Suchergebnisse

'Work/life balance' as a contemporary issue is fundamentally linked with gender justice. The issue emerged from historical transformations of the gender order, in which masculinities and femininities were attached to distinct spheres of home and workplace; but this institutional division has been weakening. Current dilemmas are documented in a field study of gender equity issues in ten public sector worksites. Because domestic labour is still predominantly women's work, 'family friendly' workplace policies mainly serve to support women's domestic commitments. Women are held accountable for managing the balance, though this has now also become part of the work of managers. Other aspects of public sector restructuring work against men's commitment to domestic equality. In these circumstances the ideal of 'balance' is itself open to debate. The ideological consequences of the re‐inscription of maternity and contemporary anxieties about masculinity require a renewal of the concept of the common good as a basis of policy.

When I was about 10 or 11 years old I played in a school rugby football team for a short time. Rugby is a game where you clasp a pointed ball to your chest and try to run through a wall of opposing players to put the ball on the ground behind them. They attempt to throw you to the ground, seize the ball, and run through a wall of your players in order to put the ball on the ground behind you. When half the game is over, everyone turns around and runs the other way.

The study described in this paper is part of a project assessing the impact of the HIV epidemic on 535 men who have sex with men. These men were surveyed about their knowledge of HIV, their sexual practices, other issues concerning the transmission of HIV, and AIDS. This paper focuses on these men's beliefs about HIV transmission, their perceptions of the safety of a number of sexual and social practices, and the factors influencing these perceptions. The findings indicate, in general, that the men surveyed were moderately well informed about HIV transmission. Some twenty percent of the men were well‐informed about both 'safe' and 'unsafe' sexual practices, a small number were ill‐informed and the remainder, the majority, were well‐informed about some aspects and ill‐informed about others. The data suggest that information from the mainstream and gay press is not only differentially available but that information is processed and interpreted by the men in different ways. Variables which influence the manner in which information is interpreted are place of residence (locale), awareness of gay community posters and pamphlets, and the men's sexual practice; these are associated with cautiousness or rashness in the men's judgments of safety and risk.