Assessing gender mainstreaming in the education sector: depoliticised technique or a step towards women's rights and gender equality?

In 1995 the Beijing Conference on Women identified gender mainstreaming as a key area for action. Policies to effect gender mainstreaming have since been widely adopted. This special issue of Compare looks at research on how gender mainstreaming has been used in government education departments, schools, higher education institutions, international agencies and NGOs .1 In this introduction we first provide a brief history of the emergence of gender mainstreaming and review changing definitions of the term. In the process we outline some policy initiatives that have attempted to mainstream gender and consider some difficulties with putting ideas into practice, particularly the tensions between a technical and transformative interpretations . Much of the literature about experiences with gender mainstreaming tends to look at organizational processes and not any specificities of a particular social sector. However, in our second section, we are concerned to explore whether institutional forms and particular actions associated with education give gender mainstreaming in education sites some distinctive features. In our last section we consider some of the debates about global and local negotiations in discussions of gender policy and education and the light this throws on gender mainstreaming. In so doing, we place the articles that follow in relation to contestations over ownership, political economy, the form and content of education practice and the social complexity of gender equality

Exploring the relationship between media coverage and participation in entrepreneurship : initial global evidence and research implications

Using a set of variables measured in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) study, our empirical investigation explored the influence of mass media through national culture on national entrepreneurial participation rates in 37 countries over 4 years (2000 to 2003). We found that stories about successful entrepreneurs, conveyed in mass media, were not significantly associated with the rate of nascent (opportunity searching) or the rate of actual (business activities commenced up to 3 months old) start-up activity, but that there was a significant positive association between the volume of entrepreneurship media stories and a nation&rsquo;s volume of people running a young business (that is in GEM terminology, a business aged greater than 3 but less than 42 months old). More particularly, such stories had strong positive association with opportunity oriented operators of young businesses. Together, these findings are compatible with what in the mass communications theory literature may be called the &lsquo;reinforcement model&rsquo;. This argues that mass media are only capable of reinforcing their audience&rsquo;s existing values and choice propensities but are not capable of shaping or changing those values and choices. In the area covered by this paper, policy-makers are committing public resources to media campaigns of doubtful utility in the absence of an evidence base. A main implication drawn from this study is the need for further and more sophisticated investigation into the relationship between media coverage of entrepreneurship, national culture and the rates and nature of people&rsquo;s participation in the various stages of the entrepreneurial process.<br /

additional stressors, increased inequalities

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A 300-year record of sedimentation in a small tilled catena in Hungary based on δ13C, δ15N, and C/N distribution

Purpose Soil erosion is one of the most serious hazards that endanger sustainable food production. Moreover, it has marked effects on soil organic carbon (SOC) with direct links to global warming. At the same time, soil organic matter (SOM) changes in composition and space could influence these processes. The aim of this study was to predict soil erosion and sedimentation volume and dynamics on a typical hilly cropland area of Hungary due to forest clearance in the early eighteenth century. Materials and methods Horizontal soil samples were taken along two parallel intensively cultivated complex convex-concave slopes from the eroded upper parts at mid-slope positions and from sedimentation in toe-slopes. Samples were measured for SOC, total nitrogen (TN) content, and SOMcompounds (δ13C, δ15N, and photometric indexes). They were compared to the horizons of an in situ non-eroded profile under continuous forest. On the depositional profile cores, soil depth prior to sedimentation was calculated by the determination of sediment thickness. Results and discussion Peaks of SOC in the sedimentation profiles indicated thicker initial profiles, while peaks in C/N ratio and δ13C distribution showed the original surface to be ~ 20 cm lower. Peaks of SOC were presumed to be the results of deposition of SOC-enriched soil from the upper slope transported by selective erosion of finer particles (silts and clays). Therefore, changes in δ13C values due to tillage and delivery would fingerprint the original surface much better under the sedimentation scenario than SOC content. Distribution of δ13C also suggests that the main sedimentation phase occurred immediately after forest clearance and before the start of intense cultivation with maize. Conclusions This highlights the role of relief in sheet erosion intensity compared to intensive cultivation. Patterns of δ13C indicate the original soil surface, even in profiles deposited as sediment centuries ago. The δ13C and C/N decrease in buried in situ profiles had the same tendency as recent forest soil, indicating constant SOM quality distribution after burial. Accordingly, microbiological activity, root uptake, and metabolism have not been effective enough to modify initial soil properties

Phosphorus dynamics in a tropical forest soil restored after strip mining

Background and aims We hypothesized that successful early ecosystem and soil development in these P-deficient soil materials will initially depend on effective re-establishment of P storage and cycling through organic matter. This hypothesis was tested in a 26-year chronosequence of seven lightly fertilized, oxidic soil materials restored to eucalypt forest communities after bauxite mining. Methods Total P (Pt) status, Hedley P fractions and partial chemical speciation (NaOH-EDTA extraction and analysed using solution 31P NMR spectroscopy) were determined in the restored soils. Results Concentrations of Pt and most Hedley fractions changed with restoration period, declined with depth and were strongly positively correlated with C and N concentrations. Biological P dominated the Labile and Intermediate P fractions while Long-term P was dominantly inorganic. Organic P concentrations in NaOH-EDTA extracts and their chemical natures were similar in restored and unburned native forest sites. Phosphomonoesters were the dominant class of organic P. Conclusions Surprisingly rapid P accretion and fractional changes occurred over 26 years, largely in the surface soils and closely associated with organic matter status. Alkaline hydrolysis products of phosphodiesters and pyrophosphate indicated the importance of microbial P cycling. The important consequences for long-term ecosystem development and biological diversity require further study

A review of source tracking techniques for fine sediment within a catchment

Excessive transport of fine sediment, and its associated pollutants, can cause detrimental impacts in aquatic environments. It is therefore important to perform accurate sediment source apportionment to identify hot spots of soil erosion. Various tracers have been adopted, often in combination, to identify sediment source type and its spatial origin; these include fallout radionuclides, geochemical tracers, mineral magnetic properties and bulk and compound-specific stable isotopes. In this review, the applicability of these techniques to particular settings and their advantages and limitations are reviewed. By synthesizing existing approaches, that make use of multiple tracers in combination with measured changes of channel geomorphological attributes, an integrated analysis of tracer profiles in deposited sediments in lakes and reservoirs can be made. Through a multi-scale approach for fine sediment tracking, temporal changes in soil erosion and sediment load can be reconstructed and the consequences of changing catchment practices evaluated. We recommend that long-term, as well as short-term, monitoring of riverine fine sediment and corresponding surface and subsurface sources at nested sites within a catchment are essential. Such monitoring will inform the development and validation of models for predicting dynamics of fine sediment transport as a function of hydro-climatic and geomorphological controls. We highlight that the need for monitoring is particularly important for hilly catchments with complex and changing land use. We recommend that research should be prioritized for sloping farmland-dominated catchments

Security of the AES with a Secret S-box

How does the security of the AES change when the S-box is replaced by a secret S-box, about which the adversary has no knowledge? Would it be safe to reduce the number of encryption rounds? In this paper, we demonstrate attacks based on integral cryptanalysis which allows to recover both the secret key and the secret S-box for respectively four, five, and six rounds of the AES. Despite the significantly larger amount of secret information which an adversary needs to recover, the attacks are very efficient with time/data complexities of $2^{17}/2^{16}$, $2^{38}/2^{40}$ and $2^{90}/2^{64}$, respectively. Another interesting aspect of our attack is that it works both as chosen plaintext and as chosen ciphertext attack. Surprisingly, the chosen ciphertext variant has a significantly lower time complexity in the attacks on four and five round, compared to the respective chosen plaintext attacks

Understanding coastal morphodynamic patterns from depth-averaged sediment concentration

This review highlights the important role of the depth-averaged sediment concentration (DASC) to understand the formation of a number of coastal morphodynamic features that have an alongshore rhythmic pattern: beach cusps, surf zone transverse and crescentic bars, and shoreface-connected sand ridges. We present a formulation and methodology, based on the knowledge of the DASC (which equals the sediment load divided by the water depth), that has been successfully used to understand the characteristics of these features. These sand bodies, relevant for coastal engineering and other disciplines, are located in different parts of the coastal zone and are characterized by different spatial and temporal scales, but the same technique can be used to understand them. Since the sand bodies occur in the presence of depth-averaged currents, the sediment transport approximately equals a sediment load times the current. Moreover, it is assumed that waves essentially mobilize the sediment, and the current increases this mobilization and advects the sediment. In such conditions, knowing the spatial distribution of the DASC and the depth-averaged currents induced by the forcing (waves, wind, and pressure gradients) over the patterns allows inferring the convergence/divergence of sediment transport. Deposition (erosion) occurs where the current flows from areas of high to low (low to high) values of DASC. The formulation and methodology are especially useful to understand the positive feedback mechanisms between flow and morphology leading to the formation of those morphological features, but the physical mechanisms for their migration, their finite-amplitude behavior and their decay can also be explored

Connectivity of larval stages of sedentary marine communities between hard substrates and offshore structures in the North Sea

Man-made structures including rigs, pipelines, cables, renewable energy devices, and ship wrecks, offer hard substrate in the largely soft-sediment environment of the North Sea. These structures become colonised by sedentary organisms and non-migratory reef fish, and form local ecosystems that attract larger predators including seals, birds, and fish. It is possible that these structures form a system of interconnected reef environments through the planktonic dispersal of the pelagic stages of organisms by ocean currents. Changes to the overall arrangement of hard substrate areas through removal or addition of individual man-made structures will affect the interconnectivity and could impact on the ecosystem. Here, we assessed the connectivity of sectors with oil and gas structures, wind farms, wrecks, and natural hard substrate, using a model that simulates the drift of planktonic stages of seven organisms with sedentary adult stages associated with hard substrate, applied to the period 2001–2010. Connectivity was assessed using a classification system designed to address the function of sectors in the network. Results showed a relatively stable overall spatial distribution of sector function but with distinct variations between species and years. The results are discussed in the context of decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure in the North Sea