In 2001, the US National Science Foundation inaugurated the ADVANCE Institutional Transformation program with the primary objective of increasing the participation and advancement of women at American Universities in all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. Although ADVANCE has been received very well, its effects have been uneven among institutions receiving the ADVANCE grant. In this paper, we reflect on the NSF’s goals for ADVANCE and initiatives ADVANCE schools undertake to increase gender equity in the context of gender organizations theory. Specifically, we comment on tensions that emerged through our own research concerning the relationship between feminist objectives of equity and justice and the nature of the ADVANCE program and transformational initiatives. We conclude by raising the perennial feminist question: ‘Can the master’s tools dismantle the master’s house?’
A national mail survey of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 ( n = 876) was conducted immediately before the U.S. presidential election (October 2012) to investigate socialization agents that may correlate with political and civic engagement. The relative importance of potential correlates of engagement including demographics, parents, peers, schools, religion, traditional media, social networks, and digital communication were evaluated. Regression analysis revealed that civically engaged youth identify with a religion, participate in civic education activities at school and extracurricular activities, take action (e.g., boycotting or buycotting), develop attitudes about citizenship, and engage in online/social media political activities. Politically engaged youth come from higher income households, discuss news and politics, take action, and are very prone to engage in online/social media political activities. While a wider range of activities appear to be related to civic engagement, those who are politically engaged appear to have a strong interest in online media usage. Implications are discussed.
Media is now central to how youth form their identities. Media also shapes the cultural background of much of young people’s action and decision making and the institutional framework of social interaction. This article explores this mediated “lifeworld” of young people by examining rates of current media use and the infiltration of media into conventional forms of socialization such as schools, family, and peers. The authors argue that increasing media use coincides with a larger structural shift to an information-based society wherein social relationships are constituted and reinforced through a cycle of “networked individualism” and growing “risk” among youth. The authors illustrate the cycle of media use, individualization, and risk by briefly examining (a) rising economic insecurity among all Americans and American youth in particular, and (b) the contradictions minority youth face in navigating structural barriers to achievement. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of their work and suggesting policy directions for youth in a media-saturated society.
Amidst current research on the positive impact of rising rates of youth civic participation, but also indications of a shift in the underlying forms of civic life and increasing socioeconomic disparities in levels of participation, the authors investigate the meaning of civic engagement from the perspective of high-school-aged youth. The authors inductively develop a typology of engagement based on in-depth interviews with a purposive stratified sample of eighty-nine high school students in a Midwestern city. The authors find that youth link civic engagement with ambition and achievement as a means to build capital in a Bourdieuian field of youth achievement. While civic engagement is informed by structural position, youth are actively involved in navigating their positions and choices. Civic engagement emerges primarily through volunteerism as youth struggle to assemble and deploy capital in the achievement field and thus compound class-based disparities in civic involvement.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.