Gender Mainstreaming: The Answer to the Gender Pay Gap?

This article examines the argument that gender mainstreaming offers the way forward for closing the gender pay gap. It juxtaposes research on the process of gender mainstreaming with our account of the processes involved in Australian state government Inquiries into the gender pay gap since the late 1990s. We indicate that the continuous process of analysis and response that gender mainstreaming can offer demands political will, intensive links between research and action, and adequate resources — which means that gender mainstreaming is seldom delivered in practice. We use our account of the Australian Inquiries to argue that, provided adequate political and financial resources are in place, the gender pay gap can be narrowed through the institutional mechanisms of an industrial relations system but that the regulatory approach is limited by its vulnerability to changes in industrial relations policy. The article concludes that, whatever strategy is used to narrow the gender pay gap, it must be able to show those who use and observe it that gender itself is a continuous, effortful and political process.     

The natural South Florida system II: Predrainage ecology

The goal of the South Florida restoration process is to reestablish a sustainable ecological system that approximates the predrainage system (i.e., the system that existed before canals and water control structures were built). A critical step in the restoration process is to describe the predrainage system with sufficient detail to capture the essential landscape features (e.g., space, connectivity, patterns) that gave the region its defining character and supported its natural abundance and diversity of plants and wildlife.A previous attempt at reconstruction of predrainage (circa 1870) vegetation patterns covered only the Everglades (Davis et al., 1994) but introduced a concept of landscape mosaics that should be extended to South Florida. We propose 16 landscape units that include freshwater landscapes, upland landscapes, coastal wetlands, and estuaries (particularly Florida and Biscayne Bays), the Florida Keys and Reef Tract, and the Inner Southwest Florida Shelf.The predrainage area, because of its enormous size, supported a landscape heterogeneity that was advantageous to animals with several distinct habitat-related life strategies. Five species have been selected to illustrate different dependencies on landscape patterns in predrainage South Florida: wood stork (Mycteria americana), American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), snail kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis), Cape Sable seaside sparrow (Ammodramus maritimus mirabilis), and pink shrimp (Penaeus duorarum). As individuals or as populations, these animals operated across several spatial and temporal scales. The predrainage system's large spatial extent and complex hydropatterns allowed wood storks and other animals with large feeding ranges to take advantage of the strongly seasonal rainfall pattern, while at the same time providing a refuge somewhere in the system for survival of all other species. Landscape heterogeneity and large spatial extent promoted the region's natural wildlife abundance and species diversity.     

GROWTH, WELFARE, AND THE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT

Using an endogenous growth model in which government purchases directly affect aggregate productivity and utility, fiscal policy experiments conducted here indicate that the macroeconomic effects of changes in fiscal policy are at least as sensitive to the mix of spending cuts as they are to the mix of tax cuts. In fact, reducing the size of the government actually reduces growth and welfare freductions in government expenditures are heavily weighted towards reductions in public capital or if the proceeds are not used to reduce capital taxation. In addition, across-the-board spending cuts are not likely to significantly improve growth and welfare. ( JEL E62, 041)     

Experimental payment protocols and the Bipolar Behaviorist

If someone claims that individuals behave as if they violate the independence axiom (IA) when making decisions over simple lotteries, it is invariably on the basis of experiments and theories that must assume the IA through the use of the random lottery incentive mechanism (RLIM). We refer to someone who holds this view as a Bipolar Behaviorist, exhibiting pessimism about the axiom when it comes to characterizing how individuals directly evaluate two lotteries in a binary choice task, but optimism about the axiom when it comes to characterizing how individuals evaluate multiple lotteries that make up the incentive structure for a multiple-task experiment. We reject the hypothesis about subject behavior underlying this stance: we find that preferences estimated with a model that assumes violations of the IA are significantly affected when one elicits choices with procedures that require the independence assumption, as compared to choices elicited with procedures that do not require the assumption. The upshot is that one cannot consistently estimate popular models that relax the IA using data from experiments that assume the validity of the RLIM.     

Insurance decisions for low-probability losses

It is widely accepted that individuals tend to underinsure against low-probability, high-loss events relative to high-probability, low-loss events. This conventional wisdom is based largely on field studies, as there is very little experimental evidence. We reexamine this issue with an experiment that accounts for possible confounds in prior insurance experiments. Our results are counter to the prior experimental evidence, as we observe subjects buying more insurance for lower-probability events than for higher-probability events, given a constant expected loss and load factor. Insofar as underinsurance for catastrophic risk is observed in the field, our results suggest that this can be attributed to factors other than only the relative probability of the loss events.

Variation in winter microclimate and its potential influence on Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) survival in Amherst,Massachusetts

If climate limits the geographical distribution of a species, local variation in microclimate may affect the species' local distribution at the edge of its range. We hypothesized that warm urban microclimates may explain the distribution of the Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) in central Massachusetts. We recorded winter temperatures with data-logging sensors in urban, coniferous, deciduous, and open habitats in the human-dominated landscape of the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. Overall, temperatures decreased with elevation. Daily maximum temperatures, a variable used in models of opossum biophysical constraints, were lowest at forested sites, intermediate at urban sites, and highest at open sites; however these were a poor indicator of evening temperatures, which are important to the nocturnal opossum. Open sites had the highest daily temperature fluctuations, and were the coldest at night. Urban and coniferous sites had the least pronounced daily fluctuations in temperature, and urban sites had the warmest nights. Habitat-specific winter temperatures in the Connecticut River Valley indicated that urban sites were most conducive to opossum persistence, but even they were unlikely to sustain populations. Other factors likely help mitigate the influence of harsh climatic conditions on persistence of opossum populations in western Massachusetts.     

Contemporary public leadership in China: A research review and consideration

China garners great international attention due to its rapid economic development, unprecedented nationwide political reform, and significant social progress over the last 25 years. Contemporary public leadership in China is arguably a major force for the myriad of recent economic, political, and social transformations in the country. This article reviews the academic literature on that leadership, providing an overview of interest to scholars, teachers, and practitioners whose work deals with cross-cultural studies of leadership development. The review focuses primarily on materials published between January 1999 and June 2004 that explicitly address public leadership in China. The review identifies six areas of research to date: (1) leadership transition, (2) democratization, (3) prominent political figures, (4) local leadership, (5) cultural and historical traditions, and (6) other identified forms of public leadership (military versus Party leadership, women as public leaders, religion and public leadership, and student leadership). The article concludes with discussions of characteristics of the literature and directions for future theoretical and empirical work.     

Disability identity and attitudes toward cure in a sample of disabled activists

This study investigates the assumption that disabled people want improvements in their functional abilities, or complete cures. Contrary to this assumption, many disabled activists are found to have attitudes in which they refuse treatment that promises a cure. In order to explain this attitude, different sources of disability identity are isolated as potential predictor variables. A multivariate model reveals that self-identity related to a personal affirmation of disability is a significant predictor of refusal of treatment, as is the age of onset of disability. Implications for interactions with medical professionals and utility-based modeling of medical treatment seeking are discussed.