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In this chapter, I use the issue of violence against transgender individuals to explore the (limited) meanings of gender within the context of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in the United Nations (UN).

Using constructivist grounded theory and institutional ethnography I bring together field research from two ethnographic qualitative research projects I have been pursuing from 2008 to 2012; I studied transgender communities in the US and the CSW through their annual meetings in the New York Headquarters of the UN.

I first demonstrate the severity of transphobic violence as a global public health problem. I proceed to report highlights of global LGBT activism, such as the Yogyakarta Principles and the latest developments within the Human Rights Council of the UN for the first time addressing global LGBT violence in 2011. I then examine the silencing of transgender experiences in the CSW by exploring the contested use of the term gender over the last two decades of intergovernmental negotiations.

This study highlights the need to broaden the conceptualization of violence and gender violence which has important theoretical and policy implications. Linking micro experiences of violent victimization in local trans-communities to the macro context of gender violence in global gender equality policy development is crucial to the advancement of human rights.

Action in the 1980s to a large extent belonged to the hard, hyper-masculine physiques of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, who seemed to embody the aggressive, go-getting, testosterone-fuelled spirit of the age. Except, as this chapter argues, it would be a mistake to take these representations of masculinity at face value.

Susan Jeffords has noted the evolution of Schwarzenegger's Terminator character from hard-bodied killer to nurturing father figure, linking this to the change in perceptions of masculinity between the Reagan and Bush eras. Indeed, as Schwarzenegger moved into the 90s his films increasingly played with notions of ‘the feminine’ – from the nurturing Schwarzenegger of Kindergarten Cop (1990) to the ‘maternal’ Schwarzenegger of Junior (1994).

This chapter focuses on Schwarzenegger's Commando (1985), the first film in which he plays a contemporary, ‘normal’ (though still unusually muscular) man: a widowed ex-special forces commando and now full-time father, named John Matrix. The act of naming this supposed he-man ‘Womb’ is only the beginning of the film's surprising and subversive disquisitions on gender. In between (and sometimes during) the expertly staged fist fights, gun battles and explosions, homoeroticism, the male gaze and gender stereotyping all bubble away under the surface. Schwarzenegger's body is presented for scrutiny in a way previously reserved for female Hollywood stars, and the film's antagonist, an embittered former colleague who is obsessed with Matrix in a way that verges on the erotic, transcends butch and enters the realms of macho camp. The film questions and subverts presumptions about the masculine and the feminine, while still delivering an ostensibly macho, quintessentially 1980s action film.

The Scopes Monkey Trial is a landmark court case in American history and has often been referred to as “The Trial of the Century.” It provides a curricular platform for understanding changes in American society, populace tensions with shifting social and moral views, gaps in economic prosperity, and the outcomes of urbanization. Studying this pivotal and historical trial – along with the context surrounding it – offers readers a dynamic lens to view powerful social and cultural insights at the beginning of the twentieth century. Additionally, academic freedom issues, which have a history in our nation's courts, (Patterson & Chandler, 2008) as well as current dialogue among educators (see the November/December issue of Social Education), and are at the very center of the Scopes Trial, require critical examination. Most importantly, it exemplifies the type of interdisciplinary content social studies educators should be promoting, a goal of 21^st Century Teaching and Learning and Common Core Standards. In this article, we provide a brief historical context setting the stage for the Scopes Monkey Trial, a daily synopsis of significant points in the trial, a rationale for teaching the Scopes Trial, and instructional teaching resources with particular emphasis on books, DVD/media, and web-based materials.

Social studies teachers possess a daunting task in a 21^st century environment of economic-mindedness and technological infatuation. In a setting of individualism and instant gratification, enabling a future citizenry to realize the patterns of economic disparity and to accept their responsibilities towards other less fortunate citizens provides a formidable challenge. The authors interpret understandings of citizenship as being closely related to conceptualizations of economics and view methods by which classrooms employ instructional technology as paramount to exploring these associations. This paper conveys how technology represents an instructional resource that may foster exploration and examination of these relationships and describes a student-centered cooperative instructional model for its classroom implementation.

This study examines the management rostering systems that inform the ways medical scientists are allocated their work in the public healthcare sector in Australia. Promoting the contributions of medical scientists should be a priority given the important roles they are performing in relation to COVID-19 and the demand for medical testing doubling their workloads (COVID-19 National Incident Room Surveillance Team, 2020). This study examines the impact of work on medical scientists and rostering in a context of uncertain work conditions, budget restraints and technological change that ultimately affect the quality of patient care. This study utilises the Job-Demands-Resources theoretical framework (JD-R) to examine the various job demands on medical scientists and the resources available to them.

Using a qualitative methodological approach, this study conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with managers and trade union officials and 9 focus groups with 53 medical scientists, making a total 76 participants from four large public hospitals.

Due to increasing demands for pathology services, this study demonstrates that a lack of job resources, staff shortages, poor rostering practices such as increased workloads that lead to absenteeism, often illegible handwritten changes to rosters and ineffectual management lead to detrimental consequences for medical scientists’ job stress and well-being. Moreover, medical science work is hidden and not fully understood and often not respected by other clinicians, hospital management or the public. These factors have contributed to medical scientists’ lack of control over their work and causes job stress and burnout. Despite this, medical scientists use their personal resources to buffer the effects of excessive workloads and deliver high quality of patient care.

Findings suggest that developing mechanisms to promote sustainable employment practices for medical scientists are critical for the escalating demands in pathology.