Perceived Devaluation and STI Testing Uptake among a Cohort of Street-involved Youth in a Canadian Setting

Perceived devaluation has been shown to have adverse effects on the mental and physical health outcomes of people who use drugs. However, the impact of perceived devaluation on sexually transmitted infections (STI) testing uptake among street-involved youth, who face multiple and intersecting stigmas due to their association with drug use and risky sexual practices, has not been fully characterized. Data were obtained between December 2013 and November 2014 from a cohort of street-involved youth who use illicit drugs aged 14–26 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Multivariable generalized estimating equations were constructed to assess the independent relationship between perceived devaluation and STI testing uptake. Among 300 street-involved youth, 87.0% reported a high perceived devaluation score at baseline. In the multivariable analysis, high perceived devaluation was negatively associated with STI testing uptake after adjustment for potential confounders (Adjusted Odds Ratio = 0.38, 95% Confidence Interval 0.15–0.98). Perceived devaluation was high among street-involved youth in our sample and appears to have adverse effects on STI testing uptake. HIV prevention and care programs should be examined and improved to better meet the special needs of street-involved youth in non-stigmatizing ways

From rhetoric to reality: A multilevel analysis of gender equality in Pakistani organisations

Despite numerous governmental efforts to improve women’s employment and equality in Pakistan, statistics suggest that these efforts are not completely fruitful. Steps taken by the government are usually in response to pressures by international donors and rights groups. However, there seem to be important contextual and socio-cultural differences at play when it comes to how gender equality is to be achieved in organisational practice. Such differences as well as an apparent lack of genuine commitment at the policy level may explain why there remains a gap between the policy and praxis of gender equality in Pakistan. Informed by structural and relational perspectives of gender, this paper draws on in depth qualitative interviews with female employees to explore the multilevel issues related to gender equality at the macro-national, meso-organisational and micro-individual levels. In particular, the paper highlights such issues as societal norms of female modesty and gender segregation (macro), sexual harassment, career related challenges and income gap (meso), and family status and agency (micro)

Explaining the gender gap in help to parents: The importance of employment

Although it is well established that adult daughters spend more time giving assistance to their parents than do sons, the sources of this gender gap are not well understood. This paper asks: To what extent can this gap be explained by structural variation, especially the different rates of employment and kinds of jobs that women and men tend to hold? Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households (N= 7,350), the paper shows that both employment status and job characteristics, especially wages and self-employment, are important factors in explaining the gender gap in the help given to parents and that these operate similarly for women and men

Accessing academic citizenship: excellence or micropolitical practices?

This chapter is concerned with access to academic citizenship (particularly full or limited academic citizenship, see Chapter 1) in higher educational research institutions (HERIs). Women are under-represented in these positions (EU 2019). Excellence is frequently the rationale for decisions about such access: the implication being that its assessment is a universal, gender neutral process. Thus, it is assumed that those involved in such assessments are detached automatons, who make decisions solely based on what purport to be universalistic criteria; assumptions that have been challenged theoretically and empirically (Nielsen 2016; van Den Brink and Benschop 2012; O’Connor and O’ Hagan 2016)