Browsing by Subject "equity"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    "Because the country says they have to change" : an analysis of a diversity intervention in a South African Police Service (SAPS) station
    (2011-12) Faull, Andrew
    This resource will be of value to scholars of transformation in South African organisations. The shift from apartheid to a constitutional democracy in South Africa brought with it a plethora of questions concerning ideas of nationhood, citizenship, and organisational transformation. Integrally caught up in the revolution, the South African Police Service (SAPS) faces transformative challenges on scales far larger than most other organisations in the country. From being the strong arm of the oppressive elite, it has had to restructure and re-articulate its function while simultaneously attempting to maintain law and order. Like many other corporations and organisations, the SAPS has engaged in interventions aimed at aiding the fluidity of this process. This report is an analysis of one such intervention. It attempts to ascertain the extent to which members are changing as a result of particular diversity workshops conducted in a region of the Western Cape. The analysis focuses on members at one particular station.
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    Biological monitoring of workers exposed to pesticides - guidelines for application in field settings
    (2011) London, Leslie
    This guideline was produced for those persons responsible for the maintenance of health and safety measures at agricultural workplaces handling potentially hazardous organophosphate and carbarnate. This guideline has been produced by the Occupational and Environmental Health Research Unit at the Department of Community Health, University of Cape Town as part of its research in the field of pesticide hazards and pesticide safety. The support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in this regard is acknowledged.
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    Diversity, inclusion, and social justice in the information context: global south perspectives
    (2020) Raju, Jaya
    This is an editorial of the special issue of the International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion 4(3/4), 2020 authored by the guest editor (Jaya Raju).
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    Doctors in a divided society: the profession and education of medical practitioners in South Africa
    (2011) Breier,Mignonne; Wildschut, Angelique
    Many of the hopes and aspirations of South Africa’s new democracy depend upon the production of professionals who not only have globally competitive knowledge and skills, but are also ‘socially responsible and conscious of their role in contributing to the national development effort and social transformation’ (Ministry of Education 2001: 5). Furthermore, there is a dire need for more black and female professionals, not only to redress the inequities of the past, but also to broaden the consciousness of social formations that tend to be conservative everywhere in the world. In South Africa under apartheid, the professions reflected race and gender hierarchies, and to varying extents they still do. Whether the professions and their education programmes are managing to achieve these ideals is a moot point which the HSRC hopes to address with a series of studies on professions and professional education, of which this is the first. The studies are intended to explore the policy concerns stated above and also to raise issues that have not yet entered policy discourse. They will examine each profession through two theoretical lenses; the first being professional labour markets, both national and international, as well as the wider general labour market in South Africa, while the second focuses on the national and international professional milieu. this resource is useful for scholars, students, and members of the public interested in improving their knowledge on the role of policy in shaping the lives and attitudes of medical practitioners in South Africa.
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    Educational investment towards the ideal future: South Africa’s strategic choices
    (2017) Shay, Suellen
    Although there has been rapid expansion of higher education around the globe, such expansion has not resulted in a more equitable system. Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser, equity in higher education is conceptualised as ‘parity of participation’ and includes both equity of access and outcomes. The tensions between expansion and equity are illustrated by comparing South Africa’s equity challenges with those of Brazil and the USA. Focusing on South Africa’s critical choices, four scenarios or possible futures are provided to illustrate some of the trade-offs and strategic choices. The main argument is that if South Africa’s higher education system continues to expand without a concomitant investment in the effectiveness of teaching and learning, it will not achieve the policy goals of equity of access and outcomes. Furthermore the investment needs to be strategically targeted to interventions that can serve as systemic levers of change for reducing drop-out rates and improving graduation rates. To this end, over the next decade the state needs to prioritise an investment in an undergraduate curriculum more ‘fit for purpose’. The investment needs to be in curriculum reform that normalises different levels of foundational provision, identifies and removes curriculum obstacles that delay or impede graduation, and provides opportunities for ‘breadth’ for all students, not only those who come from privileged backgrounds.
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    Promoting equitable access to health care for households
    (2014-09-19) McIntyre, Diane; Gilson, Lucy
    To develop an understanding of the dimensions of access to health care; Create greater awareness of health care access constraints from the household perspective; Promote critical evaluation of policy options to address access constraints in relation to equity goals; Promote and strengthen effective development and implementation of equitable health sector policies. The idea for developing this set of training materials arose from the ‘Affordability Ladder Program’ (ALPS). The ALPS initiative focused on the experience of households of illness and of seeking health care. As the name would suggest, a key focus of ALPS was that of affordability and other aspects of access to health care for households. The ALPS team recognised that almost all of the training materials presently available focus on illness and health services from the health system’s perspective, with little or no attention devoted to the perspective of households. In addition, few of the available materials focus explicitly on the issue of equity, which should be seen as a priority in the context of growing awareness of substantial inequities in existing health systems; the majority of training materials are presently directed towards efforts to promote efficiency of health services. This was seen as an important gap, in that health care managers and policy makers will be better placed to design and implement health care policies and detailed plans that meet population needs if they are aware of the experience of households and if equity is the ‘lens’ through which alternative policies are considered. Finally, despite access to health care being a key policy objective by many countries, there is a lack of clarity about how access is defined and what constitutes access. It is, thus, also important to explore the different aspects of access in greater detail so that equitable access can become a reality. On this basis, it was decided to develop a set of training materials that present participants with an equity ‘lens’ through which to view the challenges of promoting health system access, focusing attention on households’ experience of illness and health service access. TARGET GROUPS: The training materials can be used for a diverse set of target groups, but are primarily aimed at current and future health sector managers. It is also envisaged that the case studies can be used on an ad-hoc basis in post-graduate programs such as Masters in Public Health programs. CASE STUDY MATERIALS: Six case studies have been prepared for this course: *Experiences of households in Sri Lanka; *Availability of health services and resource allocation; *Affordability of drugs in the context of the World Trade Organisation (WTO); *Tax and insurance funding for health systems; *Health service acceptability issues; *Access board game
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    Researching transformation at a South African university - ethical dilemmas in the politics of representation
    (Taylor & Francis, 2011) Ismail, Salma
    This article focuses on the complexity of researching institutional culture and the ethical dilemmas posed in representing staff according to race and gender, drawing on three qualitative studies undertaken at a previously white South African university between 2000 and 2007. During the research process, issues of representation became a concern both for participants and the researcher; specifically, some participants contested how they were categorised in interview transcripts and draft articles. Based on the empirical data of the three studies and using critical social theory and constructionist, feminist and post-colonial critiques, this article asks whether researchers can describe the lives of others without violating their reality, and argues for ethical representation that allows for advocacy and empowerment.