Women and higher education in Iran: What are the implications for employment and the “marriage market”?

In contemporary Iran, women with higher education face both gender discrimination and an unfavourable economic system, one that is not conducive to employment-generation for women. This paper provides an analysis of women’s access to higher education in Iran, which has varied over the last 30 years, and their continuously limited participation in the job market. Based on qualitative field research, this paper includes the voices of individual women, discussing their experience of higher education and factors they think are contributing to their limited choice of employment. The paper suggests that while the recent trend in negotiating mehrieh (a nuptial gift which is payable by the groom to the bride) has been a strategy employed by Iranian women to overcome some of the discriminatory laws they are subject to, this trend cannot actually be explained by the fact that women’s employment opportunities are limited. The paper concludes by asserting that limited labour force participation for educated women is a consequence of both political economy and gender ideology.     

Male teacher shortage: black teachers’ perspectives

In this paper the authors draw on the perspectives of black teachers to provide a more nuanced analysis of male teacher shortage. Interviews with two Caribbean teachers in Toronto, Canada, are employed to illuminate the limits of an explanatory framework that foregrounds the singularity of gender as a basis for advocating male teachers as role models. The study concludes that educational policy attempting to address male teacher shortage would benefit from engaging with both analytic frameworks and empirical research that is capable of unravelling the politics of representation and intersectionality as they relate to addressing questions of male teacher shortage in elementary schools.     

Verifying the operation of an elastic crossbar system applied to a panel painting: the Deposition from the Cross by an anonymous artist from Abruzzo,sixteenth century

This study deals with the post-treatment evaluation of the elastic crossbar system already designed and installed on the recently restored panel painting Deposition from the Cross by an anonymous artist from Abruzzo (sixteenth century). After the restoration, the panel and the crossbars were subjected to mechanical tests to identify their elastic characteristics. Then the panel, equipped with the elastic crossbar system, was subjected for about two months to controlled environmental cycles made up of approximately constant humidity periods. During the two months, the forces exerted by the springs and the deformations of both panel and crossbars were continuously monitored. A mathematical model, calibrated on the specific parameters derived from the analysis of the panel, provided the deformation that the panel would have shown without the crossbars; comparing the model output with the measured data provided a restraining effect (RE) of approximately 7% (RE could range between zero – no restraint – and 100% – total restraint). Future developments of this project will define appropriate procedures to design an elastic crossbar system for a given panel, once the expert judgement of restorers has identified the most desirable RE to be achieved.     

Structural assessment and measurement of the elastic deformation of historical violins: The case study of the Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin (1743) known as the ‘Cannone’

This paper presents a deformative and structural study of the Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin (1743) known as the ‘Cannone’. A structural assessment is fundamental to understanding the violin's compatibility with its residual function of musical instrument. The tuning of the instrument to a modern playing pitch during concerts could, in fact, cause stress resulting in plastic deformations of its structure. In order to understand the stress level to which the violin is subjected when tuned, several tests were performed. The forces acting on the bridge were measured, the geometry of the un-strung and of the tuned violin were acquired with a tri-dimensional scanner, the violin deformation was assessed by means of the computed surface deviation mesh and by measuring the deformation in selected lines, several sections of the violin were cut from the digital model and stress exerted on the sections was computed. The stress exerted on the neck, scroll and body were found to be very limited. More significant, albeit at a low level, was the stress exerted under the bridge between the sound holes. Mechanical stress exerted after tuning was found to be safe for the violin, if applied for a limited amount of time. This does not mean that the violin can be played freely, because the real strength of the material used in the violin is not known and mechanical stress during a concert must be added to time (viscous behaviour), moisture content variation (mechano-sorptive behaviour) and hygro-thermal stress, thus worsening the condition. The method presented here could be applied to compute the level of stress of any violin.     

The politics of gender segregation and women's access to higher education in the Islamic Republic of Iran: the interplay of repression and resistance

One of the significant achievements of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the increasing access of women to all levels of education. This paper focuses on women's access to higher education and its unexpected and paradoxical outcomes. Today women in Iran represent over 60% of university students at the undergraduate level. Against the dominant social imaginary of Muslim women, this paper explores how the contradictions and complexities of politics within the Islamic Republic impact women's lives and how women themselves have been able to bring gender justice to the core of Iranian politics.     

The new articulation of equity education in neoliberal times: the changing conception of social justice in Ontario

In this paper, we draw attention to the impact of neoliberal globalisation in rearticulating conceptions of equity within the Ontario context. The Ontario education system has been hailed for its top performance on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as a high-equity/high-quality education system and created ‘PISA envy’ in the international context. Our aim in this paper is to provide some critical analysis of the neoliberal rationality and to examine its manifestations for rearticulating conceptions of social justice. Drawing on equity education policies in Ontario and one in-depth interview with an equity practitioner in one of Ontario’s large and most diverse school boards, this paper illustrates how a redefinition of equity has been made possible through neoliberal systems of accountability and performativity involving measurement and facticity. As a result of these strategies, equity policy in education has been concerned with outcome measurement and boys’ underachievement, while racial and class inequalities have become invisible. While this paper is focused on Ontario equity policy, we believe that it serves much broader interest given the current context of global education policy field.     

Women and higher education in Iran: What are the implications for employment and the “marriage market”?

International Review of Education - In contemporary Iran, women with higher education face both gender discrimination and an unfavourable economic system, one that is not conducive to...     

Viscoelastic and mechano-sorptive studies applied to the conservation of historical violins: A case study of the Guarneri “del Gesù” violin (1743) known as the “Cannone”

To assess the possible effects of mechanical loading on the conservation of historical wooden musical instruments, a research project was carried out on the violin Guarneri “del Gesù” (1743), known as the “Cannone”. This paper refers to the results obtained by studying the deformations to which a violin is subjected after being tuned, with special attention to the viscous and mechano-sorptive behaviour (as in a concert environment for example). The amount of viscoelastic creep was quantified under normal tuning conditions, and the mechano-sorptive creep was quantified using a dead mass resulting in 55% of the elastic deformation obtained after tuning. The viscoelastic and mechano-sorptive deformations were clearly observed. These deformations were completely recovered once the violin was unloaded, demonstrating that this violin structure is appropriately dimensioned for the applied stresses.