Self-rated health and barriers to healthcare in Ukraine: The pivotal role of gender and its intersections

The ongoing health crisis in the Ukraine has persisted for 48 years with a clear division of gender-based outcomes as seen in the decline of male life expectancy and stagnation of female longevity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in self-rated health and system barriers to health care applicable to gender and its intersections because of the differing negative health outcomes for men and women. Intersectionality theory provides an analytic framework for interpreting our results. Utilizing a nationwide sample of the Ukrainian population (N = 1908), we found that low socioeconomic status (SES) women rate their health worse than men generally and any other socioeconomic group. Yet women also face the greatest barriers to health care until older ages when the ailments of men cause them to likewise face the obstacles. In reviewing the barrier to health care scale, one barrier—that of health care services being too expensive—dominated the responses with some 52.5 percent of the sample reporting it. Consequently, the greatest problem in Ukraine with respect to health reform reported by the population is the out-of-pocket costs for care in a system that is officially free. These costs, constituting some 40 percent of all national health expenditures, affect women and the aged the most.     

Correlates of Childhood vs. Adolescence Internalizing Symptomatology from Infancy to Young Adulthood

In light of its associations with child and adolescent health and well-being, there remains a need to better understand the etiological underpinnings and developmental course of internalizing symptomatology in children and adolescents. This study leveraged intensive longitudinal data (N?=?959; 49.6?% females) to test the hypothesis that internalizing symptoms in childhood may be driven more strongly by family experiences whereas internalizing symptoms in adolescence may derive more uniquely from familial loading for affective disorders (i.e., maternal depression). We evaluated the relative contributions of (a) family experiences (b) maternal depression, and (c) peer influences in testing this hypothesis. The results indicated that family predictors were more strongly correlated with childhood (relative to adolescent) internalizing symptoms. In contrast to previous findings, maternal depression also exhibited stronger associations with childhood internalizing symptoms. Although often overlooked in theories concerning potential differential origins of childhood vs. adolescent internalizing symptomatology, peer experiences explained unique variation in both childhood and adolescent internalizing problems.     

Cortisol Stress Response Variability in Early Adolescence: Attachment,Affect and Sex

Attachment, affect, and sex shape responsivity to psychosocial stress. Concurrent social contexts influence cortisol secretion, a stress hormone and biological marker of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activity. Patterns of attachment, emotion status, and sex were hypothesized to relate to bifurcated, that is, accentuated and attenuated, cortisol reactivity. The theoretical framework for this study posits that multiple individual differences mediate a cortisol stress response. The effects of two psychosocial stress interventions, a modified Trier Social Stress Test for Teens and the Frustration Social Stressor for Adolescents were developed and investigated with early adolescents. Both of these protocols induced a significant stress reaction and evoked predicted bifurcation in cortisol responses; an increase or decrease from baseline to reactivity. In Study I, 120 predominantly middle-class, Euro-Canadian early adolescents with a mean age of 13.43 years were studied. The girls’ attenuated cortisol reactivity to the public performance stressor related significantly to their self-reported lower maternal-attachment and higher trait-anger. In Study II, a community sample of 146 predominantly Euro-Canadian middle-class youth, with an average age of 14.5 years participated. Their self-reports of higher trait-anger and trait-anxiety, and lower parental attachment by both sexes related differentially to accentuated and attenuated cortisol reactivity to the frustration stressor. Thus, attachment, affect, sex, and the stressor contextual factors were associated with the adrenal-cortical responses of these adolescents through complex interactions. Further studies of individual differences in physiological responses to stress are called for in order to clarify the identities of concurrent protective and risk factors in the psychosocial stress and physiological stress responses of early adolescents.     

Identifying Spatial Efficiency–Equity Trade-offs in Territorial Development Policies: Evidence from Uganda

Abstract

We contribute to the debate on the spatial allocation of infrastructure investments by examining where these investments generate the highest economic return (‘spatial efficiency’), and identifying trade-offs when infrastructure coverage is made more equitable across regions (‘spatial equity’). We estimate models of firm location choice in Uganda, drawing on insights from the new economic geography literature. The main findings show that manufacturing firms gain from being in areas that offer a diverse mix of economic activities. Public infrastructure investments in other locations are likely to attract fewer private investors, and will pose a spatial efficiency–equity trade-off.     

London as text: Eighteenth‐century women writers and reading the city

Moral convention required that the eighteenth‐century English novelist express disapproval of the opportunities London afforded women for mobility, deception, and independence. Women novelists of the period, however, subverted this code by depicting urbanized heroines who gain forbidden knowledge about male and female sexuality and social roles, and are thus able to manipulate convention rather than merely following it. Examination of five novels of the period — two by men, three by women — demonstrates that male and female novelists, while allegedly working within the same moral framework, generated vastly different moral texts out of the complex semiotic of the London environment. As the novel gained in respectability, women novelists’ use of the London convention became on the surface more conventional, and their heroines’ attitudes toward urban mores more disapproving, but subversive alternative behaviors are still depicted in late eighteenth‐century novels.     

Implementing the 1902 Midwives Act: assessing problems,developing services and creating a new role for a variety of female practitioners

This article examines the preliminary findings of an oral history project on women's working lives in three Irish counties in the period 1936-1960. By employing a feminist analysis of the narratives, the authors endeavour to investigate the extent to which the reality of married women's working lives corresponded with the rhetoric of Irish womanhood generated by political and religious discourses of the day. The analysis reveals that while the women did accept the home-based motherhood role prescribed for them, in many cases financial necessity dictated that they combine this role with that of part-time and in some cases, full-time participation in the labour market.     

Interrogating the Look of the Gaze: Theorizing a Latina Cine-subjectivity

Abstract: This article concerns sexual object choice, transgender subjectivities and emancipatory heterosexuality as imaged in three films: The House of the Spirits (1993), I Like It Like That (1994) and Mi Vida Loca (1994). The author argues, through her examination of the three films, for cinematic ways to refocus and interrogate the look and gender of the gaze, thereby envisioning what the author theorizes as a Latina cinematic subjectivity. The idea of a Latina cinematic subject is presented in order to articulate how at particular moments in the films an autonomous Latina subjectivity is created through narrative and mise-en-scène. It is at these narrative and aesthetic moments that the characters look back at the objectifying gaze, thereby creating a cinematic sexual subjectivity for the characters and a model of agency for the culturally resistant spectator who is doing the looking. The House of the Spirits points to the contradiction of sexual object choice and female desire; I Like It Like That reveals the performative and fluid possibilities of gender, as well as the hybridity of black and Latino cultures; and Mi Vida Loca reflects the struggle for agency in Chicana heterosexual relationships and in their material lives. The author argues that the three portrayals begin important cultural work in the rethinking of sexualities, as they unthink the rigidity of monosexuality, destabilize normative conceptions of gender and reinvigorate agency and egalitarianism in heterosexual relations.     

From clouds of chemical warfare to blue skies of peace: the Tehran Peace Museum,Iran

Despite the limited number of peace museums around the world, there exists an essential role for existing peace museums to promote a culture of peace and peace education. The purpose of this article was to introduce the origins, rationale, scope and work of the Tehran Peace Museum in Iran. The concept of the museum is to facilitate peace education and develop peaceful environments drawn from the personal experiences of war survivors. The museum encompasses exhibitions about the horrors of chemical and nuclear warfare and is balanced with awareness programmes, bridge-building dialogues, connections with other peace museums and a comprehensive peace education programme catering for younger and older members of society. It offers the space and opportunity for a community of learning within the museum and welcomes fresh ideas and initiatives from visitors and volunteers. The Tehran Peace Museum is unique in its body of volunteers, men and women who have been directly affected by chemical weapons. They are involved in the Veterans Voices of Peace Oral History Project and actively voice the need for creating peaceful societies in today’s world.