Kay Whitehead and Kay Morris Matthews
In this article we focus on two women, Catherine Francis (1836‐1916) and Dorothy Dolling (1897‐ 1967), whose lives traversed England, New Zealand and South Australia. At the…
Abstract
In this article we focus on two women, Catherine Francis (1836‐1916) and Dorothy Dolling (1897‐ 1967), whose lives traversed England, New Zealand and South Australia. At the beginning of this period the British Empire was expanding and New Zealand and South Australia had much in common. They were white settler societies, that is ‘forms of colonial society which had displaced indigenous peoples from their land’. We have organised the article chronologically so the first section commences with Catherine’s birth in England and early life in South Australia, where she mostly inhabited the world of the young ladies school, a transnational phenomenon. The next section investigates her career in New Zealand from 1878 where she led the Mount Cook Infant’s School in Wellington and became one of the colony’s first renowned women principals. We turn to Dorothy Dolling in the third section, describing her childhood and work as a university student and tutor in New Zealand and England. The final section of our article focuses on the ways in which both women have been represented in the national memories of Australia and New Zealand. In so doing, we show that understandings about nationhood are also transnational, and that writing about Francis and Dolling reflects the shifting relationships between the three countries in the twentieth century.
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Jennifer Hall, Tess Kay, Alison K. McConnell and Louise Mansfield
Prolonged workplace sitting can harm employee health. Sit-stand desks are a potential workplace health initiative that might reduce and break up the time office-based employees…
Abstract
Purpose
Prolonged workplace sitting can harm employee health. Sit-stand desks are a potential workplace health initiative that might reduce and break up the time office-based employees spend sitting in the workplace. However, little is known about the feasibility and acceptability of providing sit-stand desks. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study sought stakeholder employee views surrounding sit-stand desk implementation within two UK-based non-profit organisations with open-plan offices. This paper draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 26 stakeholder employees and 65 days of participant observations. Data were analysed using thematic analysis, and organisational cultural theory framed the study.
Findings
Stakeholders employees’ positioning of sit-stand desks as a workplace health initiative reflected their perceptions of the relationship between sit-stand desk provision, employee health and organisational effectiveness. Perceptions were shaped by the nature and context of the organisation and by occupation-specific processes. Relatively fixed (e.g. organisational structure) and modifiable (e.g. selecting products compatible with the environment) factors were found to restrict and facilitate the perceived feasibility of implementing sit-stand desks.
Practical implications
The findings offer several recommendations for workplaces to improve stakeholder employee attitudes towards sit-stand desk provision and to increase the ease and efficiency of implementation.
Originality/value
Whilst extant literature has tended to examine hypothetical views related to sit-stand desk provision, this study consulted relevant stakeholders following, and regarding, the sit-stand desk implementation process.
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Victoria A. Nozero, Penelope A. Whitten, Shelley Heaton, Kay Tuma, Nancy Master and Alison Armstrong
As the University of Nevada, Las Vegas continues building its new library, questions arise: Will the library instruction section be responsible for teaching students how to use…
Abstract
As the University of Nevada, Las Vegas continues building its new library, questions arise: Will the library instruction section be responsible for teaching students how to use word processing software? How will the new location affect the demand for bibliographic instruction? What will the new classrooms look like? In addition, staffing limitations, the library’s electronic environment, support from the teaching faculty, the library’s budget, and user demographics produce pressures that drive the direction an instruction program ultimately follows. The library staff can influence and control all of these pressures except one: user demographics. In this article, the authors discuss UNLV’s user population, how it has affected the development of a flexible library instruction program at UNLV, and how the online tutorial at another large urban university relates to its user population.
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The purpose of this paper is to consider whether lesbians may experience an “advantage” in non‐traditionally female work compared to heterosexual women, but argues for an…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider whether lesbians may experience an “advantage” in non‐traditionally female work compared to heterosexual women, but argues for an intersectional approach to understanding the relationship between gender, sexuality and class in male‐dominated work.
Design/methodology/approach
The research uses semi‐structured interviews with women working transport and construction, focusing here on an analysis of 13 interviews with lesbian workers, eight working in transport and five in construction, representing both professional/managerial and skilled manual occupations.
Findings
The paper considers the question of whether lesbians may experience an “advantage” in non‐traditionally female work compared to heterosexual women, but finds that their experience is complicated by other factors such as ethnicity, class and organisational culture. Organisational response and practice in relation to sexual orientation is found to be equally significant in shaping the realities of working lives for lesbians in traditionally male work.
Research limitations/implications
The findings in this paper are based on an analysis of interviews with lesbians drawn from a larger research project examining the experience of both heterosexual and lesbian women working in the transport and construction sectors.
Originality/value
The paper addresses a gap in the literature on lesbian experience in non‐traditionally female work and aims to contribute to knowledge of the diversity of lesbian experience through examining the working lives of lesbians in both professional and skilled manual roles.
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Mark Leather, Gil Fewings and Su Porter
This paper discusses the history of outdoor education at a university in the South West England, starting in 1840.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper discusses the history of outdoor education at a university in the South West England, starting in 1840.
Design/methodology/approach
This research uses secondary sources of data; original unpublished work from the university archive is used alongside published works on the university founders and first principals, as well as sources on the developments of outdoor education in the UK.
Findings
Both founding principals were driven by their strong values of social justice and their own experiences of poverty and inequality, to establish a means for everyone to access high-quality education regardless of background or means. They saw education as key to providing a pathway out of poverty and towards opportunity and achievement for all. Kay-Shuttleworth, founder of St John's, wrote that “the best book is Nature, with an intelligent interpreter”, whilst Derwent Coleridge, St Mark's first principal, had a profound love of nature and reverence for his father's poetic circle. His father, the famous English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor–Coleridge, made the first recorded use of the verb “mountaineering”. Coleridge was using a new word for a new activity; the ascending of mountains for pleasure, rather than for economic or military purposes.
Originality/value
The Romantic influence on outdoor education, the early appreciation of nature and the outdoors for physical and psychological well-being and the drive for social justice have not been told in any case study before.
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Alicia R. Ingersoll, Christy Glass and Alison Cook
The current study aims to analyze the connection between gender disparities and employment in senior legal roles within large American firms. Specifically, this study seeks to…
Abstract
Purpose
The current study aims to analyze the connection between gender disparities and employment in senior legal roles within large American firms. Specifically, this study seeks to uncover whether legal positions in large corporations reproduce inequalities in representation and wages, or whether these roles provide women with a pathway to greater gender parity.
Design/methodology/approach
Investigating a large data set of over 2,000 USA public companies over a ten-year period, this study examines the representation of women in senior legal roles, the likelihood of women’s appointment to those roles as a function of the gender composition of the industry and if a wage gap exists between men and women serving in the top legal roles in corporate America.
Findings
Findings suggest that rather than moving women closer to gender parity, in-house counsel positions reproduce many of the same inequalities found in large law firms, particularly with regard to representation in senior ranks and compensation.
Originality/value
Research has illustrated that women experience disadvantage in terms of representation, wages and advancement in large law firms and in corporate executive suites. Women lawyers who occupy senior executive roles, however, may benefit relative to their non-legal counterparts given their education and expertise. Their credentials and relative status may contribute in reducing or eliminating gender disparities. This study extends current research by investigating this potential path to greater gender equality.