Support For Equal Rights Research Articles

The Good Disobedient Citizen? Students’ Perspectives on Good Citizenship in the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016

Scholars of democratic citizenship and citizenship education have long discussed whether willingness to commit civil disobedience (CD) is an important attribute of citizens to defend and enforce democratic and human rights. In light of the youth protests of recent years, this article examines whether 14-year-old students consider CD important for being a good citizen. Using representative Danish, German, Dutch and Norwegian samples from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016, this study investigates dimensions of students’ concepts of citizenship and their relatedness to civic knowledge and support for equal rights. Confirmatory factor analysis established CD as a distinct dimension of good citizenship whose scale is metrically invariant across countries. However, linear regressions showed a negative impact of civic knowledge and support for equal gender rights on CD attitudes, raising the question if the empirical pattern of students supporting CD fits with theoretical assumptions of critical or transformative citizenship education.

Effects of Stereotype-Focused Imagined Contact on Young Adults' Intentions for Intergenerational Interaction.

Face-to-face intergenerational contact is associated with more positive attitudes toward older adults. However, such contact can be difficult to achieve, and poor contact experiences can have negative consequences for intergenerational relations. We examined whether mentally simulated intergenerational contact (which is more easily facilitated and controllable) could reduce young adults' inclinations to avoid intergenerational interactions by increasing their inclusion of the older outgroup in the self (IOS), and by enhancing their stereotypes of older adults' warmth and competence. We conducted an online experiment with 373 young adults from the United States. Participants imagined talking with an older adult (aged 70-75 years) in the circumstances intended to make salient either the older adult's warmth or their competence. Both manipulations increased young adult participants' IOS with respect to older adults, which in turn predicted more positive assessments of older adults' warmth and competence. IOS, along with ratings of warmth and competence, inversely predicted the desire to avoid future interaction with older adults. Findings indicate the viability of a simple and accessible intervention to improve intergenerational relations, which can be tailored to address different goals (e.g., encouraging intergenerational friendships vs. encouraging support for equal rights of older members of the workforce).

Історичні особливості становлення національного законодавства України в процесі формування державної політики забезпечення ґендерної рівності

Introduction. Ukraine’s signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union in 2014 posed new important tasks for our country, such as the development of new conceptual approaches to the formation of basic principles of gender policy, which would form in the Ukrainian society understanding of gender culture based on recognition of equality of men and women, and consequently help to overcome discrimination between the sexes in various relationships. Quite often, the majority of society considers gender policy a part of state social policy, especially when it comes to social security payments to families with children or on childcare leave, or employment problems, etc. However, only few people understand that the very concept of gender equality is quite broad and applies to various areas of public policy, the purpose of which is to effectively guarantee equality to different groups of Ukrainian society. Therefore, further development and improvement of legislation in terms of ensuring gender equality in Ukrainian society is a very important task. The implementation of this task requires also a generalization of the reformist experience of the late 1990s – early third decade of the XXI century, which makes the chosen topic relevant and scientifically and socio-politically significant. Purpose. The purpose of the article is to explore the mechanisms of national legislation in the process of forming state policy to ensure gender equality based on the analysis of sources involved in the study, using the latest principles and methods of scientific and historical knowledge. Methods. Methods of historicism, objectivism, generalized inference, as well as problem-thematic and chronological methods of scientific research are used. Results. The process of developing legal regulation of gender relations in Ukraine is quite dynamic in its content and is based on the principles of the international law, commitеd to writing in a number of documents of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, etc. In Ukraine, the legislative process to ensure gender equality began in the late twentieth century, in 1996 with the adoption of the Constitution of Ukraine, which in Article 24 enshrined the equality of rights of men and women. Over the next 25 years, a number of legal documents were adopted, which ensured the formation of public policy. Among them there are the Laws of Ukraine «On Ensuring Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men», «On Principles of Preventing and Combating Discrimination in Ukraine», «On Preventing and Combating Domestic Violence», and the National Action Plan of Ukraine for Implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1325 «Women, peace, security», etc. Conclusion. Thus, we can conclude that twenty-five years of Ukrainian politics has shown significant transformation of views on the role and place in the life of women. Thus, if at the end of the twentieth century the efforts of certain public organizations that defended the right to legislative «improvement of women», then in the XXI century there was a real legal support for equal rights and opportunities for both women and men in various spheres of society: social, educational, economic, political, and security sectors.

Tolerance more than equality? Two facets of tolerance towards immigrants among Czech adolescents

ABSTRACT This study focused on facets of tolerance towards immigrants among Czech adolescents, drawing on data from 9th and 10th graders (n = 2003). The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between tolerance towards immigrants and support for democracy, repression potential, right-wing authoritarianism, and out-group trust. Results showed that tolerance towards immigrants should be treated as a two-dimensional concept: support for equal rights, focused on equality in labour market, housing or access to education, and support for cultural rights, encompassing acceptance of immigrants’ rights to practice their culture and religion. We found that Czech adolescents were generally more supportive of equal rights than of cultural rights, and that out-group trust explained most of the variance for both dimensions of tolerance towards immigrants. The study also indicated ambiguous effects in the relationship between right-wing authoritarianism, repression potential and support for equal/cultural rights of immigrants with out-group trust used as moderating variable.

We Will All Be Free or None Will Be: Why Federal Power Is not Plenary, but Limited and Supreme

Emma Lazarus, who gave us the poem The New Colossus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island, is also credited for giving us the principle, “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” The root of this principle traces back to the founding contributions of James Wilson. It also stretches into present day public consciousness through the works of Martin Luther King, Jr. in support of equal rights in America. The idea of the equality of rights being essential to the freedom and rights of each person consists in the ancient law of the citizen. It was old when Paul of Tarsus used it to appeal to Rome in the Court of Festus in Caesarea. That Court secured his right to immigrate into the capital to further vindicate his equal rights to the free exercise of religion. The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony and later of Rhode Island similarly sought to secure this equality of rights to themselves by their immigration to America. Foreigners in a land of Native Americans who they thought to be Indians, the Pilgrims vindicated their religious rights upon a purchase rather than conquest or discovery. This was symbolized by Roger Williams’ escape into a snow storm, to make an appeal among the Natives for his life. Following Williams’ example, the American Revolutionaries declared their rights upon purchases from the original owners of the land, i.e., the Native Americans. They appealed as Paul and Williams did to the rights of an immigrant rather than the sanguine rights of blood or high-birth—and their cause was vindicated upon what Phillis Wheatley coined “the heaven defended line,” i.e., the equal rights of humanity. Thus, for the first several decades of its existence the United States held its doors open to immigrants. But over the years a movement to exclude immigrants began to take form in the States. It was lifted into exclusive federal purview in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, and was finally extended in Chae Chan Ping as the plenary power to exclude immigrants, which is the entire basis of federal Immigration Law as we know it today. This article will demonstrate how the judicial assertion of plenary rather than limited powers is the root of Immigration Law in America, and it will provide strategies to reverse Donald J. Trump’s recent assertion of Immigration Law as a source of unbounded Executive Power.

Gender Attitudes in Africa: Liberal Egalitarianism Across 34 Countries

AbstractThis study provides a first descriptive mapping of support for women’s equal rights in 34 African countries and assesses diverse theoretical explanations for variability in this support. Contrary to stereotypes of a homogeneously tradition-bound continent, African citizens report high levels of agreement with gender equality that are more easily understood with reference to global processes of ideational diffusion than to country-level differences in economic modernization or women’s public-sphere roles. Multivariate analyses suggest, however, that gender liberalism in Africa may be spreading through mechanisms not typically considered by world-society scholars: Support for equal rights is largely unrelated to countries’ formal ties to the world system, but it is stronger among persons who are more exposed to extra-local culture, including through internet and mobile phone usage, news access, and urban residency. Forces for gender liberalism are conditioned, moreover, by local religious cultures and gender structures.

Religion, Support of Equal Rights for Same-Sex Couples and the Australian National Vote on Marriage Equality

In 2017, the Australian Government commissioned a national vote on same-sex marriage legislation, which elicited substantial debates dominated by religious voices. We examine the associations between religious identification, the importance of religion to one's life and frequency of attendance at religious services and support for same-sex couples in such a unique context. We contribute to knowledge by (1) systematically examining these relationships in a country other than the United States (Australia) using high-quality, nationally representative panel data spanning 2005-2015 (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey; n = 44,794 observations/18,384 individuals), (2) assessing the degree of intra-group heterogeneity in views toward equal rights, and (3) considering how religiosity modifies the effects of other sociostructural factors. We find high degrees of between- and within-group heterogeneity in support of equal rights for same-sex couples, and large religiosity gradients. Furthermore, religiosity suppresses the liberalizing effects on attitudes of historical time, education, socioeconomic background, and city residence.

Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City (review)

Reviewed by: Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City Jason Schulman (bio) Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City. By Jonathan Soffer. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. xi + 494 pp. Jonathan Soffer has produced a remarkable labor of love, both for the city of New York and for the “Jewish mayor” who led it during the late 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on numerous interviews as well as Koch’s personal papers, Soffer presents a sweeping biography of the man who garnered both fame and infamy as a congressman, mayor, and television personality. Although Koch—the media-loving public servant who polarized the city over the answer to his trademarked question “how’m I doin’?”—is the center of attention, he is also Soffer’s vehicle to tell a larger story about politics in late twentieth-century America. In constructing this larger narrative, Soffer joins a growing coterie of scholars interested in American Jews and the postwar New York urban experience. When Ed Koch became mayor in 1977, New York faced a severe financial crisis, its overwhelming debt unmanageable because the city’s credit had been destroyed. Unlike his predecessor Abraham Beame, who had watched the economy’s downward spiral but had ceded his power to the Emergency Financial Control Board, Koch centralized power in the office of the mayor and instituted austerity measures and promoted gentrification in an attempt to restore the city’s budget. Almost miraculously, the budget was balanced by 1981, what Soffer calls “quite simply the greatest turnaround accomplished by any New York mayor in the twentieth century” (399). Not everyone agreed with Koch’s handling of the fiscal crisis. Many argued that Koch had “balanced the budget on the backs of poor” while doling out “corporate welfare” (234). Supporters and critics of Koch have long argued over the mayor’s tenure, as well as his legacy. Perhaps no issue quite captures the extent of Koch’s ability to divide his constituents as race. Koch often found himself at loggerheads with members of the African American community, from the Forest Hills housing controversy (which occurred before Koch was even mayor), to his decision to close Harlem’s Sydenham Hospital, to his frequent tension with Charles Rangel and Jesse Jackson. Koch’s constant attempts to court the working-class ethnic vote in New York’s outer boroughs by racially coded appeals to “law and order” also helped alienate many black voters. Similarly, gay New Yorkers were often split over Koch, some sticking by him for his years of support for equal rights and others blaming him for his inaction during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. [End Page 95] Despite his prodigious research, Soffer is, like the citizens of New York, unable to come to a complete view of Koch and his true political beliefs. After all, this was a man who was elected mayor of New York on the Democrat and Republican tickets simultaneously. Soffer does his best to explain how Koch’s politics were determined by larger contexts. Even as he fought busing and affirmative action and reduced welfare, Koch made sure to attack President Reagan enough to avoid being called a “neocon,” and he never favored social conservative issues like curtailing abortion or gay marriage. In some ways, Koch remained consistent. His support for Israel was unwavering, and he never relinquished his view that politics was his “personal battlefield” (106). Soffer’s book contributes to and complicates the vast literature on American Jews and liberalism. Soffer nicely contextualizes Koch’s migration from (far) left to (moderate) right within a larger pattern of ethnic political change during the 1970s. “Ethnic Ed,” as Koch was known, appealed to, and found comfort politicking among, working-class ethnics, especially Jews and Catholics. The complex demands of ethnic affiliation, party allegiance, and economic necessity all played a part in determining how Jews’ politics underwent change in the late twentieth century. If there is one major criticism of the book, it is that Koch’s Jewishness is not explored in greater detail. Soffer seems content to label him a “fairly secular Jew,” but we are left asking for more specificity about how the background of the...

Gender, Parties, and Support for Equal Rights in the Brazilian Congress

This article analyzes a dataset of policy views of members of the Brazilian Congress to assess the nature of support for genderrelated policy issues. It makes three core claims. First, liberal and progressive opinions on gender correspond to party membership more than to sex. Left parties have consistent and programmatic policy positions on controversial gender issues. Women and men are more divided, as are parties of the center and the right. Second, coalitions supporting change differ across policy issues. Support for gender quotas, for example, does not translate into support for more liberal abortion laws. Third, there is a large gap between legislators' attitudes toward gender-related policy and actual policy outcomes. Institutional deadlock and executive priorities explain this discrepancy. This article concludes that although women may share some interests by virtue of their position in a gender-structured society, these interests may be trumped by partisan, class, regional, and other cleavages.

Gender, Parties, and Support for Equal Rights in the Brazilian Congress

AbstractThis article analyzes a dataset of policy views of members of the Brazilian Congress to assess the nature of support for genderrelated policy issues. It makes three core claims. First, liberal and progressive opinions on gender correspond to party membership more than to sex. Left parties have consistent and programmatic policy positions on controversial gender issues. Women and men are more divided, as are parties of the center and the right. Second, coalitions supporting change differ across policy issues. Support for gender quotas, for example, does not translate into support for more liberal abortion laws. Third, there is a large gap between legislators' attitudes toward gender-related policy and actual policy outcomes. Institutional deadlock and executive priorities explain this discrepancy. This article concludes that although women may share some interests by virtue of their position in a gender-structured society, these interests may be trumped by partisan, class, regional, and other cleavages.

The relationship among reported disclosure of sexual orientation, anti‐discrimination policies, top management support and work attitudes of gay and lesbian employees

There is currently very little research to support the popularly held claim that “closeted” homosexual workers will have a less positive work‐related attitude and no empirical investigation of companies that prohibit discrimination on grounds of sexuality. This study used data from a survey of 744 homosexual employees to determine the relationships of reported disclosure of sexual orientation, anti‐discrimination policies and top management support for equal rights with relevant work attitudes. All three independent variables were found to be significantly related to affective organizational commitment and conflict between work and home. Additionally, anti‐discrimination policies and top management support were related to job satisfaction. However, none of the independent variables were significantly associated with continuance organizational commitment or job stress. It is suggested that human resource managers concerned with integrating gay and lesbian employees begin by educating top managers and creating a work environment in which disclosure of homosexual orientation is supported.

The Effect of Marital-Dyad Status Inconsistency on Women's Support for Equal Rights

The Effect of Marital-Dyad Status Inconsistency on Women's Support for Equal Rights