Women employment in colonial Hong Kong

Women's participation in the labour market is on the rise, and employment opportunities available to working women have increased greatly. However, working women in Hong Kong are still disproportionately underrepresented in higher status occupations. Despite general improvement in their educational attainment, women are still unequally paid. Their role in the workplace is still very much constrained and impeded by their familial role. Hong Kong women's continuing subordination in the workplace lies in the domination of the Chinese patriarchal family in industrial Hong Kong. Women experience institutional discrimination insofar as other institutions and the public at large also subscribe to culturally entrenched prejudices and discriminatory practices against women. It appears that women's subordinate status will not change in the foreseeable future.     

Modern Central Banking: Pressures for Change

The role of the central bank as an instrument of government economic supervision has entered a period of flux, owing to the combined forces of financial deregulation, technological advance, monetary innovation and banking globalisation. This paper discusses, with special reference to Australia, pressing areas for potential reform in the role of the central bank including greater independence, international coordination, splitting of core functions, and the creation of a 'super-regulator'.     

Incapacitation and Just Deserts as Motives for Punishment

Law and Human Behavior - What motivates a person's desire to punish actors who commit intentional, counternormative harms? Two possible answers are a just deserts motive or a desire to...     

The effects of pubertal timing on body image,school behavior,and deviance

Variation in the timing of pubertal maturation may result in behavioral differences among early, mid-, and late maturers. Using data from the National Health Examination Survey, a national probability sample of children and youth aged 12–17, we investigated the relationships between maturational timing and body image, school behavior, and deviance. In terms of body image, the early maturing boys were the group most satisfied with height and weight. The early maturing girls were most dissatisfied with weight, with 69% wishing to be thinner. This great dissatisfaction with weight reported by early maturing girls is probably not an affect of early maturation, but a concomitant of maturation in general. The majority of girls became dissatisfied with their weight as they matured, and females from the higher social groups were more likely to want to be thinner than females from lower groups. Thus, a normal developmental process is being viewed negatively by females and positively by males. Male early maturers more often had deviant behavior, but there were no consistent findings for girls. There was no effect of maturational timing on teacher reports of school absence, adjustment, popularity, need for discipline, or grade repetition.This research was supported by the Stanford Center for the Study of Youth Development and by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.Received M.D. from The Medical College of Pennsylvania.Received Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford University.Received Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.Received M.D. from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University.     

The poor in Singapore: Issues and options

This article examines the changing patterns of poverty in Singapore. As Singapore's population ages, the poor increasingly includes the elderly. It appears that ascribed factors, such as gender and race, have significant influence on financial security at old age. As the population ages, the adequacy of existing anti-poverty policy is challenged.     

On Justifying Punishment: The Discrepancy Between Words and Actions

This article reveals a discrepancy between the actual and stated motives for punishment. Two studies conducted with nationally representative samples reveal that people support laws designed on the utilitarian principle of deterrence in the abstract, yet reject the consequences of the same when they are applied. Study 1 (N = 133) found that participants assigned punishment to criminals in a manner consistent with a retributive theory of justice rather than deterrence. The verbal justifications for punishment given by these same respondents, however, failed to correlate with their actual retributive behavior. Study 2 (N = 125) again found that people have favorable attitudes towards utilitarian laws and rate them as “fair” in the abstract, but frequently reject them when they are instantiated in ways that support utilitarian theories. These studies reveal people’s inability to know their own motivations, and show that one consequence of this ignorance is to generate support for laws that they ultimately find unjust.