WOMEN AND MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Abstract: Although welcome gains have been made towards greater equity for women in the public service in recent years, many issues have yet to be tackled adequately. The paper is essentially concerned with the problems which arise because EEO programs have been couched in managerial terms, as part of the recent management reform and improvement programs within the public sector. This technocratic approach is very masculine in style and largely requires assimilation to the dominant male form of management. In concentrating on formal organisational issues. EEO programs can deflect attention from a direct engagement with the relevant value matters. Nor is the relationship between the work environment and other institutions, most importantly the family, dealt with in the managerialist approach.     

The Impact of Officer and Agency Characteristics on the Likelihood of Arrest in Domestic Violence Situations among Rural Law Enforcement Officers

Domestic violence cuts across all demographic groups. The factors related to why police officers arrest in some domestic violence situations but not others have been often studied. Little research, however, has been conducted on the arrest views of rural police officers. One hundred seventy line officers in six rural Midwestern counties were surveyed to determine the impact of officer personal characteristics and agency type on arrest decisions in various hypothetical domestic violence scenarios. First, the same situational factors appeared to be important in shaping the arrest decision in domestic violence calls of rural officers as have previously been found with urban officers. Second, the characteristics of officers and the type of agency had some impact on the likelihood of arrest, particularly if there was evidence of a physical assault. Third, the presence of evidence of a physical assault helped shape the arrest decisions of rural officers. Fourth, situational factors were more important than officer characteristics and the type of agency. Nancy Hogan and Shannon Barton contributed equally to the paper. The authors thank Janet Lambert for editing and proofreading the paper. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.     

Women and Men in Jail: Attitudes Towards and Experiences of Domestic Violence

This study explores the pre-arrest domestic violence victimization and attitudes towards domestic violence reported by women and men confined in a Midwestern metropolitan jail. Results indicated that women in the jail sample had more fear for the safety of battered women than men in the jail sample. Women in jail were more likely than men in jail to view the legal system as a deterrent to domestic violence. Logistic regression models were constructed to explore associations between jail detainees’ pre-arrest experiences of domestic violence and their gender, age, education, race, parental status and other violent victimizations. The variables associated with pre-arrest domestic violence victimization were being a woman, a parent, a victim rape and a victim of threats with a deadly weapon.     

Sexing Elvis

The image of Elvis as a butch god, sexual folk hero and archetypal macho man is largely the creation of the male media. The existence of this image has served to explain-away the threat of uncontrollable groups of female fans and has bolstered the egos of male writers, who have created ‘Elvis’ in their own (fantasy) image. The emphasis on sex has disguised the existence of differing experiences among Elvis fans, particularly that many did not experience him as a sexual phenomenon at all, but rather as a mascot, secret friend or hobby. The total domination of the male-defined sexual image of Elvis, adopted also by feminists, leads to interesting questions about how and why such a one-sided view of reality emerged and how such knowledge survives unquestioned. The author examines these questions by analyzing her own personal experiences of being an ‘Elvis fan’ and trying to understand the contradictions between subjective experence and so-called objective accounts.     

National administrative agencies in transition: A comparison of sweden and the united states

The abilities of national administrative agencies in Sweden and the United States to function effectively are influenced by their responses to three major phenomena: 1) growth in the responsibilities of government; 2) decentralization; and, 3) privatization. This paper delineates how these phenomena have affected the development of national administrative organizations in these two countries. Implications for administering national agencies in increasingly complex interorganizational environments are discussed.     

Implementing pay reform in the public sector: Different approaches to flexible pay in sweden and the united states

A set of implementation criteria drawn from the United States experience provide a framework for examining pay reform in the Swedish public sector. The study finds that the Swedish approach is quite distinct and this may be attributable to unique features in the Swedish labor market. The reform toward flexible or individualized pay in government agencies appears to be based on an assumption of greater cost efficiency in human resource management and a broad unwillingness to employ objective measures of individual or organizational productivity. Consequently the study calls into question the utility of an analytical framework based on the Anglo-American experience for examining the Swedish case.     

Laying the foundation for institutionalisation of democratic parliaments in the newly independent states: The case of Ukraine

This article examines the institutionalisation of the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, since the fall of the Soviet Union. The emergence of a popularly elected legislature in post‐Soviet Ukraine stands as a cornerstone in the development of a democratic regime. While the Verkhovna Rada is by no means a mature parliament, the foundation for future institutionalisation has been laid through the establishment of a representative political process, nascent political parties, a separation of powers between the executive and the legislature, and the policy‐making capacity of the Parliament.     

A comparison of the effects of witnessing community violence and direct victimization among children in Cape Town, South Africa

This study is based on a sample of children from the Cape Town area in South Africa. The study compares the effects of witnessing school or neighborhood violence compared with being victimized in each context on psychological distress. The findings suggest that in the context of the school, victimization has a somewhat stronger effect on distress than witnessing violence. However, in the neighborhood, the opposite was the case. "Unknown locus of control" was also analyzed as a moderating variable. The findings are interpreted in the context of violence in South African society. The study also investigates the overlap between witnessing violence, victimization, and perpetration in the child's school and neighborhood. The vast majority of victims had been witnesses as well as perpetrators. Longitudinal research, which could track involvement in various forms of violence starting at a very early age, is needed to clearly assess the differential impact of each form of violence.