive little attention. The aim of this article is primarily to demonstrate how the police attempt to prevent elder abuse in close relationships, especially in parent-child relationships. This article highlights some contradictions between the need of the police to produce criminal cases (often contrary to the interests of the victims) on the one hand, and the police's duty to prevent further abuse on the other. Research has documented that help and prevention measures in question make the situation even worse for the victims they are meant to help.     

Work–home conflict and facilitation across four different family structures in Norway

The purpose of this study was to examine how work–home conflict and facilitation vary among people living in different family structures in Norway, here conceptualized as: two-parent families; single parents; childless couples; and singles. The study used data from a Norwegian study on occupational health (N=2414). We hypothesized that respondents living in two-parent families experience more work–home conflict and facilitation than others due to more complex role expectations. Similarly, we hypothesized that the effect of workload and autonomy on work–home conflict and facilitation would be stronger among this group. The results indicate that conflict between work and home life are more profound among those living in two-parent families and among single parents than among childless couples and singles. Work-to-home facilitation did not vary by family structure, whereas the childless couples reported more home-to-work facilitation. Furthermore, with a few exceptions the effects of workload and autonomy on work–home conflict and facilitation did not differ by family structure.     

Data reduction by separation of signal and noise components for multivariate spatial images

Using the spatial dependence of observations from multivariate images, it is possible to construct methods for data reduction that perform better than the widely used principal components procedure. Switzer and Green introduced the min/max autocorrelation factors (MAF) process for transforming the data to a new set of vectors where the components are arranged according to the amount of autocorrelation. MAF performs well when the underlying image consists of large homogeneous regions. For images with many transitions between smaller homogeneous regions, however, MAF may not perform well. A modification of the MAF process, the restricted min/max autocorrelation factors (RMAF) process, which takes into account the transitions between homogeneous regions, is introduced. Simulation experiments show that large improvements can be achieved using RMAF rather than MAF.     

Risk of a ‘revolution of rising expectations’ in China?

This article analyses developments in Chinese living standards with special focus on urban-rural inequalities. The analysis and discussion target the rapid economic lift, accompanied by inequalities and the risk of revolution of rising expectations in the last three decades. Although this economic lift brings China from one of the poorest countries in the world to the second largest economy globally, many are also concerned about social instability as a result of increasing inequalities and social gaps. We have examined existing data, including international statistics and Chinese national sources. It shows that average Chinese citizens, in general, have enjoyed improvements in their living standard, but an increasing gap in per capita disposable income between urban and rural residents is observable. The discussion section connects to results from secondary surveys. The conclusion is that conditions for feelings of relative deprivation are diminutive and so is the risk of a forthcoming revolution of rising expectations in China.