The current jobs crisis is the result of a lack of business confidence and a shortage of consumers with money to spend: the government needs to create a long-term framework to drive innovation and raise productivity across the economy.

Last week’s job figures provided a stark reminder of the human impact of austerity and dealt another blow to George Osborne’s hopes of bringing the economy back to growth and paying off the deficit by 2015. Andrew Sissons takes a look at how we got in this position and suggests that the government should commit to more spending on innovation and infrastructure.

Engineer and Feminist: Elsie Gregory MacGill and the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 1967-1970

Can a woman engineer by a feminist? This article argues in the affirmative using a case study of Elsie Gregory MacGill. Elsie Gregory MacGill was Canada's first woman electrical engineer, graduating in 1927 from The University of Toronto. She then became the first woman to earn a degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1929. While establishing herself in a predominantly masculine profession, MacGill, also a third generation feminist, actively worked for women's equal rights and opportunities in Canadian society. A case study of her role in the Royal Commission of the Status of Women (RCSW), 1967-1970, is used to illustrate that not only can a woman engineering be a feminist, but more importantly that her dual background allowed her to effectively bridge the worlds of the engineering and feminism in engineering the RCSW.Une femme ingénieur peut-elle être féministe ? Cet article utilise le cas d’Elsie Gregory MacGill pour répondre par l’affirmative à cette question. Elsie Gregory MacGill, diplômée de l’Université de Toronto en 1927, fut la première femme ingénieure électrique au Canada. Elle devint ensuite la première femme au monde à devenir ingénieure en aéronautique grâce à l’obtention d’un diplôme de l’Université du Michigan en 1929. Tout en faisant sa place dans une profession essentiellement masculine, MacGill, qui était aussi une féministe de la troisième génération, milita en faveur de l’égalité des femmes au Canada. L’étude de son rôle au sein de la commission royale d’enquête sur la situation de la femme, qui siégea de 1967 à 1970, servira ici à illustrer le fait que non seulement une femme ingénieure peut bien être féministe mais, plus important, que son double profil lui a permis de réunir efficacement les mondes du génie et du féminisme à travers les rouages de la commission

Elsie Gregory MacGill: Engineer, Feminist and Advocate for Social Change

Elsie Gregory MacGill was a strong advocate for social change, and as a pioneering Canadian engineer and a feminist, her actions as a social activist during the 1960s and 1970s were influenced by and reflect this dual identity. Her actions also call into question the assumption that engineering and feminism are an unlikely combination. Résumé Elsie Gregory MacGill était une grande porte-parole pour le changement social, et en tant qu’ ingénieure canadienne pionnière et féministe, ses actions d’activiste sociale durant les années 60 et les années 70 ont été influencées et reflètent cette dualité d’identité. Ses actions mettent aussi en question la supposition que l’ingénierie et le féminisme sont une combinaison improbable

Royal Backbone and Body Politic: Aristocratic Titles and Cook Islands Nationalism since Self-Government

The main body of this article is a narrative account of the partial inclusion of traditional titleholders in the Cook Islands nation as representatives of local "royalty" or an ancient Polynesian heritage. Shifting forms of ideological inclusion and political exclusion are discussed in relation to changes in the way the nationbuilding project has been pursued since self-government in 1965. Of particular interest is how successive Cook Islands leaders have sought to incorporate a partly disempowered traditional leadership into a postcolonial imagined community. Between 1965 and 1974, during a period of party nationalism, Albert Henry encouraged the view that ariki, as local "royalty" should remain above and outside everyday politics. With the development of a local tourist industry, local titleholders came to embody a valued ancient heritage. However, this greater symbolic empowerment did not translate into a greater role in local government. The defeat of Albert Henry in 1978 by Tom Davis and the Democratic Party saw locallevel titleholders ignored by the government in favor of the symbolic reinstatement of an indigenous royalty. Since 1989, in the context of a rapidly expanding tourist industry and a growing middle class, local traditional leaders have once more been seeking to translate increased symbolic status into real political autonomy. Contradictory developments until the present suggest that, despite encouraging government rhetoric, these efforts are destined to meet with limited success

The longer-term labour market and community impacts of deindustrialisation: a comparison of the Northumberland coalfield and the Monongahela Valley mill towns

The research focuses on the longer-term impacts of past regional deindustrialisation and, more specifically, the ways in which individual and household decisions have interacted with the local public welfare and cultural context to produce profound long-term community changes, critically affecting future generations of workers. It compares the reasons for, and impacts of, these adjustments in two study areas; the Northumberland coalfield in Northeast England, and the Monongahela Valley steel towns of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Very different patterns of initial responses to job losses were observed between the two areas. These may be characterised as a distinction between ‘place-based’ coping mechanisms in Northumberland, where workers adopted strategies which allowed them to remain in place, and the ‘mobility-response’ in the Mon Valley, as large numbers of industrial workers migrated away to seek employment elsewhere. Individual workers decisions were influenced by several factors. Most significant were the types of alternative work available locally, and the opportunities and constraints arising from different public welfare systems, transport infrastructures and education and training systems. Prevailing local cultural attitudes, norms and values, were also crucial in informing opinions. It is found that in the longer-term there has been no self-righting of the labour market. Instead, a new, more troublesome equilibrium has been established. In Northumberland the growth in economic inactivity has created areas where worklessness has become a norm among social networks, influencing the aspirations, motivations and expectations of subsequent generations. This reflects the failure of British public welfare policy to mitigate the place-specific impacts of industrial decline. In contrast, the longer-term impacts of migration from the Mon Valley left a collapsed housing market, creating a social-demographic shift as the former working class population was been replaced by an incoming population more dependent on benefits or marginal employment. This process reflected the broader failures of American social policy