‘Are we to become a gender university?’ Facets of resistance to a gender equality project

Gender equality (GE) is something ‘we cannot not want’. Indeed, the pursuit of equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities for all women and men throughout a society freed from gendered oppression is widely visible in recent organizational GE initiatives. In practice, however, GE initiatives often fail in challenging gendered norms and at effecting deep‐seated change. In fact, GE measures tend to encounter resistance, with a gap between saying and doing. Using a GE project at a Swedish university, we examined the changing nature of reactions to GE objectives seeking to understand why gender inequality persists in academia. We used ‘resistance’ to identify multiple, complex reactions to the project, focusing on the discursive practices of GE. Focusing our contextual analysis on change and changes in reactions enabled a process‐oriented analysis that revealed gaps where change is possible. Thus, we argue that studying change makes it possible to identify points in time where gendered discriminatory norms are more likely to occur. However, analysing discursive practices does not itself lead to change nor to action. Rather, demands for change must start with answering, in a collaborative way, what problem we are trying to solve when we start a new GE project, in order to be relevant to the specific context. Otherwise, GE risks being the captive of consensus politics and gender inequality will persist.     

The relative performances of improved ridge estimators and an empirical bayes estimator: some monte carlo results

The relative 'performances of improved ridge estimators and an empirical Bayes estimator are studied by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The empirical Bayes method is seen to perform consistently better in terms of smaller MSE and more accurate empirical coverage than any of the estimators considered here. A bootstrap method is proposed to obtain more reliable estimates of the MSE of ridge esimators. Some theorems on the bootstrap for the ridge estimators are also given and they are used to provide an analytical understanding of the proposed bootstrap procedure. Empirical coverages of the ridge estimators based on the proposed procedure are generally closer to the nominal coverage when compared to their earlier counterparts. In general, except for a few cases, these coverages are still less accurate than the empirical coverages of the empirical Bayes estimator.     

冠华胶印誉满中华

营口冠华胶印机有限公司,是中国印刷行业以生产现代轻印刷设备为主的骨干企业,"九五"期间被国家列为办公用小胶印机的生产基地.主导产品获中国机械工业名牌产品称号.     

Religion,spirituality, coping,and resilience among African Americans with diabetes

Study aims were to explore how religion and spirituality impacted attitudes about self-management practices among African Americans with homelessness histories and to understand resilience in diabetes care practices. Qualitative semistructured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 42 African Americans older than 18 years. All audio-taped interviews lasted between 1–1.5 hr, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using ATLAS.ti (version 7.0). Five resilience themes emerged. While participants recognized diabetes as an illness requiring professional treatment, the context of balancing treatment with religion and spiritual practices mattered. The study findings highlight the importance of spirituality, religious beliefs, and coping strategies in diabetes self-care activities.     

The impact of labor unions on the passage of economic legislation

This paper examines the political power of labor unions. A model of the decision of an interest group to contribute to a political campaign is developed and tested. The empirical evidence indicates that interest groups, and unions in particular, use political contributions in a systematic and coordinated manner. Unions give money to candidates with relatively little seniority (who might otherwise not be elected) and to candidates from districts with about the average number of union members. Such candidates might otherwise not vote as the union would desire. The influence of campaign contributions and of union membership on the voting of congressmen on issues of interest to unions is also investigated. Union membership is sometimes significant and campaign contributions are always significant in explaining voting on minimum wages, wageprice controls, benefits for strikers, and OSHA and CETA appropriations. The indirect economic effects of labor unions — those effects which occur because unions influence legislation — may be as important as the direct effects which occur through collective bargaining.     

Infants born preterm and infants born full-term generate more selective leg joint movement during the scaffolded mobile task

Infants born very preterm (PT), prior to 32 weeks gestation, are at increased risk of developing cerebral palsy. Children with spastic cerebral palsy have impaired selective leg joint movement, which contributes to lifelong walking limitations. We investigated whether infants born PT generated more selective hip–knee joint movement (e.g., hip flexes as knee extends) while participating in a scaffolded mobile task. Infants born PT and infants born full-term (FT) at 4 months corrected age participated in a scaffolded mobile task for 2–3 consecutive days. The scaffolded mobile task required infants to raise their legs vertically over a virtual threshold. Three threshold heights (low, middle, and high) were used to test whether the middle and high heights encourage infants to move their legs more selectively. Fifteen infants born FT learned the task and showed more selective hip–knee movement at each of the three threshold heights on the day that they learned, compared with their baseline spontaneous kicking. Thirteen infants born PT learned the task and showed more selective hip–knee movement on their learning day, but only when the middle and high thresholds were used. The results show that the scaffolded mobile task effectively encouraged infants to generate more selective hip–knee joint movement.     

Job Strain, Workplace Discrimination, and Hypertension Among Older Workers: The Health and Retirement Study

Job strain has been associated with hypertension among younger workers; however, whether this relationship persists among older workers, particularly older racial/ethnic minorities, is unresolved. This study evaluated whether job strain and workplace discrimination are associated with hypertension and poor blood pressure control among older workers and whether these relationships vary by gender and race/ethnicity. Data were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study, and analysis was restricted to employed participants with complete information on job strain and blood pressure (N = 3,794). In adjusted models, high job strain was associated with lower likelihood of hypertension (odds ratio (OR): 0.75, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.63, 0.89) relative to low job strain. Stratified analyses indicated this association was only significant among white (OR: 0.71, 95% CI: 0.58, 0.86) and male (OR: 0.61, 95% CI: 0.47, 0.79) workers. High job strain was not significantly associated with hypertension among African American (OR: 1.14, 95% CI: 0.63, 2.07) or Hispanic (OR: 0.56, 95% CI: 0.29, 1.09) workers. Workplace discrimination was not associated with hypertension among any group. Neither job strain nor discrimination was associated with poor blood pressure control. These findings suggest that persistence in work characterized by high job strain in later life may signal resilience to the influence of work-related stressors on health. Future research efforts should examine the factors that contribute to gender and racial differences in these relationships.     

The longitudinal effects of parental monitoring and self-control on depression in Korean adolescents: A multivariate latent growth approach

The purpose of this study was to examine the longitudinal effects of parental monitoring and self-control on depression. To address this purpose, this study investigated the interrelationships among depression, perceived parental monitoring, and self-control—as well as their developmental changes from the eighth to the twelfth grades—by repeated assessment of 3449 Korean adolescents. The data from Korea Youth Panel Survey (KYPS) of the eighth graders who were followed for five years were analyzed using latent growth modeling. The univariate latent growth models showed that adolescents experience an increase in both parental monitoring and self-control but a decline in depression over the five years. In addition, the multivariate latent growth model suggested that the initial level of parental monitoring had significant effects, both directly and indirectly through self-control, on the initial level of depression. The linear changes in parental monitoring were associated with the linear changes in self-control; likewise, the linear changes in self-control were related to those in depression. These results imply that parental monitoring and self-control need to be emphasized as a strategy in order to prevent or alleviate adolescents' depression.