This article examines post–Civil Rights Act trends in private sector managerial representation for white men, white women, black men, and black women. We examine how three factors affect changing ...access to managerial positions: (1) industrial restructuring, (2) the process of bottom-up ascription, and (3) organizational characteristics. Accounting for compositional shifts in the labor supply, we find that white male managerial overrepresentation remains virtually unchanged since 1966, even while other status groups make gains. A significant portion of the observed equal opportunity advance for women and blacks takes place in the expanding service sectors of the economy. We also find that female and minority gains are enhanced in larger and more managerially intensive workplaces. For all groups, managerial representation is increasingly tied to the presence of similar others in nonmanagerial jobs. Further examination reveals a new status hierarchy of managers and subordinates—a hierarchy wherein white men are likely to manage men of all races. White women, in comparison, are realizing a growing racial privilege in managing women of color.
This study aimed to examine the prevalence and types of school-based extracurricular sports and physical activity participation among children with disabilities. This study utilised the 2013-2016 ...National Health and Examination Surveys (N = 4416). A total of 509 children who received special education services were identified as children with disabilities in this study. Descriptive statistics, Rao-Scott chi-square tests, binary logistic regression, and multivariate logistic regression model were used to answer the research questions. The results suggested a discrepancy in school-based extracurricular sport and physical activity participation between children with and without disabilities. Furthermore, there were significant disparities in participation in school-based extracurricular sports and physical activities among girls with disabilities. It is recommended that sufficient resources and training opportunities be provided for policy implementation to promote school-based extracurricular sport and physical activity participation of children with disabilities. Offering more favourable and suitable extracurricular sport and physical activity programs can also ensure children with disabilities have an equal opportunity to participate in sport and physical activity after school hours.
Cognitive and noncognitive skills are key indicators of educational success and merit. However, even when accounting for inequalities in skill formation by family socioeconomic status (SES), a wide ...SES-gap in college enrolment remains. According to the compensatory advantage hypothesis, SES-gaps in educational transitions are largest among cognitively weak students, but little is known on mechanisms. It has long been argued that noncognitive traits such as effort and motivation might be at least as important as cognitive skills over the status-attainment process, and these skills might interact by being complements or substitutes. Thus, I test whether advantaged students substitute low cognitive skills in test scores by high returns to conscientiousness—rated by teachers— in the transition to academic secondary schools. I draw data from the German National Educational Panel Study to study a cohort of students from Grades 1 to 5, when early tracking is enforced. I estimate linear probability models with school fixed-effects and moderation. To account for measurement error, I also use composite latent skills across elementary education. I report three main findings: (a) High-SES students at the same level of cognitive and noncognitive skills than low-SES schoolmates are more likely to attend the academic track bridged to college; (b) in line with the compensatory hypothesis, these SES-inequalities are largest among low cognitive performers; (3) cognitively weak students from high-SES families get the highest educational returns to conscientiousness in comparison to high cognitive performers or low-SES peers, validating the skill substitution hypothesis. These findings challenge the liberal conception of merit as the sum of ability plus effort in assessing equal opportunity in education.
The authors survey economists in the United States holding membership in the American Economic Association (AEA) to determine if there are significant differences in views between male and female ...economists on important policy issues. Controlling for place of current employment (academic institution with graduate program, academic institution—undergraduate only, government, for‐profit institution) and decade of PhD, the authors find many areas in which economists agree. However, important differences exist in the views of male and female economists on issues including the minimum wage, views on labor standards, health insurance, and especially on explanations for the gender wage gap and issues of equal opportunity in the labor market and the economics profession itself. These results lend support to the notion that gender diversity in policy‐making circles may be an important aspect in broadening the menu of public policy choices. (JEL A11, J78, A14)
Everyone has the right to education, work, healthcare, participation in cultural life and community, and rest and leisure. Many groups of people however experience inequities in many aspects of life. ...One such group is persons with disabilities. The aim of this paper is to explore the lived experiences of persons with disabilities in Trinidad and Tobago by examining the complaints lodged with the Equal Opportunity Commission. Using a basic interpretive design, files related to four categories, namely, education, goods and services, accommodations and employment, are examined. Findings indicate various attitudinal, environmental and institutional challenges across all categories as well as financial, psychological and quality of life implications. Against the backdrop of various conceptualisations of the social model of disability and the social relational experiences of disability in the local setting, policy and practice recommendations are presented to support wellbeing for persons with disabilities in Trinidad and Tobago.
Experiences of persons with disabilities are examined across four categories simultaneously, i.e. education, goods and services, accommodations and employment.
Experiences among examined categories demonstrate inconsistencies in national and organisational policies to promote equal rights among persons with disabilities.
Guidance on disability disclosure and measures to promote equal rights among persons with disabilities after disability disclosure are absent.
Ambiguity and neglect of current social situations regarding the eligibility criteria of social assistance grants contribute to double disadvantage.
The development of a social model of disability and wellbeing is recommended to promote equal rights among persons with disabilities.
Many countries delegate a substantial part of social service decisions to local administrative levels, while federal laws provide the overall framework for service levels. Strict regulations to ...reduce budget overruns may however leave local governments with a potential trade-off between adhering to fiscal budgets and supplying critical welfare services as e.g. programs to protect vulnerable children. We investigate if budgetary constraints influence child protection decisions using high-quality register data. We show that the introduction of fiscal sanctions to improve budget adherence contributed to a sharp decline in budget overruns on child protective services by reducing the number of children in out-of-home care. Our results further show that monthly variation in budget adherence within a fiscal year affects the probability of a placement in out-of-home care for children in need of help towards the end of a fiscal year. We estimate that a budget overrun of 10 percentage points by mid-year leads to a 1.2 percent reduction in the number of children in care over the remaining part of the fiscal year. Municipalities reduced child protection expenditure by choosing cheaper types of care and ending placement for children in out-of-home care, particularly for children turning 18. Our paper contributes to the literature on fiscal federalism by documenting the trade-off between managing public expenditure and providing safety and equal opportunity for vulnerable children. We thus highlight that enforcing strict budget adherence may be in conflict with social policy goals. Our results raise an important discussion about centralization versus delegation of critical public services.
This article argues a case for reconsidering positive discrimination as a viable and necessary policy intervention to speed up the progression to equality in the workplace. It provides ...counter-arguments to the four main objections to positive discrimination: the failure to select the 'best' candidate, the undermining of meritocracy, the negative impact on the beneficiaries and the injustice of reverse discrimination. It concludes that positive discrimination provides the necessary structural conditions in order for radical, transformative change towards equality to take place.
In this article we develop a contingency approach to representative bureaucracy. We argue that representative bureaucracy is a multidimensional and changing concept, and that in the academic and ...policy debate on representative bureaucracy three different dimensions are intermingled: power, equal opportunities and diversity. These dimensions not only reflect a particular view on the role of the state and the relation between the state and citizens, they also diverge in the motives for making the bureaucracy representative. Even the conception of what representation means can be totally different. We conclude that modern diversity management approaches alone may not contribute to nation-building because these mainly emphasize organizational performance. Approaches to representative bureaucracy in nation-building must also be built on moral arguments and underline the exemplary role of the state. In addition, the political viability of managerial and moral approaches needs to be taken into account through acknowledging political realities and existing distributions of power in society.
Points for practitioners
Through using a contingency approach we show how representative bureaucracy has been used as a political and administrative answer to quite different social, political and administrative problems and challenges. Through analysing these contingencies, this article contributes to nation-builders’ quest for a fitting concept of representative bureaucracy in the contexts in which they are working. The instruments used to make the bureaucracy representative need to be aligned with dominant conceptions of the state, politics, and citizens.
A robust body of research examines factors affecting the likelihood that women experience increasing barriers to promotion in workplaces. However, limited research examines how racialized and ...gendered processes may intersect and work differently for racially and gender marginalized workers. Specifically, the processes relating to a worker’s ability to reach middle-level management positions (e.g., those managers who oversee a small group of employees) and senior-level management positions (e.g., CEOs and other executive positions) may vary based on workers’ race and gender. Using 2015 EEO-1 data collected by the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC), we examine how the characteristics of a workplace affect Black men, Black women, White men, and White women’s share of middle- and senior-level management. We find Black women and Black men are strikingly under-represented in both middle and senior management in private-sector workplaces. Our results demonstrate that access to middle- and senior-management varies by the characteristics of the workplace and workers’ race and gender. Overall, our findings point to an important implication: Greater oversight of workplaces, including by the EEOC, is associated with marginalized race/gender groups having higher shares of management.
