An Exploration of womens role in the construction industry Essay

An Exploration of womens role in the construction industry - Essay Example typically one of the most male dominated areas of the labour market, with women working in the industry making up only 10 percent of the UK construction workforce; in the general population, this workforce amounts to about 45 percent. The importance of the female worker will be noted, as ideas aimed at bringing women into construction work are examined. There is more awareness in the general population that women are an asset to professions such as architecture, and the construction organisation needs to address how to recruit women into the industry, and retain them within the workforce for as long as possible. An examination of how women are recruited and retained throughout the labour market, and comparison with the construction industry, may provide some answers. The construction industry is one of the most important industry sectors in terms of economic growth and employment. This sector is also crucial in producing goods and investment opportunities, with around 58 percent of the EU’s production depending directly or indirectly, upon the construction industry. However, the sector’s performance in the spheres of research and innovation is poor, with less than one percent of its turnover being returned for use in research and development funding. Some research considering the position of women within science and engineering has been done, but very little is known about the role of women within construction research, and the factors which hinder the equal participation of men and women within the industry. There appears to be a lack of awareness, or acknowledgement within the profession of issues that specifically relate to women within the workforce, and towards female architects in particular. Women’s accomplishments in the architectural field are not well-known, and are also not well publicized through university programmes, awards, or other promotional materials and events. Women entering the architectural practice after completing their degree

Criticism on the Novel Essay Example for Free

Criticism on the Novel Essay Nature setting are explicit Page 30: When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the door, on a beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. [] It was not splintered from the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood. Foreshadowing?: power of electricity sparks his attention, if it can destroy something so quickly, why cant it bring dead flesh to life? Scientific descriptions lack important information Page 48: It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. We see how she was a poet in this quote: she gives more descriptions of the surroundings than the scientific aspect of which many people long for. Obviously shows the lack of knowledge displayed by Mary Shelly. Countries are close together Shows once again how much knowledge Mary Shelly had regarding geography. It sparks attention when she says that it takes longer to go from Geneva to Ingolstadt (a total of 413.6 miles) than it is to go to England. Monster has superhuman abilities yet he is made from human parts Page 70: I thought of pursuing the devil, but it would have been in vain, for another flash discovered him to me hanging among the rocks of the nearly perpendicular ascent of Mont Saleve, a hill that bounds Plainpalais on the south. He soon reached the summit and disappeared. Stereotyping of the Turkish and Irish people If Frankenstein had already created a monster, why did he need help from some other scientists for the creation of another monster? Page 153: I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition. I had heard of some discoveries having been made by an English philosopher, he knowledge of which was material to my success [] The Monster tells Frankenstein how hes survived mobs throwing rocks and several other projectiles and such, yet Frankenstein never stops trying to think he can kill the monster. Page 206: [] the monster whom I had created, the miserable demon whom I had sent abroad into the world for my destruction. I was possessed by a maddening rage when I thought of him, and desired and ardently prayed that I might have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal revenge on his cursed head. All quotes from Mary Shelleys Frankenstein

Attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Africa

Attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Africa The developing economies of Africa must on their part make deliberate and sustained efforts to attract the much needed inflows of foreign investments. To achieve this, the enabling economic, financial and political environment for such inflows must be created. An economy that is exposed to higher levels of political instability, economic uncertainties and financial risk will not be able to gain the confidence of investors. These risk factors if not well mitigated with a great degree of transparency and accountability could serve as barriers to both local and foreign investments. According to Banz and Clough (2002), the major reasons among many others for not investing in developing economies are the lack of transparency and poor governance policies. Therefore, Nigeria and other developing economies of Africa must work towards an environment that has a relatively reasonable economic risk, ensure political stability and demonstrate moderate financial risk to attract foreign capital inf lows especially in the form of equity investment. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) markets to which Nigeria belong have of recent experienced some legal, regulatory and supervisory changes resulting into increased transparency in the operation of their markets. The liquidity of the markets have increased and operations also liberalized to attract more foreign investors. The Nigerian economy is the largest of the 15 member body and has a lot of political and economic influence over the other members. Conscious efforts have been made by the various member countries to partially open up their economies, through systematic privatization programs, overhauling of their legal and financial institutional infrastructures and use of modern trading platforms have resulted in real development of their markets and manage to attract some foreign direct investments (FDI) to them. Nigeria is currently the biggest economy in Africa after the recent rebasement of its GDP, thereby beating South Africa to the second place ((Magnowski, 2014). The petroleum sector accounts for roughly 80% of fiscal revenues and 90% of export earnings (World Fact book).The country is also one of the major exporters of petroleum, and plays a significant role in OPEC (OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2013). To diversify its economy Nigeria is encouraging the growth of their private sector by offering some incentives to private sector equity investors who are willing to invest in the country. The country has an increasing GDP of $422.6bullion, $450.4billion and $502 billion for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013 respectively, and diminishing foreign debt stock of $15.73 billion and $13.4 billion for 2012 and 2013 respectively. There is also an increasing Foreign Direct Investment of $7.444 billionand $9.212 billion for 2012 and 2013 respectively (World Fact book: World Bank). The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) is the second largest exchange in Africa; it was established in 1960 to provide listing and trading services among others. Its activities are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the country. The value of publicly traded shares stood at $50.88 billion, $39.27 billion and $56.39 billion for 2011, 2012 and 2013 respectively. Despite all the above mentioned strong economic fundamentals or good indicators, Nigeria has been plagued by several daunting challenges, notable among them are the issues epileptic power supply, inadequate infrastructures, insecurity, endemic corruption, increasing rate of unemployment and its heavy reliance on petroleum products (Global edge, 2014; World fact book). These factors pose some uncertainties about the Nigerian economic and stock market outlook. Nevertheless, the Nigerian economy is still growing. Fortunately, the government is also conscious of some of these teething problems. Programs are initiated to diversify the economy in the areas of agriculture, power, telecommunication, transport and other services. These efforts seem to be yielding the desired results as evidenced in the country’s 6-8% per annum pre-rebasing growth rate. With these measures a seemingly conducive economic environment is created which could be exploited by investors. This therefore, presents reasonable economic risk. There is also institutionalized democracy leading to political stability in its own form in terms of the country’s ability to carry out declared programs. Nigeria is also able to finance its commercial and trade debt obligations and has at no time defaulted in payment of its external financial commitments; thus demonstrating relatively moderate financial risks. These indices send strong signals in terms of information content about Nigeria’s overall economic health to domestic, international investors and rating agencies among others. Therefore, it will be of interest to empirically explore how these factors (economic, financial and political risks) when taken together or separately can affect the country’s stock market performance and vice versa. Country risk ratings assess the probability of a country’s default on its debt from a variety of perspectives: from socio-economic condition to growth in the real gross domestic product (GDP), government stability to corruption, to exchange rate stability among others. The objective of this paper is to empirically investigate the short and long-run relationships between Nigeria’s country risk ratings; political, economic, and financial components and its stock market in order to provide further information for current and potential investors to enable them make better informed investment decisions. In our knowledge this is the first few studies of this nature conducted on an emerging economy like Nigeria. Our main instrument of investigation is the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach formulated by Pesaran and Pesaran (2009) and Pesaran et al. (2001), to empirically investigate the relationships. The ARDL method is adopted because of its econometrics techniques. One important advantage of the ARDL model over other traditional approaches is that it can be used in time-series data irrespective of their order of integration, whether I(0), I(1) and/or fractionally integrated (Pesaran and Pesaran, 2009). The ARDL approach can also test for cointegration by the bounds testing procedure and can estimate the short-run dynamics and long-run relationships. The rest of the paper is organized as follows; section two discusses related literature. Section three explains the methodology adopted in this paper. Section four presents the ARDL procedure and discusses its empirical findings. Conclusion and implications are given in section five. The globalization of trade and financial markets in the past years has created huge investment opportunities and its attendant risks. It has therefore, becomes inevitable to know the credit worthiness of participating players. The motive behind such an assessment of the economic and financial condition and sometimes political stability of a country is to be able to evaluate the country credit risks involved in doing business or investing in such a country. Any event in a country that will affect not only the prospect of profitability but also restrict the movement of capital in the form of profits, dividend etc is worth evaluating. The need for such critical evaluation of credit worthiness of countries has resulted in the establishment of several rating agencies such as Fitch, Moody’s and Standard Poor among many others. These risk ratings are considered as indicative of possible future default. A higher rating is seen as a lower risk of default, while a lower score indicates a higher risk of default. Though the primary significance of ratings is due to their impact on interest rates at which countries source for funds in the international financial markets, studies have also shown its influence on stock market movements. This argument is linked to the influence of country credit risk ratings on the inflows of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI), into the host’s economy, especially through equity shares investments. There is no scarcity of research papers on sovereign ratings and their critical roles for encouraging and facilitating investment flows especially in developed economies, but there is paucity of studies conducted on the impact of these ratings on movements of national stock markets, particularly for emerging markets such as Nigeria. Some of the early studies by Erb et al (1995, 1996a, 1996b) show that there is association or relationship between country credit risk (i.e. the risk of a country’s inability to service its external debts) and returns on equity investments. The existence of relationship between country credit ratings and stock market returns was confirmed in the early work of Erb et al. (1996a) using data that cut across boundaries. As a follow up to their earlier work, Erb et al. (1996b) investigated the influence of economic, financial and political risks on expected fixed income returns. They show that there is relation between the country risk measures and world bond market expected returns. For the ICRG economic variable, they find positive and significant signs in unhedged, local, and foreign exchange portfolio returns. They also show that the country risk attributes are significant to the real yields of fixed income securities. Kaminsky and Schmukler (2001) also examine the influence of sovereign ratings and outlook changes on the sensitivity of emerging financial markets. They find that these variables have substantial influence on both bond and stock markets. A domestic downgrade is associated with an average increase change rate of two percentage points in bond yield spreads and a decrease of one percentage point in stock returns. SubaÃ…Å ¸Ãƒâ€žÃ‚ ± (2008) expressed a contrary view, stating that in most cases news of a downgrade is often anticipate earlier before its announcement; therefore the potential negative effect of such information on stocks and exchange rate returns is diluted. The impacts of rating changes on both bond yield and sovereign debt have been tested severally by many authors. Reisen and Maltzan (1999) using the three main rating agencies, find that there is mutual interdependencies among rating changes and changes in bond yield spread. The study by Cantor and Packer (1996) also reported similar findings. Among several authors that have provided valuable insight into the influence of rating changes on sovereign debt and corporate securities are Hand et al. (1992) and Richards and Deddouche (1999). The degrees of sensitivity in all these studies tend to vary probably because of the methods used for the country risk analysis. Hammoudey et al. (2011) using emerging economies; Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (commonly referred to as the BRICS countries) establish various degrees of sensitivities of these countries’ stock markets to their respective country risk ratings. China is most sensitive to all the risk variables, followed by Russia, while all the BRICS countries show moderate economic risk sensitivity. The spillover effect of sovereign debt rating changes on national stock markets and international debts is also confirmed by various authors, among them are Ferreira and Gama 2007; Li et al 2008. This situation is common among countries that share common economic features and unrestricted Evidence of flow of information. Common border also suspected to play a significant role. Regional stock market movements are also influenced by country credit risk rating news. This development is consistent with the study by Christopher et al. (2008), stating that there is a positive relationship between the two factors. While Brooks et al. (2004) in their study, though under a different setting did not find any sensitive association among the two variables. Turkey’s stock market index also seems to have association with its economic, financial and political risk ratings. Using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, Sari et al. (2013) established a steady long-run relationship among the stock market and some of the risk variables. There are many leading commercial publishers of country and political risk analysis, but data for this study is sourced from the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) economic, financial and political risk ratings for Nigeria covering the period 2001 to 2013. The ICRG rating system is made up of 22 variables representing three major components of country risk, namely economic, financial and political. These variables essentially represent risk-free measures. There are 5 variables representing each of the economic and financial components of risk, while the political component is based on 12 variables (Hoti, 2003). The specified allowable range for each factor reflects the weight attributed to each factor. A higher score indicates a lower risk and vice versa. The stock market returns variable is obtained by taking the first logarithm difference of the monthly stock of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) for the period earlier specified.s

post colonial :: essays research papers fc

George, Rosemary Marangoly, and Helen Scott. "An Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga." Novel (Spring 1993):309-319. [This interview was conducted at the African Writers Festival, Brown Univ., Nov. 1991] Excerpt from Introduction: "Written when the author was twenty-five, Nervous Conditions put Dangarembga at the forefront of the younger generation of African writers producing literature in English today....Nervous Conditions highlights that which is often effaced in postcolonial African literature in English--the representation of young African girls and women as worthy subjects of literature....While the critical reception of this novel has focused mainly on the author's feminist agenda, in [this] interview...Dangarembga stresses that she has moved from a somewhat singular consideration of gender politics to an appreciation of the complexities of the politics of postcolonial subjecthood" (309). Full text also available from EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Article No. 9312270407. Veit-Wild, Flora. [Interview with Dangarembga] "Women Write about Things that Move Them." Matatu: Zeitschrift fur afrikanische Kultur und Gesellschaft 3.6(1989): 101-108. Wilkinson, Jane. "Tsitsi Dangarembga." Talking with African Writers: Interviews with African Poets, Playwrights and Novelists. London: James Currey, 1992. 189-198. Tsitsi Dangarembga (b. 1959) was interviewed 4 Sept. 1989 in London by Jane Wilkinson, and I here highlight some points made in that interview. There seem to be many autobiographical parallels between Tsitsi’s and Tambu’s lives, although Tambudzai (supposed to be 13 in 1968 in the novel) would be slightly older than Dangarembga (who was 9 in 1968). Dangarembga says that she wrote of "things I had observed and had had direct experience with," but "larger than any one person’s own tragedies†¦[with] a wider implication and origin and therefore were things that needed to be told" (190). One important theme in Nervous Conditions is that of remembering and forgetting—especially the danger of Tambu’s forgetting who she is, where she came from—as her brother Nhamo did. Dangarembga acknowledges this in the interview (191). "I personally do not have a fund of our cultural tradition or oral history to draw from, but I really did feel that if I am able to put down the little I know then it’s a start" (191). Nyasha, the author says, doesn’t have anything to forget, for she never knew, was never taught her culture and origins—and this forms "some great big gap inside her." "Tambudzai, on the other hand is quite valid in saying that she can’t forget because she has that kind of experience. Nyasha is so worried about forgetting because it’s not there for her to remember.

Team Work Effectiveness

There are many standard to evaluate where a team work effectively. According to Mcshane, Olekalns, Travaglione (2011), a team is effective when it benefits its organization, its member and its own survival. Based on my experience I feel that a team work effectively not only when it finishes its objective on time and accurately, but it also motivates its member in order to survival. Motivation can increase responsibility of members in working. Being responsible in teamwork is very important because teamwork is a group of people who depend on each other to finish objective. As a result, when any members are not responsible for their tasks other people will feel uncomfortable or even angry, which can influence negatively to results. For example, in week 5, our team played role as ML team which had to provide ID and pass of keepandshare website for whole class. Unfortunately, we got trouble when account had not worked. Additionally, this is the first time we work in team; therefore, some problem still happen. To be more specific, sometimes in our team, there are still some arguments contributes to debate and then, members feel uncomfortable and we did the tasks not very well. What is more, an effective team also depends a lot on leadership. Mcshane, Olekalns, Travaglione (2011) claim that an effective leader always want to create good working environment for members and support them willingly instead of put leadership on the position of power. During short-time I led my team, I’ve learned that this point is reality because, for example, sometimes I did not understand feeling of other members in my team so some feel unconfident and results were affected negatively. There are some solutions to make a team more effective. Firstly, an effective team should have clarity of direction. Each team member has to have a specific purpose when working so as to focus on the main jobs. When everyone has a clear goal, the team can work efficiently, so the team effectiveness could be greater. Secondly, it is necessary to create an appropriate structure and strict rules to build an effective team. There are some different people in one team so that there are competing interests and personality clashes in team and that could lead to conflicts between members. Therefore, leader has a very important role in the team. The leader must contribute some rules to clarify for the team what is and is not acceptable behavior. Furthermore, leadership requirement for contributing an effective team is that the team has the appropriate skills to succeed. A common think in constructing teams is that having enough members to work on the objectives will lead to team effectiveness. It is a common mistake because more people does not mean more effective if they are not the suitable people for what is being asked to do. The leader is responsible for making sure that the team has sufficient skills and resources to fulfill its submissions. Finally, one of the most important factors of contributing team effectiveness is the respect. Each team members in one team need to listen many different ideas of other members and respect their ideas. Arguments in the team are good when that lead to an agreement between team members at the end. Each team members should be polite in communication to avoid conflicts which can make the team ineffective.

Moon Phases and Weather essays

Moon Phases and Weather essays From any location on the Earth, the Moon appears to be a circular disk which, at any specific time, is illuminated to some degree by direct sunlight. Like the Earth, the Moon is a sphere which is always half illuminated by the Sun, but as the Moon orbits the Earth we get to see more or less of the illuminated half. During each lunar orbit (a lunar month), we see the Moon's appearance change from not visibly illuminated through partially illuminated to fully illuminated, then back through partially illuminated to not illuminated again. Although this cycle is a continuous process, there are eight distinct, traditionally recognized stages, called phases. The phases designate both the degree to which the Moon is illuminated and the geometric appearance of the illuminated part. The phases of the moon are New Moon, Waxing Crescent, Waxing Moon (1st Quarter), Waxing Gibbous, Full Moon, Waning Gibbous, and Waning Crescent (Last Quarter). These moon phases often affect the weather. During these phases, there are certain weather conditions that are likely to occur. The best chance for a fine day is before any moon phase day, at the New Moon, and a few days before the Full Moon. The chance of rain can be viewed as the relative weather instability. Rain occurs most frequently in the week between the New Moon and 1st Quarter and the week between Full Moon and Last Quarter. This is partly due to the moon phases effects on tides. Although the chance of rain just before the Full Moon is very low, the days could be overcast and cooler. The days before the 1st Quarter and the Last Quarter should be warmer than the days before the New Moon or Full Moon. ...

Health Care Regulations Essays

Health Care Regulations Essays Health Care Regulations Paper Health Care Regulations Paper Changes and reforms in policy affecting health care facilities are well documented by professional and academic publications (Barr, 2002). These changes and reforms, which aim to improve the provision of health care service, are adopted in order to allow health care facilities to better meet the needs of their patients (Barr, 2002). Thus, there are reforms on the aspect of health care pensions, which are adopted to protect consumers in this field where they know very little (Barr, 2002). Recent changes applied in agency regulation and policy in the United States are those implemented by the Better Home Health Care Agency, Inc., which holds office and provides health care services in Nassau, Suffolk, Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan and Westchester since 1988 (Barr, 2002). Such recent changes are focused on the provision of more efficient service and the availability of health care professionals, such as a registered nurse, administrator, and medical coordinator, even in the times that the agency is closed, such as on weekends (Barr, 2002). One of the new services provided by the agency is shopping, where the agency charges a minimal fee for assisting their clients in their dietary and shopping needs (Barr, 2002). The client may provide her dietary needs to her caretaker and the goods would be delivered to her. In relation to this, Better Home Health Care Agency, Inc. has a special in-service training, wherein caregivers and health care aids try to meet the nutritional needs of clients while at the same time pleasing their taste buds. This service consists of preparation of specific medically restricted diets, ethnic dishes, and kosher dishes, depending on the needs of the client (Barr, 2002). The changes in policy of the Agency, as manifested by the new services they provide, fall within the category of improvement of quality, which is a main concern of many health care facilities, such as hospitals (Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, 2004). This thrust is influenced by competitive pressures, which require all participants in the health care industry to improve the quality of services, lower costs, and thereby become a better competitor in the health care industry (Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission, 2004). References Barr, N. (2002). Reforming pensions: Myths, truths, and policy choices. International   Ã‚   Social Security Review 55(2), 3-36. Better Home Health Care Agency, Inc. (2007). Innovative Programs. Retrieved November 17, 2007, from   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   http://betterhomehealthcare.com/content/innovativeprograms.html Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. (2004). Improving Health Care:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   A Dose of Competition.