Positive Discrimination Policies Research Articles

Women in government: the limits and challenges of a representative bureaucracy for Afghanistan (2001–2021)

ABSTRACT This article analyses the limits and challenges of positive discrimination policies in the Afghan government (2001–2021). One of the primary objectives of the international community after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 was to bring Afghan women back into public service. The government adopted international and national policy frameworks in this direction, notably positive discrimination policies such as quotas. It set an objective of 30% female participation in civil service by 2020. To analyze these policies’ effectiveness and identify the challenges faced, we analyzed official documents setting the stage for a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews with female civil servants and women’s rights activists. The study shows that the Afghan government failed to meet its objective. This was due to both institutional and non-institutional factors. These factors included the pervasiveness of sexual violence, discrimination, and corruption, and the impact of a traditional and patriarchal culture. These findings contribute to a better understanding of past policies. The article has important lessons for the study of mechanisms to promote women in government more widely.

Foreign practice of positive discrimination

The article is devoted to the actual problem of modern society — positive discrimination. The introduction of preferential treatment is accompanied by intense controversy, the main disputes are centered around the issues of meeting such a policy with certain criteria of fairness and possible distortion of the incentives that it creates for beneficiaries. The author, based on a comprehensive analysis of doctrinal views and the experience of some countries, identifies common trends and differences in scientific views regarding the use of positive measures, offers his definition. It is worth noting that the lack of a unified opinion of specialists, the unformed practice of implementing the policy of positive discrimination actualize the chosen topic as the subject of research. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that due to the fundamental nature of the real and potential problems of affirmative action, they appear in the center of state policy as a means of economic growth/efficiency or as a way to achieve equality and social justice. Positive discrimination is aimed at compensating for the consequences of difficult socio-economic conditions that have affected certain groups of the population. There is a risk of stigmatization as a real and destructive phenomenon, the elimination of which will only harm minorities without eradicating racist beliefs. Therefore, the author believes that the effectiveness of affirmative action should be aimed not only at redistributing the positions of groups and providing preferential benefits (preferences), but also at structural changes in modern society, perpetuating the marginalization of certain classes.

Caste-Based Inequality in Fruit and Vegetable Consumption in India.

Objective:Fruit and vegetable (F&V) consumption is of central importance to many diet-related health outcomes. In India, caste is a major basis of socioeconomic inequality. Recent analysis shows that more disadvantaged “lower” castes consume less F&V than the rest. This article explores whether this consumption gap arises due to differential distribution of drivers of consumption such as income and education across castes, or whether behavioral differences or discrimination may be at play.Design:The Oaxaca-Blinder regression decomposition is applied to explain the gap in F&V consumption between “upper” castes and “lower” castes, using data from the 68th (2011-2012) round of the National Sample Survey Organization household survey.Results:Differences in the distribution of F&V drivers account for all of the 50 grams/person/day consumption gap between upper and lower castes. In particular, much of the gap is explained by income differential across castes.Conclusions:In the long run, India’s positive discrimination policies in education and employment that seek to equalize income across castes are also likely to help close the F&V consumption gap, leading to health benefits. In the medium run, interventions acting to boost lower caste income, such as cash transfers targeting lower castes, may be effective.

Этнические и расовые проблемы в федеративном государстве (по итогам президентской кампании в США 2020 г

The United States, originally formed as a haven for immigrants of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, has felt the inefficiency of its famous «melting pot»since the beginning of the XXI century. In this ethnically-and racially-conflicted state, one of the long-standing problems was considered to be the problem of African-Americans, who after World War II dispersed outside the southern states. This problem was only partially solved, and the policy of positive discrimination in favor of blacks in recent years has become increasingly critical. At the same time, the country, in which the proportion of white citizens is sharply decreasing and the number of Spanish-speaking people and people of Asian origin is increasing, is experiencing an increasing cultural, civilizational and geographical split. During the 2020 presidential campaign, the United States faced not only an epidemic of coronavirus infection, but also unprecedented protest activity, which was a test for the outdated mechanism of this federal state. The domestic political crisis might have been averted or mitigated if the United States had had a more centralized model of federalism, which would have strengthened administrative coordination and allowed ethno-racial egoism to be contained within certain limits.

Minority Education in Greece: Thrace Muslim Teachers’ Approaches and Views

In this paper, our focus is on the education of children from the Muslim Minority in Western Thrace, an administrative region of Greece. Education in Thrace is a sensitive issue that affects and is influenced by the bilateral relations between Greece and Turkey. More specifically, our research aimed to explore teachers of Muslim origins’ approaches, views and beliefs regarding Muslim students’ schooling. To this end, our research explored these issues in a Case Study using semi-structured interviews of Muslim teachers in Thrace. Our findings show that the policy of positive discrimination that had been applied to members of the Muslim Minority of Western Thrace for more than twenty years, has had positive results, but has now reached its limits. We believe that the findings of our research can inform policy makers, colleges and schools of education, as well as teachers by providing a better understanding of Muslim teachers’ prospects and needs.

Mulheres na universidade: Ações afirmativas e justiça cognitiva

Positive discrimination policies adopted by Brazilian state universities include ethnic-racial, socioeconomic and educational background aspects and have favored the access of students from lower socioeconomic conditions, and particularly of women, a segment that already represents the majority of higher education students in the country. From this point of view, this research aimed to analyze the results of Affirmative Action Policies (PAA) adopted by UFBA (Federal University of Bahia) according to the concept of cognitive justice and its contribution for an effective democratization of higher education, with specific focus on the female segment. The present study is part of Abdias Nascimento Academic Development Program (CAPES/MEC), aimed at the analysis of the impacts of the expansion of higher education in Brazil since the PAA. It is a qualitative investigation based on narrative interviews with students from different knowledge areas. The results point out the diverse aspects permeating the process of academic affiliation: among others, stereotypes, prejudice,discrimination, diversity, inclusion, female wisdom. With the poor and afro descendant women’s participation in higher education, borderline and subaltern experiences and reflections, formerly excluded and silenced – such as the knowledge produced in the realm of traditional wisdom – have been approached.

Promotion signaling, discrimination, and positive discrimination policies

AbstractThis article studies discrimination in a model in which promotions are used as signals of worker ability. The model can account for statistical and taste‐based discrimination. In the short run, a positive discrimination policy is beneficial for workers in the middle of the ability distribution, because these workers are promoted if and only if the policy is in place. Instead, workers of either high or low ability suffer from the policy. In the long run, the policy benefits all targeted workers. The model can explain empirical findings about the effects of a gender quota on the boards of Norwegian companies.

Caste in the News: A Computational Analysis of Indian Newspapers

Conflicts involving caste issues, mainly concerning the lowest caste rights, pervade modern Indian society. Caste affiliation, being rigorously enforced by the society, is an official contemporary reality. Although caste identity is a major social discrimination, it also serves as a necessary condition for affirmative action like reservation policy. In this article, we perform an original and rigorous analysis of the discourse involving the theme “caste” in India newspapers. To this purpose, we have implemented a computational analysis over a big dataset of the 2016 and 2017 editions of three major Indian newspapers to determine the most salient themes associated with “caste” in the news. We have used an original mix of state-of-the-art algorithms, including those based on statistical distributions and two-layer neural networks, to detect the relevant topics in the news and characterize their linguistic context. We concluded that there is an excessive association between lower castes, victimization, and social unrest in the news that does not adequately cover the reports on other aspects of their life and personal identity, thus reinforcing conflict, while attenuating the vocality and agency of a large section of the population. From our conclusion, we propose a positive discrimination policy in the newsroom.

'Gender is not even a side issue…it's a non-issue': career trajectories and experiences from the perspective of male and female healthcare managers in Kenya.

Women comprise a significant proportion of the health workforce globally but remain under-represented in the higher professional categories. Concern about the under-representation of women in health leadership positions has resulted in increased research on the topic, although this research has focused primarily on high-income countries. An improved understanding of the career trajectories and experiences of healthcare leaders in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and the role of gender, is therefore needed. This qualitative case study was undertaken in two counties in coastal Kenya. Drawing on the life-history approach, 12 male and 13 female healthcare leaders were interviewed between August 2015 and July 2016 on their career progression and related experiences. Although gender was not spontaneously identified as a significant influence, closer exploration of responses revealed that gendered factors played an important role. Most fundamentally, women’s role as child bearers and gendered societal expectations including child nurturing and other domestic responsibilities can influence their ability to take up leadership opportunities, and their selection and appointment as leaders. Women’s selection and appointment as leaders may also be influenced by positive discrimination policies (in favour of women), and by perceptions of women and men as having different leadership styles (against women, who some described as more emotive and reactive). These gendered influences intersect in relatively invisible ways with other factors more readily identified by respondents to influence their progression and experience. These factors included: professional cadre, with doctors more likely to be selected into leadership roles; and personal and professional support systems ranging from family support and role models, through to professional mentorship and continuing education. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy, practice and research, including highlighting the need for more in-depth intersectionality analyses of leadership experience in LMICs.

Positive Discrimination Policies and Indigenous-Based ECEC Services in Bogota, Colombia

This article aims to present a few tensions and contradictions when implementing children’s rights using the case of three Casas de Pensamiento Indígena (CPI)—indigenous childcare services—in Bogotá. It questions global policies and local interpretations of early childhood education. Its main purpose is to find insights on what it means to attend to young children from minority groups. Could early childhood education and care (ECEC) services be reduced to ethnic backgrounds? In the struggle to deal with global, local, and community discourses, policy makers see positive discrimination not only as a way to justify their actions and their policies but also as a way to respond to the question of equity and diversity, regardless of equality. Therefore, this article highlights this discussion on positive discrimination as a way to intensify social inequality or reproduce inequalities at another level with a different name. Rancière’s dissertation on politics (Rancière 1998) and on the different meanings of politics and politique is used to understand the subtle relationship between equity and diversity. Considering all of this, it was decided to do fieldwork to comprehend the daily lives of CPI settings and the complexity of their formalization/institutionalization. The study highlights how CPI both differs from and is part of conventional services, and how indigenous caregivers and children face an institutional script that asks them to perform indigenism.

Outrage in Malaysia: The Politics of Taking Offence

This article develops a general articulation of the politics of offence and outrage by drawing on examples of high profile political furores in Malaysia. In these furores, minority ethno-religious groups and individuals ostensibly caused offence to the majority Muslim Malay population. Although these offences were framed as transgressions of genuine sensitivities, I argue that politics of offence must be seen for the political utility it holds for those who claim to represent the majority group that has been putatively offended. In Malaysia, a key component of this political strategy is the positioning by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) of its constituency—the Malays—as being comparatively economically weaker than non-Malay groups. This positioning in turn warrants the continuation of the positive discrimination policies of the New Economic Policy of the 1970s, which was implemented to achieve parity between the major ethnic groups in Malaysia. An example of this was when UMNO vehemently rejected the findings of a think tank that argued that the New Economic Policy’s target of having 30% Malay ownership of equity had been achieved. This positioning of an in-group as weak, and the normalisation of privilege in the Malaysian context, is analysed in view of two other cases studies, Erving Goffman’s concept of ‘the turn’, and Ward Goodenough’s description of the human experience of outrage. I also show that ‘outrage’ as a politico-emotional strategy remains effective despite the momentous results of Malaysia’s general elections in 2018, which might otherwise herald a new era of inter-ethnic co-operation.

Unequal Thailand: Aspects of Income, Wealth and Power

Unequal Thailand: Aspects of Income, Wealth and Power. Edited by Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker. Singapore: NUS Press, 2015. Pp. 208. Inequality is a much-debated and controversial issue in the social sciences. Academic and public discourse on inequality is usually confined to advanced economies and rarely includes the developing world, despite rising inequality in economies such as China, India, or Southeast Asia. This volume, dedicated to inequality in the case of Thailand, is the first comprehensive study of its kind. The book highlights that the repeated crises and coups d'etat in Thailand are rooted in inequalities. Thanks to the quality and multifaceted contributions, this edited volume will surely become a key reference book for students of Thailand and of inequality. Phongpaichit and Baker's introduction presents their analysis of how economic inequalities underpin inequalities of power, social positions and access to resources. Using extensive time series data (1962-2015), they show that income inequality has worsened sharply during the development era. Thailand's inequality was one of the highest level in the world when it peaked in 1992. The authors point to several political-economic factors to explain this rising trend in contrast with neighbouring countries. For example, while rising inequality in Thailand is due to the benign neglect of authorities, in Malaysia, the government targeted inequalities after the riots of 1969 by implementing a policy of positive discrimination in favour of the Malays, which also provided it a source of durable legitimacy. It was only in the 2000s that the Thai government enacted a set of policies, including its universal healthcare scheme, that income inequality declined (though nonetheless remaining the highest in Southeast Asia). The remaining chapters look at different sources of inequality in Thailand. In Chapter 2, Laowakul analyses the skewed distribution of wealth based on the analysis of household surveys and the distribution of landholding based on the first ever study of a database of the Land Department. She shows that the concentration of land owning is indeed very high. She attributes this to the under-supply of public goods and services. However, public money is lacking, not because Thailand is a poor country, but because of the low rate of taxation. She proposes a tax on wealth which would fall on relatively few people--given the very high concentration of resources--while generating much-needed public revenues for the supply of public goods. Chapter 3 is dedicated to inequality in education and wages. Lathapipat highlights that overall progress in education has been accompanied by growing disparities in the access to tertiary education. Household income plays an even more important role in limiting continuation to the tertiary level. This explains the widening wage gap between those with secondary and tertiary education as well as between those receiving different standards of tertiary education. The author suggests that providing fair access to good-quality tertiary education will be key to reducing social inequality in the long run. Chapter 4, authored by Achavanuntakul, Rakkiattiwong and Direkudomsak, examines how capital markets affects inequality. First, the stock exchange exacerbates the inequality between those who have access to stock exchange and those who do not because the Thai government has never seriously taxed financial gains and has even granted tax exemptions to investors. Second, the stock exchange advantages the 200 richest families with access to inside information--such as loopholes in regulation or from the non-enforcement of rules --over the vast majority of investors which depend on public information. To support this claim, the authors tracked fifty-seven political stocks at the time of three general elections between 2005-11 and found abnormal returns in all cases. …

A commentary on the positive discrimination policy of India

Affirmative action and discriminatory measures are complex and controversial issues. The goal of affirmative action is to speed up the creation of a representative and equitable workforce and to assist those who were historically disadvantaged by unfair discrimination to fulfil their maximum potential. The term invokes emotions that range from fear and rage to satisfaction. Affirmative action has encouraged an ongoing debate regarding the legal, moral and economic questions arising from the preferential treatment of certain groups of people in society. Underlying this debate are various concerns about the notion of reverse discrimination or the unfair disadvantage to individuals who bear no responsibility for past or present discrimination practised by others. This article states the current position with regard to the caste system and the reservation of jobs in the Republic of India in the context of affirmative action and the achievement of equality in the workplace. Its purpose is to highlight the extreme division of opinion about what is socially acceptable, namely, caste. Further, it provides the reader with an understanding of the need for affirmative action in the first place in India, and thereby creates a powerful tool for understanding discrimination and the need for affirmative action measures. Another goal is to provide useful guidelines and information to all persons involved in implementing affirmative action programmes. It serves to show that if affirmative action measures and/or discriminatory measures are not properly thought out then affirmative action becomes burdensome and even more discriminatory, rather than being a means of achieving equality and redressing past wrongs.

Towards Inclusive Education: A Case Study of IGNOU

Towards the end of the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007 -2012), India catered to about 20 per cent of the youth in the age group 17 to 24 years. However, to achieve the threshold level of about 30 per cent by 2020, and address concerns which perpetuate inequalities in opportunities to higher education, Government of India (GoI) formulated positive discrimination policies. Establishment of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) was one such positive step in this direction. Since 1987, IGNOU has been striving for inclusive education and reach all groups till the last mile. As a result of its dedicated efforts, at the end of 2012, it had reached 639 out of 659 districts in the country, including those in the red corridor (infested by Naxalite and Maoist extremists) passing through States of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha, and West Bengal. IGNOU has been successfully imparting education and training to socially, economically, physically and/or geographically disadvantaged, in addition to women, minorities and jail inmates. Our results show that participation of rural women is particularly encouraging in all programmes but the dropout rate of these groups is rather high and success rate comparatively low.

Promotion Signaling, Discrimination, and Positive Discrimination Policies

The current paper studies discrimination in a model in which promotions are used as signals of worker ability. The model can account for both statistical and taste-based discrimination. A positive discrimination policy is beneficial for the workers in the middle of the ability distribution because these workers are promoted if and only if the policy is in place. Instead, workers of either high or low ability generally suffer from the policy because it weakens the positive signal of being promoted and strengthens the negative signal of not being promoted. We also show that the policy may aggravate wage inequality. The model can explain recent empirical findings about the effects of a gender quota on the boards of publicly traded Norwegian companies.

Do Caste and Class Define Inequality? Revisiting Education in a Kerala Village

Is there a strong correlation between caste and class in access to education, especially higher education? This is the broader question addressed by the study in the context of Kerala, the southernmost state in India, with impressive conventional indicators in education. Micro-level insights based on the study of a village in Kerala show that old forms of inequalities have been replaced by new forms of inequalities in education. Notwithstanding Kerala’s impressive indicators, huge inequalities exist in the educational attainments of the population. The Scheduled Castes (SCs) are still at the bottom of the rankings in enrolment in higher education despite the adoption of a positive discrimination policy and educational subsidy by the state. This situation is explained through an examination of three issues: the perception of the lower employment potential of conventional or mainstream higher education; the educational polices of the state and disparate access to economic resources. The study concludes by offering a few policy recommendations to make higher education more inclusive for marginalised sections of society.

Inclusive Secondary Education in India : Challenges and Future Directions

The focus of this article is on secondary education in India as the transition phase from school to higher education, as an instrument of promoting education as a right and as the pathway to higher education and through that to social mobility and equality. The dimensions selected for detailed analysis are: participation of the SCs and STs, the gap between the education of boys and girls and the regional variations with a focus on the northeast. I am revisiting this composite focus on marginal social groups after a long hiatus (Chanana, 1993). The dimensions of caste, tribe, region and gender are selected because students from these social groups, region and women continue to negotiate inequitable cultural barriers, a theme I have been exploring consistently in the context of gender (Chanana, 1998, 2006). This is followed by a discussion of the contribution that schools can make to help students move into colleges by providing the soft skills and cultural capital thereby making secondary education inclusive. Last section focuses on the future areas and directions of research. Overview In the first two decades after independence there was rapid growth of education mainly in the government or public sector. The stance of the government was that education had to be inclusive to which end a policy of positive discrimination was evolved on the basis of the provision made in the Indian Constitution. Until 1990 higher education was mainly in the public domain while private schools coexisted along with the public schools. However, the private schools were limited and were mostly aided, with some exceptions, by the government funds thereby following the rules and regulations which governed government run schools. Post economic liberalization in 1991, growth of education has been somewhat rapid but mainly in the private sector. Moreover, there are disparities in educational progress between rural and urban areas, between different sections of the population, namely, between the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) which are governed by the

The quiet crisis in higher education: national and sub-national perspectives

This paper examines the emerging challenges facing the higher education sector in Odisha. Low overall access to higher education, glaring spatial and social disparities in enrolment, weak infrastructure, poor quality of education and research, chronic faculty shortage and downsizing of state funding have been identified as the major challenges. Policy changes concerning higher education and the practice of pravatisation have complicated the problems rather than solving them. Active state participation, effective implementation of positive discrimination policies and ensuring accountability at all levels have been suggested to undo the damages done to higher education in the state.

Developing female coaches: strategies from women themselves

The purpose of this study was to explore strategies for the development of aspiring female coaches based on the ideas of existing high-performance female coaches. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with national-level female coaches in the United Kingdom, four recurrent ideas for developing female coaches in a male-dominated profession emerged. These were (1) role modelling and mentoring, (2) greater frequency and quality of coaching opportunities, (3) the creation of supportive networks, and (4) a policy of positive discrimination. Using a feminist cultural studies conceptual framework, this paper highlights how a culture dominated by masculine hegemony restricts the participants' opportunities for career development. Their experiences also reveal a lack of responsibility taken by governing bodies for the development of aspiring female coaches. As a result, I make a call for the inclusion of a more complex, sustained programme of socio-cultural education for coaches to inform women of the reasons for their underrepresentation as coaches, and call for greater action and leadership to be taken by sporting governing bodies.

Impetus and Resistance to Changing Work-Related Mobility Patterns in Catalonia: The Role of the Social Actors and Participation

Transport accounting and accountability, in addition to traditional infrastructure costs (i.e. vehicle and service operation), now include sustainability considerations: costs in terms of the environment, society and time spent in transit. This new perspective has highlighted the elevated expense of current daily mobility models in Western society, which are based on massive use of the car. We can see a willingness in present political agendas to change this mobility model for one which would reduce these high costs. These are primarily based on positive discrimination policies towards non-motorised and collective transport models which are reinforced by territorial management policies that promote proximity to the work place and services, as well as the use of high-capacity public transport means. Mobility model studies have generally tended to approach this topic from the perspective of actions taken by public administrations (i.e. providing more public transport vehicles or alternative criteria for managing parking spaces), overlooking the many and varied contributions by representatives of non-public administration organisations that play an active role in generating daily mobility. Therefore, in this paper we look at the contributions of these organisations to this changing model. The particular focus of our analysis is the largest trade union in Catalonia, Comissions Obreres, and its role in shaping a new scenario for workrelated mobility, seen as an organisation that not only makes claims and negotiates with public administrations and employers’ associations, but also propagates new mobility models among its own members.