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Despite decades of research and education, sexual and gender-based violence remain distressingly prevalent on university and college campuses globally. The taboos associated with sex, gender inequity, and living in a patriarchal world where misogyny is glorified and criminalised are key socio-cultural determinants driving these forms of violence. Less is known about the ways in which sexual slang or terminology impact how students experience and talk about these events. This paper reports on findings from a participatory action study that explored sexual slang use among female and male undergraduate students (n = 23) with the aim of creating more responsive sexual and gender-based violence policies and practices. The terms identified (n = 59) provide a window into the daily lives of these young people, who display remarkable socio-linguistic adaptation and creativity. They also demonstrate how cultural appropriation, the exclusion of queer students, toxic masculinitycontribute to ongoing incidents of sexual and gender-based violence on campus. These findings contribute new insights into sexual terminology among post-secondary students, particularly in the Canadian context where few studies of this nature exist. They also acknowledge the critical role universities can play in making meaningful structural change to prevent traumatic events from occurring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with dementia have typically been treated as homogenous groups with little recognition of unique aspects of identities, including age and gender. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the experiences of women living with young onset dementia which led them to take up advocacy roles as a result of their experiences. Five women from Canada who were diagnosed with young onset dementia and had then taken on advocacy roles were interviewed. Two main themes emerged–Moving In (the challenges of a diagnosis) and Moving On (into a new life). They described the challenges of a diagnosis as stopping work, being taken seriously, fighting for support, failing to meet requirements for programs and services, and changing relationships with friends. The challenges led them to move into a new life, accepting their diagnosis, and moving into new roles of advocacy and supporting others with dementia in their journey. Further research should seek to explore diversity, rather than treating people with dementia as the same. The experience of dementia is different for everyone. From getting a diagnosis to living a life with dementia, these experiences are unique. Based on interviews with five women living with dementia diagnosed before age 65, it was found that the challenges of getting a diagnosis led the women to become advocates for supporting others with dementia in their journey. The challenges of a diagnosis included stopping work, being taken seriously, fighting for support, not meeting requirements for programs and services, and changing relationships with friends. As a result of their experiences, the women moved on into a new life, accepting their diagnoses, and taking on advocacy roles to create change for others living with dementia. The advocacy roles undertaken by these women demonstrate the need to recognize the unique aspects of people with dementia, in particular women with young onset dementia, without making assumptions that the experience of dementia is the same for everyone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been little exploration of the social and emotional wellbeing of young Indigenous populations who identify as gender and sexuality diverse. Given the vulnerability of this cohort in settler colonial societies such as Australia, Canada and the USA, wider investigation is called for in order to respond to their needs and aspirations. Using a scoping review, this paper maps existing research on the intersections of youth, gender and sexuality diversity, Indigeneity and wellbeing. The evidence points to the importance of historical and contemporary experiences tied to colonisation and intergenerational trauma. For young Indigenous gender and sexuality diverse peoples, heteronormative colonial value systems converge to produce environments characterised by racism, phobia and marginalisation. The evidence base includes deficit models based on trauma and negative outcomes. However, there is also an emerging body of research highlighting the resistance and resilience of Indigenous gender and sexuality diverse youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender norms, roles and relations differentially affect women, men, and non-binary individuals' vulnerability to disease. Outbreak response measures also have immediate and long-term gendered effects. However, gender-based analysis of outbreaks and responses is limited by lack of data and little integration of feminist analysis within global health scholarship. Recognising these barriers, this paper applies a gender matrix methodology, grounded in feminist political economy approaches, to evaluate the gendered effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and response in four case studies: China, Hong Kong, Canada, and the UK. Through a rapid scoping of documentation of the gendered effects of the outbreak, it applies the matrix framework to analyse findings, identifying common themes across the case studies: financial discrimination, crisis in care, and unequal risks and secondary effects. Results point to transnational structural conditions which put women on the front lines of the pandemic at work and at home while denying them health, economic and personal security – effects that are exacerbated where racism and other forms of discrimination intersect with gender inequities. Given that women and people living at the intersections of multiple inequities are made additionally vulnerable by pandemic responses, intersectional feminist responses should be prioritised at the beginning of any crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the knowledge of an Indigenous Worldview as a meta collective of the values, beliefs, protocols of Indigenous cultures worldwide. The worldview is applied to the Canadian context which includes 600+ Indigenous cultures and languages. A description of the key concepts of Oneness, a spiritual foundation and relationship are coupled with concepts about family, education, life cycles, gender, and language. Application of these concepts are described, including the application to current research. It is essential that professionals and academics working with Indigenous Peoples understand that Western/European worldviews do not apply. Indigenous scholars and leaders in Canada have used the concept of the Indigenous worldview to lead the reclamation of original Indigenous Nations and languages. The term provides an information base from which differentiation of Indigenous values and protocols and beliefs can be made from Western/European forms. In order to achieve reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and Western nations, knowledge of the Indigenous worldview is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a study of women (n = 10) in game design and game development programs in Ontario, Canada. The study, described herein, is an investigation of the lived experiences of women in these programs, their own experiences with gaming culture, and the kinds of female video game characters they design. Here, we are interested in whether women in post-secondary game programs are producing more nuanced playable female game characters than those typically seen in commercial video games. Preliminary results of this study indicate that women are producing generally more nuanced depictions of women in their character designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary fashion industry is based on a set of 'gendered skills and attributes.' Women numerically dominate fashion schools and the labour force of fashion firms, and also start and run the majority of independent fashion brands. Angela McRobbie and others have highlighted the importance of considering the gendered dynamics of fashion-related work. Yet, as the industry continues to evolve in the wake of global integration, the digital transition and intensifying competition, there is an ongoing need for research. Using an intersectional approach, this paper provides a novel case study of young 'Millennial' female independent fashion designers who operate within the emerging and under-explored Canadian fashion industry. Drawing on 87 interviews and participant observation, the paper demonstrates how entrepreneurial motivations, pathways, practices and experiences are shaped by individual characteristics, such as gender, age, lifecycle and class. Particular attention is paid to the challenges and tensions associated with the D.I.Y. (do it yourself) model and how forms of work, including aesthetic labour, are performed and experienced in virtual spaces such as social media platforms. In so doing, the paper contributes to nascent research on Millennials and nuances our understanding of the gendered nature of creative labour. Crucially, the paper also moves beyond typical masculinist conceptualisations of entrepreneurship, which focus on high-growth and high-technology businesses, to highlight the legitimacy, prevalence and importance of alternative motivations, networks, identities and business practices within contemporary markets and creative industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we employ a comparative life course approach for Canada and Germany to unravel the relationships among general and vocational educational attainment and different life course activities, with a focus on labour market and income inequality by gender. Life course theory and related concepts of 'time,' 'normative patterns,' 'order and disorder,' and 'discontinuities' are used to inform the analyses. Data from the Paths on Life's Way (Paths) project in British Columbia, Canada and the German Pathways from Late Childhood to Adulthood (LifE) which span 28 and 33 years, respectively, are employed to examine life trajectories from leaving school to around age 45. Sequence analysis and cluster analyses portray both within and between country differences – and in particular gender differences – in educational attainment, employment, and other activities across the life course which has an impact on ultimate labour market participation and income levels. 'Normative' life courses that follow a traditional order correspond with higher levels of full-time work and higher incomes; in Germany more so than Canada, these clusters are male dominated. Clusters characterised by 'disordered' and 'discontinuous' life courses in both countries are female dominated and associated with lower income levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A surgical readiness assessment is a major step in the medical journey of trans people seeking gender-affirming surgery. Much of the peer-reviewed literature surrounding surgical readiness assessments emphasizes the perspectives of academics and clinicians, leaving the voices of trans and gender diverse patients largely unheard. Aims: This paper foregrounds patient experiences with surgery readiness assessments to discuss the tensions, challenges and opportunities they generate. Methods: We conducted a thematic analysis of 35 in-depth interviews with trans people who accessed or were seeking to access gender-affirming surgery in British Columbia. Results: We developed three main themes to capture participants' narratives of their surgical assessment experiences. The first, assessments as gatekeeping, explores the stories of people who described their assessments as outdated and even discriminatory processes. The second, assessments as a barrier to care, discusses the informational missteps, bureaucratic regulations, economic issues, and geographic concerns that made assessments difficult to access. The third, assessments as useful, includes positive stories about assessments that often involved feeling supported by an assessor and feeling prepared for the next steps. Discussion: These narratives demonstrate how much variation exists among people's experiences of readiness assessments for gender-affirming surgery. No matter how their actual assessment turned out, many participants approached their appointments with a great deal of anxiety and trepidation. We attributed this stress was to challenges ranging from lengthy wait times, arbitrary medical gatekeeping, a lack of access to knowledgeable and supportive providers, unclear or changing administrative processes, and insufficient communication. To address these challenges, it is crucial for the medical system to create more accessible pathways with centralized, up-to-date information for people trying to access assessments. Patients are best served by multi-disciplinary gender-affirming teams that provide individualized care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The higher religiosity of women in the Western Christian societies is one of the best documented findings in the religious scholarship. In spite of the recent vibrancy of secular movements in North America, the higher religiosity of women appears persistent. As a result, the gender ratio is greatly skewed in the secular groups in favour of males. For instance, for every atheist female in North America, there are at least three males. Using the Canadian General Social Surveys of 1985–2014, this paper examines how the gender religiosity gap has evolved among the Canadian-born. Throughout the period, Canadian-born women are found less likely to be unaffiliated and show a greater frequency of religious attendance. The religious attendance gap is found to be closing. The unaffiliation gap, on the other hand, seems to have widened in the 21st century. Limiting the analyses to the gainfully employed respondents only reduces the religious attendance gap. For the high earners, the attendance gap effectively disappears, while a large unaffiliation gap persists into the 2010s. This pattern is best explained by the recent literature asserting that men and women are differentially socially sanctioned for the adoption of a secularized identity. The alleged sexism of the new secular movements is also noted as a potential explanation. The examination of the recent Canadian data on perceived religious and gender discrimination produces evidence congruent with both of these potential explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how contemporary accounts of Filipino settlement in the Yukon articulate with the imaginative project of a 'frontier Yukon.' Since 2007, Whitehorse, Yukon has been as a prominent site of settlement for Filipino newcomers to Canada. This has been supported by the implementation of a new immigration policy–the Yukon Nominee Program (YNP)—inaugurated to address shortages in the territory's service sector labour market. What happens, we ask, to frontier narratives when they are put into conversation with bodies, peoples, places, and collective experiences that they were never meant to narrate? We discuss how hegemonic notions of race, gender, and frontier masculinity are reworked and unsettled in emerging narratives of Filipino settlement. In working through multiple and contested notions of the frontier, we play on varying meanings of the verb "to settle." Frontier mythologies seek to settle the disruptive potential of Filipino workers and families as they newly inhabit borderline spaces. At the same time, the hard work of "settling" into a foreign environment is set both within and against the hegemonic facade of frontier mythology. We find that while the examined discourses of arrival in the Yukon reinforce hegemonic accounts of the Yukon's settlement, and obscure histories of settler colonialism through their celebration of multiculturalism and diversity, they also contain moments of ambiguity that "unmap" hegemonic frontier narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Canadian federal and cross-provincial higher education policy from 1960 to 1990, a critical time when provisions for vocational and adult training came under the auspices of governmental concern, justified under both an economic rationale and as a way to address persistent forms of inequality. The problematisation of skill during this period had particular gendered implications, as addressing inequality through education subsidies intersected with the perceived training needs of employers and the market. Employing Nancy Fraser's theory of a ‘triple movement’, the following paper ‘takes stock’ of how the three political forces of social movements, marketisation, and social protection have shaped gendered discourses of education and training, the implications for which are of continued relevance to those trying to understand the education and training within the contemporary neo-liberal state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper critically examines the professional learning needs called for by educators working to support transgender, non-binary, and gender-creative (trans) youth and makes recommendations for practice. Interviews were conducted with 26 educators (preschool to secondary) who have worked directly with trans students (any child whose behaviour does not match stereotypes for their sex category assigned at birth, or who identifies with a gender different from their sex category assigned at birth). We examine two new concepts related to professional learning and educator preparation that emerged from theorising the data and related literature: pedagogies of exposure and culture of conversation. The limits and possibilities offered by these approaches are critically examined through the research base on teacher learning. Recommendations are made for teacher preparation, professional development and related practices to better create and sustain learning environments that affirm gender diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early-twenty-first century, extended cycle oral contraception (ECOC) became available by physician prescription in North America. Researchers speculate that this drug, with its capacity to reduce or eliminate menstrual bleeding, may shift not only women's biological processes but also their experiences of menstruation. In this paper, I discuss women's experiences of menstrual suppression drawing on findings from a qualitative study conducted before ECOC was available, and examine these findings against recently published research on menstrual suppression in an ECOC era. Findings suggest that the body as a natural entity figures strongly in women's discourses on suppression. They further suggest that suppression is a contingent, paradoxical and practical achievement, not a securely or fully realised embodied state. This paper reads women's accounts of menstrual suppression prior to ECOC as a challenge to the modern artifice of a mind/body split, and questions whether this challenge is perhaps made less discernible in an ECOC era, where attention may no longer be paid to the daily practices of menstrual suppression. Hence, a case is made for the varied political effects of ongoing non-menstruation versus event-specific practices of non-menstruation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is located at the heart of the growing body of research on international student migration. Using a gendered perspective, it explores the power relations between the students and their families that shape the processes and experiences of migration. The spotlight is on Indian students who move to Canada, specifically Toronto, for higher education. These students are part of a growing yet highly diversified stream of migrants who make up the Indian diaspora in Canada. Using survey data collected by the author, the paper first presents the social characteristics of Indian international students. The discussion then moves to present the narrative of one male respondent in Canada to illustrate how gendered power relations within the Indian patrifocal family shape the participation of sons and daughters in international student migrant flows. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we use narrative analysis to consider how the discursive resources that come with living ‘in between’ countries and cultures unfold in personal stories. We do this by presenting a close analysis of two transcripts drawn from a study about the vulnerability to HIV faced by Chinese immigrants to Canada. Our goal is to illustrate the application of narrative analysis and highlight the contributions it can make to conceptualising how transnationalism becomes consequential in accounts of intimate life. In narrative terms, transnationalism lends each life situation dual or multiple interpretive frameworks. Migrants from China to Canada situate their personal stories in relation to social and cultural norms and features of both nations. Yet, as our analysis makes apparent, ‘Canada’ and ‘China’ do not carry singular or consistent meanings in migrants’ stories. Attention to the role of stories in self-making allows us to better understand why transnational contexts appear as they do in narrative accounts, and responds to calls for more accurate mappings of the interface between transnationalism and the subject. Attention to how stories are ‘put together’ shows that transnational discursive resources are assembled in ways that bolster, and also undermine, entitlements to safe and equitable intimate relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A widespread rule of sex work is that payment occurs before service provision. Drawing on a subset of data collected as part of an ethnographic study conducted in metro Vancouver, Canada, this paper explores the temporal and gendered connections between payment and financial violence in a semi-criminalised indoor sex industry. A detailed examination of the timing of payment with 51 independent indoor sex workers reveals the gendered nature of the violence and its direct connection to anti-violence strategies indoor sex workers employ. We found that women (including transgender women) (n= 26) and men (n= 25) use payment schedules to minimise potential violence, but in divergent ways. Sex workers adhere to, negotiate and reject the golden rule of payment in advance based on different experiences of gendered violence. Through a gendered relational analysis, we show the contextual relationship between men and women as they negotiate payment schedules in their sex work interactions. These findings offer insight into the significance that the timing of payment has in sex workers’ anti-violence practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the discursive construction of ‘active citizenship’ within recent civics curriculum documents across three provinces in Canada. New secondary school civics curricula have emerged across liberal democratic states since the year 2000, presumably in response to the perception of youth as disengaged from political involvement. Many of the new curricula subsequently emphasize ‘active’ engagement within the polity. The central task of this paper is to better understand what such ‘active citizenship’ actually means, via the methodological tool of discourse analysis. Engaging a theoretical frame that incorporates Foucauldian governmentality theory and cultural theories of the role of the state in creating subjectivities, the paper ultimately argues that the ‘active citizen’ of contemporary civics curricula is, in fact, a deeply neoliberal subject. The article then draws on feminist theories of citizenship in order to assess the forms of exclusion that the curriculum documents inadvertently create, arguing that they ultimately participate in a long tradition of devaluing such elements of citizenship as relationality and emotional ties. We conclude that one of the fundamental goals of citizenship education – to expand access to citizenship participation for all – has failed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on findings from a research project funded by the Scottish Executive which analysed the gender balance in teaching and explored the underlying reasons for the decline in the number and proportion of men, particularly in secondary schools. As in other developed countries, such as Australia, the USA and Canada, the proportion of men entering teaching has declined fairly rapidly over a ten-year period. At a time when women are participating in paid work in greater numbers than ever before, their concentration in certain areas of work, particularly in the service sector and the 'caring' professions, is increasingly apparent. Despite the clarity of this trend, it is evident that responses from academics and policy-makers have been very different, with some policy-makers linking the declining proportion of men in teaching with the problem of boys' underachievement and a perceived 'crisis in masculinity', whilst some feminist writers have questioned these views, drawing on recent gender theory which questions the utility of the binary categories of 'man' and 'woman', instead suggesting that gender is performed and may have little to do with the body of the person who is involved in the particular performance. Sex and gender thus become decoupled, with the focus on individual actors freely choosing the version of gender they wish to practice. This line of argument suggests that the sex of the teacher is irrelevant; what really matters is the way in which they perform gender in the classroom. Work on the gender balance in teaching therefore provides an opportunity to reflect on underlying tensions in gender theorising and policy-making. The paper begins by considering tensions between modernist and post-structuralist accounts of sex and gender. Having outlined the underlying theoretical tensions, it then goes on to consider the accounts given by teachers and students of the reasons for their own choice of teaching as a career, their experiences in teaching and their views of the reasons underlying the declining proportion of men in teaching. The aim is to consider whether students and teachers believe that sex is an important variable structuring their lives, including their decision to become a teacher and their experiences of working as a teacher, or whether they regard gender as something which is chosen from a wide repertoire of options and is relatively free from the constraints of embodiment. In relation to research on the gender balance in teaching, the paper concludes by suggesting that there is a need to make use of the idea of gender as performance, whilst at the same time holding on to the foundational concepts of 'woman' and 'man'. This is necessary to monitor and understand the career paths and underlying power relations of women and men in teaching and to transform these over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of kinship and ethnicity in the designation of Canadian citizenship. Using the phenomenon of Lost Canadians - people whose citizenship status is ambiguous due to conflicting laws, unfamiliarity with requirements to maintain citizenship and quixotic enforcement of these requirements - the paper offers evidence for the kinship basis of a contemporary liberal democracy and reveals the degree to which a Canadian ethnic identity is operative in this settler society. But the objective of the analytical exercise is not to rest at the observation that Canadian nationalism is ethnic. Rather, by examining the ways in which the complex rules of Canadian citizenship define or exclude people from citizenship, we see how thoroughly rule-bound the status of national belonging really is. It thus might be observed that Canadian nationalism, indeed, all nationalisms, are civic since they rest on rules for belonging. Once we notice the rule-boundedness of belonging it becomes possible to disentangle these rules - kinship rules - from their connections to nature and biology and thus to appreciate their social character. From this vantage we might begin to think about alternative, and potentially more democratic, forms of belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using feminist, queer and postcolonial theories, this paper analyzes the public commentary and anxious concern about child-welfare in a recent lesbian teacher sex scandal in Vancouver, Canada, involving Jean Robertson. Arguing that the public and professional uproar is not really about child-protectionism so much as it is about the place of white teacher lesbianism in school culture, I ask new questions about how the regulation of teenage sexuality operates to secure heterosexual bifurcations of gender in the school. The idea of the innocent, white 'girl' child is, in this paper, shown to anchor a public and professional worry about the proliferation of queer teenage identifications in the school. Using Judith Butler's formulation of the heterosexual matrix, Lee Edelman's conceptualization of reproductive futurity, Judith Halberstam's investigation of queer time and space, and Mikko Tuhkanen's postcolonial reading of lesbian sexuality in popular film, I underscore societal-based upset about white teacher lesbianism. I argue that the teacher sex scandals in North America are driven by an unspoken societal upset about identifications and desires inhospitable to binary gender positions and heteronormative futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a large literature that addresses the gendered structure of forestry occupations in Europe and the USA, relatively little attention has been paid to these issues in Canada. In this paper, it is argued that policy makers and academics have used outdated statistics about forestry employment to shape policies and programs of government and industry. Use of these data has been to the general disadvantage of women working in the forest industry and in forestry communities. This paper draws mainly on three studies, spanning the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. Each study relied on secondary sources such as Census data, government and industry documents, as well as primary sources such as interviews or questionnaires. On Vancouver Island, British Columbia, analysis of land reallocation policies and transition strategies for displaced workers in the 1990s did not consider women as forestry workers or consider how job losses and opportunities for retraining might vary between men and women. Consequently, gender-neutral transition strategies were more accessible for men than for women. A study of female forestry workers in Saskatchewan revealed there was very little knowledge about employment conditions for women in forestry. Women reported that they missed out on training and advancement opportunities because they lacked networks, childcare support or other benefits that might encourage them to improve their circumstances. Finally, a survey of forest sector advisory committees across the country revealed a very low rate of participation by women, even though those who did participate had some significantly different viewpoints about forestry than their male counterparts. In combination, these efforts suggest that improvements in the understanding of forestry employment would benefit forestry workers, both male and female, and ensure that all workers made lasting contributions to the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the literature on economic restructuring tends to understand neoliberalism as a uniform governance ideology or economic-political reality, we suggest that it is more useful to understand neoliberalism as a loosely knit assemblage of programmatic efforts that consist of various political rationalities and practices of rule that aim to manage social conduct. The paper focuses on the various ways that these efforts are connected to complex state rescaling processes in Canada. Specifically, the first part of the paper examines the restructuring of nation-state responsibilities in social service and security provisions. It illustrates the shift toward a new citizenship regime that renders women as active agents who are responsible for solving problems in an individualized manner. The second part of the paper exemplifies how neoliberal programmatic efforts create new spaces of governance, particularly those of flexibility through non-standard work. The massive rescaling of the public sector, the decreasing demand for women's 'traditional' occupations, and the increasing prevalence of women in non-standard work arrangements constitute women as political-economic subjects in new ways. We analyze these processes using data drawn from in-depth interviews with personnel in the Canadian Federal Public Service. We outline some of the implications these initiatives have had on public service programmes and various public sector groups. Additionally, we provide a selection of individual accounts of public sector restructuring and gendered work by professionals and contract workers employed in the public service, and offer empirical illustrations of the contentions surrounding neoliberal restructuring initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study conducted a series of content analyses of the articles published by International Journal of Science Education , Science Education , and Journal of Research in Science Teaching from 1998 to 2002. A total of 802 research papers were analyzed in terms of the authors' nationality, research types and topics. It was found that researchers in four major English-speaking countries, including the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada, contributed to a majority of the publications, but the researchers from other non-English countries may have, to a certain extent, gradually played a valuable role on the published work. This probably implies that science education research may have progressively become an important field recognized by the international academic community. This study also found that most of the published articles were categorized as empirical studies, while position, theoretical and review papers were rarely presented in the journals. Although the research topic of students' conceptions and conceptual change was the most frequently investigated one in these five years, a declining trend was observed when analyzed by year. Moreover, in 1998-2002, the research topics related to student learning contexts, and social, cultural and gender issues were also received relatively more attention among science educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implications of the expansion of judicial and therapeutic roles in a drug treatment court (DTC) in Canada. Issues that are raised are: how the courtroom is framed as a therapeutic space where public appearances by participants are part of the therapeutic process; how judges have taken on therapeutic practices, effectively compromising their traditional role as neutral arbiter; how certain women resisted therapeutic interventions by judges and felt they received harsher punishments than men; and how treatment counselors in DTCs are given powers of enforcement over their clients. The collision of judicial and therapeutic roles in the DTC results in negative consequences for individuals in the specialized courts. Specifically, DTC participants are expected to engage in a therapeutic relationship with their treatment counselors and the court; however, their right to confidentiality is withheld, and their treatment counselors act as agents for the court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that the health of the nation is often interpreted in and through the health of the nation's youth, the threat of the ‘childhood obesity epidemic’ garners much attention and it is hardly surprising that physical education has been recruited in the ‘war on [childhood] obesity'. This paper explores how students aged 13–15 years, at a secondary school in Toronto, Canada, make sense of, negotiate and embody the health messages embedded within the obesity-informed Health and Physical Education (HPE) curricula. A post-structural analysis of student narratives reveals the ways in which notions of biocitizenry constitute a visibly ‘healthy’, gendered, engaged, normalized body. The ‘good’ HPE student negotiates health discourse in productive and responsive ways, constructing a virtuous subjectivity and alienating the unruly or undisciplined, unhealthy body in HPE. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I critically reflect on “Overstepping the Bounds,” an essay I wrote for the Journal of Bisexuality in 2003 (Volume 3, Number 2, 2003). I conclude that, while much has changed in my own life and the wider world over the last decade, there is still work to be done at the intersection of bisexuality, gender and sociology. I consider, in this regard, the impact of same-sex marriage in Canada, the legal struggle over polygamy, and the rise of transgender, queer and intersex politics. I also ponder the concept of bisexual identity in the (post)modern-day context. While a greater awareness of non-heterosexual relationships has had a positive effect, some queer people are deemed more acceptable than others. Bisexuals continue to occupy marginalized positions and misperceptions about bisexuality thrive. I am disappointed by this lack of progress but wonder if the terminology is outmoded. Perhaps a better indicator would be number of people who embrace “queer” and “questioning,” or rejecting labels altogether. I end by reviewing the texts I investigated in the original essay for information pertaining to bisexuality. I still believe that bisexuality is about choice and, as such, has the power to denaturalize and destabilize categorization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on findings from a three-year, Canadian federally funded research project entitled 'Education, Gender and Gaming' in which we documented the play practices of girls and boys playing console-based games. We show, in particular, how many of the presumptions and assumptions about 'girls playing games' simply do not hold over time, or given a particular context. We therefore attempt to show how our research practices and methodologies help to shape what we have thus far taken as 'evidence' or 'facts' about gender and illustrate how some of those presumptions might not necessarily hold over time or given different contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout history, conservative groups of Low German-speaking Mennonites have collectively migrated to preserve their religious integrity. However, their contemporary migrations to North America are not collective or church-sanctioned, but primarily economically motivated. This paper explores the intertwined processes of gender and religion in transnational social spaces through the destination experiences of Mennonite women in Canada. The paradoxes of the transnational social field-each simultaneous gain and loss-constitute a double-bind wherein choice is elusive. Caught in the contest between physical and cultural survival, women find themselves in the 'nothing' of in-between, as conflicting social fields and systems of capital-secular and sacred-collide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do processes for community engagement in forestry decision making in Canada serve the aims of sustainable forest management? This paper reports on several studies of forest land-use and management planning processes in four provinces and a national survey of forest-sector advisory committees to determine who is selected to participate, what values participants bring to the table, and how participants are expected to behave in committee processes. The analysis suggests that participatory mechanisms are both shaped by and reinforce local norms, values and expectations of forestry communities. Thus, the focus is on understanding the social context within which communities become engaged rather than providing a technical assessment of specific initiatives. In particular, the study examines assumptions related to gender, class and racialized identities that operate in rural communities and shape the participation and influence of participants. These studies all suggest that forestry advisory committees remain elite organizations, dominated by individuals with economic stakes, constrained by priorities set by government and/or industry, and focused on technical issues. Women, Aboriginal people and those of lower socioeconomic status are less likely to participate and less likely to make substantive contributions when they do participate. Differences by gender are significant, but gender is not the only factor that explains the marginalization of some groups within these processes. The results suggest a need to examine how gender intersects with other sets of social relations such as class and racialized identity in order to better understand the social factors that will influence the achievement of sustainable forest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the resurgent regulation of young people's sexuality in Canada and the UK and examines notions of childhood in relation to adulthood, referred to by the term 'generation', as they are portrayed in the political process. In both cases, the political manipulation of the identity of childhood in relation to adulthood that is both gendered and generational is an important enabling factor, although regulation takes place within a specific context for each. Moreover, this politics of generation reaches beyond the specific regulation of young people's sexuality through notions of hegemonic femininity and masculinity and the idealization of the heterosexual family in a far more pervasive regulation of society in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent critiques of contemporary obesity discourses that link 'modern Western lifestyles' to an 'obesity epidemic', the population's weight remains a central concern of current dietary guidelines. Food choices that are considered beneficial to maintaining a certain weight are understood to play a key role in one's health. This concern reflects medico-moral assumptions about the properties of food and what people should eat. However, the impact of obesity discourses on different individuals and social groups is rarely considered, although there is some evidence that people do generate, reflect and resist the norms and standards set for them, including those that relate to food/weight. In this paper, we will examine the perspectives on fatness and food choice amongst Black and White women and men living in Vancouver and Halifax, Canada. With this examination, we will challenge conventional assumptions about the singular 'modern Western lifestyle' that leads to obesity concerns by teasing out some of the social, cultural and political contexts within which people conceptualise issues regarding weight and make their food choices. By examining the experiences of both women and men we will also provide important insights into the gendered ways in which people engage with obesity discourses and the injunction to 'eat healthily' as a form of weight management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the authors draw on the perspectives of black teachers to provide a more nuanced analysis of male teacher shortage. Interviews with two Caribbean teachers in Toronto, Canada, are employed to illuminate the limits of an explanatory framework that foregrounds the singularity of gender as a basis for advocating male teachers as role models. The study concludes that educational policy attempting to address male teacher shortage would benefit from engaging with both analytic frameworks and empirical research that is capable of unravelling the politics of representation and intersectionality as they relate to addressing questions of male teacher shortage in elementary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present global context, the 'problem' of religion in relation to gender has become predominantly about the situation of Muslim women and what this indicates about the state of our civilization. Thus, in such incidents as the death of Aqsa Parvez (age 16) in late 2007 in Toronto, Canada, Muslim women's bodies, as many scholars have argued, become the battlegrounds which clearly demarcate the line between the civilized secular modern nation and premodern religious fundamentalisms. In this paper, I want to extend this critical work by bringing in an analysis of the second or 'homegrown' generation as it is in this context, I will argue that national anxieties about Canada's global status as a tolerant multicultural nation are most pronounced. Drawing on the work of Asad (2003), Mahmood (2006) and Brown (2006), I will outline how conceptions of tolerance and secularism operate through culture to produce a racialized distinction between the civilized, modern citizen and premodern fundamentalist groups in the making of Canada as a white settler multicultural nation. In order to illustrate this concretely, I will carry out a critical content analysis of representations of Aqsa Parvez's death in the media, representations which clearly demonstrate the contemporary operation of secularism and tolerance in relation to multiculturalism and its particular intensity as it pertains to second generation Muslims. In the conclusion, I want to reflect on how we might rethink our understanding of violence against Muslim women in order to destabilize this powerful binaristic framing which continues to secure a white settler hegemony of 'multiculturalism within a bilingual framework' even as it obscures the power relations through which it sustains a racial hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focuses on those working weekends and also having a workweek of 20 hours or less, which we define as having a weekend-based short workweek (WBSW). The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of workers with a WBSW, with emphasis on gender, family status, and work-life balance. To our knowledge, this is the first study examining work schedules having overlapping characteristics of both weekend work and part-time hours. The country of research for this study is Canada. We found that workers with a WBSW are more likely to be female, but less likely to be married or have dependent children. They are also more likely to be younger, less educated, less experienced, and low-waged. Nonetheless, job satisfaction among those with a WBSW is only slightly lower than those without one. Moreover, we found a group of older, married females with high job satisfaction notwithstanding having a WBSW. We presume that some have managed to balance the substantial work, economic, and family obligations that they face, but also wonder whether some have become resigned to their available employment options rather than having found decent work per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important issue facing Canadians today is crime control and prevention. Research done in the late 1980s and early 1990s by three sociologists shows that Canadian federal criminal justice policies and practices adopted by the Mulroney government from 1984 to 1990 were inconsistent with US 'law and order' models in place at that time. However, since the mid-1990s, Canadian federal and provincial governments have mimicked some US authoritarian and gender-blind means of curbing crime. The main objective of this paper is to provide some key examples of criminal justice policy transfer from the USA in Canada. At first glance, Canada may appear to be a 'kinder, gentler nation,' but not to the extent assumed by many, if not most, outside observers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines current citizenship discourses and practices in Canada, focusing on the implications not only of marketization, but also of growing securitization vis-a-vis citizenship, and the gendered ramifications of such developments. The repercussions of marketization and securitization and their interrelations, for women in general, as well as racialized and immigrant women in particular, are outlined and assessed. In this way, we see how women are at the receiving end of highly contradictory processes in that they are both 'invisibilized', in other words, rendered invisible, by the Canadian state, but are also are increasingly 'instrumentalized', in other words, used in strategic ways. Yet, women also challenge these trends and tactics, thereby interrogating these processes that serve to limit the terms and scope of citizenship in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contrasts the profiles of women who choose to pursue vocational training in either public institutions (community colleges) or private institutions (career colleges) in Canada with particular attention given to respondents' life-course positions. The study employs 1998 Adult Education and Training Survey data. Correspondence analysis shows the relation between training choices of women, their individual characteristics and selected situational, dispositional, and institutional factors. The space topography determined by the correspondence between training choices and women profiles indicates that duration of training constitutes the primary institutional feature distinguishing choice. Older women who need to balance both work and family obligations tend to enroll in single courses and are attracted to the modular programming of the private colleges. In contrast, the traditional program-based vocational training offered by community colleges is the preferred option for younger women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift away from family immigration and towards skilled immigration is one of the most important changes over the past decade in Australian immigration policy. Yet the implications of this shift for female applicants have remained largely unexplored. Skilled immigration has slipped by as a genderless story in which the androgynous skilled migrant is the central character and economists do most of the storytelling. This paper discusses the gender equality concerns raised by the policy shift towards skilled immigration. It argues that Australia's skilled immigration scheme disadvantages female applicants through its construction both of economic independence and 'skill.' A comparison with Canada's skilled migration law and regulations, which are audited by gender mainstreaming tools, is considered to ascertain what role, if any, gender-based analysis plays in identifying and rectifying the potential gender inequalities produced by skilled immigration selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an exploratory study of the sexual behaviour of young Africans living in Windsor, Canada. Twenty-five face-to-face interviews were conducted with thirteen men and twelve women aged 18 to 25 years. Data analysis enabled the identification of four main themes: awareness and concerns about STIs/HIV; partner's influence on negotiating sex or discussing sexual matters; effects of migration and availability of healthcare on perceptions of own risk and assumptions about HIV prevalence in Canada; and discomfort talking about sex. Findings highlight the influence of gender power in determining the nature of sexual activities and outcomes, as well as risky sexual behaviours. Future actions to decrease HIV transmission in Canada should address these issues in ways that are culturally sensitive and culturally inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a discussion of how Arab Muslim Canadian women perceive themselves as women, the factors influencing their gender perceptions, and if that may have changed as a result of living in two cultures: Arab Muslim and Canadian. The nine Arab Muslim women interviewed were exposed to life and education in their own societies as adults and then experienced life and education in Canada. These women were interviewed to ascertain their gender perceptions and the factors influencing their views. The findings of the study, through Arab Muslim Canadian women's narratives, show that the faith of these Arab Muslim Canadian women heavily influenced the way they perceive themselves as women and their role in society. This research indicates that Arab Muslim women are negotiating their cultural, religious, and personal identities and that these negotiations operate in complex ways. In addition, for some of the participants, certain aspects of cultural traditions may have influenced the way they perceive themselves as women. For other Arab Muslim women, the experiences and the opportunities that became available through their education in Canada were regarded as significant in their lives and perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a qualitative content analysis, this paper investigates the portrayal of heart disease among men and women in 75 articles of the 20 highest circulating mass print magazines in 1991, 1996 and 2001 available in Canada and published in the United States and Canada. The majority of articles were directed at men. Whether the article focused on men or women, the depiction of heart disease tended to be gendered. For men, heart disease was described as almost inevitable and as a badge of successful manhood. Its experience and treatment were portrayed as mechanical and aggressive, as well as the result of individual lifestyle choices that could be ‘fixed’ by the individual himself. In comparison, women's heart disease was portrayed as something of which to he ashamed, especially since diagnosis conflicts with the role of ‘caregiver.’ Women were described as ignorant, emotional victims. Moreover, women's bodies were portrayed as pathological, especially after menopause. Practical and theoretical implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though geographers have taken seriously the ways in which representations of place, race, sexuality and gender are woven into narratives of nationalism through experiences of conflict, spaces of memorialization and the practice of ‘heritage’, less attention has been paid to the ways nationalism is constituted in and through day-to-day space and spatial practice in times of peace. This paper examines how nationalism is produced in and through the workplace. In particular, I focus on how narratives of nationalism were constituted within the early twentieth-century Canadian financial services sector. Through an analysis of archival materials from six Canadian financial institutions, I compare how narratives of nationalism were employed strategically by women and men in efforts to win employment in this sector after the First World War. I argue that the workplace constitutes and important site for the production and deployment of nationalist feeling, and suggest that nationalism has long been used strategically to reach multiple, sometimes competing, goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the relations between gender and technology in the workplace, focusing on clerical work in the information workplace, especially the finance and insurance sector. Our goal is to excavate a 'hidden history' of how clerical work and the artifacts which sustain it have been understood and deployed under different cultural and economic circumstances. We employ an analysis of technosocial relations developed in Science and Technology Studies in which meanings about 'technology' and 'society' are mutually constitutive, changeable, and in need of maintenance in order to sustain their conceptual coherence. By drawing on examples from the USA and Canada, we argue that at various points over the twentieth century particular office technologies became 'feminized', or associated with characteristics coded as feminine, as a means of shaping spatial practice and social relations in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]