Gender differences in organizational justice predicting the key employee outcomes of organizational commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention

All four types of organizational justice – distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational – were included in this study of gender differences. Both male and female respondents perceived the distributive-procedural justice and interpersonal-informational justice pairings similarly and weakly. Females consistently discriminated more clearly across the pairings, however. The effect of the four justices was also found to be gender-dependent. Males’ perception of distributive justice directly predicted their turnover intentions and commitment to the organization, while females’ perception of distributive justice predicted only job satisfaction. Males’ perceptions of procedural and information justice both predicted job satisfaction. Females’ informational justice perceptions predicted job satisfaction and commitment to the organization. The paper contributes to the literature by presenting results from all four justice types and the simultaneous use of the three outcomes of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intention to quit. Overall, the males had a diffuse set of relationships between the justice types and the outcomes, whereas the relationships between the justice types and
the outcomes for females tended more to follow a limited number of pathways. The study was validated with data collected on two separate occasions.

New world orders in contemporary children's literature : utopian transformations

"New World Orders shows how texts for children and young people have responded to the cultural, economic, and political movements of the last 15 years. With a focus on international children's text produced between 1988 and 2006, the authors discuss how utopian and dystopian tropes are pressed into service to project possible futures to child readers. The book considers what these texts have to say about globalisation, neocolonialism, environmental issues, pressures on families and communities, and the idea of the posthuman."--BOOK JACKET.

Poetry in motion : Ko Un and Korean democratisation

This essay focuses on the poet and intellectual Ko Un, a prominent nationalist and critic of successive authoritarian regimes in Korea. Ashis Nandy gleaned insights into colonial India by investigating the lives of individuals who were emblematic of British colonialism. For instance Nandy focused on Rudyard Kipling to explain how colonialism damaged both Indians and the English who were complicit to it. Similarly, I intend to use the life and literary output of Ko Un to glean insights into Korea’s fight for democracy in the context of the onset of modernisation. Through his political activism and writing Ko celebrated the lives of ordinary Koreans, including his one-time prison mate Kim Dae-jung and numerous political activists, workers, and farmers. He linked their struggle for democracy to a much longer quest to preserve what he considered to be the unique and invaluable aspects of the Korean national character.

Bureaucratic, corporate/market and network governance : shifting spaces for gender equity in education

Education as a field of policy, research and practice has been reconfigured over four decades by economic, social and cultural globalization in conjuncture with neoliberal policies premised upon markets and new managerialism. One effect has been shifting boundaries between, and understandings of what constitutes the public and the private with regard to the role of the state vis-á-vis the formation of gendered subjectivities and civil society and the gendering of public– private relations in and between family and work. Drawing on feminist readings of Bourdieu and critical policy sociology, I consider the implications of a move from bureaucratic educational governance framed by state welfarism to corporate or market governance framed by the post-welfare state, and consider whether particular constructions of globalization and corporate/market governance lead to network governance. Network governance, it is argued, is premised on new forms of sociality and institutional reconfigurations of knowledge-based economies and a spatialized state that coordinates rather than regulates multiple public– private providers. The question is how each mode of governance frames various possibilities and problems for gender equity in education.

Gender differences in muscle inflammation after eccentric exercise

Unaccustomed exercise is followed by delayed-onset muscle soreness and morphological changes in skeletal muscle. Animal studies have demonstrated that women have an attenuated response to muscle damage. We studied the effect of eccentric exercise in untrained male (n = 8) and female (n = 8) subjects using a unilateral exercise design [exercise (Ex) and control (Con) legs]. Plasma granulocyte counts [before (Pre) and 48 h after exercise (+48h)] and creatine kinase activity [Pre, 24 h after exercise (+24h), +48h, and 6 days after exercise (+6d)] were determined before (Pre) and after (+24h, +48h, +6d) exercise, with biopsies taken from the vastus lateralis of each leg at +48h for determination of muscle damage and/or inflammation. Plasma granulocyte counts increased for men and decreased for women at +48h (P < 0.05), and creatine kinase activity increased for both genders at +48h and +6d (P < 0.01). There were significantly greater areas of both focal (P < 0.001) and extensive (P < 0.01) damage in the Ex vs. Con leg for both genders, which was assessed by using toluidine blue staining. The number of leukocyte common antigen-positive cells/mm2 tissue increased with exercise (P < 0.05), and men tended to show more in their Ex vs. Con leg compared with women (P = 0.052). Men had a greater total (Ex and Con legs) number of bcl-2-positive cells/mm2 tissue vs. women (P < 0.05). Atrophic fibers with homogeneous bcl-2-positive staining were seen only in men (n = 3). We conclude that muscle damage is similar between genders, yet the inflammatory response is attenuated in women vs. men. Finally, exercise may stimulate the expression of proteins involved in apoptosis in skeletal muscle.

Differences in height explain gender differences in the response to the oral glucose tolerance test - the AusDiab study

Aim To determine the extent of gender-related differences in the prevalence of glucose intolerance for the Australian population and whether body size may explain such differences.

Methods Cross-sectional data were collected from a national cohort of 11 247 Australians aged ≥ 25 years. Glucose tolerance status was assessed according to both fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and 2-h plasma glucose (2hPG) levels following a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). Anthropometric and glycated haemoglobin measurements were also made.

Results Undiagnosed diabetes and non-diabetic glucose abnormalities were more prevalent among men than women when based only on the FPG results (diabetes: men 2.2%, women 1.6%, P = 0.02; impaired fasting glycaemia: men 12.3%, women 6.6%, P < 0.001). In contrast 16.0% of women and 13.0% of men had a 2hPG abnormality (either diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance, P = 0.14). Women had a mean FPG 0.3 mmol/l lower than men (P < 0.001), but 2hPG 0.3 mmol/l higher (P = 0.002) and FPG-2hPG increment 0.5 mmol/l greater (P < 0.001). The gender difference in mean 2hPG and FPG-2hPG increment disappeared following adjustment for height. For both genders, those in the shortest height quartile had 2hPG levels 0.5 mmol/l higher than the tallest quartile, but height showed almost no relationship with the FPG.

Conclusions Men and women had different glycaemic profiles; women had higher mean 2hPG levels, despite lower fasting levels. It appeared that the higher 2hPG levels for women related to lesser height and may be a consequence of using a fixed glucose load in the OGTT, irrespective of body size.

Gender differences in the prevalence of impaired fasting glycaemia and impaired glucose tolerance in Mauritius. Does sex matter?

Objective: To examine gender differences in the characteristics and prevalence of various categories of glucose tolerance in a population study in Mauritius.

Research design and methods: In 1998, a community-based cross-sectional survey was conducted in Mauritius. Categories of glucose metabolism were determined in 5388 adults, with an oral glucose tolerance test given to those who did not have previously diagnosed diabetes (n = 4036). Other cardiovascular risk factors were assessed among those without known diabetes.

Results: For men and women the prevalence of diabetes (22.0 vs. 21.8%, respectively) and the prevalence of coexisting impaired fasting glucose (IFG) and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) (3.2 vs. 2.9%) were similar. However, men were twice as likely as women to have isolated IFG [5.1% (4.2–6.0) vs. 2.9% (2.3–3.5)], despite being younger, thinner and with lower plasma insulin but higher lipids. Conversely, the prevalence of isolated IGT was lower in men [9.0% (7.9–10.2) vs. 13.9% (12.6–15.1)]. Among non-diabetic individuals, fasting glucose was higher in men than women, whereas 2-h glucose was higher in women. In people without diabetes, women had significantly higher body mass index, beta cell function (HOMA-B), fasting and 2-h insulin than men and significantly lower waist-hip ratios, waist circumference, insulin sensitivity (HOMA-S) and triglycerides.

Conclusion: In Mauritius, the distribution of impaired glucose metabolism differs by sex. The observation that IFG is more prevalent in men and IGT more prevalent in women raises important questions about their underlying aetiology and the ability of the current glucose thresholds to equally identify men and women at high-risk of developing diabetes. IFG should be seen as a complimentary category of abnormal glucose tolerance, rather than a replacement for IGT.

Living autobiographically : how we create identity in narrative / Paul John Eakin

Preview of the article : Ever since the publication of Fictions in Autobiography in 1985, Paul John Eakin has been a major presence in the field of autobiography studies. As with his other monographs, Eakin’s latest work, Living Autobiographically: How We Create Identity in Narrative, brings together elegance and range, as well as clarity and conceptual complexity. Like his other works, too, Living Autobiographically covers a wide range of theoretical and autobiographical texts. While not indifferent to literary theory per se, Eakin (as has been apparent for some time) is profoundly stimulated by theory that goes beyond not only the literary but also the humanities. Most notable in this monograph is Eakin’s use of recent research in neurobiology. With regard to his choice of autobiographical texts for discussion, most are American, though Eakin does discuss the Australian writer David Malouf (a long-time favorite of Eakin’s), as well as the Norwegian autobiographical narratives analyzed in Marianne Gullestad’s Everyday Life Philosophers: Modernity, Morality, and Autobiography in Norway (1996). Eakin’s interest in Gullestad’s work, which is based on a project that elicited autobiographical narratives from “ordinary” individuals, shows that he is not solely concerned with so-called “literary” texts, something also seen in his discussion of the “Portraits of Grief ” series that appeared in the New York Times in the wake of 9/11.

Bringing together such disparate texts, auto/biographical procedures, and theoretical concerns is an ambitious enterprise. Most ambitious of all is that Living Autobiographically brings “culturalist” and biological frameworks together as a way of answering the question

Strategic concealment of sexual identity in an estrildid finch

One explanation for the evolution of sexual monomorphism is the sexual indistinguishability hypothesis, which argues that in group-living species individuals might benefit by concealing their sex to reduce sexual competition. We tested this hypothesis in long-tailed finches Poephila acuticauda. Males and females could not be reliably distinguished morphologically or by analysis of the reflectance spectra (300-700 nm) from the plumage and bill. Males seemed unable to distinguish the sex of an unfamiliar individual in the absence of behavioural cues; they were equally likely to court and copulate with unfamiliar males and females but rarely courted familiar males. Here we report the first experimental evidence that sexual monomorphism enables strategic concealment of sex. Males were more likely to reveal their sex when faced with a solitary unfamiliar individual than a group of unfamiliar individuals. When encountering an unfamiliar male that revealed his sex, subordinate males were more likely to conceal their sex than dominant males.

Computing in a social context : gender difference in participation

The thesis reviews the literature relating to girls and computing within a framework which is structured around three specific questions. First, are there differences between girls and boys in their participation in class computing activities and/or in non-class computing activities? Second, do these differences in participation in computing activities have broader implications which justify the growing concern about the under-representation of girls? Third, wahy are girls under-represented in these activities? Although the available literature is predominantly descriptive, the underlying implicit theoretical model is essentially a social learning model. Girl's differential participation is attributed to learned attitudes towards computing rathan to differences between girls and boys in general ability. These attitudes, which stress the masculine, mathematical, technological aspects of computing are developed through modelling, direct experience, intrinsic and extrinsic reinforcement and generalisation from pre-existing, attitudes to related curriculum areas. In the literature it is implicitly assumed that these attitudes underlie girl's decisions to self-select out of computing activities. In this thesis predictions from a social learning model are complemented by predictions derived from expectancy-value, cognitive dissonance and self-perception theories. These are tested in three separate studies. Study one provides data from a pretest-posttest study of 24 children in a year four class learning BASIC. It examines pre- and posttest differences between girls and boys in computing experience, knowledge and achievement as well as the factors relating to computing achievement. Study two uses a pretest-posttest control group design to study the gender differences in the impact of the introduction of Logo into years 1, 3, 5 and 7 in both a coeducational and single-sex setting using a sample of 222 children from three schools. Study three utilises a larger sample of 1176 students, drawn from three secondary schools and five primary schools, enabling an evaluation of gender differences in relation to a wide range of class computing experiences and in a broader range of school contexts. The overall results are consistent across the three studies, supporting the contention that social factors, rather than ability differences influence girls' participation and achievement in computing. The more global theoretical framework, drawing on social learning, expectancy-value, cognitive dissonance and self-perception theories, provides a more adequate explanation of gender differences in participation than does any one of these models.

Narrativization of actuality : convergence of form and genre in film and television

The thesis concerns the treatment of actuality in film and television, particularly the narrativization of actuality images, and the context of their placement within audio/visual texts. Several instances of the convergence of media form and genre are analyzed, and the conventions of classificatory systems and boundaries that pertain to film and television representations are reconsidered in light of changes in the conventions of genre. The distinction between, and convergence of fictional and non-fictional conventions of narrative are therefore central to the thesis, as are the related issues of viewer response, the nature of subjectivity in the viewer, the connectivity of text and culture, and the relations of actuality to the text. The thesis traces the narrativization of actuality through textual, formal and genre boundaries, adopting a ‘line of flight or deterritorialization’ that enables the thesis to ‘change in nature and connect with other multiplicities.’This line of flight passes through the conventional separation of genre groupings and texts, and, similarly, has been applied in the thesis as a rationale for the diminution of theoretical boundaries. A multiperpectival approach is applied to the permeability of, or transcendent relations of the analysis to the boundaries between genres, between texts and culture, and between actuality and virtual representation. In the thesis there is also a theoretical deterritorialization that consents to a pluralism of theory, which is an approach demonstrated by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. The model of multi-perspectivalism adopted in the thesis engages in establishing connections and similarities between theories, rather than emphasizing contradictory and exclusive practices. The Foucauldian notion of the rules of formation in discourse, Nichols’ theories of documentary representation of reality, Bordwell’s schematic interpretation, and several other positions are critiqued, as the line of flight embarked upon in the thesis intersects with, and passes through both textual and theoretical boundaries. The thesis consists of two parts: firstly, a location of theoretical perspective, in which the issues of theory pertaining to actuality and narrative are explicated, and the methodological approach of the thesis is defined. The second part commences with an analysis of the most familiar instances of actuality in film and television, with particular attention to documentary forms. It then engages in the analysis of films that represent actuality but which, in the process of narrativization, display a convergence of genre conventions. The films selected for analysis include Steven Speilberg's Schindler's List, (1993) Oliver Stone's JFK, (1991) and Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump, (1994) and Contact, (1996). Hence the thesis is concerned with the application of a pluralist theoretical approach, with, however, an emphasis on the Deleuzo-Guattarian notions of rhizome and assemblage. Within this theoretical frame, the connections between actuality and the audio/visual text are explicated, and the formation of text as ‘a rhizome with the world’, is analyzed across a range of examples.

National identity in Timor-Leste : a brief comparative study

The papers in this eduted and refereed volume were first presented at the Timor-Leste Studies Association's Understanding Timor-Leste conference (UNTL, Dili, 2-3 July 2009). Papers in the collection are divided into four language sections (Tetum-Dili, Portuguese, English and Bahasa Indonesia), along with a special section on Adult and Popular education.