Difference and equality: Icelandic parents' division of parental leave within the context of a childcare gap

Iceland's parental leave system, granting mothers and fathers equal benefits, may be interpreted as part of the development in the Nordic countries towards a dual-earner/dual-caregiver model. Even though uptake studies show fathers' increased participation in childcare, the use of the entitlement varies and a gendered pattern persists. This paper is based on interviews with 14 Icelandic couples who find themselves in a situation where they have to bridge a care gap between parental leave and state-subsidized childcare. While mothers tend to stretch their part of the leave on the argument that six months is too short a leave, fathers generally find three months to be long enough. The discussion revolves around the question of the relationship between difference and equality, inspired by Andrea Doucet's (2006) concept of strategic essentialism. May we envision a policy system that takes into consideration the way people invest in gender and at the same time develop policy measures that facilitate gender equality?     

教育民主化视域中的师生关系

教育民主化是20世纪以来世界教育改革的主流,是教育革新和改革的一项固有目标,也是目前全球教育系统演变的一个基本趋势。提倡以尊重学生人格、平等地对待学生、热爱学生为基础,建立民主、平等、对话型的师生关系,是教育民主化的要求和体现。     

Chastity value as a risk factor for prostituted adolescents in Indonesia: a qualitative exploration

ABSTRACT

Previous studies suggest that the practice of female child and adolescent prostitution can be attributed to various personal and social risk factors. However, cultural beliefs shared in specific societies may also determine prostitution involvement. We qualitatively explored the risk factors associated with prostitution in a rarely investigated Indonesian society. We interviewed eight female participants who were involved in adolescent prostitution. The findings suggest that prostitution involvement is not only attributed to the common personal and social risk factors, but also to cultural beliefs of chastity preservation. We argue that such beliefs may be rooted in gender inequality.     

At the threshold of retirement: From all-absorbing relations to self-actualization

To investigate the complexities of the retirement process, the present article draws on a case study of Eva, a Swedish woman who “awakened” from all-absorbing relations. It considers the ways in which retirement can enable liberation from patriarchal kinship structures and embodied values of respectability. The aim is to illuminate how deep, embodied values can become conscious and explicit during precarious life situations and transitional phases. The relation between the Swedish welfare state, an I-we balance, and gender equity values are illuminated. These analytical dimensions support the analysis by providing insights into the ways in which individuals embody and use cultural and social structures when they aim to manage unpredictability and to create change toward self-actualization.     

Generalized information matrix tests for copulas

We propose a family of goodness-of-fit tests for copulas. The tests use generalizations of the information matrix (IM) equality of White and so relate to the copula test proposed by Huang and Prokhorov. The idea is that eigenspectrum-based statements of the IM equality reduce the degrees of freedom of the test’s asymptotic distribution and lead to better size-power properties, even in high dimensions. The gains are especially pronounced for vine copulas, where additional benefits come from simplifications of score functions and the Hessian. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the generalized tests, accounting for the nonparametric estimation of the marginals and apply a parametric bootstrap procedure, valid when asymptotic critical values are inaccurate. In Monte Carlo simulations, we study the behavior of the new tests, compare them with several Cramer–von Mises type tests and confirm the desired properties of the new tests in high dimensions.     

To stand in line and fit in—About military men's (un)reflected navigation in the armed forces

The purpose of the study is to investigate how the everyday experience of being a man in a male-dominated organization and what navigating the organization is like. The study builds on 15 interviews with men of various ages and ranks in the Swedish Armed Forces. The findings revealed three major themes that illustrate how men, and their actions, contribute to producing and re-producing gendered norms. First, the ideal military person is seen to have characteristics that are predominantly male and even though respondents only identify with these characteristics to some extent, the typical male ideal is still prevalent within the Armed Forces. Second, this image is reproduced by an uncritical stance towards the internal workings of the organization, relating to career paths and their reliance of traditional gendered roles. Third, the Armed Forces encounter resistance to gender equality work from within the military organization, in both action and inactions. We suggest this is due to a resistance to change and that work with gender equality is minimized to a shadow task that lacks committed men. We conclude that men's reality seems both obvious and unreflected, and these structures are upheld within the Armed Forces.     

Women’s political empowerment: Influence of women in legislative versus executive branches in the fight against corruption

This research adds to the literature on gender and corruption, with the main contributions lying in the comparison of the relative influence of women in the legislative versus the executive branches of the government on cross-country corruption. Placing the empirical analysis within the context of the determinants of corruption, results, using data over a large sample of nations covering the years 2018–2020, show that it is women in the legislative branch (via membership in parliaments) that exert a downward pressure on corruption. On the other hand, women in the executive branch (captured via female heads of state and female cabinet ministers) did not exert a statistically significant influence on corruption. Such insignificance also held when an overall index of women’s political empowerment was used and with respect to the longevity of women’s suffrage in a nation. Interestingly, nations with quotas for women’s political participation experienced greater corruption. Our quantile regression results uniquely show the sensitivity of the prevalence of corruption to the factors driving it. These findings provide additional insights into the role of women in government - women across the board in government will not necessarily lead to a “cleaner” government, and that, the institution of quotas to bolster women’s participation in the political process is not advisable, at least when corruption reduction is a goal.     

国际海洋法法庭迅速释放问题研究

国际海洋法法庭自成立以来共审理了9个迅速释放案件,其中6个案件判决被告沿海国迅速释放被扣押船只和船员,从而有效地解决了沿海国和船旗国之间的争议。因联合国海洋法公约迅速释放相关规定的模糊性,以及国际海洋法法庭在保证金合理性判断标准和实质性审查问题上所采取的非一致性立场,在迅速释放问题上尚未形成习惯法。应该肯定的是,国际海洋法法庭的司法实践对沿海国相关法律制度的完善起到积极作用。本文认为,为维护我国海洋权利不受非法侵犯,应及时修改和完善我国渔民被外国执法扣押时的国家援助制度,以及解决迅速释放时的保证金制度问题。     

中国企业平等问题研究

应当将中国企业平等所取得的成就和所面临的问题放在市场经济取向改革之中加以系统分析。市场经济面前 ,法人企业一律平等。动态地看 ,中国企业平等程度取决于非国有企业比重的不断提高和所有制结构的转变。静态地看 ,中国企业平等程度取决于政府的政策导向以及经济民主与法制的建设     

Political and economic determinants of expenditure on day services for persons with intellectual disabilities or autism

This study investigates whether the Swedish national entitlement legislation, which is known to be one of the most developed in Europe for persons with intellectual disabilities or autism, accomplishes its aim to provide equal quality of day services independent of location. We estimated a reduced-form model of demand and supply-side determinants of a latent quality variable for day-service programmes using panel data on expenditure per attendee for the 290 Swedish municipalities 2004–2012. We found that expenditure per attendee is among others affected by changes of the local tax base and outcome in elections to the local assemblies. These results imply that rights of persons with intellectual disabilities with regard to equal quality of day services independent of where they live are not fully honoured in budget allocation decisions made by local governments.