More educated and more equal? A comparative analysis of female education and employment in Japan,China and India

This paper attempts to explore the connections between expanding female education and the participation of women in paid employment in Japan, China and India, three of Asia's largest economies. Analysis based on existing data and literature shows that despite the large expansion in educational access in these countries in the last half century, women have lacked egalitarian labour market opportunities. A combination of social discouragement and individual choice largely explains the withdrawal, non-participation or intermittent female presence in the labour force, notwithstanding increased educational access. In taking stock of these issues and debates across these countries, it is argued that the parallel experiences of women in these countries can be traced back to persistent gender norms which, amongst other things, imply the centrality of marriage and non-market unpaid labour for women. The paper argues that there is a need for gender-sensitive public policy in order for increased education to translate to labour market gains for women, leading to sustainable development outcomes.     

Play and Toys in West Bengal: Self-reports of parents of children with cerebral palsy

Play, in the West, is seen by professionals as a crucial context for the transmission of skills, such as problem-solving, language, and communication. As such, it forms the vehicle for much intervention and therapy. Reports were elicited from parents of children with cerebral palsy in West Bengal on the activities they engaged in with their child and on the toys, if any, the child possessed. The majority of parents reported spending time playing with and teaching their child and all respondents named at least two toys belonging to their child. Associations between play and teaching and characteristics of the families are examined along with implications for parent involvement programs in non-Western contexts.     

The hyperlinking pattern of open-access journals in library and information science: A cited citing reference study

Using 17 open-access journals published without interruption between 2000 and 2004 in the field of library and information science, this study compares the pattern of cited/citing hyperlinked references of Web-based scholarly electronic articles under various citation ranges in terms of language, file format, source and top-level domain. While the patterns of cited references were manually examined by counting the live hyperlinked-cited references, the patterns of citing references were examined by using the cited by tag in Google Scholar. The analysis indicates that although language, top-level domain, and file format of citations did not differ significantly for articles under different citation ranges, sources of citation differed significantly for articles in different citation ranges. Articles with fewer citations mostly cite less-scholarly sources such as Web pages, whereas articles with a higher number of citations mostly cite scholarly sources such as journal articles, etc. The findings suggest that 8 out of 17 OA journals in LIS have significant research impact in the scholarly communication process.