A Qualitative Exploration of Religion,Gender Norms,and Sexual Decision-Making within African American Faith-Based Communities

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) continues to be a prominent health and social justice issue, especially for African American communities in the Southern United States. Gender role norms, specifically within faith-based communities in the South, pose challenges to empowering women to make safer sexual health decisions. To explore perceptions of gender norms and sexual health, 42 qualitative interviews were gathered from female members of 16 predominantly African American churches in Atlanta, GA. Constructs from the theory of gender and power and the social ecological model were used to guide coding and analysis. Participants discussed their experiences with gender norms and gender-based power differentials at the institutional (i.e., church), familial, and interpersonal (i.e., intimate relationship) levels. Because of the attitudes and beliefs held by their religious communities and families, many participants recalled struggling to assert themselves in sexual relationships and recalled engaging in risky and unwanted sexual behavior, especially during their young adult years. However, as the participants matured, they worked to overturn traditional gender norms, empowering both their children and women in their religious communities to make healthy, autonomous sexual decisions. Moving forward, participants want their churches and members of their faith communities to play an active role in the empowerment of African American women and provide them with the confidence and education necessary to negotiate sexual decisions with their partners.

     

Gender ratio,societal culture,and male and female leadership

Top management teams are worldwide largely composed of men, with relatively few female members. The gender ratio in top management is indicative of the position of women in management within the organization, as well as related to leadership behaviours of male and female managers. In the present study, the relative importance of societal culture, organizational, and individual characteristics in explaining leadership behaviours and the associations of gender and gender ratio with leadership behaviours are studied. Hypotheses are tested with multi‐level analyses using a dataset with information from subordinates rating leadership behaviours of 12,546 managers in 437 organizations in 32 countries. The results show that in a three‐level model (i.e., societal, organizational, and individual level) to explain leadership behaviours, differences in leadership behaviours are predominantly explained by individual differences, followed by organizational and societal differences. Further, after controlling for societal influences, a higher gender ratio (relatively more female managers), was positively associated with consideration and negatively related to initiating structure. Moreover, for male managers, there was a negative association between gender ratio and initiating structure, indicating that male managers in organizations with more female managers tend to engage less in initiating structure, whereas the leadership behaviours of female managers were not associated with the gender ratio.     

The relationship between gender,perceived career barriers,and occupational aspirations

The relationships between college student gender, perceived career barriers, and occupational aspirations were examined. Participants were 314 students located in the southeastern United States. Overall, college women reported higher levels of occupational aspirations than college men. While occupational aspirations were not correlated with perceived career barriers for women or men, women reported anticipating more barriers to their career advancement than their male peers. Perceived career barriers and the interaction between gender and perceived career barriers predicted occupational aspirations after controlling for gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and year in school. The relationship between occupational aspirations and the interaction between gender and perceived career barriers in college‐age adults enhances our understanding of occupational aspirations.     

Spirituality and Post-Stroke Aphasia Recovery

Journal of Religion and Health - The role of spirituality in post-stroke aphasia recovery has been ignored despite its potential contribution to positive health outcomes, particularly stroke...