The links between gender and poverty are over-simplified and under-problematised: a time of economic crisis is an opportune moment to re-think the ‘feminisation of poverty’ and address the ‘feminisation of responsibility’

Women’s poverty levels are at the centre of political discussions around the world as governments put into place deficit reduction plans. These discussions often fail to take account of the complex relationship between gender and poverty, argues Sylvia Chant, and a renewed focus on the time and labour that women invest in bearing the burden of dealing with poverty is now needed

The Bank of Canada: Moving Towards Transparency

During the 1990s the Bank of Canada made several changes that transformed its conduct of monetary policy. In the 1960s and 1970s, policy decisions were made in an environment characterized by instrument opaqueness and goal opaqueness, which tended to shield the Bank's operations from scrutiny and accountability. Since the 1970s the Bank has moved towards transparency and openness by rejecting multiple policy instruments and adopting a single, well-defined goal of inflation control. A recent survey has shown that the Bank of Canada is in the middle range of central banks with regard to its transparency and has lost points for not publishing the forecasts that shape its policy or the minutes and voting records of its governing body. Chant suggests that the public has benefited significantly from the changes the Bank has made, but that it should continue to support research on the benefits of low and stable inflation and continually inform other policy-makers and the public of the results.

Strengthening Bank Regulation: OSFI's Contingent Capital Plan

Bank failures around the world during the recent financial crisis put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars in government backstopping. In future, requiring banks to issue contingent capital, which would convert from debt to equity when banks run into trouble, is one way to help avoid that happening again, and limit taxpayer costs if it does, according to this paper. The author makes the case for contingent capital, critiques the current federal proposal, and makes recommendations for design that would help stave off disaster for banks, not hasten their demise.Financial Services, bank failures, contingent capital, Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFT)

The links between gender and poverty are over-simplified and under-problematised: a time of economic crisis is an opportune moment to re-think the ‘feminisation of poverty’ and address the ‘feminisation of responsibility’.

Women’s poverty levels are at the centre of political discussions around the world as governments put into place deficit reduction plans. These discussions often fail to take account of the complex relationship between gender and poverty, argues Sylvia Chant, and a renewed focus on the time and labour that women invest in bearing the burden of dealing with poverty is now needed.

An exploration of the relationship between personal and career identity in the stories of three women: a counter narrative for career development

This thesis explores the stories of three women. They are different stories connected by experiences of first or second generation migration, ambiguous identities, belonging and otherness. I also connect the stories as I am one of the women, my cousin is another and the third is my friend. My interest is both personal and professional as this research serves both my personal interest in our lives and careers, and my professional concern as a practitioner about the development of career counselling practice to meet the needs of clients. The search for and interpretation of meaning (Bruner,1990) informed the methodology and analysis of this work. I do not seek a ‘truthful account’ of our stories, accurate in their telling, but a ‘truth seeking’ narrative, what memories and stories mean to the teller. The methodology is auto/biographical. I began the research where my thoughts and questions began, with my own story. This is neither autobiographical nor biographical research, it is an interplay between the two. The ‘/’ both connects and divides my story and those of my participants (Merrill and West, 2009). I reflected upon images, memories, collage and discussion about my own life and career. The stories of my co-participants, gathered through loosely structured interview and using artefacts, poems and family histories, are rich in themselves but their intersection with my own story is also part of the heuristic nature of the methodology. The interviews, lasting one to two hours, were recorded and fully transcribed, and those transcripts shared with my co-participants for accuracy. A second interview, after a period of reflection on the transcription was conducted with one participant. In this follow-up interview, questions were shaped by events and elements in the story that were of particular interest and were then able to be explored further. With the other participant a full weekend of discussion followed the interview, which brought in other family members, reflections and stories. The analysis of the material is holistic and considers the ethnography, process and Gestalt of our interactions (Merrill and West, 2009). The meaning in these lives and careers is a co-construction from themes within each story and also the shared meaning between them. The three stories present windows into very different lives and careers, but also into recognisable and shared struggles and resolutions. Although personal agency is at the heart of each story, this is set within and shaped by the family, history and communities in which each of us grew. The work of Jung (1938), Adler (1923), Frosh (1991) and later of Savickas (2011) provided some theoretical ‘heavy lifting’ in understanding the relationship between personal identities and career. Each is invited into the thesis to comment upon and to illuminate the processes at work in this shared space. They help to understand the relationship between the threads and themes in these stories and how they create a tapestry of meaning for the teller. Insights into the three stories offer a critique of the dominant models of professional practice in career counselling. Such critique follows a now well established paradigm shift in career theory in response to the changing nature of work and of social structures (Bauman, 2000; 2005: Frosh, 1991) and an increased interest in contextualism in career counselling (Richardson, 2002). Social constructionist theories and models include Savickas’ (2011) Career Construction Theory in which he identified the significance of pre-occupations as threads that accompany us through career and life, connecting the plots, characters and scripts into a story that in the telling has meaning and purpose. Pre-occupations in our three stories were identified from themes in the interviews and in other material and the pre-occupation that united us was the clarification and construction of our identities. Sometimes it was a clear and painful roar and sometimes a quiet question hidden within micronarratives that were re-membered in our conversations. Career provided us with a stage whereon identity was more or less resolved and reconstructed. The significance of the relationship between personal and career identity emerges as the key argument of this thesis and a counter narrative for career counselling. It provides an alternative to neoliberal, individualistic, outcome driven practice (Irving, 2013), and has at its heart an acknowledgement of the relationship between who we believe ourselves to be and what we do in our lives. I conclude that such a counter narrative must be illustrated first within the development of the curriculum for the training and education of careers practitioners. It must also be reflected in the development of models of career theory and counselling. In this way it will be secured within the practice of careers professionals for future generations. On a broader level there is much that the exploration into the relationship between personal and career identity can illuminate outside the specific context of career counselling. Social and political concerns about radicalisation and the construction of identity in migrant communities may be illuminated by the insights offered by this thesis. Moreover as identities become more mixed and complex in ‘liquid modern’ worlds (Bauman, 2000) this thesis offers a further understanding of the scaffolding that is needed for identity construction and life planning, when traditional structures are hard to find

The Canadian Experience with Counterfeiting

Counterfeiting poses a significant public policy issue because of the important role that paper money plays in Canada's payments system. Yet the threat of counterfeiting in all economies has increased markedly in the past decade as a result of technological advances to photocopiers and computer printers. An appropriate pubic policy response is thus necessary to maintain the public's continued confidence in the national currency. To assess the threat from counterfeiting, including possible loss of confidence in the currency, estimating the stock of counterfeits circulating is necessary. In this article, Chant proposes a composite method of detecting counterfeits as an effective alternative to existing methods and offers estimates of the extent of counterfeiting Canadian currency for 2001. An Addendum to the article summarizes Chant's methods and updates the calculations to 2003.

The Role of the 1994-95 Coffee Boom in Uganda's Recovery

This paper reports a CGE analysis that explores the consequences of the 1994-95 rise in the international price of coffee for Uganda´s economy. Evidence is found for a small effect on medium-term growth and poverty reduction. Aid dependence is among the reasons why this effect is not found to be larger. Major beneficiary groups are not only the farmers to which the windfall initially accrued but also urban wage earners and the urban self-employed.Computable General Equilibrium, Coffee; Uganda; Dutch Disease

The Role of the 1994-95 Coffee Boom in Uganda's Recovery

This paper reports a CGE analysis that explores the consequences of the 1994-95 rise in the international price of coffee for Uganda´s economy. Evidence is found for a small effect on medium-term growth and poverty reduction. Aid dependence is among the reasons why this effect is not found to be larger. Major beneficiary groups are not only the farmers to which the windfall initially accrued but also urban wage earners and the urban self-employed

Galvanising girls for development? Critiquing the shift from ‘smart’ to ‘smarter economics’

This article traces the mounting interest in, and visibility of, girls and young women in development (WID) policy, especially since the turn of the twenty-first century when a ‘Smart Economics’ rationale for promoting gender equality and female empowerment has become ever more prominent and explicit. ‘Smart Economics’, which is strongly associated with an increased influence of corporate stakeholders, frequently through public–private partnerships (PPPs), stresses a ‘business case’ for investing in women for developmental (read economic) efficiency, with investment in younger generations of women being touted as more efficient still. The latter is encapsulated in the term ‘Smarter Economics’ with the Nike Foundation’s ‘Girl Effect’ being a showcase example. In this, and similar, initiatives linked with neoliberal development, ‘investing in girls’ appears to be driven not only by imperatives of ‘female empowerment’, but also to realize more general dividends for future economic growth and poverty alleviation. Yet, while it may well be that girls and young women have benefited from their rapid relocation from the sidelines towards the centre of development discourse and planning, major questions remain as to whose voices are prioritized, and whose agendas are primarily served by the current shift from ‘Smart’ to ‘Smarter Economics’

Imaginative voyaging: fashion practice as a ‘site’ for wonder and enchantment

The aim of this paper is to explore the state of wonder within a transitional and transformative context and its potential to inform experimental fashion practices. In particular it will focus on the emotionally generative possibilities that wonder and enchantment can have on our experience of fashion. Wonder itself can take a number of forms, whether it entails being “wonder struck” by an event or something that has been seen, or to wonder as in to question, to be curious, to harbour doubt. It is this questioning and openness that is the basis of wonder’s connection to the artistic process and this paper examines how it can be applied within a fashion context. This approach to creative practice and its connection to wonder has its theoretical foundations in the work of authors such as Greenblatt and Kosky. The state of wonder itself has the potential to engage our imagination with fashion “encounters”. Familiar enchanting sites for encounter and possible wonder sites within a fashion context include the fashion show, which in recent times has expanded to encompass installation and presentation formats. These shows and their inducement of a potential sense of wonder, owe much to their large scale and performative nature. Examples of this include the presentations and collaborative projects of designers and practitioners such as Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan. Here the fashion “experience” is transient and ephemeral in nature, where those present gain the full impact or experience of the encounter. As Andrew Bolton (Bolton & Koda, 2011), referencing Alexander McQueen’s immersive and sometimes confronting presentations states, “McQueen validates powerful emotions as compelling and undeniable sources of aesthetic experiences”. This paper explores how, rather than the ephemeral fashion experience or “moment” being seen as a final outcome, one which is the domain of large scale fashion brands, it can also have relevance to small scale experimental fashion practices and within this context be present within the design process itself. The paper focuses on exploring the transitional “moments” or potential encounters that happen within the fashion design process for both practitioners and their audience. The paper reframes the fashion design process as a series of potential wonder sites, where further creative exploration can occur, not within the clearly defined areas of a traditional practice, but those that exist in the shadows or void. This reframing is further enhanced within the context of an interdisciplinary approach, where the oscillation between mediums, creative approaches and technologies has offered opportunity for innovation and for traditional approaches to fashion practice to be broken down. In conclusion the paper explores how an interdisciplinary approach to fashion practice provides a destabilized or disruptive experience of the fashion process, therefore opening up possibilities for our engagement with wonder in fashion, thereby potential sites of fashion encounters are expanded and go beyond traditional final outcomes