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| Below is the newest installation of Research News Reporter (RNR) Online. Each month a new edition will be posted. Previous editions can be viewed in the Archives. |
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January 2004 |
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IWPR’s
Research News Reporter is distributed monthly to highlight inventive,
informative, innovative, and sometimes controversial research relating to
women and their families. Each selection includes a short description of
the research and either a link to the report itself or a citation. We
sometimes include short pieces in their entirety. In
this edition: 1.
Supports for Low Income Families: States Serve a Broad Range of Families
Through a Complex and Changing System U.S.
Government Accounting Office GAO-04-256 This
GAO report examines the provision of benefits and services for low-income
families in five states: New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Washington,
and Wisconsin. They found that service provision is increasingly
decentralized, and that states have used their reserves to meet an
increasing need for services. The authors note that while most states
subsidize public transport and child care, and offer employment services,
fewer states subsidize child care for sick children, offer employment
retention bonuses for parents who find and retain employment, or assist
with the purchase of used cars. The report also states that while states
may offer supports, not all eligible applicants actually receive the
supports – in fact, for almost all of the types of supports, the report
states that officials in at least one state reported that fewer than half
of eligible applicants received the support. In many of the states,
officials expressed concern over the future of existing programs due to
fiscal uncertainties surrounding welfare reauthorization. This report is
useful for general information about service provision, as well as for
researchers and advocates interested in specific information about
services in the five studied states. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04256.pdf 2.
Moving Hotels to the High Road – Strategies that Help Workers and Firms
Succeed This research addresses
the problem of low job and workforce quality in the hospitality industry
in the United States. Using data collected through over 150 on-site
interviews with hospitality executives, managers and employees, as well as
with union leaders, trade-group representatives, and government officials,
the researchers characterize the hospitality industry as a low-wage and
low labor investment equilibrium, which reinforces what the authors call
“the downward spiral of job and worker quality.” The report identifies
problems with recruitment and retention and with advancement
opportunities. The authors cite real examples of how hotels have remained
competitive while offering good wages, benefits, and advancement
opportunities for employees and the authors argue that there are win-win
solutions for the employees and the employer that include providing
training opportunities, forming partnerships with labor unions, employees
and employers, and sharing of best practices. http://www.cows.org/pdf/jobs/hotels/rp-hotel-03.pdf Responding
to the problem of unintended teen pregnancy, these researchers look at
partner and relationship characteristics of teenagers and their
relationship to contraceptive use and consistency. Using data from the
first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health,
they find that teens who discuss contraceptive use and who wait a longer
time between the start of a relationship and the first time having sex are
more likely to use contraceptives. Those who have an older partner, have
taken a virginity pledge, or had a large number of close friends who knew
their first partner were less likely to use contraceptives or use
contraceptives consistently. The report also includes data on the
frequency of contraceptive use among sexually
experienced teens: 63 percent reported always using contraceptives in
their first sexual relationship, while 16 percent reported inconsistent
use and 21 percent reported never using contraceptives during their first
relationship. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3524603.pdf This
report documents the low number of women in executive position and on
boards of directors of the nation’s largest communications companies.
Even after much public attention about the glass ceiling, this study found
that in the last two years the number of women entering the executive
offices of top communications companies has stagnated. In 2002, women
comprised 15 percent of top executives, and only 12 percent of board
directors, unchanged from 2000. They also found that the number of women
on boards of directors is linked with more women in executive positions,
better maternity leave programs, and more women-friendly benefits
packages. http://www.appcpenn.org/04_info_society/women_leadership/2003_04_the-glass-ceiling-persists_rpt.pdf Another
interesting survey of women’s leadership is a Catalyst’s Census of
Women Board Directors, which looks at the status of women and women of
color on the boards of Fortune 500 companies. They found that, in 2003,
women held 13.6 percent of the board seats in the Fortune 500, compared to
9.6 percent in 1995. 2003 Catalyst
Census of Women Board Directors 5. Who are Fragile
Families and What do we Know About them? Motivated
by the growing number of births that occur outside of marriage (almost
one-third of all births), CLASP has used the Fragile Families and Child
Wellbeing Study (FFCWB) to examine the situations of these families. Their
findings are important because they are not consistent with stereotypes of
the children of unmarried parents as the products of casual sexual
activity. They find that the majority of unwed parents are actually
strongly connected, both physically and financially, to each other and to
their children at the time of their child’s birth. They also find that
the majority of new, unwed parents live either below or near the federal
poverty line and have low levels of education. http://www.clasp.org/DMS/Documents/1073679033.53/Marriage_Brief4.pdf
In a recent New York Times article,
Dan Hurley drew attention to research by Dr. Fenton Earls and his
colleagues on the root causes of urban crime. Hurley claims that this
research calls into question the popular and long-standing “broken
windows” theory of urban crime. Earls’ hypothesis is simple: the way
to get rid of crime and violence is to increase
neighbors' willingness to intervene for the common good. This factor,
known as collective efficacy, or the willingness of individuals to act for
each other's benefit and for the benefit of each other's children, may
even be more important than the influences of race and income level. While
there may be some similarities between the collective efficacy theory and
the broken windows theory, the two explanations lead to very different
solutions: the former asks for increased neighborhood involvement and
cohesion, while the latter has been used to justify police intervention
and cleanup. On Crime As Science (a
Neighbor at a Time) Research
by Earls and his colleagues, Robert Samson and Stephen Raudenbush: Neighborhoods
and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy Systematic
Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban
Neighborhoods November
1999 Robert
J. Sampson and Stephen W. Raudenbush. The
American Journal of Sociology, 105,
no. 3: 603-651. For
more information on women and civic engagement, please see: Women’s
Status and Social Capital Across the States http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/i911.pdf Women’s
Community Investment: The Effects of Money, Safety, Parenthood, and
Friends |
