Determinants of obesity: The case of Germany

Obesity now has the rank of a global epidemic, but finds its severest expression in the economically advanced parts of the world. This study offers an interdisciplinary analysis of obesity in Germany, including socio-economic factors. In comparison to related studies, it uses a continuous BMI variable as well as an improved empirical design. The coefficient of the term for sport activities is significantly negative, and the coefficient for the age terms are significantly positive. The results for the income variable are ambiguous. Cigarette consumption does not indicate negative relationships with individual BMI-levels. No evidence was found for systematic differences in BMI between the eastern and western regions in reunified Germany.     

Becoming Butlerian: On the Discursive Limits (and Potentials) of Gender Trouble at Ten Years of Age

This essay locates Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity with respect to the historical moment of its publication in 1990 and its influence on the evolution of gender studies and queer theory in the 1990s. It also discusses Butler's place in feminism and feminist theory, and interrogates the relationship between popular culture, activism, and work in the academy.     

彝族女童社会化进程中的传统性别文化影响浅析

在彝族文化发展过程中,形成了独特的传统文化,其中蕴含着丰富的性别文化。彝族性别文化以婚姻制度为主要内容,并在财产分配、劳作文化中反映了女性的地位、权利、行为等。长期以来,家庭教育作为彝族女童社会化的主要方式,按照社会规定的传统性别角色来塑造女性。解放后,学校教育才在彝区兴盛起来,而接受完整学校教育的女童一直很少。传统性别文化制约着今天彝族女童的社会化进程。     

The Athletic Directors’ Dilemma: “$$$ &; Women’s Sports”

The Athletic Directors’ Dilemma evaluates and ranks the Division I-A, I-AA, and I-AAA colleges according to their commitment to the spirit of Title IX in intercollegiate sports. The colleges are graded on the criteria of proportionality, scholarships, operating expenses, recruitment budget, and coaching salaries. The conferences are also evaluated and compared according to their sports’ expenditures and revenues. Charles L. Kennedy is a senior instructor of political science at Penn State York. He is a former Peace Corps volunteer, director of Pennsylvania’s Governor’s Action Center, and Assistant to West Virginia’s Secretary of State. He has developed and published numerous education simulations.     

左翼电影的都市和性别叙事：以《体育皇后》为例

20世纪30年代上海等城市急遽发展的都市化,促使了左翼电影将社会关切推衍到都市的范畴.<体育皇后>将外来文化、时尚因素和批判意识相结合的探索尤其令人瞩目.一种新的女性视觉形象被创造出来.编导者对女性使用"粉盒"的焦虑和不满,使其在向好莱坞借鉴的同时又避免了"好莱坞化".     

Violence towards psychiatric staff: a comparison of gender, job and environmental characteristics in England and Sweden

Workplace violence is receiving increasing attention world-wide, and studies suggest that, for example, nurses and women may be more abused at work than psychiatrists and men. However, there is a lack of cross-cultural data on the topic. Further, relatively few studies have addressed the influence of environmental factors in the occurrence of violence and within a cross-cultural context. The present study compares among other things the nature of violence encountered by female/male staff (nurses and psychiatrists) in Sweden and England. Psychiatric personnel from England (301 nurses; 74 psychiatrists) and Sweden (745 nurses; 306 psychiatrists) were assessed cross-sectionally by means of a questionnaire covering various areas (e.g. nature of violence). The univariate analyses showed an association between being abused and male gender, young age, being British and a nurse, physical and psychological strain. The multivariate logistic regression confirmed that British nurses and male nurses were the main risk group for exposure to violence. Further, the multivariate analysis indicated that the odds of being abused increased with increasing age, physical strain and dissatisfaction with quality of care. Interventions thus need to be sensitive to gender differences, societal context, professional roles and interactions between them. Further, clinical supervision and team functioning, organizational and environmentally friendly settings may help to reduce violence in mental health care.     

Playing at work: Understanding the Future of Work Practices at the Institute for the Future

This paper analyses the latest management assumptions and theories of playing at work, by examining how management strategies, especially relating to new media, invoke elements of play to create distinct and competing genres of discourse. After a brief overview of the latest management crisis of innovation, we will provide a few definitions of play, followed by a short summary of where play and other competing dialogues converge and overlap at worksites historically. This context will then enable us to present an ethnographic account of play at work at a non-profit forecast research firm known as the Institute for the Future, a site where notions of play are linked to a number of business and cultural discourses about the future of new media and presented in full relief. What we find is that while elements of play exist, the discourses that arise from it do not necessarily belong in the realm of play at all. Instead, notions of play at work are tied to wider historical frameworks acknowledging earlier 1960s American counter-cultural appeals for new values in management and worker self-actualization, and linked to a process for transforming that renewed impulse into the service of a networked economy in the 1990s.     

The Impact of Socio-economic Status and Mobility on Perceived Family Functioning

Perceptions of current family functioning in relation to current household income level, educational status, social-class at birth and social mobility over the lifecourse were investigated in a group of 483 individuals at age 50. Subjective report of family functioning was assessed using the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD) with socio-economic information obtained from a self-report Health and Lifestyle Questionnaire. Results indicated significant relationships between household income, social mobility and FAD scores for men but not for women in this sample. For men, lower current income and downward social mobility over the lifecourse were associated with a more negative perception of family functioning. Further research is required to understand the gender differences observed and delineate cause versus effect mechanisms.     

What does it mean to be a girl with qizhi?:Refinement,gender and language ideologies in contemporary Taiwan1

This study investigates the relationship between ideologies of language and gender as manifested through sociolinguistic interviews conducted on college campuses in Taiwan. The interviews consistently and systematically revealed the use of a term, qizhi– roughly equivalent to ‘refined disposition.’ This paper examines the implications of this preoccupation. Through an examination of the contextual use of qizhi, this study shows that, first, qizhi is commonly associated with a range of social practices, among which linguistic practices play a significant role. Second, qizhi is often used to describe, evaluate, and further regulate women's ways of speaking, although its use is not gender exclusive. Third, common linguistic varieties in Taiwan, such as Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Taiwanese‐accented Mandarin, are associated with qizhi to varying degrees. This study demonstrates how talk centered on qizhi serves as a meeting ground of social evaluation, linguistic and discursive practices, gender ideologies, and language ideologies.     

CARTOGRAPHY OF GENDER EQUALITY PROJECTS IN ICT: Liberal equality from the perspective of situated equality

This paper examines gender equality activities in the context of information and communication technology (ICT), traces the social and cultural relations that intertwine with them and discusses the understandings of gender, equality and ICT maintained in them. The aim of the paper is to analyse how liberal equal treatment actions prevail in ICT, although it is well known that liberal politics alone do not succeed in promoting gender equality, and not even in fulfilling its own goal of raising the proportions of women in technology. The study is based on oral history interviews with 30 women who have committed important parts of their lives to gender equality activities through several decades, as well as follow-up studies of women's ICT groups that aimed to promote equality in ICT expertise, both of these studies being conducted in Finland. The interviewed gender equality workers are competent promoters of gender and equality. However, they need to negotiate their aims, for example, in order to get funding, within national and transnational institutional practices, with actors who have little knowledge regarding the social construction of gender, equality or ICT. The managerial terms 'efficiency' and 'good practice' then take over the understandings of the gender equality activities in ICT, mainly organized as projects, and further emphasize the measurable goals often linked to liberal gender equality actions. These terms have material consequences and while gender equality projects continue to provide possibilities for unexpected changes, they are locked within liberal politics.