‘We are getting there slowly’: lesbian teacher experiences in the post-Section 28 environment

Prior to the subtraction of Section 28 from the 1988 Local Government Act in 2003, a substantial amount of research was published that specifically examined the experiences of lesbian physical education (PE) teachers. This article contributes to the existing academic literature by exploring the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual teachers working in a post-Section 28 school environment. Drawing on life history interviews of two lesbian PE teachers, we offer insights into how the abolition of Section 28 has affected their lives. Comparable to previous studies, both women reported feeling fearful of the consequences of identifying as lesbian and employed various strategies in order to maintain a divide between their public and private lives so as to conceal their sexual identities from colleagues, pupils and parents. However, in contrast to much of the previous literature, we found that the teachers in this study also identified with narratives of resistance. Despite being fearful of coming out at work, they nevertheless remained committed to coming out when the context is appropriate, to challenging the heteronormative symbolic order configured around the heterosexual/homosexual binary and to more proactively promoting sexual diversity and tolerance in schools

Bank ownership structure, regulations and risk-taking : evidence from commercial banks in Pakistan

This paper conducts the first empirical assessment of the theories concerning the influence of ownership structure on bank risk-taking in the presence of regulations in Pakistan. The sample used in this paper comprises a panel data of 26 banks in Pakistan, for the period from 2000 to 2014. The analysis provides evidence that increase in ownership concentration leads to an increase in bank risk-taking. Managerial ownership is associated with high risk-taking at low and high levels of managerial ownership while at intermediate level, managerial ownership has negative impact on bank risk-taking. Different types of ownership of banks in Pakistan have different impact on risk-taking. While government, family and institutional ownership have a positive impact on bank risk-taking, foreign own- ership has a negative impact on bank risk-taking. Furthermore, the results show that capital regulations are important in influencing bank risk-taking with regard to higher ownership concentration. The findings of this paper suggest that the relation between bank risk-taking and capital regulations typically depends on the type of ownership.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Profitability of Commercial Banks Revisited: New Evidence from Oil and Non-Oil Exporting Countries in the MENA Region

This paper investigates the determinants of commercial bank profitability in oil and non-oil countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region using data from 11 countries over the period 2004–2014. Since banks are under no obligation to fill reports to Bankscope database, irregular reporting banks are omitted from the sample and the model is re-estimated using only regular reporting banks, and a comparative analysis between total banks’ sample and regular reporting banks’ sample is provided. Using the two-step system GMM and fixed effects models, the results indicate that credit risk is negative and highly significant when irregular reporting banks are omitted from the sample, particularly in the non-oil group, unlike the oil countries case, which indicates that adding irregular reporting banks to the sample could lead to bias in some estimated coefficients if they constitute a considerable percentage of the total banks’ sample. Diversification is a key determinant for profitability in oil countries. No enough evidence to support the impact of financial inclusion and financial openness on bank profitability. In addition, the global financial crisis has significantly affected bank profitability in oil countries. Several policy implications are provided to the bank management to follow based on each country group

Government intervention and financial sector development

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