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Legal gender recognition in Nepal and comparative context
Get PDFThe Supreme Court of Nepal was a groundbreaker when it ruled in Pant v. Nepal (2007) that people have the right to change their gender on identity documents based on “self-feelings” and “self-determination” as opposed to medical or other criteria. At the time, no other national apex court or national government had so clearly prioritized self-determination as the guiding principle for resolving matters concerning gender identity. The decision in Pant, however, focused on people of “third gender,” in other words people who identify as neither male nor female. Now, the Supreme Court of Nepal is considering the case of a transgender woman, Ms. Kapali, who is seeking to identify as female on her identity documents, not as “third gender” or “other.” Ms. Kapali is challenging government authorities that have rejected her requests.
This Article analyzes Ms. Kapali’s claim from the vantage point of comparative law. In the years since Pant was decided, a rapidly growing number of countries and supranational legal institutions have taken steps to protect individuals’ self-determination of legal gender, including that of individuals who wish to change their legal gender from male to female or vice versa. We chart this trajectory of change around the world and explain that the trajectory is underpinned by compelling human rights principles. This analysis suggests that comparative law—along with Nepal’s constitutional law and international obligations—strongly supports Ms. Kapali’s claim to gender self-determination on identity documents. Numerous countries have surpassed Nepal in protecting gender identity rights, but Ms. Kapali’s case presents an opportunity for the Supreme Court to position Nepal once again among the world’s leading jurisdictions on gender identity rights.
This Article helps to shape understandings about Ms. Kapali’s case, and it provides context for analyzing the Supreme Court’s forthcoming ruling. Although Ms. Kapali’s case in Nepal is the impetus for this Article’s comparative analysis, our discussion of comparative law is significant to other countries as well. Our article provides the most comprehensive study to date of gender self-determination laws around the world. It thus offers insights that are relevant not only to Nepal but also to other countries that are considering reforms to gender identification policies
Job embeddedness and voluntary turnover in the face of job insecurity
Get PDFTwo important contributions to the understanding of voluntary turnover are the ideas that employees become embedded in a net or web of restraining forces on- and off-the-job and that they experience varying degrees of control and desire that yield proximal withdrawal states explaining turnover motivations. We build on these ideas in two multi-wave studies to study job insecurity, one of the most common work stressors and top concerns among employees around the world. Study 1 demonstrates that job search mediates the positive relationship between job insecurity and voluntary turnover, and that employees higher in on-the-job embeddedness are less likely to search for jobs despite job insecurity. Study 2 demonstrates that turnover intention mediates the positive relationship between job insecurity and voluntary turnover, and that employees higher in on-the-job embeddedness are less likely to contemplate quitting despite job insecurity. However, off-the-job embeddedness had opposite interactive effects, exacerbating the relationship of job insecurity with turnover
Colonialism in the new digital health agenda
No full textThe advancement of digital technologies has stimulated immense excitement about the possibilities of transforming healthcare, especially in resource-constrained contexts. For many, this rapid growth presents a ‘digital health revolution’. While this is true, there are also dangers that the proliferation of digital health in the global south reinforces existing colonialities. Underpinned by the rhetoric of modernity, rationality and progress, many countries in the global south are pushing for digital health transformation in ways that ignore robust regulation, increase commercialisation and disregard local contexts, which risks heightened inequalities. We propose a decolonial agenda for digital health which shifts the liner and simplistic understanding of digital innovation as the magic wand for health justice. In our proposed approach, we argue for both conceptual and empirical reimagination of digital health agendas in ways that centre indigenous and intersectional theories. This enables the prioritisation of local contexts and foregrounds digital health regulatory infrastructures as a possible site of both struggle and resistance. Our decolonial digital health agenda critically reflects on who is benefitting from digital health systems, centres communities and those with lived experiences and finally introduces robust regulation to counter the social harms of digitisation
'Not here to help' : equity members' experiences of Universal Credit and the Minimum Income floor
Get PDFThis report uses new data from a survey of 674 Equity members, alongside six focused interviews, to analyse the experiences of social security of those working in the cultural and creative industries. On the basis of this analysis, it makes two recommendations for reform, to better support a workforce which directly generates £28.3bn in turnover and £13.5bn in Gross Value Added annually within the creative industries, which overall make up nearly 6% of the UK economy.[1
Measuring maternal autonomy and its effect on child nutrition in rural India
No full textThis paper examines the link between a mother's autonomy—the freedom and ability to think, express, make decisions and act independently—and the nutritional status of her children. We treat ‘autonomy’ as a latent variable, and design a novel statistical framework to measure this. This method allows us to separate the direct associations of maternal and family characteristics in our model for nutrition, from their indirect associations that work through maternal autonomy. Using data from India, we explore the sensitivity of our estimates to endogeneity caused by sample selection in the presence of son preference. We find: (i) a one standard deviation (SD) higher autonomy score is associated with a 0.16 SD higher height-for-age z-score (HAZ score); and (ii) a 10% lower prevalence of stunting (HAZ < −2 SD). The latter is equivalent to the prevention of approximately 300,000 children stunting, indicating the important role of maternal autonomy
Learning a social network by influencing opinions
Get PDFWe study a campaigner who wants to learn the structure of a social network by observing the underlying diffusion process and intervening on it. Using synchronous majoritarian updates on binary opinions as the underlying dynamics, we offer upper bounds on the campaigner’s budget for learning any network with certainty, considering both observation and intervention resources, and further improving them for the case of clique networks. Additionally, we investigate the learning progress of the campaigner when her budget falls below these upper bounds. For such cases, we design a greedy campaigning strategy aimed at optimising the campaigner’s information gain at each opinion diffusion step
Engaging the AQ10 to predict professional burnout or poor work-related psychological wellbeing among Anglican clergy in Wales
Get PDFThe ten-item Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ10) is a self-report instrument originally designed to identify referrals for professional diagnosis for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Recent studies suggest that this instrument may also be tapping more generalised affective disorders. Working with this interpretation, this study examines the predictive power of the AQ10 to account for additional variance, after personal and personality factors have been taken into account, on the two scales of the Francis Burnout Inventory. Data provided by 220 Anglican clergy serving in Wales demonstrated that 8.6% of the participants recorded six or more red flags on the AQ10 (and so qualified for referral for specialist diagnostic assessment) and that higher scores on the AQ10 are associated with significantly lower levels of satisfaction in ministry and with significantly higher levels of emotional exhaustion in ministry. These data suggest that screening with the AQ10 may be helpful in identifying clergy vulnerable to professional burnout and to poor work-related psychological wellbeing, in addition to its primary purpose of screening for ASD
Imaging single-cell Ca2+ dynamics of brainstem neurons and glia in freely behaving mice
Get PDFIn vivo brain imaging, using a combination of genetically encoded Ca2+ indicators and gradient refractive index (GRIN) lens, is a transformative technology that has become an increasingly potent research tool over the last decade. It allows direct visualisation of the dynamic cellular activity of deep brain neurons and glia in conscious animals and avoids the effect of anaesthesia on the network. This technique provides a step change in brain imaging where fibre photometry combines the whole ensemble of cellular activity, and multiphoton microscopy is limited to imaging superficial brain structures either under anaesthesia or in head-restrained conditions. We have refined the intravital imaging technique to image deep brain nuclei in the ventral medulla oblongata, one of the most difficult brain structures to image due to the movement of brainstem structures outside the cranial cavity during free behaviour (head and neck movement), whose targeting requires GRIN lens insertion through the cerebellum—a key structure for balance and movement. Our protocol refines the implantation method of GRIN lenses, giving the best possible approach to image deep extracranial brainstem structures in awake rodents with improved cell rejection/acceptance criteria during analysis. We have recently reported this method for imaging the activity of retrotrapezoid nucleus and raphe neurons to outline their chemosensitive characteristics. This revised method paves the way to image challenging brainstem structures to investigate their role in complex behaviours such as breathing, circulation, sleep, digestion, and swallowing, and could be extended to image and study the role of cerebellum in balance, movement, motor learning, and beyond
Racial profiling and second-class citizenship
Get PDFI argue that racial profiling gives minority groups reason to perceive a threat of violence and wrongful arrest when interacting with the criminal justice system, consequently leading them to engage in self-limiting conduct in order to avoid being profiled. As a result, they may ultimately exercise a de facto second-class citizenship status through a limited exercise of basic rights and access to public services. This would suggest, contra consequentialist defenders of the practice, that a public ban on profiling would serve to contain an important, but often overlooked source of racial injustice and that a thorough cost–benefit analysis should include these costs