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Without achieving gender equality for girls in education, the world has no chance of achieving many of the ambitious health, social and development targets it has set for itself. (UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, March 2005) [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

From mid-1999 to mid-2001, the authors carried out a qualitative study in rural Vietnam to explore relationships between gender equity and reproductive health. One of the study's objectives was to develop culturally appropriate indicators of women's empowerment, specific to the Vietnamese context. This paper describes the process of developing, testing, and refining the empowerment indicators, presents some of the findings, and discusses the methodological challenges that need to be addressed. The paper concludes by recommending a set of Vietnamspecific domains for assessing women's empowerment in the socio-economic sphere as well as in reproductive health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the debate about the Scandinavian welfare states from a feminist perspective, focusing on the differences between a feminist perspective and the dominant liberal and critical Marxist understanding of the welfare state, in particular it focuses on the argument that the Scandinavian welfare states are the most advanced in relation to women and discusses both the potentialities and dangers in the Scandinavian welfare states in relation to women. Feminists have pointed out that the concept of gender has been disregarded from a theoretical and methodological point of view in both liberal and Marxist analyses of the welfare state. The fundamental concepts have been either the individual or the class, and the determining forces of the development of the welfare state have been found in the political sphere or in the economy or in the interrelation between the two spheres. The paper points to the need to integrate gender relations in the theoretical model for an analysis of the welfare state and emphasizes the need to explore the relationship between the family and the state (and the family and the economy) in the different welfare states. The paper emphasizes that the qualitative differences in the organization of care work are important for understanding the institutional differences between the welfare states, and especially the Scandinavian welfare states, where motherhood and care work has today become a part of social citizenship. The author argues that even though women have in important ways become empowered in the Scandinavian welfare states as mothers, workers and citizens, they have at the same time become subsumed under a new kind of male domination in the public sphere. A further exploration of this new kind of male domination must transcend the theoretical framework of both Marxism and liberalism and must begin to rethink such central concepts as citizenship, power and interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeologists have traditionally been much more interested in social ranking than in social equality, and have been very ready to deny social equality on the grounds that political authority was centralized. But limiting questions of equality to questions of political authority misses precisely those areas of life where the practical and operative presence or absence of equality makes most difference to the individual and to social relations - areas of life which archaeology is in fact much better equipped to explore than it is equipped to explore political institutions and organizations. The papers in this volume concern themselves not only with equality in political organization and between political organizations but with ways in which day-to-day equality is managed in the communities of the household or among particular social groups united by factors such as gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vietnam has advanced far beyond most other developing countries and, indeed, surpasses many developed countries in adopting a legal framework based on gender equality, and in creating institutions and programmes to support women's advancement. Inegalitarian gender norms have also persisted, however. The Vietnam Women's Union promotes women's educational, political and economic advancement but simultaneously exhorts women to pay attention to their Confucian role of maintaining family hierarchy and harmony. This paper presents findings from qualitative research examining gender relations at the grassroots level in central Vietnam. It argues that the Vietnam Women's Union could support women more effectively by promoting greater diversity in gender norms and by initiating a public discussion to address the pressures women face in trying to achieve ideals that are often experienced as contradictory and unattainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I want to address the connections between the three areas of work: first, the theorisation of identity as relational; second, the significance of difference and diversity in thinking about inequality, labour market restructuring and the social construction of multiple masculinities; and finally, the political implications of taking diversity into account in arguing for a participatory democracy based on ideas about inclusion, respect and responsibility. I want to illustrate these connections in the specific context of a case study about young men in contemporary Britain. In the sections that follow, I focus on each of these areas or concepts in turn, but attempt to demonstrate the connections between the substantive debates in each of the sections. In my conclusion I raise some of the policy implications for building wider social inclusion in democracies by connecting notions of difference and diversity to structural inequalities, or what is sometimes referred to by geographers as 'the cultural' and 'the economic' dimensions of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses some of the relationships between gender relations and finance, particularly at the meso- and macro-levels of financial transactions and trends. I focus on gender-based inequalities in finance, and the gender-based inefficiencies in finance that are created as a result. I argue that these gender biases in finance perpetuate both inequalities between women and men, and poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss some of the health policy implications of an increasing trend in population research and in its interpretation and presentation - a trend to 'political correctness' - defined not in the popular, often derogatory, sense, but as an ideological commitment to certain principles. For one of these commitments, that to the notion of gender equality, greater strength and legitimacy is today commonly sought by tying it to other less controversial goals such as that of better health. But straining for connections between gender equality and positive health outcomes often unduly constrains the research question, the research methods, and the interpretation of the research. When health policy seeks guidance from this research, it can receive signals which are too often incomplete, silent on the many trade-offs of specific policy measures, and, ultimately, perhaps even detrimental to the very goals of gender equity and social justice from which they are derived. Examples of all these possibilities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial dimensions of social interaction and reproduction have received increasing attention from sociologists in recent years. However, these issues remain largely implicit in most studies of classrooms, schools and the education system. In this paper, I argue that the study of social space should be integral to analyses of the relationship between educational differentiation and social reproduction. After examining the position of space in Gidden's theory of structuration, I focus on how space is used in schools as a resource in the production of unequal gender relations. Space is viewed not simply as a context in which interaction occurs, but as a phenomenon which both produces and is produced by, gendered power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some feminists have argued that a woman's class position should be determined by her own employment and work history, whereas Goldthorpe has argued that the family is the basic unit in class analysis, with the husband's occupation determining the class position of all family members, including the wife's Goldthorpe denies that this position as an example of gender bias, claiming that class and gender inequality are separate issues This paper argues that gender and class inequality are strongly interconnected, by virtue of the importance of the work in child-rearing earned out by the wife-mother and its effects on the child's scholastic achievements and life chances It shows that within-family processes are more important than clew position in affecting children`s scholastic achievements It further argues that children `s family environments are affected by the biographies of both parents The institutional separation of the family, schooling and the work-place means that there will be great variability in the biographies of parents who are in the same `class position' by virtue of their occupations The notion of a single indicator of `class position' therefore seems inappropriate, and too static for the complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on gender and education has burgeoned since the mid-1970s Inequality in the classroom has been one theme in such research, including the charge that teachers give preferential treatment to boys. Another has been the identification of school processes and practices which convey particular conceptions of and boundaries between masculinity and femininity Less often studied is the teacher herself of himself. In particular, the question arises of why, after a decade or so of feminist research on sexism and education, teacher appear to make relatively little effort to implement antisexist initiatives. The paper considers four possible explanations for this situation. Antisexist initiatives may be particularly uncongenial or threatening by their nature or mode of introduction. Characteristics of teachers such as age, sex or social class may influence receptivity to reform. Teacher ideologies about gender or education may set limits to what appears acceptable Conditions under which teachers work may not be conducive to enthusiastic innovation. The Challenge for sociologists is to tease out interrelationships and assess the relative weights of these factors, the challenge for feminists is to transcend the gap between principled scholarship and practical strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]