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This chapter explores the issue of ethnic diversity and race discrimination among elementary school teachers in Ireland. It examines both the historical precedents of this…
Abstract
This chapter explores the issue of ethnic diversity and race discrimination among elementary school teachers in Ireland. It examines both the historical precedents of this discrimination and uses the current experiences of Immigrant Internationally Educated Teachers (IIETs) living in Ireland to explore the phenomenon contemporaneously. The chapter begins by delineating the historical context of immigration in Ireland and more recent population data. It then explores the relevant legislative provisions to address employment and race discrimination in the Irish context. Owing to the deep-seated and historical origins of the current race discrimination, a particular focus is placed on delineating the evolution of the selection and recruitment of elementary teachers in Ireland imbued with the right to teach in elementary schools. Drawing on data ascertained through semi-structured interviews with a range of IIETs, positioned within the aforementioned analyses of relevant historical documents, the chapter then moves to explore some experiences of IIETs seeking to work in the Irish elementary school system. The chapter analyses these data through a Bourdieuian lens, paying particular attention to ways in which power has been, and continues to be, exercised by the State in regulating access to prestigeful mainstream teaching positions. The chapter proceeds to root these analyses within Kitching’s work on ‘race moves’, arguing that immigrant teachers have been racialized as other on the basis of an absence of proficiency in the Irish language.
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Makes three contributions to the ongoing debate over whether racial discrimination is disappearing, and white privilege eroding. First, develops an argument concerning why many…
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Makes three contributions to the ongoing debate over whether racial discrimination is disappearing, and white privilege eroding. First, develops an argument concerning why many economists treat empirical evidence of racial discrimination with skepticism or indifference. Second, presents some new econometric results which provide empirical insight into whether racial inequality is disappearing in residential credit markets. These results suggest that for African Americans and Latinos, racial disadvantage remains statistically significant in most cities, though its magnitude has fallen during the 1990s in many cities. Third, suggests an empirical implementation of “white privilege” in the residential credit market. Consistently finds white advantage in credit markets to be statistically significant in an econometric model of residential loan approval and denial.
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Lee Knifton, Alice Walker and Neil Quinn
Stigma and discrimination towards people with mental health problems is a global issue, imposing a considerable public health burden in terms of social isolation, limited life…
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Stigma and discrimination towards people with mental health problems is a global issue, imposing a considerable public health burden in terms of social isolation, limited life chances, delayed help‐seeking behaviour and stress. While numerous initiatives have been undertaken to address these issues, an evidence base for what works is still emerging. This paper explores the impact of 15 population‐level awareness workshops delivered over a five‐month period to 137 participants. These were employees drawn from workplaces identified as being important in the day‐to‐day lives of people with mental health problems. Evaluation approaches maximised specificity, sensitivity and anonymity and they assessed participant knowledge, attitude and behaviour. The workshops significantly improved participant knowledge. Attitude change was more complex with an overall significant improvement in attitudes, particularly in relation to unpredictability and recovery, but not dangerousness, which had more positive baseline attitudes. Social distance, a proxy for behavioural intent, had significant improvements in relation to ‘moderate’ social contact only. Qualitative feedback indicated that complex, unanticipated and positive messages had been absorbed by participants and influenced beliefs and behavioural intent. Service user narratives focusing on recovery were identified as the most valuable component of the intervention.
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Jennifer Leutwiler and Brian H. Kleiner
The purpose of this article is to explore the historical differences in wages between different groups (women, minorities, older employees, and other distinct groups) and to…
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to explore the historical differences in wages between different groups (women, minorities, older employees, and other distinct groups) and to analyse whether wage gaps are due to discrimination. Statistical data on wages, population, and education were accumulated from the US Department of Education, the US Department of Labor, and the US Census Bureau. Other reference materials were used to examine various theories for pay differences. Specifically, the gender wage gap is partially due to women’s domestic responsibilities and occupational sex‐typing. Race differences were found to have a correlation to education attainment. However, the wage gaps cannot completely be explained by other factors, indicating that negative stereotypes and discrimination do exist. The existence of discrimination is further supported by the growing number of pay discrimination lawsuits. In 2002, over $52 million was paid out by employers found guilty of employment discrimination in cases filed by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This article will define pay discrimination and examine ways to evaluate whether differences in pay are attributable to discrimination. Historical inequalities between men and women’s pay will be presented and evaluated in detail. Race differences between White, African‐American, Hispanic and Asian employees will be thoroughly addressed. Other less common forms of pay discrimination will also be covered. The analysis will reveal the non‐discriminatory as well as discriminatory reasons for differences in pay among individuals with similar aptitude and provide suggestions for improving the situation.
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This paper aims to address weight-based bullying as a persistent issue among adolescents. Fat phobia, rooted in societal biases against overweight individuals, leads to social…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to address weight-based bullying as a persistent issue among adolescents. Fat phobia, rooted in societal biases against overweight individuals, leads to social exclusion and discrimination, negatively impacting mental health and equality. Educational settings suffer from the profound effects of fat phobia, creating a toxic atmosphere that distracts from learning and marginalizes students who don't conform to traditional physical norms.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper combines historical analysis, literature review and critical discourse analysis. It examines the historical roots of fat phobia, explores the impact of societal influences, analyzes contemporary educational practices and the use of popular culture as a innovative tool.
Findings
Leveraging popular culture in anti-fat phobia education effectively challenges stereotypes. Educators empower students to critically analyze media depictions, encouraging empathy and inclusivity. Current events serve as critical teaching tools, sparking discussions on intersecting discrimination forms and equity.
Practical implications
This paper emphasizes the urgent need to comprehensively address fat phobia in education, advocating for a shift in societal attitudes toward body diversity. Popular culture can serve as an educational tool to create inclusive classrooms where all students are valued and free from weight-based discrimination.
Social implications
This paper emphasizes the urgent need to comprehensively address fat phobia in education, advocating for a shift in societal attitudes toward body diversity. Popular culture can serve as an educational tool to create inclusive classrooms where all students are valued and free from weight-based discrimination.
Originality/value
The originality and value of this paper lie in its multi-faceted approach to examining weight-based discrimination, its historical context, practical educational strategies, and the innovative use of popular culture as a tool for promoting inclusivity and empathy.
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Massimiliano Agovino, Michele Bevilacqua and Massimiliano Cerciello
While the economic literature mostly tackled discrimination looking at labour costs, this work focuses on its relation to labour productivity, arguing that discrimination may…
Abstract
Purpose
While the economic literature mostly tackled discrimination looking at labour costs, this work focuses on its relation to labour productivity, arguing that discrimination may worsen the performance of female employees. In this view, it represents a source of allocative inefficiency, which contributes to reducing output.
Design/methodology/approach
Female discrimination is both a social and an economic problem. In social terms, consolidated gender stereotypes impose constraints on women’s behaviour, worsening their overall well-being. In economic terms, women face generally worse labour market conditions. Using long-run Italian data spanning from 1861 to 2009, the authors propose a novel measure of female discrimination based on the observed frequency of discriminating epithets. Following social capital theory, the authors distinguish between structural and voluntary discrimination, and use Data Envelopment Analysis for time series data to assess the extent of inefficiency that each component of discrimination induces in the production process.
Findings
The results draw the trajectory of female discrimination in Italy and provide evidence in favour of the idea that female discrimination reduces productive efficiency. In particular, the structural component of female discrimination, although less sizeable than the voluntary component, plays a major role, especially in recent years, where more stringent beauty standards fuel looks-based discrimination.
Originality/value
The contribution of this work is twofold. First, based on contributions from social sciences different from economics, it proposes a novel theoretical framework that explores the effect of discriminatory language on labour productivity. Second, it introduces a novel and direct measure of female discrimination at the country level, based on the bidirectional link between language and culture. The indicator is easily understood by policymakers and may be used to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-discrimination policies.
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Purpose – Are members of socially dominant groups aware of the privileges they enjoy? We address this question by applying the notion of hypocognition to social privilege…
Abstract
Purpose – Are members of socially dominant groups aware of the privileges they enjoy? We address this question by applying the notion of hypocognition to social privilege. Hypocognition is defined as lacking a rich cognitive or linguistic representation (i.e., a schema) of a concept in question. By social privilege, we refer to advantages that members of dominant social groups enjoy because of their group membership. We argue that such group members are hypocognitive of the privilege they enjoy. They have little cognitive representation of it. As a consequence, their social advantage is invisible to them.
Approach – We provide a narrative review of recent empirical work demonstrating and explaining this lack of expertise and knowledge in socially dominant groups (e.g., White People, men) about discrimination and disadvantage encountered by other groups (e.g., Black People, Asian Americans, women), relative what members of those other groups know.
Findings – This lack of expertise or knowledge is revealed by classic cognitive psychological measures. Relative to members of other groups, social dominant group members generate fewer examples of discrimination that other groups confront, remember fewer instances after being presented a list of them, and are slower to respond when classifying whether these examples are discriminatory.
Social Implications – These classic measures of cognitive expertise about social privilege predict social attitude differences between social groups, specifically whether people perceive the existence of social privilege as well as believe discrimination still exists in contemporary society. Hypocognition of social privilege also carries implications for informal interventions (e.g., acting “colorblind”) that are popularly discussed.
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Jennifer J. Mease and Brittany L. Collins
This analysis draws on interviews with 19 self-identified US diversity consultants and 94 diversity statements posted on corporate websites. The findings challenge existing…
Abstract
Purpose
This analysis draws on interviews with 19 self-identified US diversity consultants and 94 diversity statements posted on corporate websites. The findings challenge existing literature that characterizes the business case for diversity as monolithic and wholly problematic for the way it constructs understandings of human difference. The authors accomplish this using metaphor analysis to demonstrate how business case arguments incorporate three metaphorical systems for thinking and speaking about human differences – as asset, as liability and as possibility. Given this diversity of metaphors, the business case does not construct human difference in a monolithic way, but in a variety of ways that both challenge and sustain problematic treatments of difference. The authors argue scholars and practitioners should attend to these nuanced difference within the discourse of the business case, and more carefully consider how these metaphorical systems both enable and constrain the design and execution of diversity work in organizations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis draws on two data sets: initial interviews with 19 self-identified US diversity consultants analyzed using metaphor analysis. To triangulate findings, the metaphorical framework was applied to 94 diversity statements posted on corporate websites.
Findings
Business case arguments operate according to three root metaphors of human difference: human difference as asset, human difference as liability and human difference as possibility. This challenges existing literature that treats the business case as a monolithic discourse.
Research limitations/implications
This analysis offers the three metaphorical system and highlights the “constrained capacity” of each. This framework offers an analytical and practical tool for scholars and practitioners, enabling them to more thoroughly understand and respond to their unique organizational and socio-historical context. It also provides a way to analyze how concepts of difference are mobilized across social and historical contexts.
Practical implications
The findings offer the “constrained capacity” that is, the strategic limitations and possibilities for practitioners who use the business case in their diversity work. This enables more skilled and ethically informed diversity initiatives.
Social implications
The findings offer insight into the subtle ways that hierarchies of human difference embedded in US history are subtly reinforced and made present through language. This enables social justice workers to better challenge problematic constructions of human difference and create new understandings when needed.
Originality/value
This piece makes two significant original contributions to existing literature. It offers more nuance to both critical and uncritical analyses of the business case by showing the diversity of business case assumptions about human difference as demonstrated in three different metaphorical systems and highlighting the constrained capacity of three different metaphorical systems. It offers unique analysis grounded in contemporary discourses, but correlated to historical systems of thought. This enables empirical identification of how certain types of thinking about human difference move across socio-historical contexts.
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This chapter reviews the historical and political context of immigration to Norway, patterns of ethnic inequality in the labour market, as well as how ethnic discrimination has…
Abstract
This chapter reviews the historical and political context of immigration to Norway, patterns of ethnic inequality in the labour market, as well as how ethnic discrimination has been legislated, publically debated and studied in the Norwegian context. Drawing on the findings of a multimethod study of discrimination in the Norwegian labour market, combining a field experiment with employer-interviews, the chapter furthermore clarifies the extent of discrimination in ethnic minority applicants’ access to the labour market and discusses what mechanisms influence the level of ethnic discrimination ‘at work’. The field experiment reveals that young Norwegians of Pakistani heritage – the by far largest group among immigrant descendants in the country – face substantial discrimination when applying for work. However, it also demonstrates striking differences in the scope of discrimination between the public and the private sector, as well as across occupational contexts, indicating that discrimination should not be seen as mere reflections of individual bias, ethnic preferences or statistical uncertainty, but rather that such individual-level dispositions are mediated through factors at the organizational level. This conclusion has important implications for our theoretical understanding of why discrimination occurs, as well as for the further development of anti-discrimination measures.
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