Dirty workers occupy jobs and perform tasks that are unpleasant and considered distasteful or “tainted” to other members of society. However, while they experience challenges in…
Abstract
Purpose
Dirty workers occupy jobs and perform tasks that are unpleasant and considered distasteful or “tainted” to other members of society. However, while they experience challenges in managing stigma, they are generally successful in creating positive self-identities. Among these dirty jobs is prostitution. As dirty workers, women sex workers in American history have been treated with humor, ridicule and derision. This study aims to explain the social contexts and the limited economic choices these women faced and examine how they may have managed their dirty work’s stigma to create positive self-identities.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses primary and secondary sources to examine a 53-year period of American history and to frame these women’s stigma management within a “dirty work” perspective.
Findings
The author suggests that sex workers in riskier roles (e.g. street walkers, crib workers or “upstairs girls” in saloons) would have been less able to effectively manage stigma and create positive self-identities as compared to brothels workers, due to the brothel’s strong social support, healthier work culture and richer resources.
Social implications
While sex work has changed significantly in the past century, the principles of identity management in this difficult and dirty work remain. Understanding the economic, social and individual challenges faced by these dirty workers will aid our understanding of the difficulties confronted by today’s sex workers.
Originality/value
Sex work is nearly absent from scholarly management literature. The lack of historical perspective and knowledge in this field limits a full understanding of how various types of dirty workers manage stigma.
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This chapter analyzes the role of grassroots organizations as natural helping systems for women’s empowerment in the rural areas of central Mexico. For almost three decades…
Abstract
This chapter analyzes the role of grassroots organizations as natural helping systems for women’s empowerment in the rural areas of central Mexico. For almost three decades, productive projects have been the preferred strategy by the Mexican government in order to alleviate extreme poverty and promote women’s empowerment. Even if the impact of productive projects on women’s empowerment has been limited, grassroots organizations are created in order to have access to financial resources that have promoted the collective dimension of women’s empowerment. Through semi-structured interviews and participatory observation, this study retrieves the experience of women’s leadership, frustrated by changing public policy, local corruption, and political use of the social policy. In those difficult circumstances, grassroots organizations are fundamental tools for women’s well-being as they promote a specific understanding of empowerment, where family, community, and relatedness are values more important than competition and individualistic achievements.
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WE all scan the advertisements for librarians in The Times Literary Supplement and other journals every week, and we might be forgiven for inferring from them that there is a…
Abstract
WE all scan the advertisements for librarians in The Times Literary Supplement and other journals every week, and we might be forgiven for inferring from them that there is a dearth of those who, by a curious inversion, are asked for as “A.L.A's or F.L.A's.” In contradiction, it would appear that about 1,500 youngsters are trying to enter the profession by way of the Entrance Examination every year. Youngsters beginning life, especially girls, do usually prefer or are constrained by their parents, the cost of living, and the scarcity of lodgings, to start in their home towns and still to live at home.. Higher in the scale the whole position is tangled in various ways. Many of the entrants fall by the way; commercial pay exceeds municipal and other library pay; more find the work uncongenial, as library work certainly is except to those who are book‐lovers, have a strong social sense, and, in the best cases, a flair for publicity and business administration. Others marry and leave, although some stay on with the ring on the third finger of their left hand. Thus, when maturity is reached, only a relatively few, even amongst the mature, have become chartered librarians and, fewer still, Fellows—as is natural seeing that the fellowship is a much more severe test nowadays and only much love and industry can achieve it. This position is even worse in some other branches of the municipal service; our salaries do not draw the best of the young folk permanently and many a Treasurer's office, to take one branch only, is complaining of want of good recruits. Those of our good ones who do remain do so because of the work and not the pay. Authority has always known this, from the day when Gladstone opined that working in the British Museum was so delightful that it was incredible that the workers wanted any pay at all. Chief librarians today have been most unfairly neglected by the salary negotiating bodies who have dealt generously with several other kinds of chief officers in the local services.
Within the past few years, responsible educators, librarians, parents, counselors, social workers, therapists, and religious groups of all sexual persuasions and lifestyles have…
Abstract
Within the past few years, responsible educators, librarians, parents, counselors, social workers, therapists, and religious groups of all sexual persuasions and lifestyles have recognized the need for readily available reading material for lesbian and gay youth. Unfortunately, this material is often buried, because it is embedded in larger works. To meet this need, I have compiled and annotated 100 of the best works for young homosexuals, bisexuals, and heterosexuals. I have also included a few of the best works currently available on heterosexuality as a much needed source of knowledge for all young adults whether they are gay or straight, whether they remain childless or eventually become parents.
This is a comprehensive list of books, some pamphlets, and a few sound recordings about or by Ronald (and Nancy) Reagan. Collections of photographs and cartoons as well as…
Abstract
This is a comprehensive list of books, some pamphlets, and a few sound recordings about or by Ronald (and Nancy) Reagan. Collections of photographs and cartoons as well as biographies, political commentary, speeches, quotations and even recipes are represented. Omitted are books in which there is only brief mention of him. The bibliography was compiled in connection with a major exhibit on Ronald Reagan at the Colorado State University Library. It is the author's intention to continue to collect Reagan materials.
The purpose of this paper is to report on ethnographic research that investigated how self-employed nurses perceive the contemporary healthcare field, what attributes they possess…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on ethnographic research that investigated how self-employed nurses perceive the contemporary healthcare field, what attributes they possess that facilitate their roles as change agents, what strategies they use to influence change, and what consequences they face for their actions, thus contributing to what is known about organizational change in institutionalized settings such as healthcare.
Design/methodology/approach
Focussed ethnography was used to explore self-employed nurses’ work experiences and elucidate the cultural elements of their social contexts, including customs, ideologies, beliefs, and knowledge and the ways that these impact upon the possibilities for change in the system.
Findings
These self-employed nurses reflected on the shortcomings in the healthcare system and took entrepreneurial risks that would allow them to practice nursing according to their professional values. They used a number of strategies to influence change such as capitalizing on opportunities, preparing themselves for innovative work, managing and expanding the scope of nursing practice, and building new ideas on foundational nursing knowledge and experience. They had high job satisfaction and a strong sense of contribution but they faced significant resistance because of their non-traditional approach to nursing practice.
Originality/value
Despite dramatic restructuring in the Canadian healthcare system, the system remains physician-centered and hospital-based. Nursing ' s professional potential has been largely untapped in any change efforts. Self-employed nurses have positioned themselves to deliver care based on nursing values and to promote alternative conceptions of health and healthcare. This study offers a rare exploration of this unique form of nursing practice and its potential to influence health system reform.
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Madeline Johnson and George M. Zinkhan
Considers the interaction between customer and provider inprofessional service encounters, where extended person‐to‐persondiscussions frequently take place. Describes an…
Abstract
Considers the interaction between customer and provider in professional service encounters, where extended person‐to‐person discussions frequently take place. Describes an experiment in which subjects read and reacted to stories describing such encounters, which included three service variables – competency, outcome and courtesy. Reports on the emotional responses of the subjects, finding that courtesy was responsible for most of the variation in response. Discusses the managerial implications resulting from the study, notably the importance of courtesy in professional service encounters.
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THESE are grave days, and perhaps especially grave for those who are workers in books, in art and in the things of the mind and spirit. They are days which may make, or may mar…
Abstract
THESE are grave days, and perhaps especially grave for those who are workers in books, in art and in the things of the mind and spirit. They are days which may make, or may mar, much that such people as the readers of THE LIBRARY WORLD have striven for through a century or more. In war the material things, money, food, clothes, cease to be ordinary problems; they become urgent; and all the graces of life, even education itself, are endangered. We have yet to experience the full impact, let alone the reactions, of the drastic war taxation recently imposed. Necessary it is, no doubt, but that will not lessen its effects.
It's not enough to simply acquire alternative and small‐press materials. They must also be made easily accessible to library users by means of accurate, intelligible, and thorough…