The purpose of the essay is to analyze the welfare state from a gender perspective. Further, the paper analyzes and critically examines three different normative solutions provided by Irish Marion Young, Nancy Fraser and Jürgen Habermas for the realization of a welfare state that includes women. Habermas argues that the welfare state has created a situation of dependency and state paternalism which reduces both individual and collective self-determination. Young follows Habermas‟ argument. She argues for a political climate where justice is reduced to the distribution of material goods rather than the elimination of underlying relations of domination and gender specific patterns. Fraser and Young therefore argue that the new client role is female and that the welfare state rests on the heterogeneous nuclear family norm with a male provider which restricts possibilities for women. The Scandinavian welfare model tends to be considered as "women friendly" because of its broad gender debate, well-developed social security that brackens the line between public-private together with a high degree of representation of women in political institutions. What is critical about the Scandinavian model is that it restricts political participation to representation. Rather, what is needed is a model of democracy that gives room for women to discuss in their own voice what their needs are and to use the discussion as a means for broader political debate. For women to be given such a voice in society, we need a model like Habermas‟ deliberative democracy with procedural rights. The strength in Habermas‟ model is that it makes it possible for women to participate in political will-formation through critical rationality. The deliberative rationality makes it possible for women to come together in the public sphere to influence the welfare state, its design and the allocation of resources. Habermas‟ democracy model has certain shortcomings because it overlooks the gender structures which affect women's access to the public sphere. It is therefore important to understand how rational communication can be achieved in a society that is socially stratified. I argue for a welfare state in which recognition, redistribution and political participation are secured and where women can participate as equals in the public sphere. This is achieved by adopting Fraser concepts of society as consisting of a multiplicity of publics rather than by a single public. It is important however, that the public sphere makes room for groups‟ particularity and I therefore argue for Youngs‟ concept of a politics of difference. It also requires an interaction between institutions and political participation through procedural rights. These rights enable women to influence societys‟ institutions and overcome the client role and gender structures in society.

The theme of the thesis is the current and debated issue of discrimination in the wok procedure. Although the Czech Republic has already implemented the applicable European legislative requirements in its national law and the concept of non-discrimination is - from the labor-law perspective - sufficient, frequent cases of differential treatment and discrimination still exist. The thesis focuses on equal treatment and discrimination in both selected Czech legislative documents and the legislation of the European Community. It focuses in more detail on gender discrimination (the most common form of discrimination) followed by the institutional security of equal treatment, difference in pay between men and women, labor market segregation, the issue of reintegration of women and men into the workplace after maternity or parental leave, representation of women in managerial positions, discrimination against elderly women and sexual harassment in the work environment. Part of the thesis also focuses on possible approaches to solve these problems such as harmonization between work and private life, the company's social responsibility, and Diversity and Age Management.

Fältstudiens syfte har varit att analysera och beskriva jämställdhets effekter på den unga generationen i dagens Rwanda. Min uppsats utfördes med en kvalitativ ansats där intervjuer har varit centrala som metod för att samla in mitt material och data. Jag har intervjuat unga vuxna kvinnor som är entreprenör eller i ledare position. Mitt resultat erhålls genom deras berättelser och upplevelser om jämställdheten i Rwanda.  Rwanda har haft en stor representation av kvinnor i parlamentet vilket har i sin tur påverkat dessa unga kvinnor. Genom mina intervjuer har jag kommit fram till att Kvinnor i Rwanda tar mer plats som aldrig förr. Sammanfattningsvis har Rwanda gjort en stor skillnad för deras kvinnor. Den stora representationen av kvinnor i höga positioner har haft en bra inverkan på nästa generation och har inspirerat dem att drömma stort. Även om Rwanda har kommit långt när det gäller jämställdhet, utmaningar finns fortfarande och hela arbetet är inte gjort.

Scholars have linked multiple background characteristics to academic achievement; among these are student SES and race/ethnicity. A largely understudied student characteristic in relation to academic achievement is student immigrant status. I contextualize this relationship by considering a macro social setting: country-level foreign-born population. To do this, I examine mathematics achievement from the 2015 PISA assessment in 41 high-income countries. Using mixed-effects modeling, I examine student- and country-level factors and their effects on mathematics achievement. I use within- and cross-level interactions to examine the relationship between 1) immigrant status and student SES and between 2) immigrant status and foreign-born population. To examine the relationship between student immigrant status and student SES and between immigrant status and foreign-born-population, I use within- and cross-level interactions. My findings indicate that immigrant students perform similarly to native-born students when considering other contextual factors at the student-, school-, and country- levels. Furthermore, SES moderates the effect of immigrant status, with second-generation immigrants exhibiting a smaller achievement gain with increased SES. Additionally, everyone – immigrants and non-immigrants alike – benefits from higher foreign-born population rates, suggesting that immigration is advantageous for all students.

Ce travail porte sur la période allant de 1750 à 1885 et documente la connexion épistémique entre la prépondérance des théories racistes et les sciences de l’homme, nouvelle forme de connaissance qui émerge et s’institutionnalise au cours de ces années. Nous opérons en identifiant les occurrences du concept d’ « égalitarisme racial » dans les discours savants européens de cette époque et cherchons les différences structurelles entre des discours ayant considéré la race au titre de facteur inopérant dans la partition naturelle des aptitudes intellectuelles entre les individus et ceux, majoritaires, l’ayant considéré au contraire comme facteur opérant à cet égard. L’objectif est de tester la validité une hypothèse selon laquelle ce serait la nouvelle perspective heuristique ouverte par l’histoire naturelle de l’homme dans les années 1750, perspective ensuite renforcée par l’institutionnalisation de l’ethnologie puis de l’anthropologie au 19ème siècle, qui aurait permis aux européens de trouver le moyen légal de se dispenser d’appliquer aux peuples colonisés la norme comportementale égalitaire traditionnellement prescrite par l’enseignement des humanités, norme rendue constitutionnelle lors de la Révolution française. Notre première partie est composée de deux chapitres, traite des années 1750-1802 et montre que cette perspective procède de la formulation de jugements théoriques portant sur les variétés et les races de l’espèce homo-sapiens rendue possible par l’adoption du postulat méthodologique des sciences physiques. Notre deuxième partie comporte trois chapitres et porte sur la période allant de 1802 à 1848. Elle renseigne le fait que ces jugements théoriques ont été formulés de manière systématique quand l’ethnologie est devenue une discipline institutionnelle. Notre troisième partie est composée de deux chapitres, porte sur les années 1848-1885 et se focalise plus spécifiquement sur le discours d’Anténor Firmin, lors de l’apogée institutionnelle de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris. Nous développons l’idée que l’emprunt de la méthode physiologique propre à l’histoire naturelle a permis d’évaluer la qualité de l’intellect au titre de fonction organique puis suggérons que c’est par ce biais que les phénomènes traditionnellement expliqués par l’histoire civile ont désormais été expliqués par l’histoire naturelle. Enfin, nous identifions ce processus comme instrumental dans la légitimation des pratiques ségrégatives en place dans les colonies en démontrant qu’il a autorisé la théorisation de différences naturelles et essentielles entre les individus d’ascendance européenne et les autres. Notre focalisation sur les quelques auteurs ayant formulé des théories scientifiques relevant de l’égalitarisme racial pointe au fait que leurs systèmes comportent tous une profonde sympathie avec le modèle épistémologique l’ancien système des humanités qui rejette la réduction de l’histoire civile à l’histoire naturelle. Nous montrons que ces auteurs ont en commun commune de conserver une critériologie explicitement politique et morale dans l’évaluation de l’intellect et indiquons que la disparition du concept normatif d’humanité sur le registre savant ainsi que sa substitution par le concept théorique d’espèce humaine correspond chronologiquement à l’époque où la hiérarchie des races est devenue un fait scientifique. Pour nous, l’émergence du système objectivant des sciences de l’homme a engendré un problème épistémologique et politique majeur lié à l’abandon d’un savoir où la notion de nature humaine n’était pas un objet scientifique, où l’expression « race des mortels » avait encore une résonnance épistémologique, et où l’essence commune des individus appartenant à notre espèce résidait dans la possession naturelle et universelle d’aptitudes intellectuelles et de facultés langagières dont le principe était encore souvent expliqué en faisant allusion à des causes immatérielles / My dissertation focuses on the authors who have not succumbed to the fallacy of considering race a relevant factor in the natural partition of intellectual abilities among our species. My hypothesis is that from 1750 to 1885, the structural reason for racial egalitarianism lays in the refusal of a new axiom then becoming overwhelmingly accepted in Europe: the idea that the scientific method devised in the 17th century to deal with physical things could be applied to political and moral philosophy. My work unearths the link between the progressive adoption of this methodological postulate and the gradual dominance of theories, suggesting that the inequality in intellectual abilities is natural among the races of our species in the European scientific circles. I focus on French, English and German discourses refusing the natural ordering of mental powers according to race and show that they shared a common epistemological perspective refusing the reduction of civil history to natural history. I first point out the fact that transforming human nature into a topic of scientific research in the new field of investigation emerging in the second half of the 18th century, titled the “Science of Man” allowed for the old concept of “intellect”, to be more and more routinely seized as the physiological function of the brain organ. I point out the fact that scientific racism derives from the systematic application of the degeneration concept, mainly used in the realm of botany and animal breeding up until the mid-18th century, to our genus. I show that the emerging field of research, then called “the natural history of Man” allowed for natural distinctions among the intellectual abilities of the races to become logically plausible. I then show that this epistemological process lead to the emergence of ethnology and anthropology as institutionalized disciplines in the 19th century and produced the main tool used by Europeans and their descendants to exclude colonial people from the egalitarian propaedeutic of the humanities. I expose the fact that the gradual exclusion of philosophical, political and moral discussions occurred while the evaluation the intellect’s the quality became exclusively conducted using the means offered by natural history. Finally, I underline the fact that the scientific authors representative of racial egalitarianism refused to let go of the normative charge traditionally attached to the concepts of humanity and civility in the traditional knowledge of the humanities. I point to the advent of a new type of learned discourse - adopting the postulate which became the hallmark of science in the 17th century: the notion that nature may be dealt with objectively, meaning that any reference to nature’s final purpose or telos is a sure sign that the discourse making this reference is not scientific – as the principal explanation for the progress of racism in the learned circles of Europe. Focusing on scientists opposing racism, I expose the fact that those authors refused to apply the scientific method to the study of individual and group behavior and that they continued to envision this study as an act having political and moral underpinnings. My work reveals that the theories of authors in favor of racial egalitarianism all refuse to take part in the then growing trend to understand our species with the sole methodologies of the natural sciences. My point is to demonstrate by the means of historiography that the scientific method may not be applied to “human nature” because in this expression, the adjective human is in fact indicating the presence of a teleology that is foreign to science and that belongs to the humanities

"Spark and Ruin: a Story of Re-beginning" is a multi-media concert dance work that addresses empathy as a physical and cognitive reactionary state, and utilizes dancing bodies as agents to facilitate this empathic experience. This work developed out of "The Flint Project," which investigates Flint, Michigan, "the most violent city in America," and a community characterized by racial tension and severe distinctions in class and social standing. This post-industrial, urban community serves as a microcosm through which we can examine how racial, social, and cultural politics intersect to establish systematic practices that challenge the possibility of the "American Dream." "The Flint Project" is a vehicle for creative research that investigates these systems and develops the material into a live performed event, "Spark and Ruin: a Story of Re-beginning". This performance includes installations featuring live performers and also various forms of media (including photography, film, and interactive "stations"). All of this material is constructed to contextualize the material for the viewer in a proscenium-style full-length dance performance. The objective of this piece is to establish a space for viewers to empathize with the material--to create an experience that will evolve into inquiry of systematic inequality as well as self-reflection of perception and bias. In facilitating this level of questioning, I aim to move viewers with compassion and heightened awareness of social inequity, as well as opportunities to chge the systems that enforce it.

Historically, public transportation has served several key purposes. Among them is the need to provide accessible transportation for all persons in an area to increase commercial and social connectivity. However, the effectiveness of public transit in accomplishing this goal is relatively unstudied. I use U.S. Census data and a proprietary dataset matching each neighborhood of Los Angeles County with its nearest public transportation option to estimate median household incomes based on proximity to rails-based public transportation in 2000, 2010, and 2017. Using a fixed effects regression, I find that, in Los Angeles County neighborhoods more than 5 miles from the city’s central business district (CBD), being closer to a rails-based public transportation station is linked with higher median income levels. The magnitude of this effect is more pronounced as a neighborhood gets further from the CBD.

An extensive body of research suggests that increasing access to contraception can improve the health of women and children and increase their socioeconomic mobility through increased wages and labor force participation. In the United States, however, contraception and childbearing has historically been used as a form of racist and eugenic population control. This thesis outlines the history of contraception in an intersectional context, inspired largely by the work of Martha Bailey and Dorothy Roberts, from forced childbearing during chattel slavery, to the forced and or coercive sterilization of large populations of Black and Brown women in the modern era. Given the historical racism of contraception, combined with the possibilities for increased socioeconomic mobility and self-determination that accompany increased access to contraception, leads this thesis to ask: who lacks access to contraception in the U.S. today? An original analysis of data from the Guttmacher Center determines that Hispanic women are the most likely to lack access to birth control, followed by younger women and impoverished women. These findings, in conversation with the current implications of the racist past of contraception, imply the need for anti-racist contraception programs that prioritize informed consent and patient autonomy. Such programs could improve women’s and child health, decrease government spending, and contribute to increasing economic and racial equality.

À première vue, l’équité apparaît comme un phénomène absent du droit pénal. Il faut dire que l’idée de l’équité a été victime d’une histoire mouvementée autorisant les plus grandes confusions à son égard, lesquelles se sont cristallisées sous la période révolutionnaire. L’absence de référence explicite à la notion et l’anathème dont elle fait l’objet, dans une matière qui ne tolère aucun facteur déstabilisant, ne sauraient pourtant signifier que l’équité ait été totalement évincée du droit pénal. En réalité, elle est un phénomène occulte, dont il faut révéler les manifestations latentes, pour finalement convenir d’une utilisation implicite de la notion par le juge et le législateur. La rigidité inspirée par la légalité criminelle n’étant qu’apparente, l’équité jouit en effet d’une importante marge d’expression. D’une part, flexible, l’équité permet de réaliser une égalité concrète. Elle se trouve en conséquence implicitement tolérée dans la matière pénale en tant qu’outil d’harmonisation du droit. L’équité joue alors un rôle de complément à la loi pénale, en assurant le passage du général – la loi – vers le cas particulier. D’autre part, l’équité peut être mobilisée par le juge pénal, sans qu’il en ait nécessairement conscience, lorsque, confronté à un cas particulier, il décide de contourner l’application de la loi pénale qui risquerait de produire des effets iniques. Au service d’un jugement individuel subjectif, en référence à des valeurs issues du fond culturel dont il procède, l’équité s’exprime hors du cadre de la loi pénale. Elle se place alors en élément perturbateur venant concurrencer l’échelle des valeurs fixées par le législateur. Qu’elle vienne compléter ou concurrencer la loi, l’équité constitue toujours un moyen d’interroger les objectifs de la matière pénale dans la mesure où elle est souvent à l’origine d’évolutions législatives. En définitive, l’étude démontre que l’équité, sans être un principe autonome, est au coeur du droit pénal. / The lack of clear reference to fairness and the fact that it’s rejected in criminal law which does not tolerate any destabilizing factor does not mean that fairness is totally excluded from it. Actually it is a hidden phenomenon. Judges and legislators use the notion tacitly. As the rigidity of the principle of legality seems to be only apparent, fairness has in fact quite some room to express itself in criminal law.On the one hand, the flexibility it allows, and the underlying goal to carry out concrete equality both explain it be tolerated in some respects as a tool to standardize law. The need for flexibility is inherent to each legal system. Fairness has a complementary role for criminal law. It enables to guarantee the transition from generality – that is law – to particular cases. On the other hand, fairness can beimplemented by judges in order to circumvent the application of criminal law when it induces iniquitous consequences. As the expression of subjective individual judgment which refers to judges’ values, fairness is expressed beyond law itself. Ultimately, our study shows that fairness, without being an independent principle, is at the heart of criminal law, because at last, expressed as a complement or as an adversary to criminal law, looking for fairness often leads to legislative evolutions.

Compared to most Western democracies, voter turnout in the United States is consistently lower. Individuals from disadvantaged groups such as the poor are also less likely to vote than more affluent citizens. To counteract these trends, American state governments since the 1970s have adopted election reform laws (early voting, no-excuse absentee or mail voting, and Same Day Registration [SDR] voting) to make voting easier for the citizen. Paradoxically, most research on election reform laws has found that these laws have a minimal effect on turnout, and do not reduce disparities between more and less advantaged voting groups. This study argues that past studies have not properly accounted for features of a state’s electoral system – combinations of voting reform laws, election administration, and history of turnout – that structure the impacts of these laws on turnout. The goal of this research is to re-evaluate the performance of these election reform laws by contextualizing the laws in a state’s electoral system. This study makes several unique contributions to the literature on election reform laws. First, convenience voting laws and state election administration are reframed as components of the overall accessibility of a state’s electoral system. Using a policy feedback framework, this reframing recognizes how citizens, political campaigns, and accessible electoral systems shape turnout. The study then evaluates the effects of accessible electoral systems on overall turnout, and turnout among the poor. Additionally, this project analyzes how these laws structure the mobilization strategies of political campaigns. Finally, this research utilizes two large datasets containing millions of respondents from all fifty American states (Catalist and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study) with advanced statistical methods to assess the effects of these laws at the individual level in the 2008-2014 midterm and presidential elections. After controlling for the accessibility of state electoral systems, this research finds that convenience voting laws do increase turnout, encourage participation from the least likely voting groups, motivate campaigns to mobilize voters, and reduce turnout inequality.