Barriers to equality: men's and women's attitudes to workplace entitlements in Australia

This paper examines attitudes to workplace entitlements, such as parental leave and flexible work hours. Family friendly policies such as leave to care for children have implications for feminist debates about sameness versus difference and the extent to which such policies will lead to greater equality between men and women, or alternatively, further entrench existing gender divisions of labour: Using data from a recent national survey in Australia, the paper shows that while the Australian workforce is generally in favour of workplace entitlements, women are generally more supportive of these kinds of benefits than men. Surprisingly, most respondents are more supportive of unpaid rather than paid parental leave. The results also show that the most important determinants of support for work entitlements are a combination of the extent to which one needs work entitlements and employment location. The results raise issues about whether the provision of workplace entitlements will encourage greater participation by men in domestic responsibilities, or simply ease women's double burden of paid and unpaid work.

Gender equality and participation in housework: A cross-national perspective

This paper examines men's and women's participation in housework in the United States, Sweden, Norway, Canada and Australia. While there has been considerable research into the factors relating to the division of housework between husbands and wives within countries, very little research has examined the way in which housework patterns vary across countries. The results show that women continue to undertake the bulk of domestic labor in all five countries, and that the factors determining men's and women's participation in housework do not vary markedly across countries. This suggests that variations across countries in levels of gender equality at a broader level have only very limited effects on levels of gender equality in the home.

Confucianism and the idea of equality

It is often supposed that Confucianism is opposed to the idea of equality insofar as the key ideals to which it is committed, such as meritocracy and li , are incompatible with equality. Sympathetic commentators typically defend Confucianism by saying that (a) the Confucian person is not a free-standing individual but a social being embedded in a social structure with different and unequal roles, and (b) social inequality has to be traded in for other values. This paper argues that in advocating meritocracy, Confucianism does not abandon the idea of equality. Indeed, invoking Aristotle's account of equality in the Nicomachean Ethics , it can be argued that the unequal distribution of rights and benefits reflects one aspect of equality, namely the vertical aspect, or the unequal treatment of unequals.

Estimating economic relationships subject to firm- and time-varying equality and inequality constraints

Applied econometricians often fail to impose economic regularity constraints in the exact form economic theory prescribes. We show how the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) Theorem and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods can be used to rigorously impose time- and firm-varying equality and inequality constraints. To illustrate the technique we estimate a system of translog input demand functions subject to all the constraints implied by economic theory, including observation-varying symmetry and concavity constraints. Results are presented in the form of characteristics of the estimated posterior distributions of functions of the parameters. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

The rebirth of an old language: issues of gender equality in Kazakhsstan

The existing language situation in Kazakhstan, while peaceful, is not without some tension. We propose to analyze here some questions we consider relevant in the frame of cultural globalization and gender equality, such as: free from Russian imperialism, could Kazakhstan become an easy prey of Turkey’s “imperialist dream”? Could these traditionally Muslim people be soon facing the end of religious tolerance and gender equality, becoming this new old language an easy instrument for the infiltration in the country of fundamentalism (it has already crossed the boarders of Uzbekistan), leading to a gradual deterioration of its rich multicultural relations? The present structure of the language is still very fragile: there are three main dialects and many academics defend the re-introduction of the Latin alphabet, thus enlarging the possibility of cultural “contamination” by making the transmission of fundamentalist ideas still easier through neighbour countries like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan (their languages belong to the same sub-group of Common Turkic), where the Latin alphabet is already in use, and where the ground for such ideas shown itself very fruitful.

Welfare regimes, work-life balance public policies and gender equality - parental leaves in Portugal and Sweden

Comunicação apresentada na "European Sociological Association Conference" em Lisboa de 2 a 5 de Setembro de 2009.

Promotion of gender equality and social inclusion of unemployed groups in Portuguese European Founds Frameworks (1990-2007): overview and critical reflection

Comunicação apresentada no 38º Congresso Mundial do Instituto Internacional de Sociologia, em Budapeste, Hungria, de 26 a 30 de Junho de 2008.

Reconceptualising public spaces of (IN)equality: sensing and creating layers of visibility

Tese apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Doutor em Geografia e Planeamento Territorial - Especialidade: Geografia Humana

Scientific Evidence in Europe : Admissibility, Evaluation and Equality of Arms

This study was commissioned by the European Committee on Crime Problems at the Council of Europe to describe and discuss the standards used to asses the admissibility and appraisal of scientific evidence in various member countries. After documenting cases in which faulty forensic evidence seems to have played a critical role, the authors describe the legal foundations of the issues of admissibility and assessment of the probative value in the field of scientific evidence, contrasting criminal justice systems of accusatorial and inquisitorial tradition and the various risks that they pose in terms of equality of arms. Special attention is given to communication issues between lawyers and scientific experts. The authors eventually investigate possible ways of improving the system. Among these mechanisms, emphasis is put on the adoption of a common terminology for expressing the weight of evidence. It is also proposed to adopt an harmonized interpretation framework among forensic experts rooted in good practices of logical inference.

IPH Response to Dept of Justice and Equality Review of the Code of Practice on the Sale and Display of Alcohol in Mixed Trading Premises

IPH responded to the Department of Justice, Equality and Defence review of the voluntary Code of Practice for the display and sale of alcohol in supermarkets, convenience stores and similar mixed trading outlets. The voluntary Code was introduced in 2008 as an alternative to the statutory rules for structural separation of alcohol products in mixed trading outlets which are set out in section 9 of the Intoxicating Liquor Act 2008. Interested bodies and individuals were invited to submit comments on the Compliance Report for 2011 and on the effectiveness of the voluntary approach to structural separation by 20th December 2011. The Minister said he intended to also seek the views of the Minister for Health and the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality before reaching any decision on whether to bring the statutory rules in the 2008 Act into operation.