A price worth paying?: Women and work – choice, constraint or satisficing

Purpose – Are women held back or holding back? Do women choose their jobs/careers or are they structurally or normatively constrained? The purpose of this paper is to shed fresh light on these questions and contribute to an on-going debate that has essentially focused on the extent to which part-time work is women’s choice, the role of structural and organisational constraints and the role of men in excluding women. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses data from interviews with 80 working women – both full-time and part-time – performing diverse work roles in a range of organisations in the south east of England. Findings – It was found that many women do not make strategic job choices, rather they often ‘‘fall into’’ jobs that happen to be available to them. Some would not have aspired to their present jobs without male encouragement; many report incidents of male exclusion; and virtually all either know or suspect that they are paid less than comparable men. Those working reduced hours enjoy that facility, yet they are aware that reduced hours and senior roles are seen as incompatible. In short, they recognise both the positive and negative aspects of their jobs, whether they work full or part-time, whether they work in male-dominated or female-dominated occupations, and whatever their position in the organisational hierarchy. Accordingly, the paper argues that the concept of ‘‘satisficing’’, i.e. a decision which is good enough but not optimal, is a more appropriate way to view women’s working lives than are either choice or constraint theories. Originality/value – There is an ongoing, and often polarised, debate between those who maintain that women choose whether to give preference to work or home/family and others who maintain that women, far from being self-determining actors, are constrained structurally and normatively. Rather than supporting these choice or constraint theories, this paper argues that ‘‘satisficing’’ is a more appropriate and nuanced concept to explain women’s working lives.

Epidemiological and nutrition transition in developing countries: impact on human health and development

Whereas common infectious and parasitic diseases such as malaria and the HIV/AIDS pandemic remain major unresolved health problems in many developing countries, emerging non-communicable diseases relating to diet and lifestyle have been increasing over the last two decades, thus creating a double burden of disease and impacting negatively on already over-stretched health services in these countries. Prevalence rates for type 2 diabetes mellitus and CVD in sub-Saharan Africa have seen a 10-fold increase in the last 20 years. In the Arab Gulf current prevalence rates are between 25 and 35% for the adult population, whilst evidence of the metabolic syndrome is emerging in children and adolescents. The present review focuses on the concept of the epidemiological and nutritional transition. It looks at historical trends in socio-economic status and lifestyle and trends in nutrition-related non-communicable diseases over the last two decades, particularly in developing countries with rising income levels, as well as the other extreme of poverty, chronic hunger and coping strategies and metabolic adaptations in fetal life that predispose to non-communicable disease risk in later life. The role of preventable environmental risk factors for obesity and the metabolic syndrome in developing countries is emphasized and also these challenges are related to meeting the millennium development goals. The possible implications of these changing trends for human and economic development in poorly-resourced healthcare settings and the implications for nutrition training are also discussed.

The assessment and development of drug calculation skills in nurse education: a critical debate

The drug calculation skill of nurses continues to be a national concern. The continued concern has led to the introduction of mandatory drug calculation skills tests which students must pass in order to go on to the nursing register. However, there is little evidence to demonstrate that nurses are poor at solving drug calculation in practice. This paper argues that nurse educationalists have inadvertently created a problem that arguably does not exist in practice through use of invalid written drug assessment tests and have introduced their own pedagogical practice of solving written drug calculations. This paper will draw on literature across mathematics, philosophy, psychology and nurse education to demonstrate why written drug assessments are invalid, why learning must take place predominantly in the clinical area and why the key focus on numeracy and formal mathematical skills as essential knowledge for nurses is potentially unnecessary.