Where the girls are: Examining and explaining the gender gap in the nursing major

The nursing major, at almost 90% female, has one of the largest gender gaps of any US college major. In trying to explain this gap, I sort through candidate explanations and show that nursing is an outlier on many dimensions. Relative to other majors, it has some of the slowest earnings growth, by far the highest occupational concentration, among the lowest penalties for part-time work, among the lowest unemployment rates, and the highest level of job tasks focused on "helping others" and "interacting with people". These factors collectively account for most of nursing's huge gender gap. While I cannot determine causal mechanisms, a major's associated job tasks (especially "helping others") account for most (55%) of the variance in majors' gender composition, while nursing's low part-time penalty is also important. Earnings growth, earnings variance, and the share of women out of the labor force from the major are less important, and academic factors like course requirements and test scores are unrelated to major gender gaps.     

Tour guide performances as sight sacralization

According to sociologist Dean MacCannell, sights are transformed into tourist attractions through five stages of “sight sacralization”: naming, framing and elevation, enshrinement, mechanical reproduction, and social reproduction. This paper hypothesizes that these stages of sight sacralization should have spoken correlates in the performances of tour guides. Through an ethnographic analysis of tour performances at the Lindheimer Home, this study shows how spoken correlates of these stages ritually transform an unimposing cottage into a valued cultural sight. The enshrinement stage, more than any other, has the potential to accomplish a ritual transformation of liminoid tourists into a state of communitas with the hostess and tour sight. The only sacralization stage without spoken correlates is mechanical reproduction. Yet the printed brochure serves as an analogue to tour performances. The paper suggests ideas for future studies of tour guide sacralization based on an examination of the structural oppositions and symbolic inversions which define types of tour performances.     

环境战略与中国城市发展

可持续发展理论已越来越受到社会广泛关注,但如何将可持续发展理论从书斋引向实践一直是大家渴望看到而未如愿的事情。作者结合上海张江高科技园区规划实践论述了城市发展进程中应如何保护生态环境,为城市可持续发展创造条件。他指出,一、降低城市积聚区密度是改善城市发展环境的基本方法;二、超大城市中心区内的开敞空间和一定面积的绿化对补偿建成区土地利用带来的负面影响是一个关键要素;三、协调通畅的交通组织必须贯彻公交优先原则;四、基础设施网络化是城市可持续发展不可或缺的条件;五、与开发商的密切合作才能实现城市管理和金融资源合理有效地利用。