Policies of Gender Equality in Ethiopia: The Transformative Perspective

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the question of why does an African country that had more women queens and empresses throughout its history practically than any other African country have the oldest known women queens in Africa, and purports to be committed to gender equality end up undermining its own objectives. The article shows that the focus on integrationist paradigm, an approach which focuses on the participation of women in the existing development paradigm, undermined the transformative nature of gender policy because it does not conceptualize gender parity as an end by itself, but as an instrument for economic progress. Consequently, progress towards gender parity remains to be little-by-little despite the strong political commitment to gender equality. The article concludes that the transformative nature of gender policy has been endangered by emphasis on macroeconomic outcomes, macro-level conceptualization of gender issues, and the limited role of civil society in influencing policy decisions.     

She's old enough to be a beautiful young boy: Sarah Bernhardt,breeches roles and the poetics of aging

This essay argues that Sarah Bernhardt's choice to play young male roles late in her career served as a radically anti-agist feminist response to the limiting and often demeaning professional and social opportunities afforded aging women. While scholarship has attended to Bernhardt's cross-dress roles through the lens of gender, this essay highlights her “breeches” roles, in particular Hamlet and L’Aiglon as cross-age and cross-gender. By examining “aging” as the contextual mode by which gender functioned, we open up new terrain with which to examine and appreciate Bernhardt's significance in the scope of theatre history, women's history and aging studies. In the title roles of Hamlet and L’Aiglon, Berhnardt assumed youth and male-ness on stage, which both highlighted her offstage socially perceived deficits (aged and female) and challenged the designation of those identities as deficient; performance threw into flux what had been assumed static. And the public responded. Far from honoring the assumed cultural hetero-normative contract that aging women acquiesce public visibility, Bernhardt's breeches roles (re)constructed her body as female (from aging/sexless) and demanded audience members’, male and female, desiring gaze.     

The dreaded body: disgust and the production of “appropriate” femininity

While some literature has explored women’s feelings about social identities like fatness, race, disability, queerness, and aging, little research has examined, from an intersectional perspective, how women construct a dreaded or viscerally disgusting body and how this produces “appropriate” femininity. This paper utilized thematic analysis of qualitative data from a community sample of 20 US women (mean age = 34, SD = 13.35) to illuminate how women imagined a body they dreaded. Responses indicated that defective femininity, having “freak” body parts, fear of excessiveness, loathing a particular person’s body, and language of smelliness and disgust all appeared, weaving together women’s fears about fatness, dark skin, and becoming old or disabled. Implications incorporating visceral disgust to examinations of body image, and the intersectional foundations of women’s dreaded selves, were discussed. Further, imagining “Other” bodies may produce especially vivid narratives around social biases and internalized oppression.     

Public Philanthropic Partnerships: The Changing Nature of Government/Foundation Relationships in the US

Relationships between foundations and the government in the United States have long been difficult with government attitudes ranging from hostile to at best indifferent in the past. American foundations have long claimed innovation as a distinctive function to perform in society in order to preserve their legitimacy. One hundred years after the rise of the large-scale American philanthropic foundation, however, the relationships between foundations and government have come into flux. Between demands from fiscally-strapped local governments and a new openness of state and federal governments to develop collaborative relationships, a variety of public-philanthropic partnerships have emerged that question the traditional roles and distribution of labor between philanthropy and the state. This article traces the historical development of the government/foundation relationship and discusses its changing nature using recession-induced ad hoc partnerships, the emergence of foundation liaison offices, and the Obama Administration’s Social Innovation Fund and Investing in Innovation program as examples.     

政府的创新功能边界：在自主创新与市场之间

在我国经济转型进程中,政府对于创新的功能边界究竟在哪里？随着自主创新战略的确立和实施,政府和企业的功能地位界定问题显得尤为重要。自主创新内在的禀赋特征致使创新的市场失灵和系统失灵,政府对于自主创新的功能边界介于创新和市场之间：发挥对创新的政策引导作用,而非主体作用;政府对于自主创新的宏观调控标志在于,为自主创新完善国家创新体系;政府对于推进自主创新的引导作用表现在,为自主创新优化政策生态环境,营造有利于自主创新的社会文化氛围和完善并实施政府采购制度等。     

对大学英语教师角色和教学理念的思考

大学英语课是跨文化的人文学科,英语教师们应具备丰富的英语国家文化、历史、政治、经济以及社会背景等知识。从英语教师自我发展的角度来看,英语教师应是英语教学的研究者和终身学习者,完成从“经验型”向“反思实践型”,从“教书型”向“专家型”的转变。     

Is All Politics Indeed Local? A Comparative Study of Dual Mandate‐Holders’ Role Attitudes and Behaviours in Parliament

The practice of dual mandate‐holding, i.e. the simultaneous occupation of a political mandate at the (sub)national and the local level, is understudied in the comparative literature. Dual mandate‐holders embody the most direct link between local and central government, yet research has disregarded whether these actors actually feel and act as local ambassadors in parliament. In this article, we study whether councillors in parliament feel responsive for local grievances in terms of their respective role attitudes and behaviour, using the PARTIREP Comparative MP Survey. The estimated regression models demonstrate that dual mandate‐holders indeed perceive themselves as local brokers, even when controlling for various systemic‐, party‐ and individual‐level factors. On the other hand, they struggle to translate their localized attitudes into localized parliamentary behaviour, which could call one of the main arguments in favour of dual mandate‐holding into question.     

发挥基层一线党代表作用是关系执政党建设的根本性任务

发挥基层一线党代表的作用,对保持党的性质、维护党的宗旨具有现实的展示作用,对密切党群关系、巩固执政基础具有积极的推动作用,对发展党内民主、完善党内监督具有重要的促进作用,对强化党的意识、增强党的凝聚力具有明显的激励作用,对破解时代课题、提高党的建设科学化水平具有深刻的启示作用,必须从完善党内法规体系、制度载体、党代表竞争机制、管理机制和作用发挥的研判机制等方面,逐步构建完善有利于基层一线党代表作用发挥的制度机制.     

Stigmatized portrayals of single women: a content analysis of news coverage on single women and single men in China

This study explored the stigmatized portrayals of single womanhood in news media by content analyzing news coverage from Mainland China of single women and single men from 2008 to 2013. Among the three prevalent news frames (conflict, responsibility, and human interest), the results showed that news reports relating to single women commonly employed more human-interest frames and concentrated on single women’s conflicts with other social groups as well as the conflicts between singles and societal expectation of population sustainability. News stories also unduly ascribed the responsibility for being ‘single’ to the women themselves, but such individual attribution was not applied to single men. As an exploratory study, our research shed light on how news framing is gendered to reinforce stereotypes and facilitate mechanisms for control. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in relation to public opinion about single womanhood and the intersectional oppression of single women in Chinese society.     

政府在环境纠纷处理中的角色回归与职能矫正

我国经济高速发展30多年,环境欠账积弊日深,随着公众环境意识的提升,因环境问题而引发的群体性事件不断增多且形势日益严峻,不容忽视。环境群体性事件不断发生或得不到很好解决的根本原因在于地方政府在环境治理中的角色偏差和职能错位。要杜绝因政府角色偏差和职能错位导致的合谋行为,就必须加强监管,矫正政府在环境群体性事件中的角色偏差,进一步将职能从经济职能转移到社会服务上来,以保障环境群体性事件的解决和环境治理的效果。