Policy studies within a feminist frame

Feminist scholarship seeks to identify and purge androcentric bias in traditional disciplines, to reshape dominant paradigms so that women's needs, interests, activities, and concerns can be analyzed and understood systematically, and to develop research methodologies that are neither gender-biased nor gender-blind. This essay provides an overview of feminist scholarship in the field of policy studies. In particular, it considers feminist studies of substantive policy domains and of the policy-making process, as well as feminist critiques of research paradigms, methods, and results that have structured policy studies for the past 50 years.     

Public information campaigns as policy instruments

Considerable controversy surrounds public information campaigns: government-directed and sponsored efforts to communicate to large numbers of citizens in order to achieve a policy result, or what might be called government propaganda. We analyze the use of campaigns as policy instruments in three ways: (1) effectiveness in achieving substantive outcomes; (2) political benefits for public officials; and (3) consequences for democratic processes. Our review of 100 campaigns from these three perspectives reveals significant advantages and disadvantages of using campaigns in practice. We conclude that the advantages of public information campaigns justify their use as policy intruments when used appropriately and with care to mitigate the disadvantages.     

Deconstructing Whiteness: Irish Women in Britain

The Irish are largely invisible as an ethnic group in Britain but continue to be racialized as inferior and alien Others. Invisibility has been reinforced by academic treatment. Most historians have assumed that a framework of assimilation is appropriate and this outcome is uncritically accepted as desirable. Sociologists on the other hand have excluded the Irish from consideration, providing tacit support for the ‘myth of homogeneity’ of white people in Britain against the supposedly new phenomenon of threatening (Black) ‘immigrants’.Focus on the paradigm of ‘colour’ has limited the range of racist ideologies examined and led to denial of anti-Irish racism. But an analysis of nineteenth-century attitudes shows that the ‘Irish Catholic’ was a significant Other in the construction of the British nationalist myth. Despite contemporary forgetting, hostility towards the Irish continues, over and above immediate reactions to recent IRA campaigns. Verbal abuse and racial harassment are documented in London and elsewhere, but unacknowledged.The masculine imagery of ‘Paddy’ hides the existence of Irish women in Britain, although they have outnumbered men since the 1920s. In America, by contrast, there is a strong stereotype of ‘Bridget’ and her central contribution to Irish upward mobility is recognized. But invisibility does not protect Irish women in Britain from racism. Indeed, they are often more exposed since their productive and reproductive roles connect more firmly to British society. Moreover, women have played a key role in maintaining Catholic adherence, which continues to resonate closely with Irishness and difference.     

The Troubled Renewal of the Canada-Ontario Agreement Respecting Great Lakes Water Quality

Powerful constituent governments can have a significant impacton a federal nation's ability to implement international agreements.Negotiating written agreements is one strategy for achievingpolicy coordination in nations with such governments. This articleexamines the Canada-Ontario Agreement (COA) Respecting GreatLakes Water Quality, which helps Canada to meet its obligationsunder its Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement with the UnitedStates. First negotiated in 1971, COA was regularly renegotiatedwithout incident until the most recent round of negotiations,which began in 1991 and continued into 1994. The negotiatingissues that proved so contentious during this round are examined,as is the impact on the negotiations of developments on thebroader Canadian political scene.     

Participation, Performance, and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering: What is at Issue and Why

Using multi-staged methods developed in this research for coding/analysis of interview data, this article portrays women’s reported experiences of participation, performance, and advancement in academic science and engineering in a major technological institution. The methods and findings have implications for understanding the complexity underlying women’s participation and performance, and for practices and policies to support advancement of women faculty, particularly those in research universities.     

BOOK REVIEW

Books reviewed in this article:
John Eekelaar, Mavis Maclean, and Sarah Beinart, Family Lawyers: The Divorce Work of Solicitors .     

“Time is money,efficiency is life”: The transformation of labor relations in China

The past twenty-five years of economic reform have seen the transformation of labor relations in China, with the widespread adoption of capitalist labor practices by firms of all ownership types. This transformation has occurred in the absence of both large-scale privatization and political change, but was part of a gradual yet dynamic liberalization and “opening up” to foreign trade and investment that occurred across both regions and across types of firms. The first half of this paper details this process of dynamic liberalization that has spawned competition and change in labor practices, including marked increases in managerial autonomy and labor flexibility. This explanation goes beyond the regional emphasis to also examine changes across types of ownership; the gradual liberalization of labor policies and convergence with capitalist practices can only be understood as part of a more general trend ofownership expansion, through the introduction of new types of firms, andownership recombination, which is the fusing of the public and non-state sectors through novel forms of organization. The much-needed panacea to this shift to capitalism—a state regulatory and legal regime that is capable of mitigating its excesses and effective organizations to represent labor—is not yet well established. The second half of this paper explores two institutions, the labor contract system and the official trade union organization, to show how labor relations have shifted dramatically toward flexibility, insecurity, and managerial control. The author would like to thank those who offered comments and criticisms, including Mark Frazier, Jaeyoun Won, Bill Hurst, Jacob Eyferth, Elizabeth Remick, Mark Selden, Ruth Collier, and two anonymous reviewers.     

Australian Full Federal Court clarifies best method disclosure obligation in Pfizer v Eli Lilly appeal

The Australian Full Federal Court has found that (i) a patentapplicant may amend the patent specification, until at leastthe date of grant, to include the best method known to the applicantat the date of filing and that (ii) there is no requirementthat new best methods discovered after the date of filing ofa complete patent specification be added by amendment.