Work-Life Reconciliation Policies From Well-Being To Development: Rethinking EU Gender Mainstreaming

Across the European Union (EU), gender policies are cross-cutting initiatives incorporated within the major axes of regional operational programs, and specifically, within active labor-market, local development and inclusion policies. This is the so-called gender mainstreaming across EU Structural Funds, calling for increasing policy instruments integration. The aim of this paper is to understand if and how to improve women’s well-being and subsequently participation in collective action through reconciliation policies. These measures aim to allow women and men to choose how they can reconcile family care, paid work, career advancement, and leisure. The idea is that such a choice implies a time allocation pattern, which is not exclusively determined by market mechanisms and/or policy measures, but also by cultural trajectories, moral values, intrinsic motivations and rules (Folbre, Nelson 2002; North, 2005; Witt 2003), varying across regions and within groups. Furthermore, the outcomes of this choice are not completely internalized as individual well-being but they can also create positive externalities. First, this paper reconstructs reconciliation policies and their governance structures across less-developed regions in Italy (so-called EU Objective 1 areas) within the EU programming phase 2000-2006. Drawing upon this reconstruction, out analysis seeks to account for differences in both contextual conditions and individual characteristics, which, in turn, shape regional development processes. Second, the paper focuses on the design of conciliation policies to unveil what underlying microeconomic premises explain the expected beneficiaries’ behavioural change. Departing from the inadequacy of standard economics, whereby work-life reconciliation would be reduced to a unique choice pattern at the individual level, the paper examines those factors of subjective identities and contextual characteristics that actually affect work-life reconciliation choices, and by this way they can have a development impact (Bowles 1998, Ray, 2000, Sen 1999). In fact, the traditional public choice approach to gender policy may not only perpetuate a male-dominated structure of socioeconomic relations but it may also keep the economy working at a less efficient level. In other words, reconciliation policies may end up reinforcing a path dependent equilibrium of low efficiency, accentuating institutional, economic, social, and cultural traps (Bowles, Durlauf and Hoff 2006). By contrast, our idea is that reconciliation policies can work as development policies as long as they alter current power structures and enhance women capabilities. Building upon this critical review of the existing gender policy framework, we put forward a cognitive framework for work-life reconciliation as a driving force to development.Microeconomic behaviour; Gender Mainstreaming; Intrinsic Motivations; Local Development; Conciliation; Power Structures

A partial solution of the isoperimetric problem for the Heisenberg group

We provide a partial solution to the isoperimetric problem in the Heisenberg group.Comment: 32 pages, 1 figur

Load distribution in small world networks

In this paper we introduce a new model of data packet transport, based on a stochastic approach with the aim of characterizing the load distribution on complex networks. Moreover we analyze the load standard deviation as an index of uniformity of the distribution of packets within the network, to characterize the effects of the network topology. We measure such index on the model proposed by Watts and Strogatz as the redirection probability is increased. We find that the uniformity of the load spread is maximized in the intermediate region, at which the small world effect is observed and both global and local efficiency are high. Moreover we analyze the relationship between load centrality and degree centrality as an approximate measure of the load at the edges. Analogous results are obtained for the load variance computed at the edges as well as at the vertices.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. Included in conference proceedings International Conference PhysCon 2005 August 24-26, 2005, Saint Petersburg, RUSSI

Faculty Development: Mission and Methods for Practical Integration

This essay proposes a Catholic structure for the intellectual life of faculty that invites participation in ways that honor their diverse backgrounds, even antipathy toward religion, while also demonstrating that identifiable Catholic perspectives, including Catholic social teaching, can provide a useful framework for faculty members to understand their academic roles in support of Catholic identity, no matter their religious background

Bell lysaker emotion recognition test: a contribution for the italian validation

INTRODUCTION: Emotion recognition deficits in psychopathology have been extensively studied with a variety of measures. The Bell Lysaker Emotion Recognition Test (BLERT; Bell et al., 1997) is an effective method to assess emotion recognition by presenting affect stimuli which may have greater verisimilitude with real life events. Indeed, BLERT combines facial expressions with affective information transmitted in prosody or body posture. This method has allowed the study of emotion recognition deficit in psychotic patients, as well as its relationships with other aspects of psychopathology (Vohs et al., 2014). OBJECTIVES: We aimed at testing the validity and reliability of an Italian version of the BLERT. AIMS: First, a group-comparison was carried out between clinical and nonclinical participants. Then, correlations among BLERT scores and other indices of psychological functioning were explored. METHODS: We recruited 12 inpatients with psychotic disorders (mean age= 54.75; 58.3% female) and 45 nonclinical participants (mean age= 24.04; 75.6% female). We administered the BLERT (Bell et al., 1997), along with the following measures: Empathy Quotient (Lawrence et al., 2004), Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004), and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-47 (Pilkonis et al., 1996). RESULTS: Clinical participants resulted impaired in all indices of the BLERT. Further, the construct validity of the BLERT was confirmed by associations with measures of empathy, emotion dysregulation, and interpersonal problems. CONCLUSIONS: The use of the Italian version of the BLERT seemed promising for the study of emotion recognition in both clinical and nonclinical samples