Gender,Politics and the State: What Do Middle Eastern Women Want?

The essays that follow are drawn from invited presentations of the Conference Group on the Middle East, which meets annually in conjunction with the American Political Science Association. The essays published here were presented in San Francisco, August 29-September 1, 1996, on one of three panels dealing with gender, politics and the state. Thanks to the continuing generosity of the Ford Foundation, five scholars from the Middle East were able to participate. The contributors would like to thank Farhad Kazemi, Deborah Gerner and Jean Lecafor their excellent comments at the panels. Louis J. Cantori, who has shepherded the Conference Group since its creation by a group of University of Chicago graduates more than a decade ago, deserves special thanks for his tireless commitment.     

Schooling women

Paige Porter (ed.), Gender and Education (Deakin University Press) Geelong, 1986. Noelene Kyle, Her Natural Destiny: The Education of Women in New South Wales (University of New South Wales Press) Kensington, 1986.     

What should a paper on men and male sexuality look like?

This paper is about writing, theory, and writing theory.     

The Promise of Wisconsin's 1999 Comprehensive Planning Law: Land-Use Policy Reforms to Support Active Living

Weaving together the disciplines of planning and policy change with the emerging research of active living, this article explores the competing interests and underlying political forces behind the design and passage of Wisconsin's Comprehensive Planning Law of 1999. While Wisconsin's law remains a work in progress, it illustrates the contemporary policy battles over land use and smart growth and the resurgence of the property-rights movement. It further highlights the influence of smart-growth coalitions and policy networks on planning reform. The authors suggest that planning practitioners and active-living proponents can adapt and transfer these policy lessons from Wisconsin to address the complex relationships of the built environment, physical activity, and the nation's current obesity problem through state and local planning reforms.     

Clinical ethics committees, due process and the right to a fair hearing

The development of clinical ethics committees in the United Kingdom raises a number of important questions about the extent to which they are compatible with the normative values of due process. If committees are to be active in delivering ethics services, it is argued that attention to due process is important. Based on research outcomes, it seems that the chairs of the United Kingdom clinical ethics committees who responded are reasonably satisfied about the ability of their committees to make ethical decisions and slightly less confident about their ability to make legal decisions. If these committees are to make potentially far-reaching decisions (whether or not involving live consultations), it is argued here that they must pay attention to the rules associated with the legal concept of due process. Equally, evaluation of the clinical ethics committee's counterpart in the United States suggests that they may become increasingly authoritative, especially as their role becomes entrenched. This makes attention to due process even more important. However, it is also proposed that, when committees become concerned about due process, their ability to "do ethics" is constrained.     

Higher Education and the Referendum on Scottish Independence

During the course of the referendum campaign, the Scottish government argued that free tuition for Scottish and EU students symbolised Scotland's preference for universal services and was intrinsically fairer than the ‘marketised’ systems operating in the rest of the UK. Invoking principles of both social justice and pragmatism, three distinct critiques of the Scottish government's higher education policy were mounted and adopted by different policy actors for different political purposes. Following a discussion of these arguments, this article concludes that a more nuanced discussion of higher education policy in Scotland is required, focusing not just on the absence of tuition fees but also on the distribution of debt and allocation of funds across the entire education system. We also note that the focus on tuition fees policy suggests that higher education systems across the UK are set on a process of divergence, whereas there are strong pressures towards policy convergence in areas such as research policy and internationalisation.