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Using a life course perspective, this chapter examines four twentieth-century US generations and the influence of generation on women, especially related to education, work life, and retirement. The Baby Boomers constitute the largest of these birth cohorts to move into retirement. A literature review and illustrative examples of trends explore whether the substantial social and legal changes, with accompanying norms and values, that influenced Baby Boomers’ earlier lives continue to characterize their approach to retirement. Social, medical, and legal changes increased access to education, work life, and longer lifespans for many Boomer women. However, substantial socioeconomic and racial inequality must be addressed to expand access to a healthy, satisfying, and financially adequate retirement stage for men and women Boomers and following generations.

Means, medians and SD for available socio‐economic status (SES) black‐white differences are here substituted for those of IQ in a between‐groups model published by the author over a decade ago. The goodness of fit of the SES variables used is compared with that for the earlier IQ data. Even when SES variables are relatively successful this can be viewed as additional evidence of the importance of IQ differences to black‐white differences in delinquency.

Understanding the factors and processes facilitating entry into science related occupations is a first step in developing effective interventions aiming to increase a skilled science base. This paper intends to address individual as well as family and school related influences on uptake of science, engineering, technology and health related careers.

Drawing on data collected for two British birth cohorts: the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study, a developmental‐contextual model of career development is tested, comparing the experiences of over 17,000 men and women during the transition from school to work.

The findings suggest that there is a persisting gender imbalance both in terms of aspirations and occupational attainment. Interest and attachment to a science related career are formed early in life, often by the end of primary education. School experiences, in particular, are crucial in attracting young people to a career in science.

Much remains to be done to improve intake in science related occupations, especially regarding recognition and access to science related courses at school, and rendering school experiences more relevant and engaging for young people.

Comparing career transitions in two longitudinal cohorts allows the study of careers over time, linking early influences to later outcomes, and enables the identification of stable and changing patterns in antecedents and outcomes.

De‐institutionalisation and resettlement have had a significant impact on offenders with learning disabilities (LD) who are now more visible in the wider community than before. Perhaps because of the challenges presented by people who were previously contained in institutions, there has been a growth of interest in their characteristics, the services and clinical interventions required to support them.This narrative review presents and discusses recent developments concerning offenders with LD. It looks at the historical association between crime and low intelligence, and then examines the evidence concerning the prevalence of offending by people with LD and recidivism rates. Recent research concerning service pathways for this population is summarised and progress in the development of actuarial, dynamic and clinical assessments of the future risk of offending is outlined.The second half of the paper focuses on a review of the evidence for and recent developments in the treatment of offending behaviour (anger/aggression, sexual offending and fire‐setting), utilising broadly cognitive behaviourally‐based approaches. Finally, future directions for research and practice innovation are proposed.

There is a popular psychometric thesis suggesting that people with different levels of cognitive ability end up in different occupations because some occupations require greater intelligence than others for successful performance. To examine several central claims of the psychometric thesis, this study uses two kinds of data for analysis: one is cross-sectional and occupation-level data from various sources dated as early as World War I and the other is longitudinal and individual-level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort (NLSY79) and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) in the United States. Findings of this study suggest that occupational segregation by cognitive ability is much less intensive than that suggested by the psychometric theory, and there is no evidence of a trend of increasing cognitive partitioning by occupation over time.

The extra-low minimum wage for US restaurant workers has remained unchanged for over 30 years. Periodic campaigns have brought this wage, and its connection to the perpetuation of inequality and exploitative work, to public attention, but these campaigns have met resistance from both employers and restaurant workers. This article draws on a workplace ethnography in a restaurant front-of-house, and in-depth interviews with tipped food service workers, to examine the tipped labour process and begin to answer a central question: why would any workers oppose a wage increase? It argues that the constituting of tips as a formal wage created for workers a two-employer problem, wherein customers assume the role of secondary, unregulated, employers in the workplace. Ultimately, the tipped wage poses a longer-term strategic obstacle for workers in their position relative to management and ability to organize to shape the terms and conditions of their work.

Following the removal of the age retirement barrier in Australia, it is expected that more older workers will remain in the workforce beyond the age of 65. An important segment of this older workforce is the managerial and professional woman, aged in her 50s and part of the first generation of women to have had a long‐term career. This paper reports on an investigation into the career and life decisions of 33 such women in Perth, Western Australia. The research looked at issues such as career histories and future work goals; impact of ageing process on career achievement, and retirement plans, and also examined the implications of barriers facing the older career woman. The research identified five related career barriers and goes on to examine the management and organisational implications of these barriers. The need to further develop career development models to include the varying circumstances and experiences of older women employees is also discussed.

During the 20th century, the United States rapidly developed its research capacity by fostering a broad base of institutions of higher education led by a small core of highly productive research universities. By the latter half of the century, scientists in a greatly expanded number of universities across the United States published the largest annual number of scholarly publications in STEM+ fields from one nation. This expansion was not a product of some science and higher education centralized plan, rather it flowed from the rise of mass tertiary education in this nation. Despite this unprecedented productivity, some scholars suggested that universities would cease to lead American scientific research. This chapter investigates the ways that the United States’ system of higher education underpinned American science into the 21st century.

The authors present a historical and sociological case study of the development of the United States’ system of higher education and its associated research capacity. The historical and sociological context informs our analysis of data from the SPHERE team dataset, which was compiled from the Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database.

We argue that American research capacity is a function of the United States’ broad base of thousands of public and broadly accessible institutions of higher education plus its smaller, elite sector of “super” research universities; and that the former serve to culturally support the later. Unlike previous research, we find that American higher education is not decreasing its contributions to the nation’s production of STEM+ scholarship.

The chapter provides empirical analyses, which support previous sociological theory about mass higher education and super research universities.

One result of domination of management as being male paradigm is that women managers are out of place, in foreign territory, “travellers in a male world”. The model of the successful manager has traditionally been masculine and while these stereotypes remain, they succeed in maintaining the dominant place for men in management. This is evident in both the theory underpinning and the actual experience of career in management. Indeed, the traditional working pattern of education, full‐time career and retirement is based on the typical working lives of men. There is no single typical working pattern for modern women. It is clear that, while male career models remain and women are the ones to step off the fast track to meet family responsibilities, they will continue to be at a competitive disadvantage in career advancement. Reviews the literature concerning women and career and argues that the importance of offering new conceptions of career based on an understanding that women’s experiences are different from men cannot be underestimated. Areas for further research and the implications for organisations are also highlighted.