scholarly journals Women's Status in Academic Activities and Higher Education in Agricultural Sciences of Japan

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 46-49
Author(s):  
Ryozo Sakiyama
2003 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH ALLAN

In this article, Elizabeth J. Allan explores how discourses embedded in university women's commission reports position women as victims, outsiders to the structure and culture of the institution, and as being in need of professional development. Using policy discourse analysis, Allan examines discourses generated by university women's commissions, which are policy-focused groups advocating for gender equity in higher education. Allan analyzes the text of twenty-one commission reports issued at four research universities from 1971 to 1996, and illustrates how dominant discourses of femininity, access, and professionalism contribute to constructing women's status in complex ways and may have the unintended consequence of undermining the achievement of gender equity. She also explores how a caregiving discourse is drawn on and challenges institutional norms of the academic workplace. Allan provides four suggestions for improving university women's commissions, including promoting awareness of policy as discourse; analyzing frameworks and assumptions of policy reports; examining implications of policy recommendations; and looking at how policy discourses construct images of women.


1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (4III) ◽  
pp. 1025-1039 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmeen Mohiuddln

The purpose of the present paper is to formulate a composite index of the status of women and to rank both developed and developing countries on the basis of that index. This index is presented as an alternative or complement to the current status of women index, published by the Population Crisis Committee (PCC) and used by the World Bank and the United Nations, which focuses on indicators measuring health, education, employment, marriage and childbearing, and social equality. The paper argues that these indicators have a poverty-bias and measure women's status in terms of structural change rather than in terms of their welfare vis-ii-vis men. The PCC index is also based on the implicit assumption that women's status in developing countries ought to be defined in a similar way as in developed countries, thus including primarily only those indicators which are more relevant for developed countries. To remedy these defects, the paper presents an alternative composite index, hereafter labelled the Alternative Composite (AC) index, based on many more indicators reflecting women's issues in both developed and developing countries. The results of the statistical analysis show that the ranking of countries based on the AC index is significantly different from the PCC index.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document