Working Girls: Femininity and Entrapment in Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls

Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls (1966) and Grace Metalious's Peyton Place (1956) are novels that have long exerted a powerful hold on the popular imagination. The bestselling Peyton Place was adapted into a successful film in 1957 before becoming an iconic television series, running from 1964 to 1969. Valley of the Dolls was similarly re-imagined in two films, Valley of the Dolls (1967) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), which, even today, retain a cult following. These books are typically remembered for their scandalous bringing to light of such ‘taboo’ issues as adultery, abortion, female sexuality and sexual abuse. But this article suggests that Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls are equally preoccupied with a sympathetic examination of the role of women in the post-war workplace. In both of these novels, the process of female self-fashioning is integrally related to a woman's entry into the workforce, and to the making and controlling of her own money. But this entry into the male-dominated workforce is inherently fraught with danger, and Metalious and Susann expose some of the myriad ways in which the so-called ‘American Dream’ is contingent on the entrapment, suppression and regulation of various forms of female desire and agency.     

Opening up the black box: looking for a more capacious version of capacity in global health partnerships

Abstract

Some versions of capacity building construe the goal of North?South partnerships as rendering African laboratories, doctors, scientists, and universities indistinguishable from their counterparts in wealthier nations. The specificities, histories, peculiarities, or inner workings of African institutions and individuals are black-boxed ? no one needs to know about them. This article draws on research at Malawi’s College of Medicine and the work of other social scientists and historians to sketch out a more capacious model of capacity, one in which capacity building is grounded in specificity, attends to material difference, is flexible and innovative, and involves as much learning as teaching. This model of capacity building requires consideration of areas in which the Northern partners in “global health” can be brought to the level of their colleagues in Africa.     

Searching for Autonomy before the Transition to Higher Education: How do Identity and Self-Determined Academic Motivation Co-Evolve?

Identity and academic motivation are particularly at stake before the major transition to higher education. However, few studies have explored their changes and their longitudinal bidirectional links. To fill this gap, a three-wave study from the end of the 11th grade to the end of the 12th grade was conducted to explore changes in identity processes and academic motivation and to investigate how they might be interconnected over time. 599 adolescents (mean age 17.4; 59% girls) completed questionnaires containing measures about identity processes and three types of academic motivation: autonomous, controlled, and impersonal. Throughout the study span of one year, four identity processes increased: commitment making, identification with commitment, exploration in breadth and exploration in depth, while the process of ruminative exploration decreased. Simultaneously, late adolescents encountered an increase in impersonal motivation, more salient for boys. The results also revealed unidirectional links from motivation to identity processes, with no gender or age moderator effects: exploration in breadth and exploration in depth were positively predicted by autonomous motivation, ruminative exploration was positively predicted by autonomous, controlled, and impersonal motivation. In addition, impersonal motivation negatively predicted commitment making. On the other hand, identification with commitment positively predicted autonomous motivation. Practical implications are discussed.

     

The Longitudinal Role of Self-Concept Clarity and Best Friend Delinquency in Adolescent Delinquent Behavior

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescence tends to be characterized by a temporary peak in delinquent behavior, and friends in particular play a key role in the initiation and the development...     

Why National Competition Policy?

Strategies to enhance Australia's international competitiveness need to embrace reform of key infrastructure service industries, reform of the regulatory environment, industrial relations reform and taxation reform. Key aspects of this reform agenda can only be addressed through a shared commitment by all levels of government. Ownership of the public utilities responsible for the nation's key infrastructure networks and services is divided among commonwealth, state and territory (and local) governments. Achieving a substantial lift in the productivity of these industries and ensuring the emergence of truly national infrastructure networks relies on agreement by all governments to public utility reform and the removal of barriers to cross-border competition. Moreover, the regulation of industries, occupations and businesses is primarily the responsibility of state and territory governments, hence regulatory reform also requires a cooperative approach by all governments.
While most jurisdictions have taken some steps to reform public utilities and to deregulate certain product markets, to date reform has been piecemeal. A more systematic approach to removal of impediments to competition across the board is likely to be necessary to lift the overall competitiveness of the Australian economy. The agreement by the commonwealth and all states and territories to implement the National Competition Policy (NCP) not only provides the necessary shared commitment to reform across the board, it also provides the rewards and sanctions needed to sustain that commitment in the face of certain resistance from vested interests.     

Evidence-based prevention strategies of suicide behavior in the world: implications for Slovenia

In this review we consider how Slovenia could consider tackling its high rate of suicide (overall 29 per 100,000, 46 in males, 13 in females). First, we consider the evidence for risk factors that may contribute to Slovenia's high rate of suicide. Second, we describe the interventions to try to reduce the impact of these factors and the evidence for such interventions. We categorize interventions in terms of their operation at either the population level or that of high-risk groups. However, it should be borne in mind that settings often assumed to provide access to population groups, such as general practice and schools, do not reach some people who are likely to be at high risk; for example those who have dropped out of school or who have been excluded from a GP's list. We focus particularly on those for high-risk groups, as a number of East-European countries with high suicide rates such as Slovenia, Hungary, and the Baltic republics are currently considering a shift toward more community-based mental health services. The provision of community mental health services in Slovenia would provide an opportunity to study their impact on the suicide rate. However, we conclude that their development should be accompanied by other initiatives operating at population levels. This multilevel approach acknowledges the complexity of the etiology of suicide, the impossibility of reaching all those at risk through services and the lack of strong evidence for any one intervention.