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Purpose: To investigate the current state of gender diversity among invited coordinators at the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) Annual Scientific Meeting and to compare the academic productivity of female interventional radiologists to that of invited male coordinators., Materials and Methods: Faculty rosters for the SIR Annual Scientific Meetings from 2015 to 2017 were stratified by gender to quantify female representation among those asked to lead and coordinate podium sessions. To quantify academic productivity and merit, H-index, publications, and authorship by females over a 6-year period (2012-2017) were statistically compared to that of recurring male faculty., Results: From 2015 to 2017, women held 7.1% (9/126), 4.3%, (8/188), and 13.7% (27/197) of the available coordinator positions for podium sessions, with no representation at the plenary sessions, and subject matter expertise was concentrated in economics and education. Academic productivity of the top quartile of published female interventional radiologists was statistically similar to that of the invited male faculty (H-index P = .722; total publications P = .689; and authorship P = .662)., Conclusions: This study found that senior men dominate the SIR Annual Scientific Meeting, with few women leading or coordinating the podium sessions, despite their established academic track record., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Purpose: To evaluate the evolving representation of women in the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR)., Materials and Methods: A retrospective review of the available gender demographic data of various SIR subgroups between 2008 and 2017 was performed. The gender makeup of the following groups was analyzed: SIR membership, SIR Executive Council members and officers, Annual Meeting invited speakers, committee chairs, Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology (JVIR) first and senior authors, JVIR editorial board, IR Quarterly (IRQ) authors, and active interventional radiology (IR) residents and fellows., Results: From 2008 to 2017, the percentage of female representation in SIR members doubled (from 6% to 13.1%). In the same period, female representation also significantly increased in Executive Council members (0% to 20%) and officers (0% to 50%), SIR Annual Meeting presenters (5.1% to 15.4%), and JVIR first authors (10% to 14.5%) and senior authors (7.1% to 11.9%). From 2012 to 2017, there were increases in female representation among SIR committee chairs (21% to 28%) and IRQ authors (4.5% to 27%). However, the percentage of female IR residents and fellows did not significantly change between 2008 and 2017 (11% vs 16.2%; P = .51)., Conclusions: Women interventional radiologists are underrepresented within SIR, representing only 9.2% of active IR physicians. There has been a steady increase in female representation within most areas of SIR evaluated in this study. Although these trends are reassuring, efforts toward increasing recruitment and retention of women in IR need to improve in light of the infancy of IR as a residency program., (Copyright © 2018 SIR. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Gender inequity is still prevalent in today's medical workforce. Previous studies have investigated the status of women in academic anesthesiology. The objective of this study is to provide a current update on the status of women in academic anesthesiology. We hypothesized that while the number of women in academic anesthesiology has increased in the past 10 years, major gender disparities continue to persist, most notably in leadership roles., Methods: Medical student, resident, and faculty data were obtained from the Association of American Medical Colleges. The number of women in anesthesiology at the resident and faculty level, the distribution of faculty academic rank, and the number of women chairpersons were compared across the period from 2006 to 2016. The gender distribution of major anesthesiology journal editorial boards and data on anesthesiology research grant awards, among other leadership roles, were collected from websites and compared to data from 2005 and 2006., Results: The number (%) of women anesthesiology residents/faculty has increased from 1570 (32%)/1783 (29%) in 2006 to 2145 (35%)/2945 (36%) in 2016 (P = .004 and P < .001, respectively). Since 2006, the odds that an anesthesiology faculty member was a woman increased approximately 2% per year, with an estimated odds ratio of 1.02 (95% confidence interval, 1.014-1.025; P < .001). In 2015, the percentage of women anesthesiology full professors (7.4%) was less than men full professors (17.3%) (difference, -9.9%; 95% confidence interval of the difference, -8.5% to -11.3%; P < .001). The percentage of women anesthesiology department chairs remained unchanged from 2006 to 2016 (12.7% vs 14.0%) (P = .75). To date, neither Anesthesia & Analgesia nor Anesthesiology has had a woman Editor-in-Chief. The percentage of major research grant awards to women has increased significantly from 21.1% in 1997-2007 to 31.5% in 2007-2016 (P = .02)., Conclusions: Gender disparities continue to exist at the upper levels of leadership in academic anesthesiology, most importantly in the roles of full professor, department chair, and journal editors. However, there are some indications that women may be on the path to leadership parity, most notably, the growth of women in anesthesiology residencies and faculty positions and increases in major research grants awarded to women.

Background: In Cambodia, HIV prevalence is concentrated in key populations including among female entertainment workers (FEWs) who may engage in direct or indirect sex work. Reaching FEWs with sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services has been difficult because of their hidden and stigmatized nature. Mobile-phone-based interventions may be an effective way to reach this population and connect them with the existing services. This article describes study design and implementation of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a mobile health intervention (the Mobile Link) aiming to improve SRH and related outcomes among FEWs in Cambodia., Methods: A two-arm RCT will be used to determine the effectiveness of a mobile-phone-based text/voice messaging intervention. The intervention will be developed through a participatory process. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews have been conducted to inform and tailor behavior change theory-based text and voice messages. During the implementation phase, 600 FEWs will be recruited and randomly assigned into one of the two arms: (1) a control group and (2) a mobile phone message group (either text messages [SMS] or voice messages [VM], a delivery method chosen by participants). Participants in the control group will also receive a weekly monitoring survey, which will provide real-time information to implementing partners to streamline outreach efforts and be able to quickly identify geographic trends. The primary outcome measures will include self-reported HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) testing and treatment, condom use, contraceptive use, and gender-based violence (GBV)., Discussion: If the Mobile Link trial is successful, participants will report an increase in condom use, linkages to screening and treatment for HIV and STI, and contraception use as well as a reduction in GBV. This trial is unique in a number of ways. First, the option of participation mode (SMS or VM) allows participants to choose the message medium that best links them to services. Second, this is the first RCT of a mobile-phone-based behavior change intervention using SMS/VMs to support linkage to SRH services in Cambodia. Lastly, we are working with a hidden, hard-to-reach, and dynamic population with which existing methods of outreach have not been fully successful., Trial Registration: Clinical trials.gov, NCT03117842 . Registered on 31 March 2017.

A growing body of evidence indicates that excessive sugar consumption is driving epidemics of obesity and related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) around the world. South Africa (SA), a major consumer of sugar, is also the third most obese country in Africa, and 40% of all deaths in the country result from NCDs. A number of fiscal, regulatory, and legislative levers could reduce sugar consumption in SA. This paper focuses on a sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax. The purpose of the paper is to highlight the challenges that government might anticipate. Policies cannot be enacted in a vacuum and discussion is focused on the industrial, economic, and societal context. The affected industry actors have been part of the SA economy for over a century and remain influential. To deflect attention, the sugar industry can be expected either to advocate for self-regulation or to promote public-private partnerships. This paper cautions against both approaches as evidence suggests that they will be ineffective in curbing the negative health impacts caused by excessive sugar consumption. In summary, policy needs to be introduced with a political strategy sensitive to the various interests at stake. In particular, the sugar industry can be expected to be resistant to the introduction of any type of tax on SSBs.

Unlabelled: Women with children often fulfil multiple roles of running a household, raising a family and working outside the home. Good nutrition during this time is important to optimise their performance and prevent lifestyle diseases. Women also act as nutritional gatekeepers for their family. The dual burden of paid employment and unpaid family work may be associated with time scarcity in mothers which can impact food preparation and therefore nutritional adequacy. The aim of this study was to examine the diet of women who lived with children by comparison of hours worked., Methods: This was a secondary analysis of the Australian National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey 2011-12. Subjects were women aged 18-65 years who resided with ≥1 child (<18 years). Women were grouped according to hours of employment: not working; working <25 h a week; and working ≥25 hours a week. Data from two 24-h dietary recalls were used to compare differences between groups in nutrient intake and proportion of energy from discretionary foods. Covariates included were age, education, smoker status, Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), number of persons in household, week or weekend day of the survey and the sequence of recalls., Results: Analyses included 1869 women. Dietary intakes varied minimally between groups with intakes of fibre, vitamin C, and calcium lowest in the group not working. Overall diet quality was poor with >30% of energy coming from discretionary foods in all groups., Conclusions: Usual hours of employment per week have a minimal effect on diet quality in women with children. It is likely that different factors specific to each group contribute to the poor dietary intakes and should be further investigated., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: Orthopaedic fellowship training is a common step before becoming a practicing orthopaedic surgeon. In the past, fellowship decisions in orthopaedics were made early in the residency and without a formal match. The process was disorganized, often not fair to the applicants or fellowship programs. More recently, there has been an organized match process for nine different disciplines in orthopaedics. Although the numbers of women applicants into orthopaedic residency has been reported and is the target of efforts to continue to improve gender diversity in orthopaedics, the numbers regarding women in orthopaedic fellowships have not been known. Other details including if there is a difference in match rate between male and female fellowship applicants and what discipline they choose to pursue across orthopaedic surgery has not been reported., Questions/purposes: (1) How have the numbers of women applying to orthopaedic fellowships changed over a 5-year period? (2) Is gender associated with fellowship match success? (3) Which subspecialties have greater proportions of female applicants?, Methods: Available orthopaedic residency match data regarding number of applicants and number of female residents between 2010 and 2014 were obtained. For fellowship data, our method was a review of the applicants who submitted rank lists and the number of applicants who matched in all subspecialties through San Francisco Match and from the American Shoulder and Elbow Society from 2010 to 2014. For each year, the number of females versus males applying was abstracted. The total number of females versus males who matched was then obtained. For each subspecialty represented in this article, the number of female applicants and matches was compared with the male applicants and matches., Results: The proportion of fellowship applicants who are female ranged from 7% to 10% annually, and the percentage of matched female applicants ranged from 8% to 12%. Overall, combining results from 2010 to 2014, female fellowship applicants had a higher proportion of match success when compared with men (women: 320 of 335 [96%]; men: 2696 of 3325 [81%]; p < 0.001). Pediatric orthopaedic fellowships had the highest proportion of women (79 of 318 [25%] followed by foot and ankle (42 of 311 [14%]; spine had the lowest (15 of 525 [3%])., Conclusions: Women applicants for advanced orthopaedic training matched at a higher proportion than men in fellowship training. Pediatrics has a higher proportion of women applicants and fellows. Orthopaedics should be a model for other surgical specialties by encouraging women to successfully pursue advanced training.

Background: Orthopaedic surgery lags behind other surgical specialties in terms of gender diversity. The percentage of women entering orthopaedic residency persistently remains at 14% despite near equal ratios of women to men in medical school classes. This trend has been attributed to negative perceptions among women medical students of workplace culture and lifestyle in orthopaedics as well as lack of exposure, particularly during medical school when most women decide to enter the field. Since 2012, The Perry Initiative, a nonprofit organization that is focused on recruiting and retaining women in orthopaedics, had conducted extracurricular outreach programs for first- and second-year female medical students to provide exposure and mentoring opportunities specific to orthopaedics. This program, called the Medical Student Outreach Program (MSOP), is ongoing at medical centers nationwide and has reached over 300 medical students in its first 3 program years (2012-2014)., Questions/purposes: (1) What percentage of MSOP participants eventually match into orthopaedic surgery residency? (2) Does MSOP impact participants' perceptions of the orthopaedics profession as well as intellectual interest in the field?, Methods: The percentage of program alumnae who matched into orthopaedics was determined by annual followup for our first two cohorts who graduated from medical school. All program participants completed a survey immediately before and after the program that assessed the impact of MSOP on the student's intention to pursue orthopaedics as well as perceptions of the field and intellectual interest in the discipline., Results: The orthopaedic surgery match rate for program participants was 31% in our first graduating class (five of 16 participants in 2015) and 28% in our second class (20 of 72 participants in 2016). Pre/post program comparisons showed that the MSOP influenced students' perceptions of the orthopaedics profession as well as overall intellectual interest in the field., Conclusions: The results of our study suggest that The Perry Initiative's MSOP positively influences women to choose orthopaedic surgery as a profession. The match rate for program alumnae is twice the percentage of females in current orthopaedic residency classes. Given these positive results, MSOP can serve as a model, both in its curricular content and logistic framework, for other diversity initiatives in the field.

Background: The process of choosing medical specialty and residency programs is multifaceted. Today's generation of medical students may have an increased interest in work-life balance and time with their families. In considering this factor, medical students may be influenced by policy regarding maternity, paternity, and adoption leave during residency and fellowship training. Current policy among orthopaedic programs regarding maternity, paternity, and adoption leave is not well described. To understand the influence these policies may have on the choices that medical students make in choosing their specialty, the policies must first be better understood., Questions/purposes: (1) What proportion of orthopaedic programs have formal or unwritten policies regarding maternity, paternity, and adoptive leave? (2) What are the provisions for time away, allotment of time, and makeup options for trainees who take leave? (3) What proportion of orthopaedic programs report utilization of leave, and what proportions of leave are for maternity, paternity, or adoptive reasons?, Methods: Accredited programs in orthopaedic surgery were identified through the Council of Orthopedic Residency Directors within the American Orthopaedic Association. Current program directors of these accredited programs were surveyed. The survey was emailed to 144 program directors, of which 141 emails were delivered. Responses were received from 45 program directors, representing 31% of programs. The survey focused on maternity, paternity, and adoptive leave, and it consisted of questions designed to explore program policies (formal, unwritten, no policy, or in development), time considerations (amount allowed, allocation of time away, and makeup requirements), and utilization (trainees who took leave and type of leave used)., Results: Most respondents have maternity leave policy (formal: 36 of 45 [80%]; unwritten: 17 of 45 [38%]). Sixteen programs (16 of 45 [36%]) reported having both a formal and an unwritten maternity leave policy. Less than half of the programs have paternity leave policy (formal: 22 of 45 [49%]; unwritten: 19 of 45 [42%]), and fewer programs have adoption leave policy (formal: eight of 45 [18%]; unwritten: 11 of 45 [24%]). For programs that have formal or unwritten policies, most programs allow 4 to 6 weeks off (26 of 43 [60%]) with nearly half of programs allocating leave as paid time off (15 of 37 programs [41%]) and nearly half of programs requiring makeup time (17 of 37 [46%]). Many programs reported no utilization of leave by trainees (23 of 36 [61%]); many programs reported utilization by three or fewer residents (11 of 13 [85%]); and among residents who took leave, maternity was the most common reason (maternity: 22 of 36 [61%]; paternity: 11 of 36 [31%]; adoption: three of 36 [8%])., Conclusions: This study highlights the lack of uniformity among orthopaedic surgery residency and training programs regarding approach to maternity, paternity, and adoption leave. Discussion among program directors, perhaps facilitated by the Council of Orthopedic Residency Directors within the American Orthopaedic Association, to align the programs' policy in this arena may provide more transparent and uniform policy for trainees in orthopaedic surgery.

Background: Orthopaedic surgery now has the lowest percentage of women in residency programs of any surgical specialty. Understanding factors, particularly those related to the medical school experience, that contribute to the specialty's inability to draw from the best women students is crucial to improving diversity in the profession., Questions/purposes: (1) Does required medical school exposure to orthopaedic surgery increase the proportion of women choosing the specialty? (2) Do negative perceptions deter women from choosing orthopaedic surgery? (3) What proportion of orthopaedic faculty members are women, and what proportion of residents are women? (4) To what degree has gender bias been identified in the application/interview process?, Methods: Two PubMed searches of articles between 2005 and 2015 were performed using a combination of medical subject headings. The first search combined "Orthopaedics" with "Physicians, women" and phrases "women surgeons" or "female surgeons" and the second combined "Orthopedics" with "Internship & Residency" or "exp Education, Medical" and "Sex Ratio" or "Sex Factors", resulting in 46 publications of which all abstracts were reviewed resulting in 11 manuscripts that were related to the research questions. The Google Scholar search of "women in orthopaedic surgery" identified one additional publication. These 12 manuscripts were read and bibliographies of each reviewed with two additional publications identified and included., Results: Required exposure to orthopaedics was found to be positively associated with the number of women applicants to the field, whereas negative perceptions have been reported to deter women from choosing orthopaedic surgery. Orthopaedics has the lowest percentage of women faculty and women residents (14%) compared with other specialties; this suggests that same gender mentorship opportunities are limited. For women applying to orthopaedics, gender bias is most evident through illegal interview questions, in which women are asked such questions more often than men (such as family planning questions, asked to 61% of women versus 8% of men)., Conclusions: Successful recruitment of women to orthopaedic surgery may be improved by early exposure and access to role models, both of which will help women students' perceptions of their role in field of orthopaedic surgery.

Background: Women and minorities remain underrepresented in orthopaedic surgery. In an attempt to increase the diversity of those entering the physician workforce, Nth Dimensions implemented a targeted pipeline curriculum that includes the Orthopaedic Summer Internship Program. The program exposes medical students to the specialty of orthopaedic surgery and equips students to be competitive applicants to orthopaedic surgery residency programs. The effect of this program on women and underrepresented minority applicants to orthopaedic residencies is highlighted in this article., Questions/purposes: (1) For women we asked: is completing the Orthopaedic Summer Internship Program associated with higher odds of applying to orthopaedic surgery residency? (2) For underrepresented minorities, is completing the Orthopaedic Summer Internship Program associated with higher odds of applying to orthopaedic residency?, Methods: Between 2005 and 2012, 118 students completed the Nth Dimensions/American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Orthopaedic Summer Internship Program. The summer internship consisted of an 8-week clinical and research program between the first and second years of medical school and included a series of musculoskeletal lectures, hands-on, practical workshops, presentation of a completed research project, ongoing mentoring, professional development, and counselling through each participant's subsequent years of medical school. In correlation with available national application data, residency application data were obtained for those Orthopaedic Summer Internship Program participants who applied to the match between 2011 through 2014. For these 4 cohort years, we evaluated whether this program was associated with increased odds of applying to orthopaedic surgery residency compared with national controls. For the same four cohorts, we evaluated whether underrepresented minority students who completed the program had increased odds of applying to an orthopaedic surgery residency compared with national controls., Results: Fifty Orthopaedic Summer Internship scholars applied for an orthopaedic residency position. For women, completion of the Orthopaedic Summer Internship was associated with increased odds of applying to orthopaedic surgery residency (after summer internship: nine of 17 [35%]; national controls: 800 of 78,316 [1%]; odds ratio [OR], 51.3; 95% confidence interval [CI], 21.1-122.0; p < 0.001). Similarly, for underrepresented minorities, Orthopaedic Summer Internship completion was also associated with increased odds of orthopaedic applications from 2011 to 2014 (after Orthopaedic Summer Internship: 15 of 48 [31%]; non-Orthopaedic Summer Internship applicants nationally: 782 of 25,676 [3%]; OR, 14.5 [7.3-27.5]; p < 0.001)., Conclusions: Completion of the Nth Dimensions Orthopaedic Summer Internship Program has a positive impact on increasing the odds of each student participant applying to an orthopaedic surgery residency program. This program may be a key factor in contributing to the pipeline of women and underrepresented minorities into orthopaedic surgery., Level of Evidence: Level III, therapeutic study.

The key activity in good practice of occupational medicine is to control, on a regular basis, the workers' health and how it is affected by the work environment and - consequently - to provide the employers and employees with advice regarding the organization, ergonomics, physiology and psychology of work. Occupational medicine practitioners should remember that certain duties are performed both at work and at home. This issue is particularly important in preventive healthcare of pregnant working women. Taking the above into consideration, we reviewed the literature with respect to nuisance and occupational risk factors, which might be associated with professional and household duties. The research indicates the need to reduce activities that require frequent bending or lifting, put a women at risk of falling or cause excess occupational stress for pregnant women. We would like to draw the doctors' attention to the possibility of exceeding a 4-hour limit of work at video display terminals and negative effects of low physical exercise and sitting for a long time both at work and at home. Since long working hours (over 40 h/week) affect the course of pregnancy negatively, total working time at work (including any additional jobs) and at home must be taken into account in the occupational risk assessment. To sum up, we emphasize that preventive healthcare of pregnant working women should mainly include education programmes. Women need to know how to perform their work safely and pay attention to the scope and frequency of household tasks (duties)., (This work is available in Open Access model and licensed under a CC BY-NC 3.0 PL license.)

The development field needs to be more serious about gender inequities and women's empowerment. By ignoring gender inequities, many development projects fail to achieve their objective. And when development organizations do not focus on women's empowerment, they neglect the fact that empowered women have the potential to transform their societies. I also review the Gates Foundation's record on gender and propose some approaches to improve it., (Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

Under Canada's Employment Insurance system, parents are entitled to receive up to 50 weeks of parental leave at 55 % of salary. Despite this national policy, women with higher education are more likely to delay childbearing. This analysis aimed to assess the association between workplace support, educational attainment and the timing of first births. Women who had recently given birth to their first live-born infant and lived in Alberta, Canada, were randomly selected to participate in a telephone survey. Logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between workplace support, educational attainment and timing of first pregnancy. Among 835 women with a planned pregnancy, 26 % agreed that support or lack of support for pregnant women at their workplace affected their decision about when to begin their family. After controlling for age and income, women who had completed a post-graduate degree were three times (OR 3.39, 95 % CI 1.69-6.81) more likely to indicate that support or lack of support for pregnant women in their workplace affected their childbearing decisions. In spite of national policies, and the potential risks associated with delayed childbearing, workplace support impacts timing of pregnancy, particularly for highly educated women.

Background: Although increasing numbers of large companies are complying with demands for a breastfeeding-friendly workplace by providing lactation rooms and breast-pumping breaks, the effectiveness for intention to use breast-pumping breaks to express breast milk among employed mothers is uncertain. To explore the impact of employees' perceived breastfeeding support from the workplace and the benefits of breastfeeding on a woman's intention to use breast-pumping breaks after returning to work, we conducted a survey at a female labor-intensive electronics manufacturer in Taiwan., Subjects and Methods: A structured questionnaire survey was administered to 715 working mothers employed in an electronics manufacturing plant in Tainan Science Park in Southern Taiwan. Questionnaire content included female employee demographics, employment characteristics, and breastfeeding behavior after returning to work, as well as employees' perception of breastfeeding-friendly support and awareness of the benefits of breastfeeding when raising their most recently born child., Results: Higher education (odds ratio [OR] 2.33), non-clean room worksite (OR 1.51), awareness of breast-pumping breaks (OR 4.70), encouragement by colleagues to use breast-pumping breaks (OR 1.76), and greater awareness of the benefits of breastfeeding (OR 1.08) were significant predictors of the use of breast-pumping breaks after returning to work, whereas the perception of inefficiency when using breast-pumping breaks reduced an employed mother's intention to use breast-pumping breaks (OR 0.55)., Conclusions: This study finds an association between an appreciation of the benefits provided by the employer and the likelihood of increased usage of breastfeeding breaks. Workplaces and employers can help employed mothers to understand the benefits of breastfeeding, which may increase the intention of the mother to take breast-pumping breaks after returning to work.

Vascular surgery is a subspecialty that attracts future surgeons with challenging technical procedures and complex decision making. Despite its appeal, continued promotion of the field is necessary to recruit and retain the best and brightest candidates. Recruitment of medical students and residents may be limited by the lifestyle inherent to vascular surgery and the length of residency training. The young adults of the current applicant and resident pool differ from prior generations in their desire for hands-on mentoring, aspirations to affect change daily, a penchant for technology, and strong emphasis on work-life balance. Furthermore, the percentage of women pursuing careers in vascular surgery is not representative of the eligible workforce. Women are now the majority of graduates in all of higher education, and thus, vascular surgery may need to make a concerted effort to appeal to women in order to attract the most talented young professionals to the field. Recruiting strategies for both men and women of Generation Y should target a diverse group of potential candidates with an awareness of the unique characteristics and needs of this generation of rising surgeons., (Copyright © 2013 Society for Vascular Surgery. All rights reserved.)

In this paper I describe some of my professional experiences as a female, both as a graduate student and throughout my career. My own experience was unique because I began graduate school a few months after arriving in the U.S. with limited knowledge of English in a very competitive and demanding program , in addition to the fact that I was a faculty wife in that department. A major dilemma in achieving a successful academic career involves finding an optimal balance between the demands of a career and those of motherhood. In earlier years the burden of compromises dictated by the needs of children customarily fell on the shoulders of women, and this often delayed the development of their careers. This has changed some over the years as many couples share child-rearing responsibilities, but remains a hurdle for many professional women. While institutional biases and conflicting demands still produce special challenges to women who strive to make significant contributions to their fields, such women are more in charge of their careers today than they were 30 or 40years ago. But in my experience, the achievement of contributing significantly to knowledge in the field, for both men and for women, involves quite a few sacrifices., (Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

There is a notion that combining parenthood with a career in academic science is problematic, yet academic science careers can provide an outstanding career choice for professional parents because they offer extraordinary flexibility and stability. Much has been written about the paucity of women in tenure track scientific positions and the general disparity between men and women in all professions. However, the status quo is changing as more women fill the ranks of academia and male professors share childcare and household duties with spouses who hold professional positions. Although combining any career with parenthood can be challenging, parenthood should not be considered an obstacle to a successful scientific career., (Copyright © 2011.)

French organic chemistry had a strong nationalistic bent in the immediate aftermath to World War II. It continued to bask in the glow of the pre-World War I Nobel prize awarded jointly in 1912 to Victor Grignard and Paul Sabatier. In addition, the influence of the two mandarins then in power, Charles Prévost at the Sorbonne and Albert Kirrmann, a Dean in Strasbourg who would be called upon as vice-director at the École normale supérieure in Paris, saw to it that the only theory of organic reactions, admissible in the classroom and in the laboratory, was Prévost's. As Mary Jo Nye has shown, a wall was erected against penetration of the ideas of the British school of Ingold and Hughes. Mechanistic chemistry, as was being vigorously studied by the contemporary Anglo-American physical organic chemists, was 'persona non grata' in France. Publication by Bianca Tchoubar, in 1960, of "Les mécanismes réactionnels en chimie organique" opened a breach. The irony was for Dr. Tchoubar, a militant member of the Communist Party and a lady of fierce opinions, to have become a propagandist for the Anglo-American school of mechanistic studies. Truth for her overruled political propaganda. Her little book was revolutionary in the French context of the times. Together with the GECO (Groupe d'étude de chimie organique) summer conferences pioneered by Guy Ourisson after his return from Harvard, it ushered in the new ideas. This historical essay, based on an in-depth study of Tchoubar's book, will include a portrait of this remarkable woman scientist. It will delve at some length into the renewal of French science initiated by De Gaulle's government after his return to power in 1958. The tension in the French scientific establishment of the sixties reflected two opposed versions of nationalism, the one conservative, Malthusian, inner-directed, the other forward-looking, eager for the recovery of national status, seeing a strong French science as a means for asserting national identity and independence from the two world power blocs.

This article traces prostitution in al-Mahalla in the first half of the 20th century as a regulated urban practice until the trade was outlawed in Egypt in 1949. Studying prostitution during this period of exceptionally rapid growth and transformation not only provides a window on a particular type of illicit sexuality and public morality in a colonial context, it also gives us a hint as to gender relations and inter-communal relations on the invisible marginalized part of a provincial local community, and how it was socially transformed. I argue that the regulation of prostitution in Egypt in 1882 and 1905 created a sphere for a power contest between the colonial state and the local community, between nationalist discourse and the local way of life, and between public morality and private space. While nationalist discourse constructed one virtuous nation, the local community accepted the licensed prostitution quarter, and resisted secret prostitution. The people of the town actively and continually shifted boundaries on what was public and what was private, what was the state's responsibility and what was communal liability.

In developing countries, employment rates for mothers with young children are relatively low. This study analyzes how maternal labor market outcomes in Argentina are affected by the preschool attendance of their children. Using pooled household surveys, we show that 4-year-olds with birthdays on June 30 have sharply higher probabilities of preschool attendance than children born on July 1, given enrollment-age rules. Regression-discontinuity estimates using this variation suggest that preschool attendance of the youngest child in the household increases the probability of full-time employment and weekly hours of maternal employment. We find no effect of preschool attendance on maternal labor outcomes for children who are not the youngest in the household.

The influential roles of culture and ethnic identity are frequently cited in developing disordered eating and body dissatisfaction, constituting both protective and risk factors. For African American women, strongly identifying with African American cultural beauty ideals may protect against disordered eating to lose weight, but may actually increase risk in development of disordered eating directed at weight gain, such as binge eating. This study compares African American and Caucasian women on disordered eating measures, positing that African American women show greater risk for binge eating due to the impact of ethnic identity on body dissatisfaction. Findings indicate low levels of ethnic identity represent a risk factor for African American women, increasing the likelihood of showing greater binge eating and bulimic pathology. In Caucasian women, high levels of ethnic identity constitute a risk factor, leading to higher levels of both binge eating and global eating pathology. Implications for prevention and treatment are discussed.

This paper argues that international security forces in Timor Leste depend upon civilian partners in HIV/AIDs "knowledge networks" to monitor prostitutes' disease status. These networks produce mobile expertise, techniques of government and forms of personhood that facilitate international government of distant populations without overt coercion. HIV/AIDs experts promote techniques of peer education, empowerment and community mobilisation to construct women who sell sex as health conscious sex workers. Such techniques make impoverished women responsible for their disease status, obscuring the political and economic contexts that produced that status. In the militarised context of Timor Leste, knowledge of the sexual conduct of sub-populations labelled high risk circulates among global HIV/AIDs knowledge networks, confirming their expert status while obscuring the sexual harm produced by military intervention. HIV/AIDs knowledge networks have recently begun to build Timorese sex worker organisations by contracting an Australian sex worker NGO to train a Timorese NGO tasked with building sex worker identity and community. Such efforts fail to address the needs and priorities of the women supposedly empowered. The paper engages theories of global knowledge networks, mobile technologies of government, and governmentality to analyse policy documents, reports, programmes, official statements, speeches, and journalistic accounts regarding prostitution in Timor Leste.

China's economic reforms over the past three decades have dramatically changed the mechanisms for allocating goods and labour in both market and non-market spheres. This article examines the social and economic trends that intensify the pressure on the care economy, and on women in particular in playing their dual roles as care givers and income earners in post-reform China. The analysis sheds light on three critical but neglected issues. How does the reform process reshape the institutional arrangements of care for children and elders? How does the changing care economy affect women's choices between paid work and unpaid care responsibilities? And what are the implications of women's work–family conflicts for the well-being of women and their families? The authors call for a gendered approach to both social and labour market policies, with investments in support of social reproduction services so as to ease the pressures on women.

In the nineteenth-century Prohibition Party, American women ascribed new gendered meanings to party work traditionally performed by male partisans, and also drew upon their gendered roles as women, mothers, and wives to create new partisan strategies. This article investigates the political culture that sustained a remarkable departure from traditional Democratic and Republican practices, and further explores why women's contributions to the Prohibition Party declined in the early-twentieth century. In so doing, it traces how gender and gender roles shaped the meaning of party and politics, and elucidates the interplay between institutions, constituencies, and policy during one of America's most tumultuous political eras.

The Leeds Association of Girls' Clubs (LAGC) was set up by a group of women, including Hilda Hargrove, Dr Lucy Buckley and Mary and Margaret Harvey, to promote collaboration between the city's girls' clubs. The organisation epitomised women working in partnership whilst reflecting their differing philanthropic and political interests. However LAGC's collaborative approach resulted in liberal consensus which downplayed the significance of girls' working conditions. Throughout the decade LAGC's focus was its annual competitions. These featured utilitarian and decorative handicrafts (darning and doylies) enshrining both frugality and aspiration, alongside dance and drill which channelled girls' vigour. Nevertheless, LAGC's resilience resulted in an organisation which is still in existence.

Frequently eighteenth-century service is described as a life-cycle stage used to build up the financial wherewithal to set up house. As such it was central to the way youth or girlhood was traversed, and studies of adolescent years rightly emphasise the importance of service. However, this narrative, while largely accurate, is also problematic. What happened when service did not end with marriage, or when a woman remained single well into adulthood? In practice, servants were found among both the married and single, and among the young and the old. Concentrating on the eighteenth century, and incorporating material from Nordic Europe, this article teases out some of the nuances in the context and experience of service that partially disrupt the established narrative.

This paper uses the British Household Panel Survey to present the first estimates of the housework-wage relationship in Britain. Controlling for permanent unobserved heterogeneity, we find that housework has a negative impact on the wages of men and women, both married and single, who work full-time. Among women working part-time, only single women suffer a housework penalty. The housework penalty is uniform across occupations within full-time jobs but some part-time jobs appear to be more compatible with housework than others. We find tentative evidence that the housework penalty is larger when there are children present.

In response to the poor working conditions suffered by domestics struggling to survive the Depression, middle-class women's organizations initiated various legislative reforms aimed at tackling the problems they believed plagued the occupation. Throughout these years, organized women debated three key pieces of reform related to domestic service: efforts to suppress street-corner markets, health requirements for prospective domestics, and state-level wage and hour reform. These reforms were united by the rhetoric of privacy, which clubwomen used both to oppose wage and hour reform and to support requirements that domestics have physicals before applying for work. This article examines the fine distinction that middle-class women's organizations drew between public and private in the appropriate application of government power and the resulting conflict between progressive women's gender ideology and their most deeply-held reform ideals. In doing so, it reveals organized women's struggle to reconcile their humane ideals with the reality in their kitchens.

Numerous studies examine the causal factors of entrance into prostitution and find economic marginalization, substance addiction, and interpersonal networks are common reasons women enter the trade. However, we know less about the role that age of onset plays in shaping female pathways into prostitution. Here, we build from insights into previous research by analyzing not only entry pathways but also how age categories are linked to time spent in the trade and whether the length of time in prostitution exacts a greater “toll” on women. Drawing from the feminist and age of onset literatures, we analyze 40 in-depth interviews with female street prostitutes from five U.S. cities. Our results underscore the importance of age as an organizing feature of women’s pathways into prostitution and the potential associated consequences of working in this trade.

The article addresses how Vietnamese immigrant women developed an urban employment niche in the beauty industry, in manicuring. They are shown to have done so by creating a market for professional nail care, through the transformation of nailwork into what might be called McNails, entailing inexpensive, walk-in, impersonal service, in stand-alone salons, nationwide, and by making manicures and pedicures de riguer across class and racial strata. Vietnamese are shown to have simultaneously gained access to institutional means to surmount professional manicure credentializing barriers, and to have developed formal and informal ethnic networks that fueled their growing monopolization of jobs in the sector, to the exclusion of non-Vietnamese. The article also elucidates conditions contributing to the Vietnamese build-up and transformation of the niche, to the nation-wide formation of the niche and, most recently, to the transnationalization of the niche. It also extrapolates from the Vietnamese manicure experience propositions concerning the development, expansion, maintenance, and transnationalization of immigrant-formed labor market niches.

Women were central to the provision of welfare services in France during the refugee crises of the late 1930s. By building on the services created during the First World War, women, as either volunteers or professionals, actively cared for refugees and others during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the phoney war (September 1939-May 1940) and the German invasion of 1940. French women's involvement with refugee aid enabled them to develop a sense of autonomous civil and political activism, especially—although not exclusively—in their work with the French Red Cross. In addition, the history of welfare activities for refugees illuminates how ordinary people dealt with the extraordinary circumstances of war, invasion and the forced movement of populations.

Inasmuch as women's subordinate status is a product of the patriarchal structures of constraint that prevail in specific contexts, pathways of women's empowerment are likely to be "path dependent." They will be shaped by women's struggles to act on the constraints that prevail in their societies, as much by what they seek to defend as by what they seek to change. The universal value that many feminists claim for individual autonomy may not therefore have the same purchase in all contexts. This article examines processes of empowerment as they play out in the lives of women associated with social mobilization organizations in the specific context of rural Bangladesh. It draws on their narratives to explore the collective strategies through which these organizations sought to empower the women and how they in turn drew on their newly established "communities of practice" to navigate their own pathways to wider social change. It concludes that while the value attached to social affiliations by the women in the study is clearly a product of the societies in which they have grown up, it may be no more context-specific than the apparently universal value attached to individual autonomy by many feminists.

This paper examines several pioneering genre paintings by the important scholar painter Yun Duseo (1668-1715), with its focus on their artistic sources which have not yet been explored so far. Painted on ramie, 'Women Picking Potherbs' is one of the most intriguing examples among Yun Duseo's oeuvre, which encompasses a broad variety of themes, including genre imagery, landscapes, portraits, dragons, and horses. Even among Yun Duseo's genre paintings, 'Women Picking Potherbs' is extraordinary, as recent scholarship regards it as the earliest independent representation of lower-class women in the history of Korean art. In particular, Yun Duseo painted two women who were working ourdoors to gather spring potherbs. In a conservative Confucian society, it was extraordinary women who were working outdoors. Hence, Yun Duseo occupies a highly important place in Korean painting. Furthermore, even though Yun Duseo came from the upper-class, he often painted images of lower class people working. It is possible that Yun Duseo was familiar with the book titled "Tian gong kai wu" (Exploitation of the Works of Nature) which was published in the 17th century. By identifying the probable body of his artistic sources in the book known as "Tian gong kai wu," it will be possible to assess the innovations and limitations found in 'Women Picking Potherbs'.