Does Gender Equality Affect Municipal Transparency: The Case of Spain

The influence of women in organizational transparency is an understudied vein of representative bureaucracy. Literature claims that the increase of women in formal political representation opened the opportunity to bring to public organizations gender diversity, experiences, and values different from those of men. It highlights the beneficial leadership styles and the legitimacy of public bureaucracies. Since gender equality in Spanish local government has increased in recent years, it was the trigger and the aim for this study: to understand the influence of women’s political representation on the level of Spanish municipalities’ transparency. The analysis draws on panel data econometric techniques. The results reinforce the discussion that the representation of women in local political life will increase information transparency and reduce information asymmetry in municipalities.     

Culture on the Rise: How and Why Cultural Membership Promotes Democratic Politics

Selectively using Tocqueville, many social scientists suggest that civic participation increases democracy. We go beyond this neo-Tocquevillian model in three ways. First, to capture broader political and economic transformations, we consider different types of participation; results change if we analyze separate participation arenas. Some are declining, but a dramatic finding is the rise of arts and culture. Second, to assess impacts of participation, we study more dimensions of democratic politics, including distinct norms of citizenship and their associated political repertoires. Third, by analyzing global International Social Survey Programme and World Values Survey data, we identify dramatic subcultural differences: the Tocquevillian model is positive, negative, or zero in different subcultures and contexts that we explicate.     

Regional Implications of China’s Quest for Energy in Latin America

This paper analyses the Chinese quest for energy resources in Latin America, arguing that the strengthening of relations in this sector can only be explained by a conjunction of interests on both sides. Looking at the presence of Chinese national oil companies in the regional energy sector, we show that China’s incursion has allowed the region to shift its traditional energy partners, introducing a factor of change into economic and political relations with geopolitical implications for the regional arena.     

Comparative study of Greulich and Pyle Atlas and Maturos 4.0 program for age estimation in a Portuguese sample

Age estimation of living individuals has become one of the big issues of forensic anthropology. The increase of children and adolescents with no valid proof of their chronological age is a legal concern to many countries, especially in situations of illegal immigration, sub adult delinquency and juvenile work. For this purpose, the use of radiological methods for evaluation of skeletal maturation is particularly useful. In this study we compare the two of the most common methods applied in age estimation by hand/wrist radiographs: the Radiographic Atlas of Skeletal Development of the Hand and Wrist made by Greulich and Pyle (GP), 1959,and the Sempé method developed for computer--Maturos 4.0 (MT) program. These methods were applied to a sample of 230 radiographs of the hand and wrist from Portuguese children and adolescents of known sex age and age, aged between 12 and 20 years, who performed medical examination at the University of Coimbra Hospitals during 2005. The methods achieved different performances, depending on the age group. Between 12 and 15 years the bone age with the MT program is closer to the chronological age, whereas in older ages the GP Atlas method is more trustworthy. At the ages with legal consequences in Portugal (16 and 18 years) the GP Atlas method is most accurate, namely to decide whether an individual is younger or older than 18 years. Around 16 years old, although there are doubts in relation to the accuracy of both methods, GP Atlas seems to perform better.     

Prisoners' expectations of the national forensic DNA database: surveillance and reconfiguration of individual rights

In this paper we aim to discuss how Portuguese prisoners know and what they feel about surveillance mechanisms related to the inclusion and deletion of the DNA profiles of convicted criminals in the national forensic database. Through a set of interviews with individuals currently imprisoned we focus on the ways this group perceives forensic DNA technologies. While the institutional and political discourses maintain that the restricted use and application of DNA profiles within the national forensic database protects individuals' rights, the prisoners claim that police misuse of such technologies potentially makes it difficult to escape from surveillance and acts as a mean of reinforcing the stigma of delinquency. The prisoners also argue that additional intensive and extensive use of surveillance devices might be more protective of their own individual rights and might possibly increase potential for exoneration.     

Data for Y-chromosome haplotypes defined by 17 STRs (AmpFLSTR Yfiler) in two Tunisian Berber communities

The 17 Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (STRs) included in the AmpFLSTR Yfiler PCR Amplification Kit (AB Applied Biosystems) (DYS19, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS385, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS448, DYS456, DYS458, DYS635 and GATA H4) were typed in two Berber communities, a small village (Takrouna) and a town (Sejenane), from North Tunisia. As expected, diversity was higher in the town, even when compared with a pool of three small Berber communities, probably due to the combination of different founder effects and genetic drifts operating in the small villages.     

Speaking ‘unspeakable things’: documenting digital feminist responses to rape culture

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which girls and women are using digital media platforms to challenge the rape culture they experience in their everyday lives; including street harassment, sexual assault, and the policing of the body and clothing in school settings. Focusing on three international cases, including the anti-street harassment site Hollaback!, the hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported, and interviews with teenage Twitter activists, the paper asks: What experiences of harassment, misogyny and rape culture are girls and women responding to? How are girls and women using digital media technologies to document experiences of sexual violence, harassment, and sexism? And, why are girls and women choosing to mobilize digital media technologies in such a way? Employing an approach that includes ethnographic methods such as semi-structured interviews, content analysis, discursive textual analysis, and affect theories, we detail a range of ways that women and girls are using social media platforms to speak about, and thus make visible, experiences of rape culture. We argue that this digital mediation enables new connections previously unavailable to girls and women, allowing them to redraw the boundaries between themselves and others.     

Legal protection of the genetic heritage in Brazil (comments on the new "Biosafety Law" of March 24, 2005)]

The purpose of the current article is to outline and comment the most important aspects of the regulation of Brazil's criminal legislation about the protection of the human genome, which establishes crimes related to genetic manipulation and to the dissemination of transgenics in the environment. It also refers to the problems related to the application of the old legal text (Law 8.974/1995), which punished conducts that stayed without the enough development. These gaps complicated so much the application of those rules that the Brazilian Parliament has recently proposed the complete modification of the present legislation by a new Biosecurity Law (Law 11.105/2005). This law for the first time authorizes research with human embrionyc stem cells in Brazil, trying thus to solve in this way the problem of cryoconserved human embryos produced by in vitro fertilization programmes. The new law is analyzed here from a legal and ethical view point.     

Local political leaders and context awareness: identifying perceptions of autonomy and efficacy

Leadership theories fail to explain how leaders acquire and interpret context. This article claims that political leadership styles articulate a choice of action that results from the leader's discerned possibilities to act. In order to explore these interpreted contextual determinants of leadership styles and the degree to which “possibility” has an influence over them, our research used a multiple case study design, with extensive interviews. Focusing on context awareness as a way of unveiling style determinants, I claim that it will produce different effects on leadership styles as a consequence of the leader's sense of autonomy and of political efficacy.     

Women’s political representation and transparency in local governance

Despite the growing interest on the influence of gender in local government, the relationship between women’s political representation on municipalities, as council member or as female mayors, and transparency is an under-researched topic. This article analyses the political representation of women in Spanish local councils and their influence on the level of transparency. Results show that women’s political representation in municipalities has a positive influence on the level of transparency, increasing information transparency and reducing information asymmetry.