Habitudes de lecture et performances scolaires des élèves des classes de 3ème et de 1ère de la ville de Ouagadougou Burkina Faso

Ouagadougou est fortement corrélée par la présence d’une bibliothèque dans leurs établissements ou dans un rayon pas trop éloignée de leur lieu de résidence, Les élèves de première lisent plus que ceux des troisième. Les # lles lisent plus que les garçons. Les élèves de la ville lisentautant que ceux des provinces. De même, la lecture in ue positivement sur les résultats des élèves qui ont l’habitude de lire. ce sont les # lles plutôt que les garçons qui sont in uencées par l’accès au livres et qui ont une plus forte corrélation entre lire et réussir a l’école Ainsi, les # lles qui lisent plus que les garçons, enregistrent conséquemment de meilleures notes

Decoupling Local Ownership? The Lost Opportunities for Grassroots Women’s Involvement in Liberian Peacebuilding

Civil society organizations and grassroots groups are often unable to play an active role in post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding. A possible explanation for the observed challenges in peacebuilding is the gap or decoupling between international expectations and norms from practical action, local norms and capacities. External actors are often overly instrumental and operate according to a general template that fails to start from what the local capacities might actually be. This often leads to the decoupling of general values from practical action, which helps account for the observed barriers of engaging local civil and community organizations in reconstruction. We examine the different types of decoupling and the challenges these present. We evaluate our general theoretical argument using evidence based on the experiences of Liberian women’s civil society organizations. Given the compliance of the Liberian government with international norms, we should expect external actors to have an easier task in incorporating civil society and women’s organizations in the post-conflict reconstruction process; yet, the record appears to be the opposite. While we present the ‘tragic’ aspect of this relationship between international norms and local practice, we also suggest opportunities for ‘hybrid’ alternatives

Two-Stage Cryogenic HEMT Based Amplifier For Low Temperature Detectors

To search for dark matter candidates with masses below $\mathcal{O}$(MeV), the SPLENDOR (Search for Particles of Light dark mattEr with Narrow-gap semiconDuctORs) experiment is developing novel narrow-bandgap semiconductors with electronic bandgaps on the order of 1-100 meV. In order to detect the charge signal produced by scattering or absorption events, SPLENDOR has designed a two-stage cryogenic HEMT-based amplifier with an estimated charge resolution approaching the single-electron level. A low-capacitance ($\sim$1.6 pF) HEMT is used as a buffer stage at $T=10\,\mathrm{mK}$ to mitigate effects of stray capacitance at the input. The buffered signal is then amplified by a higher-capacitance ($\sim$200 pF) HEMT amplifier stage at $T=4\,\mathrm{K}$. Importantly, the design of this amplifier makes it usable with any insulating material - allowing for rapid prototyping of a variety of novel detector materials. We present the two-stage cryogenic amplifier design, preliminary voltage noise performance, and estimated charge resolution of 7.2 electrons.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, conference proceedings for LTD2

‘I know my rights, but am I better off?’: institutions and disability in Uganda

Uganda is internationally recognised for both its legal and constitutional provisions for people with disabilities, and the presence of disabled persons’ organisations that provide informal advocacy and support. Using a unique dataset of 579 Ugandans with physical disabilities, we develop a conceptual framework on social capital to investigate the factors correlated with knowledge of formal institutions that target disability. In examining whether this knowledge results in higher incomes we find that gender matters. A woman’s education and membership of external networks are correlates of knowledge; higher levels of this knowledge are associated with substantially higher levels of income

Climate change adaptation among female-led micro, small, and medium enterprises in semiarid areas: a case study from Kenya

This chapter contributes to the literature on private sector adaptation by empirically exploring how female-led micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSMEs) in Kenya’s semiarid lands (SALs) experience and respond to climate risk. The chapter argues that strong sociocultural orientations around gender roles and resource use and access not only confine female-led MSMEs to sectors that experience higher exposure to climate risk – most notably agriculture – but also trigger more pronounced barriers to building resilience within their businesses, including reduced access to land, capital, markets, new technology, and educational opportunities. Faced by these barriers, female entrepreneurs may pursue unsustainable forms of coping, as part of which business activity is scaled back through reduced profits, loss of business, and the sale of valuable business assets. Such strategies may help enterprises to cope in the short term but may undermine longer-term MSME adaptive capacity. Social networks, such as women’s groups and table banking initiatives, appear to be crucial adaptation tools. Additionally, a strong dependency exists between household resilience and business resilience, implying that building resilience at the household level could support adaptive capacity among female-led MSMEs. Supporting the adaptive capacity of women in business should be a policy priority

Integrating institutional and behavioural measures of bribery

Bribery involves individuals exchanging material benefits for a service of a public institution. To understand the process of bribery we need to integrate measures of individual behaviour and institutional attributes rather than rely exclusively on surveys of individual perceptions and experience or macro-level corruption indexes national institutions. This paper integrates institutional and behavioural measures to show that where you live and who you are have independent influence on whether a person pays a bribe. The analysis of 76 nationwide Global Corruption Barometer surveys from six continents provides a date set in which both institutional and individual differences vary greatly. Multi-level multivariate logit analysis is used to test hypotheses about the influence of institutional context and individual contact with public services, socio-economic inequalities and roles, and conflicting behavioural and ethical norms. It finds that path-determined histories of early bureaucratization or colonialism have a major impact after controlling for individual differences. At the individual level, people who frequently make use of public services and perceive government as corrupt are more likely to pay bribes, while socio-economic inequality has no significant influence. While institutional history cannot be changed, changing the design of public services offers is something that contemporary governors could do to reduce the vulnerability of their citizens to bribery

Barriers to women entrepreneurship. Different methods, different results?

Building on research by Akehurst et al. (Serv Ind J 32:2489-2505, 2012), this study analysed internal and external factors in women entrepreneurship and linked these factors to the barriers that women face when starting businesses. To do so, two contrasting statistical techniques were used: PLS and QCA. After analysing results from each of these techniques, we observed that family duties and difficulties in obtaining financing (both internal and external) were the main factors related to barriers faced by women entrepreneurs