Academic literature on the topic 'Women cabinet officers'

The extraordinary partnership that Beatrice and Sydney Webb embarked on when they married in 1892 spanned almost fifty years and left a lasting mark on British sociology, social welfare policy, and public administration. Groomed to make a Society marriage, Beatrice Potter (1858-1943) grew up believing that love and career were incompatible goals for a woman. Her disastrous relationship with the prominent, domineering politician Joseph Chamberlain reinforced that conviction. After it became clear that they would not marry, Beatrice made a name for herself as a social investigator, studying London’s poor in the late 1880s. But she could not shake off her obsessive love for Chamberlain. When Sidney Webb (1859-1947), a Fabian Socialist and a clerk in the Colonial Office, fell in love with Beatrice in 1890, he assured her that she could enjoy love and work. After a year of agonizing doubt, she agreed to marry him because she believed he would be the ideal partner for her work. But she was not passionately in love with him, as she had been with Chamberlain. She did not find Sydney physically attractive and was embarrassed by his lower class origins. It took Beatrice ten years to be fully happy with Sidney and a marriage that was focused almost entirely on work. Instead of having children, they wrote books together. They investigated social and economic issues, campaigned for sweeping changes in education and social policy, sat on government commissions, and were instrumental in founding the London School of Economics. When they married, Sidney vowed they would show the world what a marriage of true equals looked like. Beatrice agreed, but always recoiled from any suggestion that she was the dominant partner in the relationship. Their collaboration, in sharp contrast to the Youngs’ partnership, was fundamentally egalitarian: it acknowledged Beatrice’s contributions as much as Sidney’s and allowed each to play a variety of public roles. Beatrice headed a public campaign to rewrite Britain’s Poor Law legislation, and sat on several government commissions during World War I. Sidney was elected to Parliament and held two Cabinet posts. They are buried together in Westminster Abbey, the only non-royal couple to be so honored. But their seemingly idyllic union was marred for many years by Beatrice’s yearning for a more romantically compelling partner than Sydney and her sublimated passion for the dominating Chamberlain.

Abstract The Israel experiment reveals bias against women as leaders to be an MK, cabinet minister, and party leader, or to oversee masculine policy areas, though women candidates are favored in stereotypically feminine policy areas. Women and men candidates, however, receive equivalent evaluations by female participants as MK or minister, and for energy policy; and participants whose mothers are highly educated score women and men candidates equivalently as MK, minister, party leader, and for security and energy policy. Participants recognize party issue ownership and give more favorable evaluations to candidates of their preferred coalition, yet candidate gender in some cases has a larger effect on evaluations than party. The Israeli case fits expectations in the literature due to its limited incorporation of women into government, a constant security threat, and continued male dominance in the military in combat roles and as senior officers.

Abstract This chapter opens by describing how, after being sworn in as the thirty-ninth president of the United States on January 20, 1977, Jimmy Carter, his wife Rosalynn, and their children, walked along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. That unprecedented act indicated that Carter intended to be accessible to the people and establish an administration atypical of his predecessors. The chapter goes on to show how Carter brought an African-American woman, Mary Fitzpatrick, to the White House to be his daughter Amy’s nanny, and he and Rosalynn enrolled Amy in a public school. Rosalynn established the Office of First Lady and assumed an active role in the administration. Carter chose cabinet members and other appointees on the basis of merit, and he opened the recreational facilities at the White House to staff members and their families. He went to work his first day in office.

Abstract Need I tell you that the women were always ready to press into these places of horror, going to them in torrents of rain, groping their way by dim lantern-light, at all hours of night, carrying spirits and ice-water; calling back to life those in despair from utter exhaustion, or again and again catching for mother or wife the last faint whispers of the dying? That women were deeply involved with the conduct of the American Civil War was not new. Women have always accompanied armies, perhaps as officers’ wives but more likely as laundresses and/or camp followers. In the latter capacity they have, of course, been “public women.” What was new about the Civil War was the fact that a few women were presuming to suggest to various generals how best to conduct the war. In addition, in both North and South, women nursed with devotion-without sacrificing their respectability-and saved lives. In the North they organized for relief on a completely unprecedented scale. A smaller group organized the Women’s National Loyal League to pressure Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment. Inspired by Stowe’s great novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, northern soldiers marched off to battle singing Julia Ward Howe’s “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In other words, women’s writing was central to the culture during this period. And when the war ended, a plethora of books appeared, celebrating the heroic efforts of all these remarkable women.

Abstract It was known that the Lincolns were entertaining at their first State dinner on March 28, 1861. Carriages and cabs filled the circular drive in front of the entrance to the mansion, a reminder of the almost perpetual crush of office-seekers that still plagued the new administration. Even if they could not gain access to the building they were on the wait for Cabinet members and other influentials whom they hoped to buttonhole on their arrival. The new Secretary of the Treasury, escorting his lovely young daughter Kate, managed to push through the throng as they hastened to the entrance and moved through the main hall to the Blue Room, where some thirty guests were gathered. Mrs. Lincoln was already present to receive her guests when the Chases arrived. A plump, self-conscious little woman, her dress described as “gorgeous and highly colored,” made a vivid contrast to the men, some in black evening dress, others simply in everyday frock-coats and trousers.

Abstract As a result of the 2G spectrum scam, Uninor India (Telenor) faces an uncertain future. Will it stay in business after August 2012? Who knows? A few hundred employees, men and women, most of them less than 35 years old, are gathered in this open office. There are no cabins, no high walls to hide behind. It is time for Uninor Managing Director Sigwe Brekke’s weekly town-hall meeting with his employees. Brekke puts his own confidence level at six. Not without reason. Uninor was perhaps the most serious new telecom operator in India. It has to date got over 45 million customers, and has more than 17,000 employees, over 2,000 distributors, close to half a million retailers, etc. Now, according to the Supreme Court verdict on the 2G spectrum scam, it has to surrender its spectrum by August. The only way out is Telecommunications, or DoT, auctions spectrum before that. This will be difficult, says DoT. This typical of majority global corporations operating in India governed by evolving spectrum allocations

Curtiz’s career is summarized during the pre-Code era of Hollywood films. The evolution of the Production Code from the 1922 appointment of Will Hays as the czar of the MPPDA to the lack of enforcement of the Code is contextually chronicled as a key driver of the nature of Warner Bros. pictures during the early years of the Depression. Zanuck pioneered the “ripped from the headlines” gangster dramas that struck a chord with audiences. After he directed The Mad Genius, with John Barrymore, Curtiz’s pay was cut as Warners lost $8 million in 1931.Following The Woman from Monte Carlo and the visually creative Alias the Doctor, Curtiz was assigned the contemporary Strange Love of Molly Louvain, starring Ann Dvorak.He hit box-office gold with Doctor X (1932), a gruesome pre-Code horror film starring Fay Wray, who recounted Curtiz’s cold, sometimes cruel behavior on the set. Curtiz’s production of The Cabin in the Cotton included his racial faux pas and his alienation of Bette Davis during their first film together.His masterly direction of 20,000 Years in Sing Sing concluded a year of worsening economic conditions for the country.