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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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June 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.
Building a Stronger Child Care Workforce: A Review of Studies of
Public Compensation 1.
Building a Stronger Child Care Workforce: A Review of Studies of Public
Compensation This
research-in-brief summarizes a report by the Institute for Women’s
Policy Research comparing the outcomes of seven programs for improving the
wages, education, and retention of child care workers. The programs
differed in their characteristics with some providing training and college
classes to child care workers and others providing stipends to
participants based on their education level and financial rewards for
receiving additional training. The study finds that overall, child care
practitioners who participated in these programs had higher income,
education, and retention levels than other child care workers. The authors
also report that participants in some of the programs reported feelings of
increased professionalism and improved morale after participating in the
programs. The authors offer a set of recommendations for improving the
quality of the child care workforce, including increasing starting
salaries for child care providers and establishing minimum worker
requirements. http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/G715.pdf
2.
Parents’ Beliefs About Condoms and Oral Contraceptives: Are They
Medically Accurate? March/April
2004 Marla
E. Eisenberg, Linda H. Bearinger, Renee E. Sieving, Carolyne Swain, and
Michael D. Resnick Perspectives
on Sexual and Reproductive Health
36(2) In
this article, the authors evaluate the beliefs of parents on the
effectiveness, safety, and usability of condoms and the birth control pill
from data collected through telephone surveys of 1,069 parents of 13 to
17-year-olds in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Parents clearly play an important
role in their children’s sexual education, yet the researchers find that
most parents in the survey underestimated the effectiveness of condoms for
preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The article also
reports that fathers generally had more accurate views about condoms than
mothers did, yet mothers had more accurate views on the pill than fathers
did. The level of information also varied with political affiliation. The
researchers found that politically conservative parents tend to have less
medically accurate information on condoms and the pill than politically
liberal parents. The authors advocate direct resource and skills trainings
for parents so that they feel comfortable discussing sexuality with their
children and are able to communicate medically accurate information. http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3605004.html
3. Comparing Care
Regimes in Europe This
article compares the current welfare and care policies, including both
formal and informal care, in the member countries of the European Union.
The authors find that Belgium and Luxemborg have the most generous
child-related tax allowances, and Denmark has the highest proportion of
young children in formal child care arrangements (64 percent of children
under age 3 were in formal child care arrangements in 1998). The article
also finds that Luxemborg has the highest public spending on pensions, and
Ireland has the lowest. The authors address the question of whether the
policies in individual countries will tend to converge in the future as
the EU becomes more integrated, and they suggest that while there are some
signs of convergence, it is unlikely that all national care differences
will disappear.
4. Under the
Microscope: A Decade of Gender Equity Projects in the Sciences This
report surveys gender equity projects supported by the AAUW Educational
Foundation and the National Science Foundation in the science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Comparing more than 400
projects, the researchers find that these projects encompass a diverse set
of gender equity intervention efforts, including mentoring,
extracurricular, informal, and professional development activities. The
researchers find that many projects include creative and innovative
strategies, but the projects do not adequately integrate gender equity
interventions into classrooms and do not sufficiently track demographic
information on participants. The authors conclude with some key strategies
for improving gender equity projects, including focusing on content and
skill development, integrating the use of online activities, and
emphasizing data collection and evaluation. http://www.aauw.org/research/underthemicroscope.pdf
5.
No Longer Getting By: An Increase in the Minimum Wage is Long Overdue Amy
Chasanov Economic
Policy Institute This
new briefing paper enters the debate over the minimum wage increase by
pointing out that the rate has not increased in seven years, and in that
time it has failed to keep pace with inflation and the escalating cost of
living. The author finds that an increase in the minimum wage would
benefit women and minorities most, as, for example, 60.9 percent of
workers who earned between $5.15 and $7.00 per hour in 2003 were women.
The paper argues that an increase in the minimum wage would have a
‘ripple effect’ of wage increases for other low-income workers and
would increase consumer purchasing power and stimulate the economy. The
author responds to the common argument that an increase in the minimum
wage will result in lower employment by arguing that the benefits of a
minimum wage increase (such as lower employee turnover, lower recruiting
and training costs, and higher morale and productivity) outweigh the costs
for employers, and therefore will not result in decreased total
employment. The author also points to extensive research suggesting that
the employment effects associated with a modest minimum wage increases are
close to zero. http://www.epinet.org/briefingpapers/151/bp151.pdf
6.
Crossing Borders: A Report of the Working Group on Immigration and Women May
13, 2004 Marjorie
Lightman, Ronald Cluett, Jeffrey A. Heller, Bonnie Weinstein, Kimala
Price, and Anne J. Stone Women’s
Research and Education Institute This
report includes six essays that have grown out of the WREI Working Group
on Immigration and Women. The essays approach the theme of immigration and
women from diverse perspectives, including legal, political, historical,
and statistical perspectives. The essay by Anne Stone is interesting in
that it uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services Bureau to construct a historical profile of
immigration in the United States. Stone points out while the proportion of
the U.S. population that is foreign born (just over 11 percent) is the
highest measured by a decennial census, the proportion was actually higher
in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 2000, Stone finds that over half of
foreign born people were born in Latin America, and almost 60 percent of
the total foreign born population resided in just four states: California,
New York, Texas, and Florida. This
edition of IWPR’s Research News Reporter was prepared by Misha Werschkul. |
