Race lines and spaces of political action among migrant youth

Recently proposed Anti-Racism Strategy established within a framework of the Australian Government's multicultural policy, People of Australia, identifies ‘youth engagement’ as one of the key areas that needs to be promoted and supported. Young people have been invited to join youth councils and youth forums and work with national, state and local policy-makers. Some have taken up this challenge and became public faces and active members of anti-racism campaigns. Others, however, either remained silent about the discrimination they face, or organised their own grassroots youth-based and youth-led initiatives. This paper discusses individual and collective responses to racism among young people in Australia, focusing on Melbourne, and examines possibilities in which racism, as a common experience among migrant youth, can be utilised to form alternative spaces for political action, challenging not only interpersonal, but also systemic forms of racism. By drawing attention towards institutional and systemic forms of racism, and the historical perpetuation of racist practices, these youth initiatives rely on legal measures, and argue that racism should be discussed in the context of the broader Australian society, not only in relation to minority groups.     

Depression in the Profession: Social Workers' Experiences and Perceptions

This study reports the findings of interviews with fifty socialworkers who volunteered to describe their personal experiencesof depression in the workplace. The findings confirm the literatureon the stresses of social work and provide an account of theways in which the social workers sought to reconcile their mentalhealth needs with their role as professionals. The study suggeststhe potential for those working at all levels in social workagencies to support social workers who are experiencing depression.At a time of shortages in the profession in the UK, and of effortsto enable those with mental health problems to remain in orreturn to work, the experiences of those social workers interviewedillustrate the managerial, training and human resource imperativesto provide more supportive workplaces.     

Copyright Issues for the Distance Learning Professor

The Internet has made the accessibility of knowledge both instantaneous and global. The professor who teaches online must be aware of the legal issues created by digital technology. The scope of the Fair Use Doctrine in the U.S. Copyright Law is under debate by educators and copyright owners. Educators advocate amending the scope of works available for distance learning, under the Fair Use principle, to include the same range of exclusions allowed in face to face classrooms such as: audiovisual works, movies and videos. While copyright owners advocate licensing of materials, educators feel that licensing procedures and costs need to be geared to the needs and ability to pay of the educational institution, otherwise their distance learning students will not have access to the same materials as those who sit in the classroom. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Race and Marital History as Correlates of Women's Access to Family-Friendly Employee Benefits

Using a nationally representative sample of young women surveyed intermittently since 1968 (N = 2030), this study assessed the effects of race and marital history on access to family-friendly employee benefits between 1978 and 1995. Accounting for such factors as work history, total number of employers for whom the respondent has worked, education level, and number of children, race was found to act as a suppressor variable. White women were found to work for more years for employers providing family-friendly benefits even though Black women worked for more years in full-time jobs. Results suggested that systematic biases relegated Black women to lower-paying full-time jobs without family-friendly benefits more so than was the case for White women. Policy implications regarding affirmative action are discussed. No relationship was found between marital history and access to jobs with family-friendly benefits when taking into account other sociodemographic and employment-related characteristics.     

Absence Because of Family Responsibilities: An Examination of Explanatory Factors

This article presents findings from the first comprehensive study of the determinants of absence from work caused by family responsibilities. Two types of absence—absence to care for ill family members and absence for other family reasons—are considered. Data from a sample of 2,642 Australian employees are used to test six hypotheses. Results suggest that absence caused by family illness varies by sex, that job satisfaction is related to men's but not women's absence for family illness, that workplace flexibility is related to women's but not men's family-related absence, that child care arrangements are associated with the probability of absence for family illness for parents of preschoolers, and that the presence of dependent children is strongly related to absence for family reasons.     

Occupational Segregation and the Gender Gap in Workplace Authority: National Versus Local Labor Markets

Previous research linking occupational gender segregation to the workplace authority gap assumes that the effect of gender composition is invariant across occupations, ignoring the important distinction of whether an occupation's relevant labor market is local or national. We offer a new method for defining occupational labor markets and hypothesize that the effect of occupation gender composition on the authority gap will be strongest in national labor market occupations. Both sexes' odds of possessing work authority decline with the representation of women; this effect is strongest in the more desirable, national labor market occupations. Assuming occupations are part of one labor market results in understating the gender composition penalty for national labor market occupations.     

‘You Can Stand on Your Head and Still End Up with Lower Pay’: Gliding Segregation and Gendered Work Practices in Danish ‘Family‐friendly’ Workplaces

This article explores the process of gliding segregation in two Danish workplaces. We address the questions of how and why women and men at the same workplace, with the same levels of education, often end up doing different work tasks. Drawing on a gendered organization perspective and sense of entitlement theory we illustrate the processes whereby structural and cultural expectations place women in predictable and routine work, and men in more developmental work. We also show that the level of education makes a difference to women's sense of entitlement to developmental work, but that the discourse of family friendliness disadvantages women in the allocation of interesting and valued work tasks. The findings illustrate the resilience of gendered work practices and the importance of focusing on workplace interactions to explain this.     

Headquarters involvement,socialization, and entrepreneurial behaviors in MNC subsidiaries

Headquarters of multinational corporations can be involved in their subsidiaries and help with the development and transfer of innovative ideas. However, headquarters involvement might not always be desired or needed, and it can thus be perceived as interference with local activities, potentially reducing local willingness to go the extra mile. We address the lack of knowledge about subsidiary manager behavior by answering the following question: How does headquarters involvement influence the proactive behavior of subsidiary managers to push for new and innovative ideas? Using data from 120 top managers in subsidiaries of multinational corporations, we find that the negative relationship between headquarters involvement and their subsidiary managers' support for initiatives can be reduced when socialization mechanisms such as a common corporate culture or rotation programs are put in place.     

Workplace support and European fathers’ use of state policies promoting shared childcare

ABSTRACT

Social policies such as paternity leave and parental leave offer fathers the opportunity to be more involved in childcare than earlier generations of fathers. While such policies are increasingly offered by governments around the world, research by the International Network on Leave Policies and Research shows that many European fathers do not take advantage of these benefits, despite fathers’ growing interest in participation in early childcare. This article introduces a special issue devoted to understanding how the workplace can impact European fathers’ interest in and abilities to take leave, a topic that has received relatively little research attention. The articles in the special issue suggest that barriers to European fathers’ leavetaking are deeply embedded in workplace culture and work practices and will be difficult to eradicate without a dramatic challenge to the concept of the male ideal worker, who prioritizes work above family.     

Crossover of resources and well-being within employee-partner dyads: through increased schedule control

ABSTRACT

This study examined whether one partner’s additional resources obtained from a workplace intervention influence the other partner’s perception of having those resources at home (crossover of resources). We also examined whether one partner’s decreased stress by increased work resources crosses over to the other partner’s stress levels (crossover of well-being). Longitudinal data came from IT employees and their married/cohabiting partners in midlife (N?=?327). A randomized workplace intervention significantly increased employee-reported schedule control at the 6-month follow-up, which, in turn, increased partner-reported employees’ work schedule flexibility to handle family responsibilities at the 12-month follow-up. The intervention also decreased partners’ perceived stress at the 12-month follow-up through the processes by which increases in schedule control predicted decreases in employees’ perceived stress, which further predicted decreased levels of partners’ perceived stress. Notably, crossover of resources and well-being were found in couples who lived with children in the household, but not in couples without children. Our findings suggest that benefits of workplace support can permeate into the family domain, by increasing partner-perceived family resources and well-being.