Effects of retirement on cognitive function: A gender and international perspecive

Background: As the global population is ageing, studying cognitive impairments including dementia, one of the leading causes of disability in old age worldwide, is of fundamental importance to public health. As a major transition in older age, a focus on the complex impacts of the duration, timing, and voluntariness of retirement on health is important for policy changes in the future. Longer retirement periods, as well as leaving the workforce early, have been associated with poorer health, including reduced cognitive functioning. These associations are hypothesized to differ based on gender, as well as on pre-retirement educational and occupational experiences, and on post-retirement social factors and health conditions. Methods: A cross-sectional study is conducted to determine the relationship between duration and timing of retirement and cognitive function, using data from the five sites of International Mobility in Aging Study (IMIAS). Cognitive function is assessed using the Leganes Cognitive Test (LCT) scores in 2012. Data are analyzed using multiple linear regressions. Analyses are also done by site/region separately (Canada, Latin America, and Albania). Robustness checks are done with an analysis of cognitive change from 2012 to 2014, the effect of voluntariness of retirement on cognitive function. An instrumental variable (IV) approach is also applied to the cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses as a robustness check to address the potential endogeneity of the retirement variable. Results: Descriptive statistics highlight differences between men and women, as well as between sites. In linear regression analysis, there was no relationship between timing or duration of retirement and cognitive function in 2012, when adjusting for site/region. There was no association between retirement characteristics and cognitive function in site/region/stratified analyses. In IV analysis, longer retirement and on time or late retirement was associated with lower cognitive function among men. In IV analysis, there is no relationship between retirement characteristics and cognitive function among women. Conclusions: While results of the thesis suggest a negative effect of retirement on cognitive function, especially among men, the relationship remains uncertain. A lack of power results in the inability to draw conclusions for site/region-specific analysis and site-adjusted analysis in both linear and IV regressions.

EXAMINING HOW SAME-GENDER AND MIXED-GENDER COUPLES NAVIGATE SEXUAL ISSUES IN THEIR RELATIONSHIPS

Sexual scripts—the definitions and expectations that individuals hold for sexual interactions—are thought to play an important role in the maintenance of sexual well-being. Sexual scripts can be rigid or flexible, and they can be concordant or discordant between members of a couple. Sex therapists support sexual script flexibility for maintaining sexual and relationship satisfaction when couples are navigating sexual issues. However, empirical research examining the role of sexual script flexibility and the degree of script concordance/discordance in couples’ sexual well-being has been limited, due in part to the limited measures available. Furthermore, within the existing research, there has been an unfortunate tendency to exclude individuals in same-gender relationships – perpetuating the long-standing knowledge gap in the literature on positive sexuality in diverse relationships. To address these gaps in the literature, we conducted a series of online studies that recruited individuals in diverse relationships. A measure of individual sexual script flexibility in response to sexual issues was developed (Chapter 2); in addition, the structure of an existing measure assessing couple sexual scripts in response to a sexual issue was evaluated (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 examined how individuals in diverse relationships compared on measures of individual sexual script flexibility and on couple sexual scripts. Findings suggest that there are more similarities than differences across diverse couples. Chapter 5 explored how flexibility in an individual’s approach to sexual issues relates to sexual well-being, specifically by assessing sexual communication and partner responses as mediators. Results suggest that individual sexual script flexibility relates to sexual well-being through reciprocal partner processes. Collectively, this research program suggests that more similarities than differences exist between individuals in same- and mixed-gender relationships, and that partners are important to consider in the relationship between individual sexual script flexibility and sexual well-being. These findings have implications for sex and couple therapy; these results emphasize the importance of interventions that target both members of the couple, and further our understanding of sexuality in same- and mixed-gender relationships.

'I am not an Honourable Lady': gender and language in the National Assembly for Wales

Women have been historically underrepresented in political institutions and it has been claimed that it is difficult for women to succeed in the masculinist cultures that exist in political contexts. The ‘new’ devolved institutions of the UK offer opportunities to investigate gender inequality in political contexts which have a greater proportion of women members; that have included women from their inception; and that have been designed with egalitarian issues to the fore. Here, ethnographic and discourse analytic data is used to assess a senior woman’s performance in the National Assembly for Wales; to explore politicians’ appraisal of this performance; and to analyse the breakdown of the debate floor in terms of ‘rule-breaking’ activities such as barracking. In this Community of Practice the individual’s performance draws upon communicative styles that are both stereotypically masculine (adversarial) and feminine (consensual), which can be viewed as an indication of the speaker’s competence. However, this is undermined by the speaker’s failure to adopt the correct linguistic practices for this CoP which leads to the breakdown of the formal debate discourse. Assembly Members appraise this failure negatively while also drawing upon stereotypical notions of gendered communicative norms and wider discourses of gender differentiation.

Gender and politics in the devolved assemblies

The devolution of powers from Westminster to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales led to much speculation about the creation of a new political era that would herald new ways of 'doing politics'. It was thought that the new institutions would provide a more inclusive, less combative culture that aimed to include a greater proportion of women members. With the 'new' institutions now over ten years old, linguistic research into the participation of men and women on the debate floor shows that they participate more equally and that improvements have been made in relation to the extent that women feel included. However, the devolved institutions retain some of the adversarial features associated with Westminster, and women are still subject to the burden of gendered stereotypical judgements and expectations that may affect their performance and inclusion within them.

An ethnographic investigation into gender and language in the Northern Ireland Assembly

This paper investigates the extent to which the negative evaluation of one of the women Ministers in the Northern Ireland Assembly can be attributed to gender. Interviews with politicians as well as the Minister herself illuminate this discussion by identifying the ‘gendered discourses’ that are drawn upon when describing the Minister’s communicative style in debates. Close analyses of transcripts of debates offer a description of some elements of this style, and find that while the Minister is confrontational in debates and ‘stands her ground’, she does not take part in illegal interventions that disrupt the debate floor and are characteristic of the Assembly as a whole. Although the construction of the Minister’s unpopularity can be attributed to a complex interplay of factors, it can be concluded that it is partly the way she draws on gendered linguistic resources that leads her to be negatively judged by her peers.

A view, different proposals: Concept of gender and public policy

This article analyzes the meaning of “gender” as a category of analysis in public policy. The concept has been transferred from the feminist theories and this has meant that the United Nations and European Union have incorporated the inequality as a structural inequality and an issue justice. So, the feminist demands enter the political agenda as an integral project which is characterized by the adoption of the gender perspective and its application from a transversal methodology (“gender mainstreaming”). In this sense, the "gender ideology" is a new paradigm against the “patriarchal ideology”. Now, political actions should be articulated in a double movement of correction and promotion to achieve real equality in societies more democratic and ultimately more just.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis as a Tool for Concept Clarification, Typology Building, and Contextualized Comparisons in Gender and Feminist Research

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a method for the systematic analysis of cases. A holistic view of cases and an approach to causality emphasizing complexity are some of its core features. Over the last decades, QCA has found application in many fields of the social sciences. In spite of this, its use in feminist research has been slower, and only recently QCA has been applied to topics related to social care, the political representation of women, and reproductive politics. In spite of the comparative turn in feminist studies, researchers still privilege qualitative methods, in particular case studies, and are often skeptical of quantitative techniques (Spierings 2012). These studies show that the meaning and measurement of many gender concepts differ across countries and that the factors leading to feminist success and failure are context specific. However, case study analyses struggle to systematically account for the ways in which these forces operate in different locations.

Faulkner revisited : narrating property, race, gender and history in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day

My thesis explores the formation of the subject in the novels of Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. I attach the concept of property in terms of how male protagonists are obsessed with materialistic ownership and with the subordination of women who, as properties, consolidate their manhood. The three novelists despite their racial, gendered, and literary differences share the view that identity and truth are mere social and cultural constructs. I incorporate the work of Judith Butler and other poststructuralist figures, who see identity as a matter of performance rather than a natural entity. My thesis explores the theme of freedom, which I attached to the ways characters use their bodies either to confine or to emancipate themselves from the restricting world of race, class, and gender. The three novelists deconstruct any system of belief that promulgates the objectivity of truth in historical documents. History in the three novels, as with the protagonists, perception of identity, remains a social construct laden with distortions to serve particular political or ideological agendas. My thesis gives voice to African American female characters who are associated with love and racial and gender resistance. They become the reservoirs of the African American legacy in terms of their association with the oral and intuitionist mode of knowing, which subverts the male characters’ obsession with property and with the mainstream empiricist world. In this dissertation, I use the concept of hybridity as a literary and theoretical devise that African-American writers employ. In effect, I embark on the postcolonial studies of Henry Louise Gates, Paul Gilroy, W. E. B Du Bois, James Clifford, and Arjun Appadurai in order to reflect upon the fluidity of Morrison’s and Naylor’s works. I show how these two novelists subvert Faulkner’s essentialist perception of truth, and of racial and gendered identity. They associate the myth of the Flying African with the notion of hybridity by making their male protagonists criss-cross Northern and Southern regions. I refer to Mae Gwendolyn Henderson’s article on “Speaking in Tongues” in my analysis of how Naylor subverts the patriarchal text of both Faulkner and Morrison in embarking on a more feminine version of the flying African, which she relates to an ex-slave, Sapphira Wade, a volatile female character who resists fixed claim over her story and identity. In dealing with the concept of hybridity, I show that Naylor rewrites both authors’ South by making Willow Springs a more fluid space, an assumption that unsettles the scores of critics who associate the island with authenticity and exclusive rootedness.

Gender and age differences in the sleep habits : a cross-sectional study in adolescents

Objectives: Analyze gender and age differences in sleep habits in a sample of adolescents. Design: A cross-sectional study. Setting: Public schools of Viseu, Portugal. Participants: Sample consisted of 7534 students, aged 11-20 years (mean age: 14.96 ± 1.81 years; 53.6% girls). Measurements: Data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire, answered in class and consists of questions to assess insomnia (DSM-IV criteria), sleep patterns, socio-demographic and daily habit variables. Results: Mean sleep duration in this sample was 8.02 ± 1.13 h. Age interfered with sleep duration that decreased with the increasing of age, from 8.45 ± 1.14 h among 11/12 years old to 7.37 ± 1.04 h for ages ≥ 17 years old. Insomnia and symptoms of insomnia were associated with gender and with increasing of age. Nearly 80% of students reported daytime tiredness, 66.7% sleepiness during the day; 56.1% during classes and 47.6% reported waking up with headaches, all variables more prevalent among girls and older adolescents. Conclusions: The sleep problems and variables related to sleep have become more frequent among girls and with increasing age. We recommend that the promotion of sleep hygiene and prevention of the consequences should be encouraged in adolescents and their families, especially among the female gender and older adolescents.

Gender and diversity in the workplace : Introduction to the special issue

Research on gender and diversity has taken longer than usual to develop in Portuguese academia. Different explanations can be provided for the apparent lack of interest in these matters. Comparative cultural studies have depicted Portuguese culture as scoring high on femininity (Hofstede, 1991). «Femininity pertains to societies in which social gender roles overlap» (p. 82) and it may have an influence on people’s attitudes towards ‘the other’ and the role of men and women in the organisation, and in shaping the individual’s behaviour and attitudes towards equality and diversity. On the other hand, Portuguese society likes to portray itself as a homogenous society (Cabral-Cardoso, 2002). Taken together, these factors may partly explain why gender and diversity issues have failed to make it to the top of research agendas in Portuguese academia. The limited number of papers included in this special issue and focusing on the Portuguese context still reflects that state of affairs.

Test Anxiety, Coping, Gender and Academic Performance in English Exams: A Study of Finnish Upper Secondary School Students

In this MA thesis, test anxiety related to English exams among Finnish upper secondary school students was studied. In addition, the ways students try to cope with test anxiety were investigated. The purpose of the study was to investigate gender differences in test anxiety, the effects of test anxiety on academic performance and relationships between test anxiety, academic performance and coping strategies. Test anxiety and coping strategies were analysed as scores of questionnaire responses. Coping strategies comprised of three categories – task-orientation and preparation, seeking social support and avoidance. Academic performance was analysed as teacher ratings of general performance in English exams. In total 67 subjects were studied. The subjects were Finnish general upper secondary school students. The data were collected by using online questionnaires. This data were mainly quantitative, but also qualitative elements were included. The quantitative data were analysed by using statistical methods. The results showed that females experienced statistically significantly more test anxiety than males. In addition, a statistically significant correlation was found between test anxiety levels and academic performance ratings of the subjects: the higher the test anxiety score, the lower the academic performance rating. A meaningful correlation was found between test anxiety and seeking social support as a coping strategy: a higher test anxiety score was related to using social support as a coping strategy. However, no relationships were found between academic performance and the three coping strategies when quantitative and qualitative data were analysed. Therefore, different coping strategies per se did not seem to be related to academic performance, but instead it was assumed that the effectiveness of coping strategies is dependent on individual differences. In order to obtain more generalisable results and to gain more understanding of test anxiety and coping with it, a larger number of subjects form different areas of Finland and of different ages could be examined in future studies. Moreover, cross-national and cross-cultural studies could provide valuable information. As a practical recommendation for educational purposes, the results of this study indicated that a more individualised approach is needed.