Explaining the Lack of Progress in Yemeni Women’s Empowerment; Are Women Leaders the Problem?

Despite existence of women’s empowerment policies and the appointments of women leaders to oversee the implementation and sometimes design of those policies, the Republic of Yemen has repeatedly ranked last in the WEF Gender Gap Index since 2006. Is this a problem of capacity? Are the women leaders, who are driving the national women’s development agenda forward, lacking in this field? This article investigates this question through a mixed-method research by surveying and interviewing Yemeni women leaders who were involved in empowerment policies in health, education, economic participation and political empowerment between 2006 and 2014. Findings from this research show that the women leaders were highly qualified in terms of expertise; education and professional skills. Furthermore, findings show that the patriarchal system punishes women leaders when they challenge it, which forces many of them to refrain from antagonising the patriarchy. Those who do, risk their professional and even personal wellbeing in their plight against practices that negatively affect women’s empowerment of the larger women community. This finding has significant implications on women’s empowerment policies in Yemen and countries of similar contexts, by directing funding and support from the traditional individual capacity building efforts to those concerning harnessing the collective power

Of ambition, opportunity and pretence: the politics of gender in Yemen

Yemen has continuously been one of the worst places worldwide in terms of women’s rights in education, health, and the economy, according to international development indicators. It is puzzling that this is the country’s reality despite the fact that during the last two decades, Yemen witnessed a surge of high-level appointments of women in key decision-making positions, the creation of several women-related national institutions, and the implementation of various women’s empowerment policies. This research attempts to address this puzzle by investigating the failure of women’s empowerment policies in Yemen between 2006 and 2014 in health, education, and the economy, from the perspectives of the women leaders themselves, who are at the forefront of the women’s empowerment efforts in the country. To demonstrate their failure, I first review the state’s gender policies, using policy mapping, to identify trends and measure their success drawing on existing policy evaluation approaches. Next, I present empirical findings collected through a mixed-method approach, which notably include descriptive-statistical analysis of surveys and qualitative examination of elite interviews. This research investigates feedback from leading Yemeni women, who are the main drivers behind gender equality in Yemen, and who were directly involved in women’s empowerment efforts in the researched time frame. Using women’s empowerment’s agency-structure framework, I investigate the relevance of: lack of capacity of women leaders, political and economic instability, and the culture of political support, to policy success. I argue that all three factors contributed to the failure of women’s empowerment policies through sub-mechanisms, however, the culture of political support – or lack thereof, had the highest explanatory power of the three factors. This research departs from existing scholarly work on Yemeni women’s empowerment in that it focuses on the experiences of the women leaders as champions of the empowerment agenda, while also acknowledging the importance of the socio-political context in which they operated. This research provides gender policy makers with insights into the practical implications of gender policies in conservative societies such as Yemen, by addressing sustainability and impact of women’s empowerment efforts

Explaining the Lack of Progress in Yemeni Women’s Empowerment: Are Women Leaders the Problem?

Despite the existence of women’s empowerment policies and the appointments of women leaders to oversee the implementation and sometimes design of those policies, the Republic of Yemen has repeatedly ranked last in the WEF Gender Gap Index since 2006. Is this a problem of capacity? Are the women leaders, who are driving the national women’s development agenda forward, lacking in this field? This article investigates this question through a mixed-method research by surveying and interviewing Yemeni women leaders who were involved in empowerment policies in health, education, economic participation and political empowerment between 2006 and 2014. Findings from this research show that the women leaders were highly qualified in terms of expertise, education, and professional skills. Furthermore, findings show that the patriarchal system punishes women leaders when they challenge it, which forces many of them to refrain from antagonising the patriarchy. Those who do, risk their professional and even personal well-being in their plight against practices that negatively affect women’s empowerment of the larger women community. This finding has significant implications for women’s empowerment policies in Yemen and countries of similar contexts, by directing funding and support from the traditional individual capacity building efforts to those concerning harnessing the collective power

Social Worked-Examples Technique to Enhance Student Engagement in Program Visualization

يعد تعلم البرمجة من بين أهم التحديات في تعليم علوم الكمبيوتر. حاليا، يتم استخدام تصوير البرامج ) PV ( كأداة للتغلب علىمعدلات الفشل والتسرب العالية في مادة اساسيات البرمجة. ومع ذلك، هناك مخاوف متزايدة بشأن فعالية أدوات تصوير البرامج الحالية استناداالى النتائج المختلطة المستمدة من الدراسات المختلفة. تعتبر مشاركة الطلاب أيضًا عاملاً حيويًا في بناء PV ناجحًا، كما تعد أيضًا جزءًا مهمًامن عملية التعلم بشكل عام. تم إدخال العديد من التقنيات لتعزيز المشاركة في أدوات تصوير البرامج؛ ومع ذلك، فإن مشاركة الطلاب في PVلا يزال يمثل تحديًا كبيراً. استخدمت هذه الورقة ثلاث نظريات مختلفة: البنيوية، والبناء الاجتماعي، والحمل المعرفي لاقتراح تقنية لتعزيزمشاركة الطلاب في استخدام أدوات تصوير البرامج. تعمل تقنية الأمثلة المكتملة الاجتماعية ) SWE ( على تحويل المثال المكتمل التقليدي إلىنشاط اجتماعي ، حيث يتم التركيز بشكل أكبر على دور التعاون في بناء معرفة الطلاب. حددت هذه الدراسة ثلاثة مبادئ يمكن أن تعززمشاركة الطلاب من خلال تقنية SWE : التعلم النشط والتعاون الاجتماعي والأنشطة ذاتس التحميل المنخفض.Learning programming is among the top challenges in computer science education. A part of that, program visualization (PV) is used as a tool to overcome the high failure and drop-out rates in an introductory programming course. Nevertheless, there are rising concerns about the effectiveness of the existing PV tools following the mixed results derived from various studies. Student engagement is also considered a vital factor in building a successful PV, while it is also an important part of the learning process in general. Several techniques have been introduced to enhance PV engagement; however, student engagement with PV is still challenging. This paper employed three theories—constructivism, social constructivism and cognitive load to propose a technique for enhancing student engagement with program visualisation. The social worked-examples (SWE) technique transforms the traditional worked-example into a social activity, whereby a greater focus is placed on the collaboration role in constructing students’ knowledge. This study identified three principles that could enhance student engagement through the SWE technique: active learning, social collaboration and low-load activity

MOLECULAR GEOMETRY CHANGES IN SOME CARBONYLS AND AROMATIC RINGS UPON ELECTRONIC EXCITATION: HERZBERG-TELLER VIBRONIC COUPLING AND UNITARY DUSCHINSKY ROTATION

The common assumption in probing the dynamical motion of molecules is that the molecular electronic activity depends weakly on vibrational coordinates on electronic excitation. Therefore, electron-vibration interaction, which is known as Vibronic Coupling (VC), may be ignored. The Herzberg-Teller theory of Vibronic Coupling (HTVC) is a breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation (BOA) since nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom can no longer be separated. The inclusion of a single quantum of a non-totally symmetric vibrational mode changes the overall symmetry of the state and permits the transition. Often, this assumption may be invalid, especially in carbonyl and aromatic compounds. This thesis will use both quantum mechanics and electronic structure theory of molecules to probe the breakdown of this assumption in carbonyls (formaldehyde H2CO, acetaldehyde CH3CHO, and acetone CH3COCH3) and aromatic carbonyl compounds (benzaldehyde C6H5CHO and benzophenone C6H5COC6H5). This work will investigate the extent to which HTVC is significant by looking at nuclear coordinates deformation and electronic density redistribution upon electronic excitation. Non-totally symmetric vibrations are important to identify the coupled electronic states whereby intensity is borrowed from nearby electronic states in case of forbidden electronic transitions by symmetry in the FC region. This electronic density redistribution distortion may be due to the Duschinsky Matrix (DM) and HTVC interaction renders information on how the transition moment varies as the molecular geometry changes, giving rise to the non-Condon regime. This coupling should be probed to see if it is caused by orbital interaction and this interaction would give rise to non-adiabatic coupling. This molecular geometry alteration is so important for probing and hence understanding vibration-electron coupling in polyatomic molecules

Molecular Geometry Changes in Some Carbonyls and Aromatic Rings upon Electronic Excitation: Herzberg-Teller Vibronic Coupling and Unitary Duschinsky Rotation

The common assumption in probing the dynamical motion of molecules is that the molecular electronic activity depends weakly on vibrational coordinates on electronic excitation. Therefore, electron-vibration interaction, which is known as vibronic coupling (VC), may be ignored. The HerzbergTeller theory of vibronic coupling (HTVC) is a breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation (BOA) since nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom can no longer be separated. The inclusion of a single quantum of a non-totally symmetric vibrational mode changes the overall symmetry of the state and permits the transition. Often, this assumption may be invalid, especially in carbonyl and aromatic compounds. This thesis will use both quantum mechanics and electronic structure theory of molecules to probe the breakdown of this assumption in carbonyls (CH2CO, CH3CHO, andCH3COCH3) and aromatic carbonyl compounds (C6H5CHO and C₆H₅COC₆H₅). This work will investigate the extent to which (HTVC) is significant by looking at nuclear coordinates deformation and electronic density redistribution upon electronic excitation. Non-totally symmetric vibrations are important to identify the coupled electronic states whereby intensity is borrowed from nearby electronic states in case of forbidden electronic transitions by symmetry in the FC region. This electronic density redistribution distortion may be due to the Duschinsky matrix (DM) and HTVC interaction renders information on how the transition moment varies as the molecular geometry changes, giving rise to the non-Condon regime. This coupling should be probed to see if it is caused by orbital interaction and this interaction would give rise to non-adiabatic coupling. This molecular geometry alteration is so important for probing and hence understanding vibration-electron coupling in polyatomic molecules

Examining the relationship between agile adoption motivation factors and agile practice clusters used by software startups in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Agile software development methodology (ASDM) has been increasingly adopted in organizations. Despite many benefits offered by ASDM, successful ASDM adoption is a big challenge for organizations. Many studies show that these methods were adopted partly by selecting a set of agile practices. Therefore, it is difficult for new adopters to choose agile practice sets that fit their organization needs as ASDM has a big pool of available practices or clusters. Agile practices should be selected based on motivation factors that include the organization needs in order to maximize the benefit of adopting them. The aim of this study is to identify the relationships between organization’s ASDM adoption motivation factors and the agile practices clusters. This study used a quantitative approach to evaluate the relationships between these variables. The study was conducted using a questionnaire with 76 software practitioners from software startups in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The analysis generated 4 clusters; each is associated with a list of practices. These clusters are labeled as project management, quality assurance, software process, and incremental and iterative clusters. This study finds that three adoption motivation factors (a motivation for increased software quality, increased efficiency, or increased effectiveness) are associated with the quality assurance, software process, and incremental and iterative clusters. By understanding these factors in terms of ASDM adoption and which types of agile practice cluster is more suitable will help to increase the success of the agile adoption process. Furthermore, the study will help to understand how the startups selected the practices used. Also, the study could help new startups to easily choose the proper agile practices based on their motivation and needs. The findings will help the organization to select suitable agile practices cluster by matching the motivation factors that correspondingly affect the ASDM successful adoption