Roadblocks to Equality


Book Description

Notes on the Contributors Patrizia Albanese is Associate Professor of sociology at Ryerson University, and author of Mothers of the Nation: Women, Families and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Europe (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and co-editor (with Tepperman and Curtis) of Sociology: A Canadian Perspective, 2nd ed. She is currently doing (SSHRC-funded) research on Quebec's $7/day child care program and is working on a project on household work and lifelong learning (with Dr. Margrit Eichler, OISE/UT). She has published chapters in edited collections on motherhood and nationalism, Canadian families, and childcare in Canada. She is currently working on a book on childhood in Canada (expected 2009, Oxford University Press), and is co-director of the Centre for Children, Youth and Families at Ryerson University. Susan Bryant is Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Windsor, where she has been teaching since 1999. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication from Simon Fraser University and a Master's in Environmental Studies from York University. Her research interests focus on gender and labour, gender and technology, critical theories of technology, and culture and the natural environment. Walter S. DeKeseredy is professor of criminology, justice, and policy studies at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. He has written 12 scholarly books and more than 60 scientific journal articles on a variety of topics, including woman abuse in intimate relationships and crime in public housing. He also jointly received (with Martin D. Schwartz) the 2004 Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology's (ASC's) Division on Women and Crime, and in 1995, he received the Critical Criminologist of the Year Award from the ASC's Division on Critical Criminology. In 2007, he won the UOIT Research Excellence Award for his many contributions to a social scientific understanding of woman abuse and other social problems. Natalie Dias is a fourth year undergraduate student majoring in Honors Sociology and Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Waterloo, Canada. Her research interests include gender, advertising, popular culture, social theory, and social inequality. Peter Eglin is Professor of Sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo where he has taught since 1976. He is author of Talk and Taxonomy: A Methodological Comparison of Ethnosemantics and Ethnomethodology ... (1980). With Stephen Hester he is co-author of The Montreal Massacre: A Story of Membership Categorization Analysis (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2003), A Sociology of Crime (Routledge, 1992), and co-editor of Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis (University Press of America, 1997). As a student of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis he investigates the use of categories for describing persons in practical reasoning in talk and texts in various settings, most recently gender categories and the category "feminist." He is currently beginning a study of university-specific work as an interactional accomplishment. He is also exercised by the question of intellectual responsibility in a number of human rights issues, notably state terrorism in El Salvador in Jeffery Klaehn's Filtering the News (2005), near-genocide in East Timor in Jeffery Klaehn's Bound By Power (2005), and Israeli crimes in Palestine. Danielle Fagen is a prevention/intervention professional at a private non-profit organization that works with individuals and families affected by drug and alcohol issues in Athens, Ohio. She has published an article related to her M.A. thesis in Feminist Criminology, which the official journal of the American Society of Criminology's Division on Women and Crime and she is an adjunct instructor at Ohio University. Kathleen Gotts is a graduate of Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication. Her thesis was a woman-centered, qualitative communication study of the campaign strategies and discourse used to advocate the legalization of midwifery in the province of Ontario, Canada, from 1979 to 1989. Besides her research in women's political activism and communication, another of her key interests is how risk is communicated in public health messaging. Sylvia Hale is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at St. Thomas University. Her major publications include the widely influential Controversies in Sociology textbook (Copp Clark, 1995) as well as The Elusive Promise: The Struggle of Women Development Workers in Rural North India (McGill University, 1987). She is also an award-winning educator. Her research interests include the family, development, and political-economy. Mandy Hall is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. She has published refereed articles in Feminist Criminology and Critical Criminology, which is the official journal of the American Society of Criminology's Division on Critical Criminology. Her areas of concentration are critical criminology, violence against women, juvenile delinquency, and drugs and crime. Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center http: //thirdcoastactivist .org. His latest book is Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). http: //www.southendpress.org/2007/items/87767. Jensen is also the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang). He can be reached at [email protected] and his articles can be found online at http: //uts.cc.utexas.edu/ rjensen/index.html. Neetin Kalsi is completing her MA in Sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research interests include race and ethnicity, knowledge, cultural practices, and social inequalities. Jeffery Klaehn is widely published as a cultural commentator and critic. His scholarly writings have been published in national and international peer-reviewed journals, including the European Journal of Communication, International Communication Gazette and Journalism Studies, and are required reading for many media-related courses at the MA and PhD levels throughout North America and the United Kingdom. He is the editor of and main contributor to Filtering the News: Essays on Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model (2005), Bound by Power: Intended Consequences (2006) and Inside the World of Comic Books (2006). His research interests include popular culture, media, discourse, politics, universities, education, and human rights. Michèle Martin is a professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Toronto, an M.A. from the Université de Montréal and a B.A. from the UQAM, both in communication. Her research is in the historical sociology of technological development, political economy of communication and socio-cultural analysis of the media. Her particular area of interest is the political economic development of forms of communication and their impact on society. Martin's books include Images at War: 19th Century Illustrated Periodicals and the Development of National Identities (University of Toronto Press, 2006), Victor Barbeau, pionnier de la critique culturelle journalistique (Presse de l'université Laval, 1997), and Hello Central? Gender, Culture and Resistance in the Formation of Telephone Systems (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991). Her articles appear in such journals as Réseaux, Histoire sociale/Social History, Labour/Le travail and Journal of Communication Inquiry. She also presented many papers in various international conferences. Michèle Martin has been visiting professor in different universities: the Goldsmith College, Oxford University; the London School of Economics and Political Sciences; the Institut Français de Presse, Uninversité Paris II; the University of Bucarest, Romania. She teaches the political economic development of communication technologies, socio-historical study of the media, politics of visual representation, feminism and communication theories. Claudia Mitchell is a James McGill Professor in the Faculty of Education, McGill University, and an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her research focuses on visual and other participatory methodologies particularly in addressing gender and HIV and AIDS, teacher identity and gender, and the culture of girlhood within broader studies of children and popular culture and media studies. She is a co-founder of the Centre for Visual Methodologies for Social Change at UKZN which focuses on visual methods and media education. She is the co-author/co-editor of eight books including several books on girlhood, Seven Going on Seventeen: Tween Studies in the Culture of Girlhood (with J. Reid-Walsh), Girlhood: Redefining the Limits (with Y. Jiwani and C. Steenbergen) and Combating gender violence in and around schools (with F. Leach). Michael Parenti is a political scientist, historian and media critic. His books include The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories, 2006), Superpatriotism (City Lights), The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), and Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (City Lights). For more information visit: www.michaelparenti.org. Richard Poulin is Professor of Sociology at the University of Ottawa and is an expert in globalization, sex trafficking and the sex industries. He has been researching and writing about pornography and prostitution for more than twenty years and has published a range of books, book chapters and journal articles in all of these areas. Jocey Quinn is a Professor of Education at the Institute for Policy Studies in Education (IPSE) London Metropolitan University. Her work takes a cultural approach to Higher Education and Lifelong Learning and she is particularly interested in the relationships between knowledge transformation and social justice. She has published widely and has conducted national and international research in this field. This includes research on the impact of the mass participation of women in Higher Education and on working class 'drop out' from HE. She is currently writing two books Culture and Education (Routledge) and Learning Communities and Imagined Social Capital: Learning to Belong (Continuum). Jacqueline Reid-Walsh is a specialist in historical and contemporary children's literature, culture and media and fascinated by girls culture. In these areas she has published on topics ranging from early moveable books and Jane Austen's' juvenilia to Nancy Drew mysteries and girls websites. She is co-author of Researching Children's PopularCulture (Routledge: 2002), co-editor of Seven Going on Seventeen (Peter Lang, 2005), and currently co-editing an encyclopedia of girls popular culture (with Claudia Mitchell). She teaches at Université Laval and Bishop's University. Carole Roy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Adult Education at St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia. Her book, The Raging Grannies: Wild Hats, Cheeky Songs, and Witty "







Equal Is Unfair


Book Description

We’ve all heard that the American Dream is vanishing, and that the cause is rising income inequality. The rich are getting richer by rigging the system in their favor, leaving the rest of us to struggle just to keep our heads above water. To save the American Dream, we’re told that we need to fight inequality through tax hikes, wealth redistribution schemes, and a far higher minimum wage. But what if that narrative is wrong? What if the real threat to the American Dream isn’t rising income inequality—but an all-out war on success? In Equal is Unfair, a timely and thought-provoking work, Don Watkins and Yaron Brook reveal that almost everything we’ve been taught about inequality is wrong. You’ll discover: • why successful CEOs make so much money—and deserve to • how the minimum wage hurts the very people it claims to help • why middle-class stagnation is a myth • how the little-known history of Sweden reveals the dangers of forced equality • the disturbing philosophy behind Obama’s economic agenda. The critics of inequality are right about one thing: the American Dream is under attack. But instead of fighting to make America a place where anyone can achieve success, they are fighting to tear down those who already have. The real key to making America a freer, fairer, more prosperous nation is to protect and celebrate the pursuit of success—not pull down the high fliers in the name of equality.




Open Minds to Equality


Book Description




Open Minds to Equality


Book Description

An educator's sourcebook of activities to help students understand and change inequalities based on race, gender, class, age, language, sexual orientation, physical/mental ability, and religion. The activities also promote respect for diversity and interpersonal equality among students, fostering a classroom that is participatory, cooperative, and democratic. Learning activities are sequencedto build awareness and understanding. First, students develop skills for building trust, communication, and collaboration. Second, they learn to recognize stereotypes and discrimination and explore their presence in people's lives and in institutions. Finally, students create changes, gaining self-confidence and experiencing collective responsibility. This book is an essential resource for teachers, leaders in professional development, and curriculum specialists.




Open Minds to Equality


Book Description

Educators are becoming increasingly concerned with more areas of discrimination and inequality that affects students. For example, as more immigrant students enter schools, understandings and skills for educating about language discrimination are needed. Similarly, as educators become more aware of the negative consequences of homophobic behavior on students, knowledge and approaches for dealing with homophobia in schools are called for. Open Minds to Equality deals with the expanding range of equity concerns. Membership in the largest association (National Association for Multicultural Educators) is growing by leaps and bounds. State-level associations are being started in these subjects all across the country. While focusing on discrimination based on race, gender, class, and age, the second edition also addresses bias based on religion, mental and physical ability, sexual orientation, and language. It provides educators an inclusive framework for thinking about diversity and responding practically to all these forms of difference in their classrooms. Activities in the book address both content and process. The content broadens the readersO awareness of the causes of inequality, particularly how differences are used to justify inequality. It encourages questions and the exploration of many sources of information and various points of view. The process is experiential, participatory, cooperative, and democratic. This book is extremely helpful for teachers, facilitators, staff development programs, and curriculum specialists. It is also appropriate for professionals in educational settings outside of schools such as camps, scouts, church groups, and youth agencies (all of which bought the first edition of this book). A Longwood Professional Book.




Advancing Gender Equality


Book Description

The Commonwealth Secretariat has been a pioneer in promoting women’s rights and gender equality since the 1976–85 UN Decade for Women, and of gender mainstreaming since the UN 4th World Conference on Women, to which our 1995 Plan of Action on Gender and Development was a Commonwealth contribution. This publication brings together case studies prepared in connection with the end-of-term review of the 2005–15 Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender Equality. The case studies are based on submissions and interviews with government representatives, gender specialists and other stakeholders, including civil society organisations, from 20 countries representing all regions of the Commonwealth. The examples were selected to demonstrate a range of strategies that can be employed to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment. Together they help to show what perpetuates gender inequality and offer approaches that can be adopted to help end unjust discrimination.




Ordinary Equality


Book Description

We are all living through modern constitutional history in the making, and Ordinary Equality helps teach about the past, present, and future of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) through the lives of the bold, fearless women and queer people who have helped shape the U.S. Constitution. Ordinary Equality digs into the fascinating and little-known history of the ERA and the lives of the incredible—and often overlooked—women and queer people who have helped shape the U.S. Constitution for more than 200 years. Based on author Kate Kelly’s acclaimed podcast of the same name, Ordinary Equality recounts a story centuries in the making. From before the Constitution was even drafted to the modern day, she examines how and why constitutional equality for women and Americans of all marginalized genders has been systematically undermined for the past 100-plus years, and then calls us all to join the current movement to put it back on the table and get it across the finish line. Kate Kelly provides a much-needed fresh perspective on the ERA for feminists of all ages, and this engaging, illustrated look at history, law, and activism is sure to inspire many to continue the fight. Individual chapters tell the stories of Molly Brant (Koñwatsi-tsiaiéñni / Degonwadonti), Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Alice Paul, Mary Church Terrell, Pauli Murray, Martha Wright Griffiths, Patsy Takemoto Mink, Barbara Jordan, and Pat Spearman, and features other key players and concepts, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Title IX, Danica Roem, and many more.




Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders


Book Description

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.




Equal Means Equal


Book Description

When the Equal Rights Amendment was first passed by Congress in 1972, Richard Nixon was president and All in the Family's Archie Bunker was telling his feisty wife Edith to stifle it. Over the course of the next ten years, an initial wave of enthusiasm led to ratification of the ERA by thirty-five states, just three short of the thirty-eight states needed by the 1982 deadline. Many of the arguments against the ERA that historically stood in the way of ratification have gone the way of bouffant hairdos and Bobby Riggs, and a new Coalition for the ERA was recently set up to bring the experience and wisdom of old-guard activists together with the energy and social media skills of a new-guard generation of women. In a series of short, accessible chapters looking at several key areas of sex discrimination recognized by the Supreme Court, Equal Means Equal tells the story of the legal cases that inform the need for an ERA, along with contemporary cases in which women's rights are compromised without the protection of an ERA. Covering topics ranging from pay equity and pregnancy discrimination to violence against women, Equal Means Equal makes abundantly clear that an ERA will improve the lives of real women living in America.