Comparative international experiences in promoting women's participation and position in the science, engineering and technology fields : possible models for South Africa

A country's science base is recognised universally as the foundation of its economy. In South Africa, the government emphasizes the National System of Innovation (NSI) as a means to secure economic growth, poverty alleviation and sustainable global competitiveness. And yet more than half of the country's population is largely excluded from participating and progressing in science, engineering and technology (SET) sectors. Like elsewhere around the globe, in the South African public science system, women are younger and less qualified than men; they study and work primarily in disciplines traditionally dominated by their gender and consequently less valued in terms of scientific contribution; and they receive a smaller portion of research grants and work. In the private sector, they are equally at a disadvantage being horizontally segregated to less valued disciplines, and vertically and contractually segregated at lower, less permanent positions. This is an important issue because in order to address its skills shortage, low productivity and need for greater innovation, South Africa has to unleash the potential of women in this area. Without female insight, creativity and experience, knowledge generation and technological development - in the public sector and business alike - would be narrow, biased and incomplete. Everyone should have equal access to a SET education and the possible job opportunities the field offers. However, more importantly, all members of society should benefit equally from, and have the possibility to influence SET innovations as they improve the quality of our lives and produce employment and wealth creation opportunities. The barriers to women's attraction, recruitment, retention and progression m SET careers are well-established. Among others, they stem from gender stereotyping, self-efficacy doubts, poor support for reconciliation between family and work life demands, and the predominantly mate SET image, culture, networks and standards for scientific enquiry. Many interventions have been developed to overcome these barriers and encourage more females to enter and remain in SET fields. International institutions such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations (UN), have, at the global level, endorsed such instruments for change as effective measures. These instruments include, but are not restricted to gender-mainstreaming efforts, mentorship programmes, networking, funding (scholarships, bursaries and faculty chairs), disaggregated gender statistics and awareness-raising initiatives such as role model promotion. This study briefly highlights some of these international experiences, but focuses primarily on resource centres for women in SET as a preferred and effective means to tackle women's under-representation in the sector. Women's resource centres (WRCs) are exceptional in their ability to consolidate many, if not all, of the internationally-endorsed approaches and implement them - through partnerships and involving a wide stakeholder base - in a holistic manner, based on the life cycle approach. The central objective of this research is to assess whether commonalities exist across observed WRCs in terms of context, stakeholder involvement, services and other critical success factors and to present these as good practice for a WRC organisational model. Research in this report is based on case studies of five approaches from Finland, South Korea, Sweden, the UK and the US. No developing country WRC example was readily available. A questionnaire was used to collect the data. Senior management from three WRCs, focusing on women in SET (two national and one regional), and two national nonsector specific WRCs completed a comprehensive questionnaire. Some telephone interviews were conducted for clarification purposes. The findings revealed commonalities in terms of 1) how each Centre achieved legitimacy; 2) the kind of stakeholders who needed to be involved, to what extent and why; 3) the main areas of focus and the types of services which should be provided to meet objectives; 4) the presence of core competencies; 5) the use of partnerships to enhance the Centre's work; 6) the basic level of resources needed and key cost drivers; and 7) the evaluation and control mechanisms to ensure continuous development. As the questionnaire was open and based on experience and perceptions, the findings also revealed some personal insights into possible challenges and opportunities when establishing a Centre. It is important to note several limitations of this study, namely that it focuses on WRCs in developed economies and does not examine interventions targeted at pre-university education or those with developmental objectives. In South Africa, emphasis is placed on education and skills, while poverty alleviation makes these issues central to any effort focused on women in SET. Although an off-the-shelf model is neither available, nor appropriate in the developing country context, significant learnings could be gained from the experiences of those intimate with the resource centre approach and its effectiveness in addressing the under-representation of women in SET fields. The author hopes the findings set out in this research would be useful and form the basis of further investigation into the possibility of establishing a South African Resource Centre for Women in SET.Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2008.Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)MBAUnrestricte

Empowering leadership: balancing self-determination and accountability for motivation

Purpose This study set out to investigate the role of self-determination and accountability in the relationship between empowering leadership, motivation and performance. Design/Methodology/Approach Data were collected from 172 participants working in an international software development organization. Hypotheses were tested in PROCESS using the Preacher and Hayes (2008) bootstrapping method. Findings Results indicate that empowering leadership played a significant role satisfying basic psychological needs. As expected, the satisfaction of needs is related to autonomous motivation. Crucially, perceived accountability was also positively related to autonomous motivation. Research Limitations The cross-sectional design of our study limits our ability to rule out the possibility of reverse causation. Practical Implications The results suggest that traditional management practices such as accountability can be successfully utilized in conjunction with self-determination theory without undermining autonomous motivation. Our study highlights two key opportunities for HR professionals. Specifically, by equipping managers with the skills to display empowering leadership behaviors, and by communicating organizational values and individual job meaning to enhance identified forms of motivation, HR can fully realize the benefits of autonomous employee motivation. Originality/value This paper offers valuable insight into how leaders can balance the satisfaction of basic psychological needs with accountability to influence autonomous motivation in employees. The model presented demonstrates the potential of empowering leadership in achieving this balance and highlights the importance of identified motivation as a powerful correlate of work performance

Refractive and corneal astigmatism in white school children in Northern Ireland

To study the prevalence of and relation between refractive and corneal astigmatism in white school children in Northern Ireland and to describe the association between refractive astigmatism and refractive error

Refractive error and visual impairment in school children in Northern Ireland

To describe the prevalence of refractive error (myopia and hyperopia) and visual impairment in a representative sample of white school children

Profile of anisometropia and aniso-astigmatism in children; prevalence and association with age, ocular biometric measures, and refractive status

Purpose. We describe the profile and associations of anisometropia and aniso-astigmatism in a population-based sample of children. Methods. The Northern Ireland Childhood Errors of Refraction (NICER) study used a stratified random cluster design to recruit a representative sample of children from schools in Northern Ireland. Examinations included cycloplegic (1% cyclopentolate) autorefraction, and measures of axial length, anterior chamber depth, and corneal curvature. ?2 tests were used to assess variations in the prevalence of anisometropia and aniso-astigmatism by age group, with logistic regression used to compare odds of anisometropia and aniso-astigmatism with refractive status (myopia, emmetropia, hyperopia). The Mann-Whitney U test was used to examine interocular differences in ocular biometry. Results. Data from 661 white children aged 12 to 13 years (50.5% male) and 389 white children aged 6 to 7 years (49.6% male) are presented. The prevalence of anisometropia =1 diopters sphere (DS) did not differ statistically significantly between 6- to 7-year-old (8.5%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 3.9–13.1) and 12- to 13-year-old (9.4%; 95% CI, 5.9–12.9) children. The prevalence of aniso-astigmatism =1 diopters cylinder (DC) did not vary statistically significantly between 6- to 7-year-old (7.7%; 95% CI, 4.3–11.2) and 12- to 13-year-old (5.6%; 95% CI, 0.5–8.1) children. Anisometropia and aniso-astigmatism were more common in 12- to 13-year-old children with hyperopia =+2 DS. Anisometropic eyes had greater axial length asymmetry than nonanisometropic eyes. Aniso-astigmatic eyes were more asymmetric in axial length and corneal astigmatism than eyes without aniso-astigmatism. Conclusions. In this population, there is a high prevalence of axial anisometropia and corneal/axial aniso-astigmatism, associated with hyperopia, but whether these relations are causal is unclear. Further work is required to clarify the developmental mechanism behind these associations

Visual Acuity Measures Do Not Reliably Detect Childhood Refractive Error - an Epidemiological Study

PURPOSE: To investigate the utility of uncorrected visual acuity measures in screening for refractive error in white school children aged 6-7-years and 12-13-years. METHODS: The Northern Ireland Childhood Errors of Refraction (NICER) study used a stratified random cluster design to recruit children from schools in Northern Ireland. Detailed eye examinations included assessment of logMAR visual acuity and cycloplegic autorefraction. Spherical equivalent refractive data from the right eye were used to classify significant refractive error as myopia of at least 1DS, hyperopia as greater than +3.50DS and astigmatism as greater than 1.50DC, whether it occurred in isolation or in association with myopia or hyperopia. RESULTS: Results are presented from 661 white 12-13-year-old and 392 white 6-7-year-old school-children. Using a cut-off of uncorrected visual acuity poorer than 0.20 logMAR to detect significant refractive error gave a sensitivity of 50% and specificity of 92% in 6-7-year-olds and 73% and 93% respectively in 12-13-year-olds. In 12-13-year-old children a cut-off of poorer than 0.20 logMAR had a sensitivity of 92% and a specificity of 91% in detecting myopia and a sensitivity of 41% and a specificity of 84% in detecting hyperopia. CONCLUSIONS: Vision screening using logMAR acuity can reliably detect myopia, but not hyperopia or astigmatism in school-age children. Providers of vision screening programs should be cognisant that where detection of uncorrected hyperopic and/or astigmatic refractive error is an aspiration, current UK protocols will not effectively deliver

Polarized QPOs from the INTEGRAL polar IGRJ14536-5522 (=Swift J1453.4-5524)

We report optical spectroscopy and high speed photometry and polarimetry of the INTEGRAL source IGRJ14536-5522 (=Swift J1453.4-5524). The photometry, polarimetry and spectroscopy are modulated on an orbital period of 3.1564(1) hours. Orbital circularly polarized modulations are seen from 0 to -18 per cent, unambiguously identifying IGRJ14536-5522 as a polar. Some of the high speed photometric data show modulations that are consistent with quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) on the order of 5-6 minutes. Furthermore, for the first time, we detect the (5-6) minute QPOs in the circular polarimetry. We discuss the possible origins of these QPOs. We also include details of HIPPO, a new high-speed photo-polarimeter used for some of our observations.Comment: Accepted for publication by MNRAS. The paper contains 7 figures and 1 tabl

What is the impact of supervision on direct practice with families?

Supervision has been described as the “pivot” upon which the integrity and excellence of social work practice can be maintained.However, there is little research that examines its impact on how social workers work directly with children and their families. Where effectiveness studies exist, they tend to explore the impact of supervision on organisational and staff-related outcomes such as retention rates or worker well-being. The current study focuses on one specific sub-category of the wider supervision and practice literature: systemic group supervision or “systemic supervision” and is based on a wider evaluation of systemic social work practice in the UK. The paper pairs observations of systemic supervision (n=14) and observations of direct practice (n=18) in peoples’ homes. It presents correlational data on the relationship between supervision quality and direct practice quality to assess whether there is an association between the two practice forums. The paper demonstrates that there is a statistically significant relationship between supervision quality and overall quality of direct practice. Supervision was also associated with relationship-building skills and use of “good authority” skills; that is, practice that was more purposeful, child-focused and risks to children better articulated. Interestingly, where a clinician qualified in systemic family therapy was present in supervision, this was associated with bothimproved supervisory and direct practice quality. This suggests that there may be an important association between the discussions held in systemic supervision, particularly where a clinician is present and the quality of conversations that practitioners have with children and families. These findings contribute to a growing body of knowledge about the relationship between effective supervision and direct practice within children and families social work