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Purpose: Sexual minority youth are more likely than their heterosexual peers to consider and attempt suicide, in part due to victimization experienced within schools. While existing research suggests that rates of school victimization and suicidality among sexual minority students vary by school and community context, less is known about variation in these experiences at the state level.

Methodology: Using data from a large, representative sample of sexual minority and heterosexual youth (2017 Youth Risk Behavior States Data, n = 64,746 high school students in 22 states), multilevel models examine whether differences between sexual minority and heterosexual students in victimization and suicide risk vary by state-level policies.

Findings: Results suggest that disparities between sexual minority and heterosexual boys in bullying, suicide ideation, and suicide attempt are consistently smaller in states with high levels of overall policy support for LGBTQ equality and nondiscrimination in education laws. Sexual minority girls are more likely than heterosexual girls to be electronically bullied, particularly in states with lower levels of LGBTQ equality. Disparities between sexual minority and heterosexual girls in suicide ideation are lowest in high equality states, but state policies are not significantly associated with disparities in suicide attempt among girls.

Value: Overall, findings suggest that state-level policies supporting LGBTQ equality are associated with a reduced risk of suicide among sexual minority youth. This study speaks to the role of structural stigma in shaping exposure to minority stress and its consequences for sexual minority youth's well-being.

Purpose: The goal of Volume 21 of Advances in Medical Sociology, entitled Sexual and Gender Minority Health, is to showcase recent developments and areas for future research related to the health, well-being, and healthcare experiences of LGBTQA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Queer, Asexual, and related communities that do not identify as heterosexual) persons and communities.

Approach: In this introduction to the volume, we trace the historical development of research on sexual and gender minority (SGM) health, discussing how priorities, theories, and evidence have evolved over time. We conclude with brief suggestions for future research and an overview of the articles presented in this volume.

Findings: Research on SGM health has flourished in the past two decades. This trend has occurred in conjunction with a period of intense social, political, and legal discourse about the civil rights of SGM persons, which has increased understanding and recognition of SGM experiences. However, recent advances have often been met with resistance and backlash rooted in enduring social stigma and long histories of discrimination and prejudice that reinforce and maintain health disparities faced by SGM populations.

Value: Our review highlights the need for additional research to understand minority stress processes, risk factors, and resiliency, particularly for those at the intersection of SGM and racial/ethnic or socioeconomic marginality.

Given their history of preparing African Americans, ethnic minorities, and first-generation college students for careers in education, the culture and traditions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) can provide insight into the preparation of diverse physical educators for the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity in today’s American K-12 schools. As such, this chapter will present practical findings from an ethnographic study of a historically Black urban Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) program with a large native Spanish-speaking population. Specifically, we focus on the concepts of cultural sustainment and code-switching as strategies used by teacher educators to promote bilingualism and biculturalism. To achieve this, we highlight the relationship among institutional, programmatic, and classroom cultures for the cultural ­sustainment and development of preservice physical educators. According to Paris (2012), culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to perpetuate and foster linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling. We conclude with strategies on how to successfully work with culturally diverse college students, promoting bilingual and biculturalism through cultural sustainment and code-switching.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between microfinance participation and entrepreneurial behaviour of Ghanaian families as well as the moderating role of the family head’s gender. It is argued from a resource-based theory perspective that microfinance is a financial resource that removes credit constraints to entrepreneurial behaviour of families. However, gender of the family head creates heterogeneity in this relationship in line with the gender theory.

In order to test these claims, cross-sectional data from 2,727 families on microfinance participation and household characteristics in Ghana are utilised.

The study finds that microfinance participation has a positive and significant relationship with a family’s decision to own an enterprise. Also, the study finds that female-headed families are better utilizers of microfinancial resources for entrepreneurial purposes compared to their male counterparts. This difference is a pure gender effect.

This finding is in contrast to the dominant stream of gender-based entrepreneurship research that suggests that women are subordinate to men and need to be helped to become “honorary men”. From a policy standpoint, solutions aimed at reversing discrimination against women in economic markets must consider women within their own right. The study makes a contribution to the literature by showing empirically the source of heterogeneity in entrepreneurial returns to microfinance participation by families.

Despite formal ethics education and ethics-related continuing professional education (CPE) requirements, professional accountants continue to play a central role in enabling corporations to make unethical business decisions and take unethical business actions. Several jurisdictions in the United States require ethics education for licensure, but often the focus is on memorizing rules and regulations, rather than on providing tools to improve the moral practice of professionals and to help them resolve ethical dilemmas. The authors analyzed recent state Certified Public Accountant (CPA) society course offerings and found much more emphasis on memorization than on ethical reasoning to satisfy State CPA CPE requirements. To improve accountants’ ethical awareness and behavior, CPE providers should stress ethical reasoning rather than merely memorizing rules. Such changes will make future and present accountants and auditors more ethically aware, and thus more likely to improve their ethical decision-making. Nonetheless, the authors suggest that effective ethics education and training should start in the classroom with help from departmental advisory councils. Ethics courses offered in accounting programs as well as those offered by CPE providers can leverage the experience of members of advisory councils to create programs that resonate with professionals and foster lifelong ethical awareness and ethical reasoning skills.

An employee who is eligible to make a complaint for unfair dismissal has to prove that he has been dismissed by the employer if the employer contests that the employee has in fact been dismissed. If the dismissal is not contested, all the employee has to do is to show that he has been dismissed. This constitutes the first stage of the proceedings in an industrial tribunal.

Purpose of this chapter is to explore Afrocentric mentoring models of individuals in higher education. In this chapter, leadering will refer to mentoring and the influence upon followers and why and how activities and objectives are to be achieved. Issues of race, social class, disability, gender, sexual orientation, age, and geographic location play a role in faculty and leader faculty leadering. Literature review was used in investigating the phenomenon of faculty leadering from the perspectives of cross-cultural faculty leadering relationships within the field of education and Afrocentric faculty leadering models. Afrocentric philosophy, Indigenous wisdoms, and also the cultural traditions and perspectives of peoples of African heritage are assumed to offer a helpful foundation toward a nuanced explanation of culturally relevant faculty leadering within the faculties of education. A faculty leader to demonstrate professional behaviors and actions that will assists staff in professional socialization in higher education. Racism and other forms of oppression experienced by Black and other marginalized youth in societies cause many to develop fatalistic attitudes about themselves, their education, and their future. African-centered faculty leadering models should be rooted within philosophies, cultures, and principles that apply theories to praxis, unique locally and globally.