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.     

Feminism,nationalism, and labour in post-civil war Northern Province of Sri Lanka

This viewpoint highlights the paradox of low labour force participation and high unemployment among women at a time of growing educational levels of women in the former conflict-affected Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It highlights the rise of ethno-feminism and sub-nationalism that undermine what few opportunities open up for women in terms of employment and livelihood opportunities, thereby weakening the peacebuilding efforts of various stakeholders.     

Women,Science and Culture: Science in the Nineteenth-century Periodical

The Victorian periodical press offers unique insights into many diverse areas of nineteenth-century experience, and the complex relations between gender, science and culture in particular, yet it has been consistently marginalized as a primary resource in academic study. The Science in the Nineteenth-century Periodical (SciPer) project at the universities of Sheffield and Leeds is creating a new point of access to a wide range of non-specialist periodicals across the century by means of a fully searchable electronic index. By detailing the entire contents of each journal, and not just those articles that have a clear scientific relevance, it becomes clear that science formed a fundamental and integral part of nineteenth-century culture. The electronic index, moreover, will include hypertext cross-reference links that will allow the user to identify a dialogic pattern of encounters between ostensibly diverse articles, rather than only to browse in a simple chronological mode. By adopting this innovative approach, the SciPer database will reveal the manifold intertextual relations between the fictional works of women writers like Elizabeth Gaskell and the scientific articles that often appeared in the pages of the same magazines, and will show that writers of both sexes and across several different genres actively engaged in vibrant interdisciplinary debates concerning scientific issues in a forum provided by the periodical. Although the SciPer database itself is not specifically focused on issues of gender, the index will include several periodicals aimed explicitly at a female readership and, by providing access to titles still rarely utilized in modern scholarship, it will offer further insights into the important contemporary debates about women and science, as well as the more subtle ways, in which gendered imagery was employed within scientific discourse. This article details some critical findings from Punch , The English Womans Domestic Magazine , Cornhill Magazine and the Review of Reviews .     

No Rosy glasses in Bluesy Ghettos? Job satisfaction of pink and blue collar workers and the comparable worth legislations

ABSTRACT

The majority of studies using contemporary data report that women have a higher job satisfaction than men, and even more so in the occupations with a greater female share. This pattern, paradoxically given the lower pay of female-dominated jobs, is often attributed to women’s voluntary sorting into these occupations. In contrast, historical scholarship emphasizes the societal restrictions which shaped women’s vocational choices and the dissatisfactions with wages which led to the comparable worth movements around the world. During the 1980s, the Canadian comparable worth movement achieved momentum and instigated many legislative changes. By 1989, 6 out of 10 Canadian provinces had laws prescribing ‘equal pay for work of equal value.’ Using nationally representative Canadian data from 1989 to 1991, we examine how these legislations affected job satisfaction in pink and blue collar occupations. We find strong evidence for the higher job satisfaction of pink collar women in jurisdictions with a comparable worth legislation. The findings are discussed within the sociocultural context of the late twentieth century.     

充分发挥工会在创新社会管理中的重要作用

工会要站在巩固党的执政地位、维护国家长治久安、保障人民安居乐业的高度,充分认识参与创新社会管理的重大意义,找准参与创新社会管理和构建和谐社会的切入点和着力点,要在组织动员广大职工,促进科学发展上下功夫;在发展和谐劳动关系,促进社会和谐稳定上下功夫;在改善民生,解决职工最关心最直接最现实的利益问题上下功夫.不断提高工会干部参与创新社会管理的能力和水平,在党和国家工作大局中更好地发挥工会组织作用.     

论工会在推进新生代农民工城市融入中的作用

与老一代农民工相比,新生代农民工城市融入愿望更为强烈。然而,受到城乡二元结构的限制与自身文化、技能的制约,新生代农民工城市融入水平较低。工会作为党联系职工群众的纽带和桥梁,作为职工利益的代表者和维护者,理应发挥组织优势,加快推进新生代农民工城市融入。     

The Africa-China relationship: challenges and opportunities

The dramatic growth in the relationship between Africa and China is one of the great stories of the twenty-first century, part of the profound transformations taking place in the global political economy. It has been greeted with excitement, consternation, and confusion. To its cheerleaders, it represents the enduring partnership between Africa and China, spawned by the historical affinities of struggles against Western imperialism and humanistic aspirations for development. To its critics, it is reminiscent of European colonisation a century earlier, in which Africa serves as a cheap source of raw materials, a lucrative export market for Chinese manufactured goods, and an outlet for its surplus capital. Rather than a development partner, some see China as Africa's biggest development competitor, whose explosive growth and insatiable quest for global markets threatens Africa's industrialisation and competitiveness. This paper examines the factors behind the development of Africa-China relations, especially its economic magnitude, and the challenges and opportunities it offers both regions.     

Challenging the European Union: the rising powers and the USA in the Doha Round

In this article, the challenges posed to the European Union's (EU) role in trade policy and its implications for development policy during the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda, also known as the Doha round, are highlighted. The authors argue that transformed power relations have created a situation characterized by role uncertainty, for the emerging powers but also for the EU. Priorities among multiple possible roles – in the existing trade regime, in relation to the global South and in the ongoing negotiations – become subject to redefinition. For the EU, heavily wedded to a multilateralist and reformist mission because of its own history, this process is particularly difficult. The EU's traditional role conceptions as a leader and a benign partner to developing countries have been challenged and partly replaced by a more realist approach.