Semiotic Readings of the USS Midway Museum

This article was inspired by a visit to the USS Midway aircraft carrier during the 2012 ISA Convention. Through a semiotic reading of the museum's exhibit and honoring ceremony of veterans, the article argues that while women have been increasingly included in certain combat positions within the US military, institutions that convey messages of military service continue to leave women out of the picture. This thereby renders gender-inclusive practices in war invisible to the average citizen. Through the erasure of women's performance in the armed services, war museums and memorials help ensure that war remains a male preserve in the public imagination. More broadly, the article argues that semiotics as a methodology should be given more attention by feminist scholarship that seeks to challenge mainstream conceptualizations and measurements of militarization. Doing so should provide more sophisticated and nuanced understandings of how militarism becomes embedded in societal level institutions – as previously advanced by feminist scholars.     

Unbecoming blackness: the diaspora cultures of Afro-Cuban America

This paper addresses the relationship between ageing, gender, cultural norms, and the constitution of gendered body-subjects. It briefly discusses three conceptual approaches which have been used to understand ageing, gendered body-subjects: postmodernist/social constructionist, psychoanalytic, and poststructuralist feminist. It is argued that the first two approaches are entrenched in dualistic modes of thinking, and therefore can never construct ageing gendered body subjects as other than through the dualistic discourse of decline and cultural devaluation in Western consumer cultures. The third, however, appears to hold some promise for a more just and flexible way of accounting for the integrity of, and culturally valuing, the gendered body-subject in old age. Examples from writings on dance are used to illustrate this argument.     

The decreasing percentile residual life ageing notion

Earlier researchers have studied some aspects of the classes of distribution functions with decreasing α-percentile residual life (DPRL(α)), 0<α<1. The purpose of this paper is to note some further properties of these classes, and to initiate a theory of non-parametric statistical estimation of DPRL(α) functions. Specifically, the close relationship between the DPRL(α) and the increasing failure rate ageing notions is studied. Other close relationships, between the DPRL(α) ageing notions and the percentile residual life stochastic orders, are described, and further properties of the above classes of distributions are derived. Finally, we introduce an estimator of the percentile residual life function, under the condition that it decreases, and we prove its strongly uniform consistency.     

建构与解构:民族女工性别化技能研究

“性别化技能”的核心含义是不同性别学习接受不同技能,由此形成的男女能力差异是造成性别不平等的直接原因。本文分析研究了少数民族女工性别化技能建构与解构的逻辑机理,认为性别技能是由家庭、社区、学校、工作单位、社会传媒等结构性力量与女工个体性因素相互作用所建构,其历史成因是民族习俗与父权制的安排,现实动因则是资本对父权红利、性别租金的追逐,而创造相同、维护差异、习得新技能则是民族女工解构性别技能的主要策略与路径。     

The godmother of gendered organizations: In celebration of the work of Joan Acker

Joan Acker can be considered the godmother of gendered organizations. In this paper, we reflect on the impact that Joan Acker's work has on our thinking and our careers as gender scholars in management and organization studies in Europe. First, we tell our personal stories of close encounters with Joan Acker. Second, we highlight what we consider to be two key contributions of Joan Acker. The first are the interrelated gendered processes regarding structure, culture, interaction and identity from her work in the early 1990s, the second the notion of inequality regimes from her later work on the intersections of gender, class and race. We then discuss how Acker's work has been influential in our research on gendered organizations, and in our teaching when we use it in our explanations of the functioning of gender in organizations to students, and in our work as advisors and consultants for organizations interested in equality, diversity and inclusion. Finally, we elaborate on new directions building on Acker's work, especially in current theorizing on gender and diversity in organizational change.     

Some stochastic properties of conditionally dependent frailty models

The frailty approach is commonly used in reliability theory and survival analysis to model the dependence between lifetimes of individuals or components subject to common risk factors; according to this model the frailty (an unobservable random vector that describes environmental conditions) acts simultaneously on the hazard functions of the lifetimes. Some interesting conditions for stochastic comparisons between random vectors defined in accordance with these models have been described in the literature; in particular, comparisons between frailty models have been studied by assuming independence for the baseline survival functions and the corresponding environmental parameters. In this paper, a generalization of these models is developed, which assumes conditional dependence between the components of the random vector, and some conditions for stochastic comparisons are provided. Some examples of frailty models satisfying these conditions are also described.     

谈构建生态批评理论的原则

构建生态批评理论需要遵循一些基本原则。本文结合中西理论家的观点,提出并论述了建构生态批评理论的三大原则：生态进步性原则、生态整体性原则和多样统一原则,以期为生态批评理论的建构提出规范。     

大学生自杀问题的社会伦理思考

近年来,青年大学生的自杀现象屡见不鲜。透过这些自杀现象我们可以发现自杀不仅仅是社会问题和心理问题,更多的是社会伦理价值观深层次的问题,文章对大学生自杀原因进行了伦理思考,并提出了伦理教育的相关对策,以期为社会各个方面对大学生自杀进行早期干预提供参考。     

Gendered institutional research cultures in science: the post-doc transition for women scientists

This study examines perceptions of post-doctoral women bench scientists working across fourteen major US research universities, and how both individual and institutional experiences influenced their desired futures. Findings reveal three distinct career paths (research, teaching, and industry). This study provides insight into individual career decision processes involving as to how gender is experienced in male-centric cultures, how experiences of barriers are reframed, and how obstacles influence choices. These women emphasized strong desires to contribute to their respective fields and to collaborate with others, a key relational aspect missing in their current work. All participants indicated aspirations to have both a career and a full life beyond the lab. Findings further suggest a post-doctoral environment laden with gender and family biases including subtle discrimination and challenges specific to women working in male-centric cultures. A strong relationship between experiences of gender and family biases suggests that additional burdens are placed on women's career paths and their evolving identity. This study identifies the postdoctoral journey as a unique transition zone marked by a period of adaptation and selection as they make sense of their experience and decide on how best to achieve success and fulfillment as women and as scientists.     

Exploring Media Representations of Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

In the last decade, Latin America has seen several women taking up the top job. However, even as Presidents, far from being treated as equal with their male counterparts, they still suffer from media coverage filled with prejudice about their status as women. This article examines the media landscape portraying a woman in power; namely the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK), by looking at news pieces published in two main national Argentinean newspapers, Clarín and La Nación. In order to document this trajectory, I identify three “roles” that media assigns to CFK: the Stupid Girl, which accounts for the questionings of her validity as a candidate; the Wicked Widow, which speaks of CFK after her husband died in 2010 through the lens of a revival of that stereotype; and finally a role that arises from the moment in which CFK catches media attention by becoming the first lady in 2003, the Frivolous Diva. The first section briefly introduces CFK's trajectory as a prominent leader. Then, the body of the article discusses the three roles introduced earlier. Finally, the conclusion argues that despite the media's power, sometimes they fail at getting their message across, making obvious their gendered discursive operation.