Equity Programs Research Articles

Equity and Diversity in Selective Universities: Experiences of Students Admitted to Health Majors via Equity Programs

Equity and Diversity in Selective Universities: Experiences of Students Admitted to Health Majors via Equity Programs

The Case for Universal Design for Learning in Technology Enhanced Environments

This article examines the intersection of two drivers in the contemporary higher education environment. First, the increase in blended learning, propelled by advances in computing technology and the drive towards student-centred, active learning pedagogies influenced by social constructivism. Second, the need for university curriculum to become more inclusive as the sector continues to respond to the social justice and business aspects of the widening participation agenda. In response to this need for effectively designed blended pedagogies in technology-rich physical and online environments and the need to design for inclusion, this article argues for the adoption of the principles of Universal Design for Learning to be used in curriculum design and development. Not only is an implementation of Universal Design for Learning easier in a technology-rich learning environment, it is the ethical responsibility of universities to provide accessible curriculum as they seek to attract and retain more students through pathways and equity programs.

Share Repurchasing and the Policies of Stock-Options

The objective of this paper is to examine the relation between share repurchases and stock options. In fact, certain studies demonstrate that the development of stock option plans since the beginning of the 1990s is also considered one explanation for the increase in equity programs for repurchasing shares. We have tested the validity of our hypothesis on a sample of 77 French firms listed during the 2003-2008 period. The results demonstrate a positive link between the performance of near future exercise of employee stock options and share repurchases. The desire to avoid the dilution associated with the performance of stock options can thus be one of the motives for making share repurchases. The results subsequently demonstrate that directors holding a substantial number of stock options encourage companies to make share repurchases. On the other hand, we detected a negative relationship between the existence of managerial stock options and the augmentation of dividends.

Sharing Equity with Future Generations: An Evaluation of Long-Term Affordable Homeownership Programs in the USA

Shared equity initiatives provide homeownership opportunities to low- and moderate-income families who buy homes at below-market prices. The appreciation that can be earned by resellers is limited to preserve the homes' affordability at resale. This article analyses affordability, personal wealth, security of tenure, and mobility outcomes for seven shared equity programs across the USA. Homebuyers earned returns that were competitive with what they would have received if they had invested in stocks or bonds. In addition, homes remained affordable to lower income buyers over time as the homes were resold. Homeownership under these programs was sustainable: there were very low delinquency and foreclosure rates and many families who sold their homes were able to use their sales' proceeds to purchase market-rate homes. Owners also showed little evidence of being locked in place, and moved to new homes at rates near the national average.

Microcredit and the Discourse of Empowerment: A Case Study in Jinotega, Nicaragua

Microcredit has become an increasingly popular strategy for improving the social, economic, and health status of women in the developing world. NGOs, government agencies and private enterprise have all put forth credit initiatives geared toward “women’s empowerment.” Despite the ubiquity of such programs, there is very little consensus about what it actually means to “empower” women. Using abstract terms is problematic as it undermines the ability to establish specific targets and goals for gender equity programs. Moreover, when interventions are aimed at such broadly defined goals, it becomes near impossible to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of these programs. Despite the wide variety of microcredit program design and client demographics, they are spoken of as uniform categories in the literature. Little to no attention has been given to how varying program design leads to different benefits. For example, individual loans lead to a greater amount of financial autonomy and decision-making power, whereas solidarity loans excel at building social connections and community affiliation. Such nuances should be considered when designing economic and gender equity interventions in order to ensure that needs are properly met, and benefits maximized to their fullest potential. This paper takes into consideration what it means to be “empowered,” and whether or not empowerment is the correct form of discourse for discussing gender equality. It also compares three different microcredit program designs in order to understand how program design and demographics affect outcomes.

Educación de adultos en determinantes sociales de la salud: experiencia con la Seremi de Salud de la Región de Los Ríos

Introduction: The increasing, contextual need for generating spaces for education on the social determinants of health (SDH) motivated the School of Public Health at the University of Chile (SPH-UC) and the Regional Ministerial Secretary of Health of the Los Rios Region, to create an educational methodology based on adult education and applying the Guide for Evaluating Equity (GEE). The goal of this report is to describe the findings, achievements, and lessons of this process. Materials and Methods: This systematization is based on the adoption of a planning framework for adult education, the use of cinema en education, and the use of qualitative methods to explore perceptions and lessons learned. Results: Results include the systematization of participants' expectations, as well as important advances in identifying determinants, job characteristics, and possible causal mechanisms of health inequity, visualization of the vulnerable groups and barriers involved, in addition to greater difficulties in reorienting programs and everyday work practices. Conclusions and Discussion: Participants' experience showed that the strategy facilitated learning comprehension of complex health problems. It was also shown to be a valued space for understanding the difficulties in implementing a local approach to health equity programs and everyday work practices of health workers.

Chongqing

Chongqing’s experience suggests that while Janos Kornai is surely correct about shortage in a planned economy, he is mistaken that market signals may only be employed under an economic regime of private property. Chongqing has called instead on government-owned firms, and their market earnings and appreciation, to fund social equity programs and infrastructural construction. This “third hand” is different from Adam Smith’s “invisible” first hand, which, on the basis of rational individuals pursuing their own interests, supposedly generates a self-regulating and optimizing market economy; it is also different from the second hand, by which the state engages in a variety of interventions in order to perfect the functioning of such a market economy. Its main actors are state-owned and not privately owned enterprises but, unlike earlier state enterprises, it strives not for the profit of the enterprise but rather for social equity and public benefit. It in fact at once challenges and utilizes the other two hands. Though state-owned, in the context of China’s current political-economic system and the globalized economy, this third hand does not behave like a monopoly; rather, it must compete against the other two hands, and not only against other localities within China but also other nations and economic entities outside China. Only if it succeeds in driving economic development under such competition can it become a “model” with wider application in China as a whole. And only thus can it, in a globalized economy dominated by capitalism, establish equitable development as a realistic alternative. Thanks to the Chongqing “experiment,” the question is no longer just a theoretical or ideological one, but one of observable and evolving realities.

Are Less-Educated Women in the Blind Spot of Pay Equity?

In this article I will show two things: first, that the labour market is still very divided with respect to gender and, second, that the material impact of this division differs sharply by level of education. Among occupations that require the least education, women pay a very high price for this gender based division of employment. In contrast to occupations where more education is needed, those requiring the least education show a huge difference in wages according to whether they are predominantly male or predominantly female. This difference is a widespread phenomenon that favours so-called male occupations. The corresponding pay gap, in favour of men, in occupations requiring a high school diploma (Secondary V in Quebec) or less, is shrinking only slightly, whereas the gaps between men and women in occupations requiring more education are clearly closing. The article then demonstrates that three often mentioned options for action, at present, offer little hope to counter that particular phenomenon: Quebec’s Pay equity act application, collective bargaining and internal promotion. Yet, this problem still affects approximately 500,000 women, after 25 years of equal access programs and close to 15 years of implementation of the Pay Equity Act. Employment equity programs are the most promising initiatives, provided that they find their way into the affected employment sectors.

Bureaucratic Competence as an Essential Factor in Cross-Cultural/Multicultural Program Evaluations

Abstract: While we may all agree in principle that both implementers and evaluators should be culturally sensitive and ethical as well as instrumentally effective in their work practices, we often ignore the extent to which these practice goals may conflict with one another in achieving bureaucratic competence, particularly in a multicultural society. Reconciling them requires us to acknowledge the indispensable role of responsible program evaluation in this effort, one that addresses: both the employees and the recipients of programs; the need for evaluators to be open to both theoretical and operational contributions to the field; the signal role of bureaucratic, as well as electoral, modes of representation; the indispensable function of affirmative action and pay equity programs in reconciling diversity and fairness; and the principle that subjects in evaluation and implementation processes should play a more significant role than the passive status assigned them by traditional bureaucracy and applied social science.

Equal opportunity outcomes for women in the finance industry in Australia: Evaluating the merit of EEO plans

This paper investigates equity programs in the finance and insurance industry to identify the approach to implementing equal employment opportunity used by Australian organisations. The research uses data from organisational reports submitted to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency in order to identify issues in one industry, and link organisational approach to equal opportunity with the employment status of women. Despite the high numbers of women employed in this female-dominated industry, there are limited numbers of women in management. The findings show no correlation between the equal opportunity approach used and numbers of women in management.

Equal opportunity outcomes for women in the finance industry in Australia: Evaluating the merit of EEO plans

This paper investigates equity programs in the finance and insurance industry to identify the approach to implementing equal employment opportunity used by Australian organisations. The research uses data from organisational reports submitted to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency in order to identify issues in one industry, and link organisational approach to equal opportunity with the employment status of women. Despite the high numbers of women employed in this female-dominated industry, there are limited numbers of women in management. The findings show no correlation between the equal opportunity approach used and numbers of women in management.

Language and gender in an age of neoliberalism

We live at a time when neoliberalism – market fundamentalism – appears to organize not only global and national political-economies but also ‘non-economic’ spheres, including one’s personal sense of identity, interests, happiness, hopes, and even the subjective value of life and self. And this article examines the significance of neoliberalism for the critical study of language and gender. Central to my discussion is the concept of neoliberal governmentality, a distinctive mode of power, which both constitutes the free subject and shapes the way a free subject acts upon her freedom and works and desires herself into a responsibilized individual. I analyze a case of workplace gender equity programs in a Tokyo corporate office in the early 1990s. I demonstrate how this problematization of a particular modality of linguistic practice was linked to the active ethical and aesthetic relationship to the self, and how this relationship among gender and language mediated by neoliberal governmentality worked as a concrete technique of self-making.

Diversity Training, Educational Equity, and Teacher Preparation Programs: The Promise of Multiculturalism

Diversity Training, Educational Equity, and Teacher Preparation Programs: The Promise of Multiculturalism

The people who own themselves: aboriginal ethnogenesis in a Canadian family, 1660-1900

Preface Race and Progress The Concept of Race The Classification of Races in Europe and North America: 1700-1850 Towards Scientific Racism Antecedents of the Racial Worldview Latent and Manifest Orientalism The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power Does Race' Matter? Transatlantic Perspectives on Racism after 'Race Relations' When Place Becomes Race Is there a 'Neo-Racism'? The Relationship between Racism and anti-Semitism Global Apartheid? Race and Religion in the New World Order The Lore of the Homeland: Hindu Nationalism and Indigenist 'Neoracism' Settling In: Epidemics and Conquest to the End of the First Century The Guarani: The Economics of Ethnocide The Indians Are Coming to an End: The Economics of Ethnocide Saami and Norwegians: Symbols of Peoplehood and Nationhood Of Our Spiritual Strivings Capitalism and Slavery Prelude to Settlement: Indians as Indentured Labourers Resistance and Renewal: First Nations and Aboriginal Education in Canada Towards a Antiracism Agenda in Education: The Case of Malta The Denial of Difference: Reframing Anti-Racist Praxis Working Precariously: The Impact of Race and Immigrants Status on Employment Opportunities and Outcomes in Canada The Integration of Racism Into Everyday Life: The Story of Rosa N They Can be Hired in Masses They can be Managed and Controlled like Unthinking Slaves The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture Our Enemies among Us! - The Portrayal of Arab and Muslim Americans in Post-9/11 American Media Races, Racism and Popular Culture Inflammatory Rhetoric? Baseless Accusations? A Response to Gabor's Critique of Racial Profiling Research in Canada The Criminalisation of Indigenous People Identity, Belonging and the Critique of Pure Sameness How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America Between Black and White: Exploring the Biracial Experience Colour and the Changing Racial Landscape Language Matters Imperialism, History, Writing & Theory Anti-Racism, Social Movements and Civil Society Racism/Anti-Racism, Precarious Employment and Unions Reverse Racism? Students' Responses to Equity Programs How Gays Stay White and What Kind of White It Stays.

Racial Minorities and Affirmative Action/Employment Equity Législation in Canada

The purpose of this article is to highlight the disadvantaged status of visible minorities in public and private sector organizations and the need for affirmative action/employment equity programs to ameliorate their disadvantaged statut, to describe and analyze public policy on employment equity at the federal and provincial levels, to evaluate the effectiveness of the federal EE initiatives; and to provide policy implications and recommendations for strengthening public policy initiatives.

Race and Ethnicity: Finding Identities and Equalities, and: Seeing Ourselves: Exploring Race, Ethnicity and Culture (review)

Reviewed by: Race and Ethnicity: Finding Identities and Equalities, and: Seeing Ourselves: Exploring Race, Ethnicity and Culture Jeffrey G. Reitz Leo Driedger , Race and Ethnicity: Finding Identities and Equalities, Second Edition, Don Mills ON: Oxford University Press, 2003, 318pp. Carl E. James , Seeing Ourselves: Exploring Race, Ethnicity and Culture, Third Edition, Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, 2003, 340 pp. Both of these books, intended as texts in university courses in race and ethnic relations in Canada, are updates of previously-published versions dating back to 1989. The 1989 version of Leo Driedger's book was entitled The Ethnic Factor: Identity in Diversity and published by McGraw-Hill Ryerson. An updated version appeared from Oxford University Press in 1996 as Multi-Ethnic Canada: Identities and Inequalities. The current book is the "Second Edition" from Oxford. The 1989 version of Carl E. James' book was published by Sheridan College. A revised edition was published by Thompson in 1995, with an update in 1999. Since the 2003 versions of both of these books are very much like the earlier versions (Driedger's text has title changes, James' has more new material), readers may usefully consult previous reviews such as [End Page 229] those appearing in the pages of this journal. Eric Fong reviewed Driedger's Multi-Ethnic Canada in 1999 (v. 24, 4; pp. 553–4) and Subhas Ramcharan reviewed James' Seeing Ourselves in 1997 (v. 22,3; pp. 396–7). Driedger's text adopts a fairly conventional approach, covering the wide range of topics expected in a comprehensive survey course on race and ethnic relations in Canada. There are five parts, including classical and contemporary theory, a description of the ethnic diversity of Canadian society, analysis of identity formation and inequalities, respectively, and concluding with a discussion of human rights issues. This is an excellent format, and the discussion of many specific topics is quite comprehensive. Driedger's own research contributions are extensive, and he can hardly be faulted for making full use of them in his text. The book also is very clearly written. These virtues undoubtedly are major reasons for the success of the text. Fong's review of the 1996 edition cited "many limitations" to the book. These include the neglect of "most recent theoretical and empirical discussions of ethnic relations" in sociology. Given the minor updating for this 2003 edition, the limitation has become rather more worrisome. Fong's list of neglected topics included the human capital analysis of immigrant employment, ethnic entrepreneurship and the enclave economy, segmented assimilation, and processes of inter-ethnic competition. Today one might add other interests such as native-born racial minorities, sub-ethnicity, transnationalism, and a global perspective. As well, most policy discussions are woefully out-of-date, and there is little sense of current policy debates regarding immigration (symptomatically the points-based immigration selection points system is described as it was in 1986, Table 3.1), multiculturalism (such as prompted by Neil Bissoondath's 1994 book) or race relations (employment equity is barely mentioned and only the initial 1986 federal legislation, there is no mention of anti-racism advocacy, and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation is erroneously described as not yet implemented, p. 51). The book would benefit from a serious overhaul, rather than the perfunctory updating it has received. Carl James' text is completely different. Although the book adopts a social-science perspective on race relations, and there are chapters on a range of subjects such as racism and discrimination, equity programs, multiculturalism, and immigrants and refugees, in other respects the book departs sharply from the conventional textbook format. James illuminates issues of race and ethnic relations using commentaries gathered from students in courses over past years, which "present the experiences, ideas, conceptualizations, convictions and reactions of Ontario college and university students who participated in both compulsory and elective courses with me during their educational program" (p. 16). The reader is placed in direct contact with a range of viewpoints about racial minorities in Canada, both from whites and from minorities themselves. In some ways, the text reads like a focus-group report, with extended and [End Page 230] lightly-edited quotations organized thematically and with extended narration for context. The...

Gender equity as ‘boundary object’: …or the same old sex and power in geography all over again?

In her 1990 analysis of the gendered character of United Kingdom Geography departments, Linda McDowell argued that Geography was a bastion of male power in academia (McDowell 1990). More than a decade later, much the same can be said of Canadian Geography (also see Rose et al. 1996). In this paper, I examine issues relating to the gendered character of Canadian Geography. I argue that geography should be seen as a gendered space, and that within such a space gender equity policies can be seen as `boundary objects' that mediate the tensions between conservatives who oppose equity programs and more progressive Geographers who support them. A key problem with equity programs arises in relation to the question of `merit' and the way that it is constructed in masculinist terms that marginalise women geographers. Gender Equity in Canadian Universities, The Social Sciences, and Geography Canadian universities have committed themselves to employment equity under the Employment Equity Act, but these institutions have not been particularly successful when it comes to employing female faculty. Between 1986 and 1998, the period during which the Employment Equity Act has been in force, the proportion of university faculty who are women rose less than 10 percent, from 16.8 percent to 26.2 percent (Table 1). Women are also significantly under-represented in the higher ranks of the professoriate (Table 1). Much of the recent increase in the proportion of faculty that are women occurred because of a decrease in the absolute number of male faculty, not because of any significant increase in the number of women being hired. In fact, the numbers of women faculty have risen almost imperceptibly since 1995. The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (1999, 43) warns that the (already slow) progress in gender equity in the universities is now `threatened'. Similar to the universities as a whole, women faculty comprised just 26.7 percent of Social Science faculty members in Canada (Table 2). If the Social Sciences are compared to other academic fields in the university system, however, the gender equity picture is even less bright. Indeed, Social Sciences rank in the lower half of the eight academic fields defined by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (Table 3). Gender equity programmes have been even less successful in Geography than they have across the University and the Social Sciences. Women faculty drop from about 26 percent for the Social Sciences and the university as a whole to 16.2 percent for Geography departments (Table 4). Across the Canadian university system, there were a little more than six times the number of male full professors (35.6%) as female (5.6%) in 1998. In Geography, however, there were almost nineteen times as many male full professors (44.6%) as female (2.4%) in 1999. Geography thus has one of the worst gender equity records in Canadian universities. The Gendered Character of (Canadian) Geography How are we to read these data on the participation of women in the labour force in Canadian academic Geography? Some analysts have suggested that the problem of unequal gender representation in academe is merely a result of women choosing not to pursue an academic career (see the review of such literature in Winkler 2000, 738-742), or more insidiously, that women lack the `academic qualities' that men possess. Writing about the British context, for example, A. H. Halsey (1990) claims that women make up a higher proportion of `non-producers' and a lower proportion of `high producers' in the academy. These are familiar arguments in the debate over gender equity in academe; they are often deployed in taken-for-granted ways by both men and women in ways that justify not hiring women, or deny them tenure and promotion. In contrast to some of these `common sense' perspectives, there is a significant literature that suggests that we should understand academe as an exclusionary space of white, bourgeois masculinity (McDowell 1990; Rose 1993; Berg 1994, 2001; Seidler 1994; Rose et al. …

Ten years of strategies to increase participation of women in computing programs

In the late eighties, the participation rate of women in Information Technology courses in most Australian Universities was around 25%. This low level of women's participation in computing courses occurs not only in Australia but also overseas [1], [2]. More studies that are recent indicate that the participation rates have not improved and in fact may be even further in decline [3]. Participation rates in the workforce also appear to be in decline [4], [5].Concerned at the imbalance within Australia, the Federal government directed all Australian Universities to increase the number of women in courses leading to a professional computing qualification (i.e., information technology courses) to 40% of students by 1995 [6].This paper details one Australian university's approach, over a 10-year period (1991 - 2001), to redress this imbalance. We provide examples of intervention strategies developed and the outcomes for these strategies. We present the outcomes against a background frame of the Australian Higher Education scene of that decade which was influenced by funding levels to universities in general and to equity programs in particular. We present data related to the participation of women in computing programs along with snapshots of the overall changing student demographics over this period.

Making Employment Equity Programs Work for Women

Making Employment Equity Programs Work for Women

Making employment equity programs work for women

Women continue to be undervalued in employment, both in terms of the positions they occupy and the wages they receive. Employment Equity Programs (EEPs) were conceived to eradicate employment discrimination and organizations subject to the Employment Equity Act are mandated to adopt them. Their success, however, has been mixed. Although EEPs have resulted in some improvement in the status of women, their success has been overshadowed by complaints of unfairness and employee backlash. Essential measures to eliminate these negative perceptions and improve the effectiveness of EEPs are discussed.