Navigating equality:religious young women's perceptions of gender and sexuality equality

Equality has become an important concept within secular-liberal societies (Perrons 2005), with white, secular Western women interpellated as quintessentially embodying this equality (Gill and Scharff 2011; McRobbie 2011; Nayak and Kehily 2008). For religious organizations, the interacting spaces of gender and sexuality constitute two of the most contested terrains in rights-giving, and many religions are seen as less progressive regarding equality vis-à-vis other social institutions (Plummer 2003; Tosh and Keenan 2003; Weeks2007). Young religious women have to articulate how they fit into the contours of secular-liberal equality norms as religious subjects. This chapter will focus on how young religious women living in the UK made sense of equality in the context of their religion, focusing on attitudes to gender equality and sexuality equality.

Coping with uncertainty:gender and leadership identities in UK corporate life

Within corporate contexts, senior leaders must construct credible leadership identities if they are to demonstrate effectiveness in achieving business goals. This is a particular challenge for women, who have struggled historically to gain senior leadership positions. This chapter explores the identity struggles experienced by Karen, a woman Human Resources director within a management meeting as she delivers bad news about ‘company restructuring’ to her colleagues. Using Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA), I show how this leader struggles to maintain a professionally competent identity as she negotiates the bad news. The analysis reveals that despite the demands of her role, Karen demonstrates extraordinary linguistic competence in managing her team within a turbulent business world that continues to remain inhospitable to female leaders.

Gender and size diversity in top management team: evidence from Portugal

In recent years the Top Management Team (TMT) in the companies has been extensively studied and discussed by many researchers (Campbell & Mínguez-Vera, 2008; Erhardt et al, 2003; Haleblian & Finkelstein, 1993; Amason & Spienza, 1997). Thus, this theme has undergone a major evolution as well as it has been diversified progressively. Combined with the Upper Echelons Theory, it was established a new dimension of diversity of the Top Management Team that addresses, for example, the diversity of gender and the size of the team. There are several countries that have established laws and regulatory requirements in order to increase the presence of women in the business environment such as Norway, Spain, France, Holland and Italy. However, the female gender is far from equal in terms of representativeness (Torchia et al., 2011), but there are noteworthy developments yearly. It is also noticeable that the size of Top Management Teams has also increased, which can provide advantages for the company (Heleblian & Finkelstein, 1993). In the course of this dissertation it was studied the female gender ratio and the size of the Top Management Team with the profitability (ROA – Return On Assets) of 41 Portuguese companies listed on the Euronext Lisbon between 2011 - 2015. Initially, the Spearman test was applied in order to verify the correlations between the variables in study. It was created a linear regression that relates the number of women (independent variable) and ROA (dependent variable). The Mann-Whitney test was used to verify the ROA behaviour between companies with no women in TMT and companies with women in TMT. After analysis, the results demonstrated that there was a positive relationship between the number of women with ROA. Also companies that have women in TMT have better performance compared to companies with no women in the Top Management Team. As far as the size of the team is concerned, it positively influences the economic profitability, in a meaningful way.

"Ancestry, gender and language - The role of culture in economic development"

This thesis is a combination of research questions in development economics and economics of culture, with an emphasis on the role of ancestry, gender and language policies in shaping inequality of opportunities and socio-economic outcomes across different segments of a society. The first chapter shows both theoretically and empirically that heterogeneity in risk attitudes can be traced to the ethnic origins and ancestral way of living. In particular, I construct a measure of historical nomadism at the ethnicity level and link it to contemporary individual-level data on various proxies of risk attitudes. I exploit exogenous variation in biodiversity to build a novel instrument for nomadism: distance to domestication points. I find that descendants of ethnic groups that historically practiced nomadism (i) are more willing to take risks, (ii) value security less, and (iii) have riskier health behavior. The second chapter evaluates the nature of a trade-off between the advantages of female labor participation and the positive effects of female education. This work exploits a triple difference identification strategy relying on exogenous spike in cotton price and spatial variation in suitability for cotton, and split sample analyses based on the exogenous allocation of land contracts. Results show that gender differences in parental investments in patriarchal societies can be reinforced by the type of agricultural activity, while positive economic shocks may further exacerbate this bias, additionally crowding out higher possibilities to invest in female education. The third chapter brings novel evidence of the role of the language policy in building national sentiments, affecting educational and occupational choices. Here I focus on the case of Uzbekistan and estimate the effects of exposure to the Latin alphabet on informational literacy, education and career choices. I show that alphabet change affects people's informational literacy and the formation of certain educational and labour market trends.

Mitochondrial Inheritance, Mito-nuclear Coevolution, and Sex-associated Genes in Bivalve Molluscs: Transcriptomics and Molecular Evolution

Bivalvia represents an ancient taxon including around 25,000 living species that have adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions, and show a great diversity in body size, shell shapes, and anatomic structure. Bivalves are characterized by highly variable genome sizes and extremely high levels of heterozygosity, which obstacle complete and accurate genome assemblies and hinder further genomic studies. Moreover, some bivalve species presented a stable evolutionary exception to the strictly maternal inheritance of mitochondria, namely doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI), making these species a precious model to study mitochondrial biology. During my PhD, I focused on a DUI species, the Manila clam Ruditapes philippinarum, and my work was two-folded. First, taking advantage of a newly assembled draft genome and a large RNA-seq dataset from different tissues of both sexes, I investigated 1) the role of gene expression and alternative splicing in tissue differentiation; 2) the relationship across tissue specificity, regulatory network connectivity, and sequence evolution; 3) sexual contrasting genetic markers potentially associated with sexual differentiation. The detailed information for this part is in Chapter 2. Second, using the same RNA-seq data, I investigated how nuclear oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) genes coordinate with two divergent mitochondrial genomes in DUI species (mito-nuclear coordination and coevolution). To address this question, I compared transcription, polymorphism, and synonymous codon usage in the mitochondrial and nuclear OXPHOS genes of R. philippinarum in Chapter 3. To my knowledge, this thesis represents the first study exploring the role of alternative splicing in tissue differentiation, and the first study analyzing both transcriptional regulation and sequence evolution to investigate the coordination of OXPHOS genes in bivalves.

Scientia feminae, scientia universalis?

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

The empire strikes back: Die Postkoloniale Indische Literatur von Aussen Nach Innen

The article, which is divided into five sections, the Indian-born author of German language attempts to illustrate/illuminate the particular hurdles to determining this subject as a genre. The works discussed by male and female authors vary tremndously one from another both in theme and in style. Among them are novels and stories in traditional narrative style by Naipaul, Ghosh, Lahiri… primarily grouped by major themes of immigration. At the same time that authors such as Rushdie, Roy, Tharoor... have been endeavoring to expand the vocabulary and conventions of the English language and to further modern narrative technique. Not only is the complex Indian subcontinent and its positive and negative realities portrayed and redefined, but as a parallel occurrence, rave stories and pop novels are being written by Rushdie and Kureishi. One must note here that English is not the mother tongue of any of these writers. The English language is used as an instrument of literary and artistic expression. This essay also expounds on examples of how “Indian Writing in English” differentiates itself clearly from “The Indian Romanticism” of European literature. The postcolonial writers point an admonishing finger to the wounds of India and they ruthlessly mock the inhumane regimes of Mrs. Thatcher and of Mr. Bush. One segment is devoted to the bizarre portrayal of love, gender and sex relations that makes the reading of the books in question vexing.

A (des)construção da noção de gênero nos contos de Katherine Mansfield

Pós-graduação em Letras - FCLAS

Sex steroids and gender differences in nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To review and summarize current knowledge on gender differences and sex steroid hormones in nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer. RECENT FINDINGS: Beyond the proven role of gender as a risk factor for the development of bladder cancer, recent studies indicate that women present with more advanced bladder cancer tumor stages than men, which may be due to differences in both bladder cancer care and biology. In addition, female gender has been identified as an independent prognostic factor for both recurrence and progression and may be associated with worse response to Bacillus Calmette-Guérin instillation therapy. Overall, sex steroid hormones and their receptors impact bladder carcinogenesis, recurrence and progression. Basic and transitional research evidence suggests that estrogens may initially protect against bladder cancer development, but later promote bladder cancer progression. Androgens, in contrast, seem to initiate and drive bladder cancer with its receptor playing a central role. Promising novel research shows a potential role of sex steroid hormones as therapeutic targets. SUMMARY: Whereas men are more likely to develop bladder cancer, women present generally with more advanced disease and have worse oncologic outcomes even after adjusting for tumor stage. Sex steroid hormones and their receptors play an active role in bladder cancer development and progression and represent attractive therapeutic targets for gender-specific care.

Sex/gender differences and autism: setting the scene for future research

Objective The relationship between sex/gender differences and autism has attracted a variety of research ranging from clinical, neurobiological to etiological, stimulated by the male bias in autism prevalence. Findings are complex and do not always relate to each other in a straightforward manner. Distinct but interlinked questions on the relationship between sex/gender differences and autism remain under addressed. To better understand the implications from existing research and to help design future studies, we propose a four-level conceptual framework to clarify the embedded themes. Method We searched PubMed for publications before September 2014 using search terms “‘sex OR gender OR females’ AND autism.” 1,906 citations were screened for relevance, along with publications identified via additional literature reviews, resulting in 329 reports that were reviewed. Results Level 1 “Nosological and diagnostic challenges” concerns the question “How should autism be defined and diagnosed in males and females?” Level 2 “Sex/gender-independent and sex/gender-dependent characteristics” addresses the question “What are the similarities and differences between males and females with autism?” Level 3 “General models of etiology: liability and threshold” asks the question “How is the liability for developing autism linked to sex/gender?” Level 4 “Specific etiological-developmental mechanisms” focuses on the question “What etiological-developmental mechanisms of autism are implicated by sex/gender and/or sexual/gender differentiation?” Conclusions Using this conceptual framework, findings can be more clearly summarized, and the implications of the links between findings from different levels can become clearer. Based on this four-level framework, we suggest future research directions, methodology, and specific topics in sex/gender differences and autism.

Perspectives on gender, migration and transnational work: joint work of social reproduction and care in Southern Europe

This paper presents the "state of the art" and some of the main issues discussed in relation to the topic of transnational migration and reproductive work in southern Europe. We start doing a genealogy of the complex theoretical development leading to the consolidation of the research program, linking consideration of gender with transnational migration and transformation of work and ways of survival, thus making the production aspects as reproductive, in a context of globalization. The analysis of the process of multiscale reconfiguration of social reproduction and care, with particular attention to its present global dimension is presented, pointing to the turning point of this line of research that would have taken place with the beginning of this century, with the rise notions such as "global care chains" (Hochschild, 2001), or "care drain" (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2013). Also, the role of this new agency, now composed in many cases women who migrate to other countries or continents, precisely to address these reproductive activities, is recognized. Finally, reference is made to some of the new conceptual and theoretical developments in this area.