Over 200 Years of Native American Art and Culture at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts

This paper was presented at the 2009 Native American Law Symposium

Over 200 Years of Native American Art and Culture at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts

This paper was presented at the 2009 Native American Law Symposium

How Working Mothers Negotiate Work-Family Conflict: An Exploration of Work Satisfaction, Home Life Satisfaction, and Partner Supportiveness

The demographics of the American workforce and family structures have shifted dramatically over the past 60 years, but traditional work and domestic roles have evolved only slightly. Women are more impacted than men by fixed interpretations of gender roles due to their assumption of professional positions in the workplace without relief from domestic responsibilities. For many women who are engaged in the professional realm while raising a family, the result is often a work-family conflict. Despite significant research and some governmental policy and organizational policy changes, limited progress has been made in resolving the conflict. Some dimensions of work-family conflict have been well-researched, but an area that has been less studied is how women negotiate work-family conflict within their relationships with a partner. Moreover, there is limited information on how this conflict is negotiated in same-sex partnerships compared with opposite-sex partnerships. This study used a mixed-methods research design including a web-based survey and in-depth interviews to examine the following questions: What, if any, differences exist in levels of work satisfaction and home life satisfaction among women in same-sex partnerships and women in opposite-sex partnerships? What contributes to the differences in work and home life satisfaction among women in same-sex partnerships and women in opposite-sex partnerships, and among the identified differences, what elements of an operational model for work-family conflict negotiation can be highlighted that might lead to more satisfaction for women? Findings suggest that there are some important differences between same-sex and opposite sex partnerships. Quantitative analysis of the data suggests that working mothers in same-sex partnerships feel more supported by their partner than women in opposite-sex partnerships. Feelings of partner supportiveness are a positive indicator of home life satisfaction, and home life satisfaction is positively correlated with work satisfaction. Other important themes also emerged from the qualitative data as critical to the discussion of work-family conflict within relationships: the impact of socialized gender roles and biological gender issues, the complexity of work-family arrangements, the extent to which the division of responsibilities are negotiated, and the extent to which family circumstances are considered in career decisions

Measuring Our Impact: What Did Our Attendees Think of Our Conference?

Peers evaluated conference presentations at an annual conference that is sponsored by two professional organizations of literacy educators in one geographic location in New York State. Conference sessions dealt with innovations and programs in schools that encouraged literacy learning. Comments from conference attendees indicated that the presenters seemed to be empowered by the ideas and strategies they were disseminating and the conference attendees themselves were inspired to try innovative uses of new technologies and other means of supporting language and literacy development in their own classrooms. All presentations were congruent with the then current New York State Common Core Learning Standards, which the presenters and their audiences felt were powerful for literacy learners in their schools

Why Intensive Agriculturalists Have Higher Fertility: A Household Energy Budget Approach

It is widely held that human population growth rates began to increase markedly after the Pleistocene/Holocene transition largely as a consequence of the adoption of agriculture and sedentism. A common explanation for this increase in growth rates has been that circumstances associated with food production and/or the accompanying decrease in mobility allowed for higher fertility rates, but over the past decade a number of empirical studies and simulation analyses have revealed that the relationship between mode of subsistence and fertility is more complex than had previously been realized