When Are Women Well Represented?

Chapter 2 offers a re-reading of classic and newer research on women’s political representation. It is designed not to provide the reader with a comprehensive, global account of what has been said and found by multiple generations of scholars. Rather, by using more select work, the authors show through a critical reading that the dominant “dimensional approach” to political representation limits both conceptual understanding and empirical evaluation of the quality of women’s political representation. This tendency toward individual dimensions of representation—oftentimes discrete analysis of descriptive, substantive, symbolic, and affective representation—not only presumes that women’s good representation is somehow a simple question of adding up and taking away scores for each dimension, but it also makes it particularly hard to conceive, theoretically and empirically, when women are well represented, given women’s ideological and intersectional differences. Hence, the authors’ claim to redress intersectionally women’s poverty of representation demands that we conceive of representation as a mélange.

Developing the humour repertoire concept to guide future tourism-humour research

The central interest in this study is to develop and position the humour repertoire concept for tourism and leisure research. The term humour repertoire encompasses the totality of a person’s abilities and skills to both appreciate and produce humour. Such skills include the individual’s humorous (travel) stories, jokes from their life and travels, and the ability to see travel and leisure situations as amusing. A framework outlining the role of the humour repertoire is presented and an online empirical study is reported to address select components of the conceptual scheme. The results show a weak association between humour appreciation and production, indicating that researchers examining humour in tourism need to be careful in building generic implications from select work. Attention is then given to the multiple social and contextual factors beyond the individual level that need to be considered when assessing humour in diverse tourism contexts. Fresh research directions are indicated by considering the richness of the repertoire framework and links to cognitive schema research.

Residential Counselors and Self Care: A Retrospective Qualitative Study of Archival Interview Data

Objectives: The purpose of this qualitative inquiry was to understand the barriers related to effective self-care for master’s level residential counselors. Methods: Archival interview transcripts of 77 residential counselors were analyzed utilizing a social constructivist lens to identify perceived barriers to effective self-care. Themes related to levels of self-care influences including individual, supervisory, and organizational barriers to effective self-care emerged. Results: Results reflected those themes specifically by indicating that counselors can take steps to actively engage in wellness pursuits to promote self-care. Similarly, supervisors and organizations can enhance or impede a counselor’s ability to engage in self-care. Conclusions: Counselors should select work settings that have both supervisory and organizational supports for self-care. This includes encouraging a culture of wellness through support, development, coverage for time off, and other related areas. Implications show that practices and policies are needed to promote effective self-care across individual, supervisory, and agency domains.

Occupational lung disease

Occupational lung diseases are under-recognized by most general (and respiratory) physicians. When affected individuals are of working age, the diagnosis can result in significant socio-economic consequences. A comprehensive knowledge of all occupational lung diseases is beyond the remit of most respiratory physicians, but an understanding of the relationships between work and disease is crucial to ensure that cases are not missed. This chapter presents two contrasting cases. The first is a ‘traditional’ case of occupational asthma, the most commonly reported occupational lung disease in the United Kingdom (as well as in most ‘developed world’ countries). The second case describes a rare disease (obliterative bronchiolitis) recently linked to a few select work exposures, highlighting the complexity of establishing causation in suspected occupational disease, particularly one uncommon in the general population. An occupational history should be taken in all cases of respiratory disease; access to specialist advice is freely available and frequently invaluable.

Job Recruitment, Employee Placement and Workplace Experiences of Outsourced Workers in Selected Sub-Sectors in Ibadan, Nigeria

Most studies on outsourced workers in Nigeria did not addressed the issues of their recruitment, placement and workplace experiences along sub-sectoral lines. This study was conducted in Ibadan using ten work organisations covering four sub-sectors. Neoliberal and Systems theory provided the theoretical framework. The design was survey and exploratory. A two-stage sampling consisting of purposive and simple random techniques were used to select work organisations and respondents. Questionnaire was used to elicit information. In addition, twenty in-depth interviews and ten key informant interviews were conducted with outsourced workers across organisations and management representatives respectively. Most respondents across the sub-sectors felt they were placed in peripheral positions. Management confirmed that there were disparities in the kinds of incentives given to outsourced and permanent workers. Outsourced workers’ experiences varied along sub-sectoral lines. Efforts should be made by government and management of work organisation to improve the working conditions of outsourced workers.

Causal Factors in Select Work Accidents: Investigation of Worker Fatalities

As part of a NIOSH project dealing with causal factors in select work accidents, a collection of worker fatality case studies is described. Although only eight worker deaths have been analyzed thus far, certain general trends implicating human factors deficiencies are emerging. Three case reports are presented which illustrate four frequently observed problems: (1) inadequate or lacking hazard protection, (2) inadequate employee safety training in hazard recognition and avoidance, (3) inadequate employee supervision, and (4) lack or violation of specific safety rules and job procedures. The need for in-depth accident investigations for better understanding accident etiology is discussed.