Permission to speak: British women in the established churches during the First World War

The first decade of the twentieth century witnessed the growth of the suffrage movement, and a vigorous debate about the public role of women. Britain’s established churches were caught up in this discussion, as they addressed calls for women to have more authority in religious institutions. Dialogue among church leaders ranged between two extremes. Conservatives viewed women’s roles through the lens of ‘traditional’ gender constructs, opposing a public role and voice for women. Progressive factions contended that women should receive the political suffrage and the right to participate in church councils. The male hierarchy argued that empowered women were necessary for the ongoing ministries of the churches, and would be supportive of traditional morality. By 1919, the progressives had prevailed. This matched developments in the franchise, in which gendered qualifications for voting were swept away. Thus, the typically conservative churches played an important role in redefining women’s public roles.     

Ethics by Design: The Impact of Form of Government on Municipal Corruption

While trust in government at all levels is at an all‐time low, actual corruption at the municipal level has been declining. One factor often credited with this decline is the introduction of the council‐manager form of government. One of the key reasons the council‐manager form was created in the early 1900s was to act as an antidote to the corruption prevalent in the big‐city machine politics of the era. Despite this, no one has tested whether the council‐manager form has in fact influenced the decline in corruption rates. This article uses a rare events logit model to analyze corruption convictions in municipalities between 1990 and 2010 to determine which factors, including form of government, affect the probability that a corrupt act will occur. The findings indicate that municipalities with the council‐manager form are 57 percent less likely to have corruption convictions than municipalities with the mayor‐council form.     

Structural discrimination and social stigma among individuals incarcerated for sexual offenses: Reentry across the rural–urban continuum

The stigma associated with a felony conviction can impede the reentry process, and emerging research findings indicate that one's community can amplify or temper the mark of a criminal record. Researchers examining criminal stigma have focused on individuals living in urban areas, overlooking the experiences of persons outside these communities. Using qualitative data collected from a sample of men and women paroled for sexual offenses in Missouri, we contrast how social and structural stigma alter the reentry experiences for participants living in communities along the rural and urban continuum. The results show that the stigma of a sex offense conviction was a near‐universal experience and residence restrictions stymied efforts to find housing. Residents of urban areas and some large cities felt that the community offered relative anonymity from stigma but the stress of their status being discovered was omnipresent. Participants in rural areas and small cities had less social privacy and reported being shunned in the community, although strong social ties did mitigate some of the consequences of stigma. The results highlight the importance of considering place when studying reentry and have implications for designing correctional policies to address the needs of residents returning to non–metropolitan locations.     

Managing from the Middle: Frontline Supervisors and Perceptions of Their Organizational Power

Frontline supervisors serve in a critical role, maintaining relationships between upper management and frontline workers; however, we still know relatively little about how subordinates view their power in relation to their supervisors and how frontline supervisors understand and exercise their own power. Focusing on street‐level workers and frontline supervisors across a statewide community corrections agency, we explore perceptions, experiences, and assertions of power in the workplace. Using focus groups with thirty‐two street‐level probation and parole officers and focus groups and field observations of seventy‐five frontline supervisors, we find that officers and frontline supervisors have widely differing views on the power of the frontline supervisory position, some of which are influenced by gender. While street‐level workers align frontline supervisors with policy creators, frontline supervisors view themselves as disempowered go‐betweens. Frontline supervisors compensate for their perceived lack of power in policymaking and implementation by using micropower strategies to assert their power. This study extends street‐level bureaucrat theory to the role of frontline supervisors, who in practice are distant from the upper management roles with which they are typically categorized.     

Physical,Social, and Perceived Availabilities of Alcohol and Last Month Alcohol Use in Rural and Small Urban Communities

This study seeks to provide a greater understanding of the factors that determine the perceived availability of alcohol and its role in predicting adolescents’ alcohol use. Participants were 151,703 7th–12th grade students (50% female) from a sample of 219 rural communities across the United States, with oversampling for predominantly Mexican-American and African-American communities. Multilevel analysis was used to estimate the perceived availability of alcohol as a function of physical and social availability measures and individual and community-level control variables. Physical availability was measured as the number of alcohol outlets in the community and whether beer and wine were sold in non-liquor stores. Social availability measured the availability of alcohol from social or family groups. Last month alcohol use was then estimated as a function of physical, social and perceived availabilities and control variables. Physical availability had little relationship to perceived availability or recent alcohol use while social availability was a strong predictor of both. Perceived availabilities at the individual and community levels were significant in predicting last month alcohol use. The findings suggest that altering both perceived and actual availability of alcohol can potentially have strong effects on the levels of adolescent alcohol use.     

Discrimination and Mexican-Origin Adolescents’ Adjustment: The Moderating Roles of Adolescents’, Mothers’, and Fathers’ Cultural Orientations and Values

Drawing on García Coll et al.’s integrative framework and the risk and resilience model, this study examined the relationships between adolescents’ perceived discrimination and psychosocial adjustment and the moderating roles of adolescents’, mothers’, and fathers’ cultural orientations and values, and adolescent gender in a sample of 246 Mexican-origin families. Using multilevel modeling with data from mothers, fathers, seventh graders (M _age = 12.8 years; SD = .57 year) and older siblings (M _age = 15.7 years; SD = 1.5 years), findings revealed that perceived discrimination was positively related to depression, risky behaviors, and deviant peer affiliations. In addition, parents’ cultural orientations and values and adolescent gender moderated the relationships between perceived discrimination and some indicators of adjustment. These findings suggest that parents’ cultural orientations and values can serve as protective and vulnerability factors in the associations between Mexican-origin adolescents’ perceived discrimination and their psychosocial adjustment.     

Mexican-Origin Adolescent Mothers’ Stressors and Psychosocial Functioning: Examining Ethnic Identity Affirmation and Familism as Moderators

Mexican-origin adolescent mothers are at increased risk for poor psychosocial functioning as a result of various stressors with which they must contend; however, existing theory suggests that cultural strengths may help mitigate the negative effects of stress. As such, the current study examined the associations between cultural and economic stressors and Mexican-origin adolescent mothers’ (N = 207; M age = 16.23 years, SD = 1.0) internalizing and externalizing behaviors, as well as the degree to which ethnic identity affirmation and familism values moderated these links. Adolescent mothers who reported higher levels of discrimination, acculturative stress, and economic stress also reported higher depressive symptoms and greater involvement in risky behaviors. Importantly, ethnic identity affirmation minimized the negative associations between cultural stressors and adolescents’ involvement in risky behaviors, with the associations being weakest among adolescents with high levels of ethnic identity. Familism appeared to serve a protective function under conditions of low levels of discrimination, but not under conditions of high levels of discrimination. Findings are discussed with special attention to the developmental and cultural contexts in which these adolescent mothers’ lives are embedded, and implications for future research and practice are presented.