Difference Blindness vs. Bias Awareness: Why Law Firms with the Best of Intentions Have Failed to Create Diverse Partnerships

This Article uses the example of BigLaw firms to explore the challenges that many elite organizations face in providing equal opportunity to their workers. Despite good intentions and the investment of significant resources, large law firms have been consistently unable to deliver diverse partnership structures - especially in more senior positions of power. Building on implicit and institutional bias scholarship and on successful approaches described in the organizational behavior literature, we argue that a significant barrier to systemic diversity at the law firm partnership level has been, paradoxically, the insistence on difference blindness standards that seek to evaluate each person on their individual merit. While powerful in dismantling intentional discrimination, these standards rely on an assumption that lawyers are, and have the power to act as, atomistic individuals - a dangerous assumption that has been disproven consistently by the literature establishing the continuing and powerful influence of implicit and institutional bias. Accordingly, difference blindness, which holds all lawyers accountable to seemingly neutral standards, disproportionately disadvantages diverse populations and normalizes the dominance of certain actors - here, white men - by creating the illusion that success or failure depends upon individual rather than structural constraints. In contrast, we argue that a bias awareness approach that encourages identity awareness and a relational framework is a more promising way to promote equality, equity, and inclusion.

Development of a Household Pharmaceutical Waste Collection Program for Atlanta, Georgia: An Analysis of Risk Factors and Public Awareness with a Comprehensive Collection Plan

Decades of mixed messages from three federal agencies left many Americans unaware of the hazards associated with the indiscriminate disposal of unwanted or expired medicines. For this Capstone project, a systematic review of state and federal regulations was undertaken to determine how these laws obstruct household pharmaceutical waste collection. In addition, a survey of 654 Atlanta residents was conducted to evaluate unwanted medicine disposal habits, awareness of pharmaceutical compounds being detected in drinking water, surface, and ground waters, and willingness to participate in a household pharmaceutical waste collection program. Survey responses were tabulated to provide overall results and by age group, gender, and race. A household pharmaceutical waste collection plan was developed for the city and included as an appendix.

Mapping the awareness of inequalities in health programs in Spanish communities: moving forward together

The aim of this study is to map the awareness of gender, socioeconomic, immigrant and ethnic health inequalities in health at schools, maternal health and traffic injury health prevention programs. The study was conducted in the 19 health descentralized areas in Spain, 17 autonomous community (ACs) and the 2 autonomous cities (ACities). The data were collected from May 2008 to January 2009. The unit of analysis was the collection of policy documents setting out the programs mentioned above and the related support material in each AC. A reading guide was used to analyze the awareness of inequalities. With regard to health at schools, 2 of 10 programs show a high awareness of inequalities and include many specific proposals to be implemented at the local level. Regarding maternal health, 13 ACs have prepared support material with high awareness of inequalities to be implemented. A traffic injury program has been created in two ACs. We map the whole situation in Spain regarding the health programs that we have used as examples and their awareness of inequalities. We can conclude that there are differences between the regions studied in Spain and in general, the awareness of inequalities is low.

What makes an ad enjoyable? Analysing advertising appeals as viewed by Portuguese consumers

Nowadays, consumers are faced with a variety of media that convey myriad advertising messages, which struggle amidst a highly competitive environment, with a view to drawing the viewers’ attention, raising awareness, creating interest and inspiring desire and, ultimately, leading to the purchase of the product/service at stake. For this, advertising professionals deliberately intertwine their selling arguments with emotionally-charged creative concepts. It is the aim of this study to analyse the impact of the main creative appeals and to identify groups of consumers based on their attitudes towards them. We have undertaken a quantitative study, by means of a survey administered to a convenience sample with a list of creative appeals, which had to be classified by the respondents according to their attitudes. Globally speaking, the preferred appeals were humour, music and animation. Nonetheless, it was possible to divide the respondents into three groups. ‘Advertising fans’, the ‘rationally-minded’ and the ‘emotionally-minded’. This study presents some limitations, especially as to the sample used. Apart from the reduced number of respondents and lack of more widespread geographic reach, some academic qualifications were underrepresented. The results of this study offer some avenues to be explored by marketing and advertising professionals when it comes to deciding on the best creative approach to select for their advertising campaigns. Besides, this study paves the way to the development of future research on the issue of advertising appeals and its relationship with the psychographic characteristics of consumers.

Open business intelligence: on the importance of data quality awareness in user-friendly data mining

Citizens demand more and more data for making decisions in their daily life. Therefore, mechanisms that allow citizens to understand and analyze linked open data (LOD) in a user-friendly manner are highly required. To this aim, the concept of Open Business Intelligence (OpenBI) is introduced in this position paper. OpenBI facilitates non-expert users to (i) analyze and visualize LOD, thus generating actionable information by means of reporting, OLAP analysis, dashboards or data mining; and to (ii) share the new acquired information as LOD to be reused by anyone. One of the most challenging issues of OpenBI is related to data mining, since non-experts (as citizens) need guidance during preprocessing and application of mining algorithms due to the complexity of the mining process and the low quality of the data sources. This is even worst when dealing with LOD, not only because of the different kind of links among data, but also because of its high dimensionality. As a consequence, in this position paper we advocate that data mining for OpenBI requires data quality-aware mechanisms for guiding non-expert users in obtaining and sharing the most reliable knowledge from the available LOD.

Awareness of L1 and L2 word-formation mechanisms for the development of a more autonomous L2 learner

Unlike traditional approaches, new communicative trends disregard the role of word-formation mechanisms. They tend to focus on syntax and/or vocabulary without analyzing the mechanisms involved in the creation of lexical items. In this paper, based on the analysis of the use of prefixes by L2 learners in oral and written productions, as provided by the SULEC, we emphasize the advantages that word-formation awareness and knowledge may have for the learners in terms of production, creativity, understanding, autonomy, and proficiency. Through the teaching of word-formation learners may more easily decipher, decode and/or encode messages, create words they have never seen before, etc.

Acciones públicas de sensibilización de género: el esfuerzo de la administración regional y local en comunicación publicitaria (1999-2007)

El artículo analiza las iniciativas de comunicación relacionadas con la igualdad de oportunidades entre mujeres y hombres. El objetivo es analizar con enfoque de género las acciones realizadas por parte de las instituciones públicas regionales y locales para sensibilizar y promover la conciliación entre la vida familiar y laboral de seis comunidades autónomas (Andalucía, Cataluña, Comunidad Valenciana, Galicia, Madrid y País Vasco) y de sus capitales, desde 1999 (cuando se aprueba la ley de conciliación) hasta 2007 (se aprueba la ley de igualdad). La información sobre publicidad convencional fue proporcionada por Infoadex. Para la recogida de otro tipo de iniciativas a través de medios menos convencionales se acudió a cuatro fuentes institucionales: 1) Ayuntamientos de las capitales, como fuente estrictamente local, 2) Diputaciones de la capital de la Comunidad Autónoma, como fuente provincial, 3) Direcciones Generales de la Mujer o instituciones análogas como fuente de información a nivel regional o autonómico y, por último, 4) otras concejalías vinculadas al tema de la corresponsabilidad, cuyo radio de acción también es autonómico. Los resultados, aunque con diferencias entre regiones, reflejan carencias en la cobertura de las acciones que llevan a cuestionar la falta de estrategia política en términos de comunicación, pese a la introducción sistemática de estos objetivos en la agenda internacional (ONU y UE) y del gobierno español. En consecuencia, las campañas publicitarias e iniciativas recogidas contribuyen a la visibilización del problema y al empoderamiento, pero no tanto al objetivo de la paridad.

Visibilidad de la cadena de frío vacunal en España

La implementación de la cadena de frío vacunal en España ha pasado por distintas etapas durante los últimos cincuenta años. Los textos en que aparece citada desde las primeras campañas de vacunación contra la poliomielitis hasta mediados de los años ochenta muestran una organización rudimentaria, voluntarista y con pocos recursos. En 1990 se inicia una etapa de sensibilización por parte de las autoridades sanitarias centrales y autonómicas que comienzan a prestar mayor atención hacia los recursos materiales precisos. Finalmente, un tercer periodo que abarca los últimos veinte años supone la modernización de los recursos, la adopción de protocolos, la formación de los sanitarios implicados en el programa de inmunización, la aplicación de la logística y la difusión del conocimiento. Se ha efectuado una revisión de los diferentes estudios y publicaciones que han contribuido a dar una aceptable visibilidad a la cadena de frío, columna vertebral de los programas vacunales, relegada a menudo al campo de los técnicos y precisada de una continua puesta al día de los sanitarios que administran las vacunas.

A proposal for teaching with authentic texts in order to develop social awareness in a language subject in tertiary education

The University of the 21st century has to establish links with society and prepare students for the demands of the working world. Therefore, this article is a contribution to the integral preparation of university students by proposing the use of authentic texts with social content in English lessons so that students acquire emotional and social competencies while still learning content. This article will explain how the choice of texts on global issues such as racism and gender helps students to develop skills such as social awareness and critical thinking to deepen their understanding of discrimination, injustice or gender differences in both oral and written activities. A proposal will be presented which involves using the inauguration speech from Mandela's presidency and texts with photographs of women so that students analyse them whilst utilising linguistic tools that allow them to explore a text's social dimension.

Percepciones de los hombres sobre las complicaciones asociadas a la mutilación genital femenina

Objetivo: Explorar el conocimiento de los hombres procedentes de países donde se realiza la mutilación genital femenina sobre las consecuencias negativas en la salud de las mujeres afectadas. Métodos: Metodología cualitativa con enfoque etnometodológico, a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas individuales y grupales a 25 hombres, en relación con la mutilación genital femenina, seleccionados mediante triple muestreo. Se entregó una carta de presentación del estudio a los participantes y la declaración del consentimiento informado, y se les solicitó permiso para grabar la entrevista en audio. El análisis de los datos se realizó con el software informático Atlas. Ti7. Resultados: Los participantes contrarios al corte son conscientes de la diversidad de complicaciones físicas, obstétricas, psicológicas, sobre la sexualidad y sociales en las mujeres sometidas a mutilación. Sin embargo, los hombres que tienen un posicionamiento favorable muestran en general un desconocimiento de los problemas secundarios a esta práctica. Conclusiones: Los participantes procedentes de países donde se realiza la mutilación genital femenina, contrarios a mantener esta práctica, muestran un mayor conocimiento de las consecuencias negativas que los que se manifiestan a favor. El diseño de herramientas y programas de sensibilización destinados a la lucha contra la mutilación genital femenina debe visibilizar las complicaciones sobre la salud de las mujeres y las niñas, e incluir intervenciones familiares que impliquen a los hombres en el proceso de erradicación de esta práctica.

Reminiscences, 1755-1762: including the Louisburg and Quebec campaigns, manuscript, 1792

Autograph diary, in the hand of British officer Lt. Governor Henry Hamilton, written in Bermuda.