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This article empirically charts how a discursive construction of the separation of race and racial justice organizing, and "intersectionality" serves to uphold white supremacy and efface intersectional marginalization among people of colour. Undertaking the first study of how UK policymakers and practitioners in equality organizations understand and operationalize "intersectionality", it maps "generic intersectionality", which is delivered to benefit "all". Through empirical examples, its detrimental effects for racial and intersectional justice are demonstrated. First, it is used as a rationale for a relinquishment of a focus on race/racism; racial justice organizations are constructed as uniquely incapable of doing intersectionality. Second, "neutral", "unspecific" representatives are constructed as those capable of knowing about and doing intersectionality. Intersectionally marginalized people are constituted as non-credible knowers and doers of intersectionality. Generic intersectionality is a novel use of intersectionality, which gives a new name to liberal sameness and constructs its beneficiaries as a monolithic, white "everyone". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies find that workers who feel insecure in their jobs are likely to suffer negative physical and mental health effects. However, cross-national differences in this relationship are typically overlooked. Drawing on notions of relative deprivation and the social gradient of health, the authors argue that the extent of variation in subjective job insecurity within a country can explain these cross-national differences. The results from multilevel models indicate that the relationship between job insecurity and health varies across countries in Europe, and job insecurity exhibits the strongest negative association with health in countries with a low level of job insecurity inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore gendered patterns in the tasks parents perform when choosing a school for their children. I analyze interviews with 18 fathers and 70 mothers in Chicago and confirm patterns revealed in these interviews with descriptive trends from the 2016 American Time Use Survey. I find that white fathers are unengaged in the school choice process, while women and non-white fathers make extensive efforts involving significant amounts of time and energy. Non-white fathers explain that their involvement is partially motivated by a desire to protect their children from the experience of discrimination. These findings provide an instance where gender inequality in white families is reproduced by both the gender and racial privilege of white fathers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The three British Sports Councils are instrumental in developing the policy landscape for sport and physical education (PE). They aspire to equality between the sexes in ‘sport and physical recreation’ (SPR), in keeping with their Royal Charters [Sport England. (1996/2009). Royal Charter of English Sports Council (Sport England). Retrieved from https://www.sportengland.org/media/10309/consolidated-royal-charter.pdf; Sport Scotland. (1996). The Royal Charter for the Scottish Sports Council. Retrieved from http://www.sportscotland.org.uk/sportscotland/Documents/Resources/sportscotlandRoyalCharter.pdf; Sport Wales. (1997). The Royal Charter of the Sports Council for Wales. Retrieved from http://sport.wales/media/128780/royal%20charter.doc] and the Equality Act [HM Government. (2010). Equality Act 2010. London: TSO. Retrieved from http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/pdfs/ukpga_20100015_en.pdf]. As public bodies they are committed to eliminating direct and indirect discrimination in provision, and advancing equality. One of their main functions is the distribution of public money, and all collect participation data detailing the different SPR choices of the sexes. These are primary planning tools in the three home countries. This paper investigates whether equality in relation to sex is considered a ‘first-order’ question of distributive justice for the Councils. Therefore, the funding awarded to the top SPR preferences by sex for each Country is presented. Defining SPR determines eligibility for funding and the boundaries of the SPR infrastructure which influences and interfaces with sport, school sport and PE. Consequently, critical feminist political and economic theory is used to evaluate the Councils’ framing of SPR and equality in relation to sex. Male preferences are disproportionately grant-aided leaving those of females significantly under-funded. Although the remit of the Councils is ‘sport and physical recreation’ this is usually reframed by them as ‘sport’. Equality is generally considered a second-order question of justice, and outsourced to national governing bodies of sport. Further dance, one of the most popular female SPR activities for girls, has not, until 2016, been designated as SPR in England and has been ineligible for funding. These policies suggest indirect discrimination against women and girls who disproportionately prefer physical recreation and dance to competitive sport. Therefore, the Sports Councils and/or overarching government departments may not be fulfilling their legal requirements under the Equality Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on experiences and lessons from an LGBTQI project implemented by Oxfam and its partners in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and a third country in Asia where LGBTQI work is strongly criminalised. It argues that protecting and promoting the rights of LGBTQI persons, so that they can live a decent life without violence, needs a systemic shift in social norms and attitudes, even in contexts where laws and policies promise equality. Development policymakers and practitioners can usefully channel funding and other forms of support to LGBTQI leaders, groups, and movements who are best placed to lead the social change needed. The article shares a wide range of strategies used by the project and calls for development organisations and funding agencies to work with LGBTQI organisations in solidarity and sustain their vital activism, long term. It focuses in particular on the key strategies of supporting the development of safe spaces, both in ‘real life’ and online. These spaces are extremely important for psychosocial well-being, challenging social norms, fostering collective consciousness, and collective action. The article also focuses on advocacy to place LGBTQI issues in the spotlight, internationally as well as nationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article unravels the nature and causes of inequality and riskiness of poverty in Bangladesh. Using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey of 2010, the authors attempt to unmask the factors responsible for deprivation and discrimination in Bangladesh. The authors have constructed a probit model and run mean test to check which factors are significant in determining poverty status. Contrary to general belief, the authors find that the gender and religion do not play significant role in determining the poverty status of households. However, other factors such as age, rural-urban distribution, education, marital status, disability, remittance, region, and so on have noteworthy impact on poverty condition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Administrative justice systems are under a variety of pressures, in particular austerity-inspired civil justice reform. I argue that such pressures do not necessitate the decline of administrative justice, and that a developing Welsh model has cross-jurisdictional appeal, especially to legal orders currently lacking a relevant organisational centre and joined-up approach. I examine the efficacy of existing conceptions of administrative justice and delineate a developing Welsh approach grounded in egalitarian principles. The nascent Welsh model emphasises reforming administrative justice hierarchies so that they work harmoniously with regulatory and value-promoting parts of the system, focusing on user perspectives and tackling the risks of less transparent forms of bureaucratic decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The exploitation of shale gas resources is a significant issue of environmental justice. Uneven distributions of risks and social impacts to local site communities must be balanced against the economic benefits to gas users and developers; and unequal decision-making powers must be negotiated between local and central governments, communities and fracking site developers. These distributive and procedural elements are addressed in relation to UK policy, planning, regulatory and industry development. I adopt an explicitly normative framework of policy evaluation, addressing a research gap on the ethics of shale gas by operationalising Shrader-Frechette’s Principle of Prima Facie Political Equality. I conclude that UK fracking policy reveals inherent contradictions of environmental justice in relation to the Conservative Government’s localist and planning reform agendas. Early fracking policy protected communities from harm in the wake of seismic risk events, but these were quickly replaced with pro-industry economic stimulation and planning legislation that curtailed community empowerment in fracking decision-making, increased environmental risks to communities, transferred powers from local to central government and created the conditions of distributive injustices in the management of community benefit provisions. I argue that only by “re-localising” the scale of fracking governance can political equality be ensured and the distributive and procedural environmental injustices be ameliorated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gender mainstreaming has been celebrated as a new policy strategy for change in gender relations. However, its transformative potential seems to be lost in the process of implementation. The aim of this article is to evaluate the policy effectiveness of gender mainstreaming and its ability to bring about change in gendered social structures and practices. Previous research has focused on gender mainstreaming as a policy strategy. This article provides a new perspective on the problems of implementation by approaching gender mainstreaming from an organizational perspective. Gender mainstreaming takes place in certain organizational contexts, implemented by local actors. This article reveals the practices of implementation in the Finnish state administration, specifically in the Ministry of Defence. The analysis is based on a discursive reading of thirteen group and individual interviews collected in the Ministry of Defence in 2012. The article pinpoints two interlinking problems concerning implementation of gender mainstreaming on the organizational level. First, the state officials, who should implement gender mainstreaming, do not have enough information to do so successfully. Second, there is resistance toward gender mainstreaming on the organizational level. This article suggests that negotiations about gender, gender equality and gender mainstreaming as complex issues concerned with social power relations should be included in the process of implementing gender mainstreaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the relationship between the Equality Act 2010 and the Charities Act 2011 (in Scotland, the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005) in the context of adoption by same-sex couples and the complex exceptions to the Equality Act that charities may be able to rely upon in order to continue to discriminate. It concludes that the law is confusing to the point of opacity, to the detriment of those seeking to exercise their rights and those called on to adjudicate conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the transformation from rice farming to commercial aquaculture and its implications for gender roles and relations, women’s access to and control over resources, household food security, and livelihood. Primary data collected from 400 sample households located across 10 villages in northern and southern Bangladesh were used for this study. Data were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods, namely, wealth-ranking technique, self-assessment technique, Gini coefficient, Lorenz curve, and descriptive statistics. Commercial aquaculture increased both farm income and income inequality, brought in new sources of employment, changed gender roles and relations, altered women’s access to and control of resources, altered household food consumption patterns, and increased market dependence for staple food. Commercial aquaculture not only decreased the workload of women but also weakened their access to and control over agricultural products. Women became more dependent on the husband’s income and had lesser control over its use. Farm mechanization reduces women farmer’s drudgery and diversification of rice monoculture toward rice-based high-value crops and aquaculture improves the welfare of everyone in society. This implies that poor farmers, including women, should be provided better access to improved technologies and credit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the concept ‘justice’ undergirds every discourse on affirmative action, its meaning is feverishly contested with contradictory definitions wielded as battling swords in a zero sum struggle over the distribution of scarce material resources and symbolic goods. In part, the issues have become even more important since the number of states that have now embarked on affirmative action policies have been growing and the results have been diverse. Affirmative action policies have occurred most frequently in internally heterogeneous societies marked by deep ethno-cultural divisions in which one ethnic community has tended to dominate the rest. To overcome inequalities and ingrained segmental prejudices in these multi-ethnic countries that witnessed over the years the cementing of advantages and privileges among certain ethnic groups has been the primary aim of affirmative action policies. Upheavals and ongoing conflicts have generally dogged these experiences, attesting to some successful societal changes in institutions and practices, to winners and losers. In this paper, we examine some of the controversies, especially in relation to two paradigms and perspectives of social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘Gender mainstreaming’ has been regarded as one of the strongest approaches to deal with the issue of equality policy for women. In order to mainstream women in the political process, a number of NGOs have been carrying out different programs in Bangladesh for building awareness among women so that they could opt for participation in the political process. The paper analyzes the role of NGOs in the process of mainstreaming gender in politics in Bangladesh in general and in the enactment of the Local Government (Union Parishad) (Second Amendment) Act of 1997 in particular. Based on empirical data collected through an open-ended structured questionnaire and available secondary data, the study findings reveal that despite having no formal access to the policy process, NGOs augment participation of women in the political process through informal means as is exemplified by their training programs that enhance women's social and economic status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is now well established that work life balance should not only be regarded as a fundamental employment right, but also as an important element for the achievement of other EU policies and is key to promote women’s activation in the labour market. For this purpose, European institutions (namely the Commission and the European Parliament) set about implanting a set of policies and legislative measures between the late 1990s and 2008. The onset of the sovereign debt crisis in 2008 and the associated austerity measures have posed a serious challenged to realisation of the Lisbon Agenda to establish a comprehensive framework for the reconciliation of work and family life. Crisis has provided an opportunity for ideologically driven cuts aimed at retrenching the Europe social model. The debates at the national and European level seemingly ignored the gendered nature of this policy shift, thus reasserting the centrality of hegemonic gender norms across Europe. This article seeks to assess the extent of the impact of the recession and of the austerity measure that were introduced as a mean to address the challenges of economic crisis on work life balance policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the extent of authoritarian durability and public opinion towards democracy in Southeast Asia drawing on findings from the Asian Barometer. While Freedom House indicators rank many countries in the region as not free or partially free, a high proportion of citizens within the same countries report that they live in a democracy. Conversely, countries ranked as electoral or liberal democracies have high proportions of citizens who report that they do not live in a democracy. These findings reveal quasi-thermostatic concerns that, when satisfied, open the way for the expression of other concerns. Views about democratic experience reveal differing expectations about democracy among the general public. In general, the results suggest that a high proportion of citizens in Southeast Asia have a rather instrumental view of democracy that is underpinned by perceptions of good governance rather than democratic ideals. Still, while economic growth is considered to be very important, when looking at what matters for a functioning democracy, other measures of good governance such as freedom and equality, trust in government, accountability and responsiveness are considered more important. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the policy regarding the development of gender equality at work in the Anglophone Caribbean. Topics mentioned include the development of trade union for women, their lack of visibility within trade union leadership, and the increase of female membership in the Caribbean region.

The article offers the author's insights on the article "Equality policies in sport: carrots, sticks and a retreat from the radical," by J. Lusted, published in the 2014 issue of the "Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events." Topics discussed by the author regarding Lusted's article include the emergence of equality policy in the late 1990s and the equality policies from Great Britain Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) and the National Governing bodies (NGBs).

The article discusses the impact of egalitarianism on the development and reformation of imperial honours systems in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, as well as their subsequent impact on honours policies in Great Britain. Topics include damehoods and knighthoods, national identities, potential conflicts between democracy and hereditary titles, public debates about titles, and the views of officials such as the politicians John Howard, Simon Upton, and Sir James Parr.

This article presents a case study of how Bistandsnemnda (BN)/Digni, an umbrella organisation for Norwegian mission organisations and churches, responded to increased pressure from the Norwegian state to focus on gender equality and women's rights as part of their development aid work. BN initiated a special programme called Women Empowerment and Gender Equality in which the organisation displayed an unusually strong involvement. The level of involvement implied that BN exceeded its given mandate as an umbrella organisation, creating tensions and reactions among the members. We discuss this level of involvement, looking at both external and internal factors. We argue that BN's involvement in this programme should be understood in the light of BN's and the member organisations' considerable economic dependence on the Norwegian state and the symbolic importance of gender equality in the production of Norwegian national identity. These two factors led to strong pressure to comply with state policies on gender and aid. This was reinforced by political ambivalence about faith-based organisations receiving state funding; a scepticism that has been fuelled by some rather conservative gender policies in a number of BN's member organisations. A one-sided focus on external political pressure does not, however, provide sufficient explanation for what happened in this particular case. We argue that BN's strong involvement was simultaneously driven by individuals who were committed to gender equality. The pressure from the Norwegian state gave these actors an opportunity to push for more gender-sensitive policies among the member organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay, the collaborative product of a legal scholar and a literary critic, examines the relationship between Dalit literature and legal assertion in challenging caste discrimination in Britain. The construction of caste discrimination in India as an international human-rights issue from the late 1990s onwards has raised awareness of caste discrimination in Britain and given impetus to long-standing demands for caste discrimination in Britain to be made illegal – a possibility envisaged in the Equality Act 2010. We were interested in finding out whether the intense lobbying for a change in British law by Dalit organisations was matched by a similarly vibrant cultural output by Dalit writers and artists, as exists in India. The article specifically analyses the play The Fifth Cup by Rena Dipti Annobil and Reena Bhatoa Jaisiah and the poetry of Daljit Khankhana as examples of British Dalit writing. These Dalit writers are involved in legal and political campaigning against caste discrimination and their writings engage with the concept of law, but only the play by Annobil and Jaisiah addresses caste discrimination in the UK whereas Khankhana's poetry focuses on violence against Dalits in India. The writings reflect two different political strategies towards caste identity and the struggle against casteism. With regard to caste identity, Khankhana disavows it or represents it as problematic in his poetry, asserting a totally non-caste identity, whereas Jaisiah and Annobil embrace and celebrate Dalit identity in their play as having the potential for resisting casteism. However, despite their different approaches to caste identity and the struggle against casteism, both Khankhana and the playwrights Jaisiah and Annobil support the legal prohibition of caste discrimination in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Emerging from contemporary UK equality policy, the Gender Duty is not ostensibly about health, although men's health groups are keen to use it to bring about improvements in the health of men. Nevertheless, the status of men's health as an inequality is contentious and any links to equality policy should not be left unquestioned. In this article, I try to develop a critical but supportive perspective regarding the potential of equality legislation for improving men's health by describing the Gender Duty and exploring the links between equality and human rights and men's health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most troubling developments in recent years has been widening income inequality in the United States and elsewhere. We argue Post Keynesian Institutionalism (PKI) provides insight into the causes of increasing income inequality and our contribution is threefold. First, we compare PKI to the 'financialization' literature, noting key similarities and differences. Second, we examine changes in financial structure and income inequality for a sample of developed nations, showing that financialization has increased in nearly all the countries sampled and that this increase has generally been accompanied by a rise in income inequality. Third, we demonstrate that the development of modern financial structures does not preclude an expansive welfare state and egalitarian public policies. Our finding is congruent with Hyman Minsky's conception of PKI, which stressed both that 'economic systems are not natural systems' and that capitalism comes in as many varieties as Heinz has of pickles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last two decades large numbers of women have entered parliaments in several east and southern African countries. In late 2007, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa in southern Africa and Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda in east Africa all had national legislatures ranging from 25 to nearly 50 per cent women, placing them in the top 26 worldwide. This is far above the Sub-Saharan African and world averages of about 17 per cent women in a single or lower house of parliament. This development is part of a global trend whereby women are using electoral gender quotas to take a 'fast track' to equal legislative representation. The six countries identified here share a set of common characteristics explaining women's electoral success, with one important difference. The three southern African cases have all increased their percentages of women in parliament using a proportional representation electoral system and voluntary political party based quotas. The three east African cases have done the same through the use of a mix of electoral systems and mandatory 'special' or 'reserved' seats for women. This article describes the two alternatives, discusses their impact on women's descriptive and substantive representation in these six African countries and concludes with a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of electoral gender quota. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, gender mainstreaming is presented as bringing new élan to gender equality policies. Gender mainstreaming is a gender equality strategy that aims to transform organizational processes and practices by eliminating gender biases in existing routines, involving the regular actors in this transformation process. In this article, we question the aspirations of gender mainstreaming. Can gender mainstreaming escape the genderedness of organizations; can it genuinely effect change, or does it inevitably become compromised? Our analysis of a case project within Human Resource Management in the Ministry of the Flemish Community in Belgium shows that gender mainstreaming does indeed bring about changes, but that it does not break down the genderedness of organizations substantially. While gender mainstreaming invokes an image of cooperation between equal parties that pursue a dual agenda of business needs and feminist goals, our analysis shows that crucial power differences between those parties determine the outcome. The complex social dynamics of gender mainstreaming entail compromises in the context of these power differences, which seriously hinder the transformative and innovative potential of gender mainstreaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the policy of the administration of United States President George W. Bush on the promotion of democracy as a foreign policy goal. Description of a realist; Actions taken by the government in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; Topics of speeches of government officials; Examination of the appointed officials.

This article starts with the observation that in the context of extremely heterogeneous gender regimes within and among EU member states, the European Union is progressively institutionalizing equality policy at the supranational level. The argument advanced to explain the puzzle as to why gender policy development in the EU apparently escapes the 'joint decision trap' (Scharpf 1988) highlights gender differences in public EU support. It is claimed that explanations of policy changes in the EU after Maastricht have to take into account mass public 'Euroskepticism' and, in particular, 'gender gaps' in EU support, and to identify their sources and impacts in the processes of EU governance. By using Eurobarometer data this study explores whether cross-national variation in gendered EU support can be explained primarily by sociodemographic characteristics of individual respondents or by variables situated at the level of member states or whether factors related to the EU's democratic performance are the decisive ones. In the conclusion propositions are formulated regarding the mechanisms why gender differences in EU support can be expected to impact European governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the cinema of the period during and immediately after the Martial Law government run by President Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. The article discusses the country's aim for an egalitarian society by the year 2000. The article also presents a discussion about "Orapronobis," a film by Lino Brocka.

The article focuses on China's achievements in establishing a national policy which raises status of women and ensures gender equality by promoting a legal system, establishing a national organization and promoting a national agenda towards women's development. In protecting women's rights, China has implemented the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women in 1992. The National Working Committee on Children and Women was established in 1990.