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sandeep-health-care · 1 year ago

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The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Early Cancer Diagnosis

Improving the proportion of patients diagnosed with early-stage cancer is a key priority of the World Health Organisation. In many tumour groups, screening programmes have led to improvements in survival, but patient selection and risk stratification are key challenges. In addition, there are concerns about limited diagnostic workforces, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, placing a strain on pathology and radiology services. In this review, we discuss how artificial intelligence algorithms could assist clinicians in (1) screening asymptomatic patients at risk of cancer, (2) investigating and triaging symptomatic patients, and (3) more effectively diagnosing cancer recurrence. We provide an overview of the main artificial intelligence approaches, including historical models such as logistic regression, as well as deep learning and neural networks, and highlight their early diagnosis applications. Many data types are suitable for computational analysis, including electronic healthcare records, diagnostic images, pathology slides and peripheral blood, and we provide examples of how these data can be utilised to diagnose cancer. We also discuss the potential clinical implications for artificial intelligence algorithms, including an overview of models currently used in clinical practice. Finally, we discuss the potential limitations and pitfalls, including ethical concerns, resource demands, data security and reporting standards.

1. Introduction

Early cancer diagnosis and artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly evolving fields with important areas of convergence. In the United Kingdom, national registry data suggest that cancer stage is closely correlated with 1-year cancer mortality, with incremental declines in outcome per stage increase for some subtypes [1]. Using lung cancer as an example, 5-year survival rates following resection of stage I disease are in the range of 70–90%; however, rates overall are currently 19% for women and 13.8% for men [2]. In 2018, the proportion of patients diagnosed with early-stage (I or II) cancer in England was 44.3%, with proportions lower than 30% for lung, gastric, pancreatic, oesophageal and oropharyngeal cancers [3]. A national priority to improve early diagnosis rates to 75% by 2028 was outlined in the National Health Service (NHS) long-term plan [4]. Internationally, early diagnosis is recognised as a key priority by a number of organisations, including the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection (ACED).

Many studies indicate that screening can improve early cancer detection and mortality, but even in disease groups with established screening programmes such as breast cancer, there are ongoing debates surrounding patient selection and risk–benefit trade-offs, and concerns have been raised about a perceived ‘one size fits all’ approach incongruous with the aims of personalised medicine [5,6,7]. Patient selection and risk stratification are key challenges for screening programmes. AI algorithms, which can process vast amounts of multi-modal data to identify otherwise difficult-to-detect signals, may have a role in improving this process in the near future [8,9,10]. Moreover, AI has the potential to directly facilitate cancer diagnosis by triggering investigation or referral in screened individuals according to clinical parameters, and automating clinical workflows where capacity is limited [11]. In this review, we discuss the potential applications of AI for early cancer diagnosis in symptomatic and asymptomatic patients, focussing on the types of data that can be used and the clinical areas most likely to see impacts in the near future.

2. An Overview of Artificial Intelligence in Oncology

2.1. Definitions and Model Architectures

AI is an umbrella term describing the mimicking of human intelligence by computers (Figure 1). Machine learning (ML), a subdivision of AI, refers to training computer algorithms to make predictions based on experience, and can be broadly divided into supervised (where the computer is allowed to see the outcome data) or unsupervised (no outcome data are provided) learning. Both approaches look for data patterns to allow outcome predictions, such as the presence or absence of cancer, survival rates or risk groups. When analysing unstructured clinical data, an often-utilised technique, both in oncology and more broadly, is natural language processing (NLP) [12]. NLP transforms unstructured free-text into a computer-analysable format, allowing the automation of resource-intensive tasks.

It is common practice in ML to split data into partitions, so that models are developed and optimised on training and validation subsets, but evaluated on an unseen test set to avoid over-optimism. A summary of commonly used supervised learning methods is provided in Table 1. Such methods include traditional statistical models such as logistic regression (LR) as well as novel decision tree and DL algorithms.

Deep learning (DL) is a subgroup of ML, whereby complex architectures analogous to the interconnected neurons of the human brain are constructed. Popular Python-based frameworks for deep learning include Tensorflow (Google) and PyTorch (Facebook), which provide features for model development, training and evaluation. Google also provides a free online notebook environment, Google Colaboratory, allowing cloud-based Python use and access to graphic processing units (GPUs) without local software installation.

Although a detailed description of neural network structures is beyond the scope of this article, artificial neural networks (ANNs) can be used to illustrate the overarching principles (Figure 2). As a recent example, Muhammad et al. used an ANN to predict pancreatic cancer risk using clinical parameters such as age, smoking status, alcohol use and ethnicity [18]. In their most basic form, ANNs consist of: (1) an input layer, (2) a ‘hidden layer��, consisting of multiple nodes which multiply the input by weights and add a bias value, and (3) the output layer, passing the weighted sum of hidden layer nodes to an activation function to make predictions. Deep learning simply refers to networks with more than one hidden layer.

Figure 2. Example of a single-hidden-layer ANN architecture. (1) The smoking status in pack years and lung nodule size (mm) are entered as the two input nodes. (2) In the hidden layer, each node multiplies the values from incoming neurons by a weight (shown as decimals at incoming neurons) and aggregates them. (3) The results are passed to an activation function, converting the output to a probability of cancer between 0 and 1. Multiple learning cycles are used to update the hidden layer weights to improve performance.

Many early diagnosis models have exploited convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures, which led to a revolution in computer-vision research by allowing the use of colour images as input data. While the downstream fully connected layers resemble those of an ANN, the input data are processed by a series of kernels which slide over image colour channels and extract features, such as edges and colour gradients. These inputs are then pooled and flattened before being passed to the fully connected layer. Many pre-defined CNN architectures with varying degrees of complexity are available for use, including AlexNet [20], EfficientNet [21], InceptionNet [22], ResNet [23] and DenseNet [24]. As we discuss further in this article, CNNs have a wide range of applications in radiology and digital pathology.

2.2. Data Types: Electronic Healthcare Records

A number of emerging healthcare data modalities are suitable for analysis with AI. In recent years, a global expansion in electronic healthcare record (EHR) infrastructures has occurred, enabling vast amounts of clinical data to be stored and accessed efficiently [25]. Many exciting digital collaborations are arising to facilitate early diagnosis research using EHRs, including the UK-wide DATA-CAN hub [26]. Other digital databases record outcome measures and pathway data. For example, the Digital Cancer Waiting Times Database aims to improve cancer referral pathways through user-uploaded performance metrics [27].

It is important to draw a distinction between local hospital EHR data and national public health data registries, including those utilised by multi-centre screening studies. With registries, unified database structures are being implemented for consistency across institutions. A key aim of the NHSx ‘digital transformation of screening’ programme is to ensure interoperability of systems, so that data can flow seamlessly along the entire screening pathway, including into national registry databases [28]. An example of database unification is the new U.K. cervical cancer screening management system, which will simplify 84 different databases into a single national database, and aims to streamline data entry and provide simple, cloud-based access for users [29].

Digital databases, whether local or national, are ripe for analysis with AI, which is inherently able to process large amounts of information (‘Big Data’) [30]. EHR data typically include structured, easily quantifiable data such as admission dates or blood results, and unstructured free-text such as clinical notes or diagnostic reports. The latter can be analysed using NLP approaches. An overview of NLP in oncology is provided by Yim et al. [12], and example early diagnosis uses include identifying abnormal cancer screening results [31], auditing colonoscopy or cystoscopy standards [32,33] and identifying or risk-stratifying pre-malignant lesions [34,35,36,37,38]. NLP has also been used to automate patient identification for clinical trials, reducing the burden of eligibility checks [39]. Morin and colleagues published an exciting example of how AI and NLP technology can integrate into EHR systems: their model can analyse millions of data points and perform real-time cancer prognostication based on continuous learning of routinely collected clinical data

Read More: https://www.europeanhhm.com/articles/the-role-of-artificial-intelligence-in-early-cancer-diagnosis

#healthcare #hospitals #health #medical care #doctors #health and wellness #healthy lifestyle #medical equipment #technologies #artifical intelligence #cancer treatment #early cancer detection #diagnostics

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spookyjarchivist · 2 years ago

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literally dying over here that someone enjoyed my tags this much but i have realized that im not done here

btw it’s important to note that im using the books for my tolkien analysis bc jackson’s movies made eowyn’s storyline in particular a misogynistic late 90s/early 2000s “Girl Power” story as opposed to tolkien’s original surprisingly feminist narrative that, as my previous tags note, breaks down the gender binary without ignoring the biological necessities of the “time” insofar as middle earth having a recognizable time frame in terms of our reality, there’s also the low-key transphobic handling of dwarrowdam when gimli is talking to eowyn about about them

also ive never seen a bond film or read the books, i just know how famous their “bond girls” are for being prop prizes and damsels in distress

BUT let’s first talk about bond

The first Bond book was published in 1953 (a year before LotR in fact) and the first movie was released 1962. After WWII women were more interested than ever in working outside the home, though there had been strong steady movements on that front since the lates 1800s in terms of college education. The main difference is that middle class women wanted to enter the workforce in more traditionally men’s spaces. And they did. Including spy work (Here is an article I read on the topic. Warning, it is in fact thinly veiled marketing and recruitment propaganda for MI6, but it DOES include interesting history from first-hand accounts and talks a bit on the influence of James Bond on spy work in the UK). This influx of women in the workforce gives the James Bond stories absolutely zero excuses not to include women in their stories. Even if we go with the classic strong female lead that uses her femininity to her advantage, there are ways outside of the classic misogynistic honeypot trap (a strategy that the linked article notes is extremely ineffective).

Okay, we’ve established the lack of excuses for Bond. Let’s talk Tolkien.

Like I said previously, there’s just not a lot of excuses for Tolkien to bring in more women than he does. It’s a war story from the perspective of soldiers. His writing style restricts him to main points of the story, and he’s working in a perceived time frame where women were unlikely to be in positions of power due to traditional inheritance laws. On top of that the societies we’re talking about need to be careful about putting childbearing people in dangerous situations or else there will be no people.

We’re working with roughly middle ages level of healthcare (maybe 1800s for certain countries if we’re being VERY generous), so birthing is a hard and dangerous process that’s likely to kill people. Miscarriages, which can also be dangerous, are most likely going to happen fairly often as well. They’re still extremely common, so suffice to say there would be even more.

Keeping childbearing people out of military service is one of those things that, yeah isn’t all that great in terms of personal autonomy, but is explicitly necessary in terms of survival. We can’t even take the elves magical healing stuff into account because they’re not exactly going out into other kingdoms and if they did it would most likely be for royalty or at least nobility. The only thing the birthing process has going for it right now are the fact that they’re most likely using midwives to help with the actual labor. When medical care developed historically, involving doctors actually made the process more dangerous because they weren’t properly trained like midwives were and were unaware of stuff like germs. Hell, going to a midwifery is not a bad idea even now, just make sure it’s close to a hospital or works with one incase there’s an emergency (Here is a link to the Sawbones episode on birth, it’s a good overview and in my opinion is a great way to understand this particular issue when considering why and how we need to think about this particular biological function when world building in fantasy and historical or history-based fiction)

So we’ve established why there are so few women in LotR. Now let’s talk about how Tolkien actually addresses women narratively. It should be noted that I’m going to be pulling from two specific examples, mostly because of how salty I am about how Jackson handled them. Eowyn and dwarrowdams.

Before I go into depth on the women I actually have to touch on the men. Funnily enough, one of the things Jackson changed on purpose was giving pretty much all of the royal and nobility characters major character flaws they didn’t have previously in order to make them more relatable (or hate-able if you’re Denethor). This is actually Kinda Bad in terms of Tolkien’s themes because he uses royalty as a metaphor for ideal virtues and character traits. That’s not to say they’re perfect. They have weaknesses and many of his royalty characters fall to those weaknesses, but the ones we’re shown in LotR are expected to have learned from the mistakes of their forebears and even their own. They aren’t expected to be perfect, but they are expected to show a strength of character above other people because of their responsibilities. Aragorn in particular is held to an even higher standard because of his role as King of Gondor. He is, in essence, the ideal man, thematically speaking.

As stated in my previous tags, Tolkien uses Eowyn to further this narrative and twists that ideal man into an ideal person instead. He shuns the toxicity of violent masculinity and focuses instead on the valor of protection and healing, even though it’s an unseen one as opposed to the “glory” found in war. People will sometimes get upset that Eowyn becomes a healer in the end because they feel that it’s a traditionally feminine role that punishes her for her wanting fight as a man, but they’re missing that it’s only then that she actually fulfills the wish she’s had from the beginning to BE Aragorn. “The hands of the king are the hands of a healer.” SHE is now the ideal man. The ideal person. Not only is Tolkien saying that traditionally feminine roles are just as important as traditionally masculine ones, but by making both Eowyn and Aragorn skilled fighters and healers he’s also saying that they are not inherently gendered either.

As for dwarrowdams, I know this seems like such a small thing when compared to how I went on about Eowyn, but it’s the thing that makes it all come together for me. We’ve established that Tolkien is recognizing the need for childbearing people to stay safe in times of war and the unfortunate necessities of the time that enforces a certain amount of lack of autonomy due to the dangers. We’ve also established that he recognizes the ability of women to still perform those “masculine” duties regardless. However, I believe the thing that cinches LotR as one of the most feminist works of our time (and certainly of Tolkien’s) is that when he talks of how the dwarves are only about a third women, he explicitly states that part of the reason their population growth is even slower than that would suggest is because they often simply choose not to have husbands. This is not framed as crazy or weird. It’s not demonized. It’s a simple fact that sometimes women just don’t want to marry and that’s okay. If even a “population struggle” doesn’t overwrite someone’s right to choose whether to marry or not, then certainly nothing else can. And this was written during a time when women were still heavily pressured and expected to get married and have children!

So of course LotR is more welcoming of women than James Bond. They’re allowed to be people with wants and desires. They’re not belittled for doing traditionally masculine things. They’re not arm candy or a prop. They’re not punished for not devoting themselves to a man. They’re just people.

the Lord of the Rings is a story about some guys. There are women in the story, but they are not for the most part the main characters. James Bond, likewise, is a story about guys where women are side characters. But the Lord of the Rings does not exclude women from the narrative or give the impression of a “boys club” in the way that James Bond does, despite the fact the James Bond has more women in it. The problem is not with how many women are represented, but whether women are welcome in the worldbuilding. There is no more issue with writing a story about a group of guys than a group of girls, both of which are groups it is okay to have. But the men in James Bond are a group because they are misogynist, whereas the fellowship is a group of guys because they like hanging out with each other, and when women show up they’re thrilled to hang out with them too. In this essay I will…

#lotr #lord of the rings #lotr meta #tolkien #middle earth #eowyn #gender roles #long post #*noodlespeaks #i go pretty hard into jackson here #but i do actually like the movies and think they’re a passable adaptation #but as the hobbit movies showed #when jackson decides to write fanfic it tends to go bad #if i could add a read more i would #but im on mobile and if it’s on here i cant find it

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script-a-world · 5 years ago

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(sorry this is long) I'm creating a fantasy matriarchal society that's a combination of like America post WW2 and like the amazons/valkyries crossed with magical girls. I could use some help figuring out the gender dynamics, since part of my goal is to use the swap to highlight some inequalities that still exist in our gender expectations today by flipping them. I'm trying to figure out if it's better to have the men be primary caregivers (1/?)

since there’s no reason to assume that the gender that gives birth has to be the caregivers) or if I should go the “matriarchal society would value childrearing above other jobs” route. Some thoughts I had: Women are the main magic-users in society (magical girl/amazons blessed directly by the god who rules the city with power)and that perhaps all young women are expected to go through military service of some sort before becoming matrons, politicians and doctors. (2/?)

Maybe women are associated with Life and Death and “important duties” that revolve around them, including duties regarding both killing and saving lives. So healing, leading armies, fighting, hunting, childbirth (possibly care?) and politics are feminine jobs, while “lesser duties” that revolve more around menial labor are relegated to men (manual labor, maintenance, ‘uneducated’ jobs, support jobs like scribe and secretary, cooking, cleaning, perhaps some jobs like fashion design or art). (3/?)

Do you think this is a good balance? What are some other ways I could divide gender roles? The world situation is a magical land with about early 20th century level tech (trains and private schools and like phones/radios).Also, what is the best way to objectify men in this society? I was thinking of making it so men are seen as useless/only for the purpose of providing sexual pleasure and siring children to women. (4/?)

They don’t’ actually create children or take the ‘important jobs’ (the poor dears just don’t have the brains for it, they’re too simple and direct, men don’t have the emotional maturity to handle serious issues, they lack empathy, they only want sex anyway so it’s not like you need to worry about their emotional needs, etc). I’d love some suggestions on how a society like this might work or if there are other ways to divide the gender roles, (5/?)

as well as some ways men might experience objectification in society. How would fashion be different, and how would this society put pressure on men to look or act in certain ways (and women as well). Any suggestions? Thanks, and sorry for the long question(6/?)

Mod Miri Note: If you have a question that requires multiple asks, please use the google form! That way there’s no risk of parts of the question being lost.

Tex: “Do you think this is a good balance?” No, I do not. I disagree with the notion that a group of people ought to be objectified, neglected, abused, pigeon-holed, or otherwise mistreated under the guise of inversion as a way to tout a certain prescription of thought. I think this methodology perpetuates stereotypes, and with stereotypes come all the -isms that are used as excuses to treat people poorly just because they’re different from the originating group.

I’m going to be radical and say “none of the above”. There’s a few reasons for my answer, but aside from the brief overview in the previous paragraph, let me go through and try responding to all of your points in a more precise manner.

Let’s start with American culture post WWII - and I’m going to assume that, because of this choice, you’re working from an American perspective. This is important! But I’ll handle that detail in a bit.

Post-WWII culture is heavily influenced by WWII culture. For women, this meant enlistment in the military, as well as filling the gaps in the domestic labor force left by men being shipped off (History.com, The Atlantic). Their service in the military - quite often voluntary - was as critical and crucial as their domestic work (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2, Wikipedia 3). They usually received lower pay than men, true (though interestingly the women in the UK were often treated better; Striking Women), though governments of the time admitted that without women the war effort would have crumpled.

Rosie the Riveter is a popular piece of propaganda (where it was also considered patriotic for women to join the workforce and military service; National Women’s History Museum), but don’t let that dissuade you from thinking that women were not recognized for other types of work during the war. Many women in the US were recognized for their military service (USO), and other women’s histories endure today - Lyudmila Pavlichenko (Wikipedia), Vitka Kempner (Wikipedia), and Virginia Hall (Wikipedia). I’m going to toss in the official synopsis of Queen Elizabeth II’s involvement in her own military to round things out (The Royal Family), complete with a picture of her in uniform (Wikipedia).

Many women after the war went back to strictly domestic duties, and I think that parallels their wartime efforts - both situations are of the “all hands on deck” type, but the play of gender roles here means that the duties of a functioning society are divvied up by different functional spheres - and make no mistake, men and women relied on each other equally as much to cover the gaps, despite the sexism inherent in modern Western society. The difference between war and non-war time cultures was that the latter wasn’t necessarily cultivated by patriotism that could unite the different “factions”. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History gives a thorough examination of this topic.

The following era - typified by the birth of the Baby Boomer generation - saw a marked increase in economic prosperity (Wikipedia). With that came increased social mobility for women (Citation 1), usually catalyzed by the actions of their fathers (Citation 2). This may typically be achieved by consistent, conscientious public policy formation (Citation 3). In short, many cultures - if they haven’t already - are realizing that it’s good for business to let women control how they participate in society and the flow of money.

In the US, this was precipitated by the boom of social development (American History; archived version). Aside from the Truman administration negotiating price fixing to prevent inflation, a significant factor was the passing of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (AKA the G.I. Bill). This primarily benefited the Greatest Generation, though other pertinent legislation by the 79th Congress benefited the Silent Generation onwards: the Fair Deal, Revenue Act of 1948, Taft-Hartley Act, Employment Act of 1946, National School Lunch Act, and Hobbs Act.

It’s debatable how well this impacted long-term economic development, considering the almost immediate rise of McCarthyism in the US in 1947, which was heavily intertwined with the Truman Doctrine that precipitated the Cold War. The results of the war, at least economically, were… mixed (Wikipedia 1, Wikipedia 2). I have no doubt that this impacted the social mobility of women in all affected countries - which is all of them, but I’m sure hairs could be split on this if you wish.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s tackle the Amazons.

The modern, popular interpretation (that is slow to be shaken by archaeological evidence) is mostly mythological (Wikipedia). While some ideas are thrown in the way of a Minoan Crete ancestry to the myth, there are more similarities drawn to the Scythian and Samartian cultures on the Eurasian Steppe (CNET). It’s possible that instead of the equally-extreme pole end of the gender dichotomy that is patriarchy-matriarchy, the Scythians just scandalized the Athenians with a comparatively more fluid society (Smithsonian Magazine).

As for Valkyries… there’s been a revival of them in pop culture, probably as a net-casting to see what’s out there aside from Amazons. TVTropes covers the many, many ways media utilizes them as a trope, to varying degrees of mythological and cultural accuracy. As they state, valkyries are a form of psychopomp, as they decide who among the battlefield’s dead will go to Valhalla (ruled by Odin) or Fólkvangr (ruled by Freya). Freya seems to have assumed the “type” (as opposed to characteristics salient to a particular individual) of a valkyrie, as the female counterpart the warrior archetype. To wit, Freya herself may be a type (Wikipedia).

Here’s where the issue gets thorny - modern popular understanding of valkyries, and by extension Scandinavian women, is skewed through the modern lens.

@fjorn-the-skald has a lovely series called Viking History: Post-by-Post, or An Informal Crash Course & A Historical Guide to the Vikings, that typically focuses on medieval Iceland. In his post “Lesson 13.c - Women in the Viking Age, Part III: Were Women “Vikings”?”, discusses the particular penchant of modern times to romanticize and/or skew history to their own biases - in this instance, how medieval Icelandic women functioned in their culture, as well as how valkyrie myths play into this.

The TL;DR of that is: “viking” women were a societal anomaly, the battlefield was a male domain (and they were expected to die on it), a woman’s prowess of the domestic sphere was highly respected to a level often equivalent to men, and the domestic sphere was the sphere of commerce. Scandinavian culture prized strong women, just as they prized strong men, and their culture rested upon the concept of different genders having their own distinct, complementary, and equal domains.

Fjörn builds upon this history in an ask about gender roles outside the usual dichotomy of male-female. Valkyries, and shield-maidens, may be classed as a third gender in medieval Scandinavian culture, because women were temporarily occupying the male role in their society. While valkyries are of divine origin, shield-maidens are not, though they seem to have taken on a supernatural bent by performing feminine qualities while living in the male sphere (something that they can literally wear, by the donning of their armor).

That probably comes across as distasteful to, especially, a modern American perspective, but many ancient cultures are like that. There’s a footnote on that ask about links to a contemporary perspective of same-sex relationships, as well, to round out that talking point.

With those historical and mythological details discussed, let’s move on to magical girls.

Interestingly, the genre and trope derive from the American TV show Bewitched (Nippon.com). Its evolution reflected Japan’s changing tone about female sexuality, focusing on girls. Magical Girl doesn’t seem to be intended to attract the male gaze in a sexual light - and in fact was generated as a form of female empowerment by by way of growing up (TVTropes), but it seems to happen anyways (TVTropes).

Magical girls, as a genre, originated in the 1960s - the archetypical Sailor Moon encompasses not only magical girls, but also the kawaii aesthetic. Kawaii, incidentally, followed after the magical girl trope, and plays upon women performing as girls in society.

As magical girls are intended for young girls, a demographic known as shōjo, it is considered a subgenre of the target audience. Please note that shōnen'ai (Fanlore) and yaoi (Fanlore) are also subgenres of shōjo.

For some context, the adult female target audience is known as josei, the young adult men is known as shōnen, and adult male audience is known as seinen. Many manga and anime are often misattributed to the wrong category, so it helps to know which is which, and why.

Kumiko Saito argues (through an unfortunately paywalled article that I’m more than willing to disseminate to those without JSTOR access) that magical girls reinforce gender stereotypes as well as fetishize young female bodies. She argues this point more eloquently than I can, so I’ll be quoting a few sections below.

Page 148 (7 of 23 on the PDF):

The 1960s “witch” housewife theme waned quickly in the United States, but various cultural symbolisms of magic smoothly translated into the Japanese climate, leading to Japans four-decade-long obsession with the magical girl. Bewitched incorporated the concept of magic as female power to be renounced after marriage, thereby providing “a discursive site in which feminism (as female power) and femininity has been negotiated” (Moseley 2002, 403) in the dawning of Americas feminist era. Japans magical girls represented a similar impasse of fitting into female domesticity, continued to fascinate Japanese society, and came to define the magical girl genre. In direct contrast to the American heroines Samantha and Jeannie, however, whose strife arose from the antagonism between magic (as power) and the traditional gender role as wife or fiancée, the magical girls dilemma usually lies between female adulthood and the juvenile female stage prior to marriage, called shõjo. In other words, the magical girl narratives often revolve around the magical freedom of adolescence prior to the gendered stage of marriage and motherhood, suggesting the difficulty of imagining elements of power and defiance beyond the point of marriage. In fact, these programs were broadcast exactly when the rate of love-based marriage started to surpass that of miai (arranged marriage),4 which implies that the magical girl anime, founded on the strict ideological division between shõjo and wife/mother, may have been an anxious reaction to the emergent phase of romance.

Page 150 (9 of 23 on the PDF):

The combination of magical empowerment and shõjo-ness framed by the doomed nature of transient girlhood naturally created ambivalent, messages in Akko-chan as well. In the societal milieu in which Japan was undergoing the politically turbulent era of Marxist student movements at the largest scale in the postwar era, Akko-chan’s super- human ability to transform into anyone (or anything) is quite revolutionary, implying a sense of women’s liberation. Despite this potential, her metamorphic ability never threatens gender models, as she typically dreams of becoming a princess, a bride, or a female teacher she respects. The use of magic is also largely limited to humanitarian community services in town. Akko-chan’s symbolic task throughout the series focuses on how to steer her power to serve her friends and family, leading to the final episode in which she relinquishes magic to save her father. Akko-chan embraces the cross-generic mismatch between the radical idea of empowering a girl with superhuman ability and the hahamono [mother genre] sentimentalism idealizing women’s self-sacrifice. All in all, the new setting adopted in this series, that a mediocre girl accidentally gains magic, became a useful mechanism for the underlying theme that the heroine is foredoomed to say farewell to magic in the end. This rhetorical device transforms latent power of the amorphous girl into the reappreciation of traditional gender norms by equating magic with shõjo-hood to be given up at a certain stage.

Saito discusses the thematic shifts in the magical girl subgenre in the 1980s to a more sexualized view, and the according rise of both an older audience and otaku fans, the latter of whom, she clarifies, make a habit of recontextualizing canon to categorize characters into stereotypes that are stripped of the majority of their original context.

On pages 153-154 (12-13 of 23 on the PDF):

The conventions of the magical girl genre transformed significantly against this paradigm shift. Both Minky Momo and Creamy Mami originally targeted children, recording a decent outcome in business and eventually leading to the revival of the genre. Because the plots are directly built on the genre clichés, however, the jokes and sarcasm of many episodes appear comprehensible only to adult viewers equipped with the knowledge of the Töei magical girls. The intrigue of these programs largely lies in the way they parody and mock the established genre conventions, especially the restrictive function of magic and the meaning of transformation. The genre is now founded on the expectation that the adult viewer has acquired a diachronic fan perspective to fetishize both the characters and the text’s meanings.

Creamy Mami presents the story of fourth-grader Yū, who gains magical power that enables her to turn into a sixteen-year-old girl. Yū’s magical power is more restrictive than Momo’s, for her superhuman capacity simply means metamorphosis into her adult form, who happens to become an idol singer called Mami. Given that the magic’s ability is self-oriented cosmetic effect and bodily maturation, the heroine’s ultimate goal by means of magic is to grow old enough to attract her male friend Toshio, who neglects Yū’s latent charm but falls in love with the idol Mami. The series concludes when Yū loses her magic, which correlates to Toshio’s realization that Yū is his real love. Mami’s thematic messages teach the idea that magic does not bring much advantage or power after all, or rather, magic serves as an obstacle for the appreciation of the truly magical period called shõjo. The heroine gains magic to prove, although retroactively, the importance of adolescence preceding the possession of “magic” that enables (and forces) female maturation.

It’s noted in the article that the 1990s-2000s period received criticism for showing a physical maturation of girls, so codified euphemisms via garment changes such as additional frills and curled hair were used instead. This “third-wave” magical girl challenged standing norms of its predecessors by doing things such as likening adult responsibilities (“childrearing and job training”) as a sort of game, as well as the transformation implying that the character’s power is in being herself, something that juxtaposes previous norms.

Due to shifting power dynamics and other changes in Japan’s culture, it became more common for boys to become magical girls as well, further separating the magical girl concept from a strict reflection of gender roles. As such, Japanese culture - insofar as my English-based research can guide me - no longer immediately implies a direct and distinct correlation between magical girls and the female gender.

An analysis of Puella Magi Madoka Magica (PMMM) by Tate James (2017; PDF) discusses an additional dimension of the magical girl genre. Two pertinent points of the piece is that 1.) PMMM dismantles archetypes pitting women against girls, and 2.) PMMM reinforces the gender stereotype that the best type of girl is a passive girl.

Now for the issue you’ve raised about who ought to be the primary caregiver of children.

Consistent, immediate, and continuous interaction between a mother and her child benefits both of them (Citation 4, Scientific American 1, Live Science, Citation 5, Scientific American 2, UNICEF, WHO). Mothers have a distinct neurobiological makeup that predisposes them toward caring for infants (Citation 6), and likewise infants have a predisposed preference to their mother’s voice and heartbeat (Citation 7). I would like to think that is sufficient evidence as to why nearly all cultures encourage mothers as the primary caregivers.

This said, cultivation of a father-child dyad is immensely beneficial to the child (Citation 8, Citation 9), and can alleviate the effect of maternal depression on the child (ScienceDaily). Partnered men residing with children have lower levels of testosterone but a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and adiposity (Citation 10). It’s interesting to note that higher prolactin levels in the mother’s breastmilk has a correspondingly higher level of sociosexual activity with their partner in cotton-top tamarins, which stimulates pair bonding (Citation 11), as well as in other species (Citation 12).

Paternal postpartum depression is recently recognized in fathers, to severe and reverberating deleterious effects on themselves and their family (Citation 13). Screening tools for detecting depression in Swedish fathers is not sufficiently developed, and many men may be passed over despite reaching cut-off suggestions in other criteria for depression (Citation 14).

It has been observed that while human mother and fathers have the similar oxytocin pathways, the exhibit different parenting behaviours when exposed to elevated levels of oxytocin - primarily that fathers will react with high stimulatory behaviour and exploratory play (Wikipedia).

Men being socialized in a culture of stoicism and an encouraged reaction pattern to violence have poor mental health that can culminate into death and other long-term effects (Citation 15). Suicide in the US is currently the leading cause of death at time of posting this response, that the total suicide rate increased 31% from 2001-2017, and in 2017 male rates were nearly four times higher than females (NIMH).

On the topic of magical culture: it’s incredibly difficult to research because it’s a component of overall culture, and one that’s not typically available to strangers/foreigners/the uninitiated. As such, a lot of authors default to what they already know. It’s not a bad thing, but if someone wants to reach outside their comfort zone, they’re going to have some trouble.

I’m going to go off the three, four-ish, cultures you’ve already come to us with: American, Scandinavian, Scythian/Samartian, and Japanese just to round things out.

For a very, very rough overview of America, we have:

Native Americans of the contiguous US

Hawai’i

Alaska

Whatever the colonizing peoples brought over (including, but not limited to, English, Scottish, Irish, Norwegian, German, and Italian)

Whatever the myriad cultures of Africa brought over as slaves

Hispanic

NB: I’ve put Hawai’i and Alaska as separate items because they’re not part of the contiguous US.

European settlers were of a few groups:

The merchants working on charters

Indentured servants from the merchants’ homelands

Slavs

Immigrants in post-colonial eras

This is an important distinction because 1.) contemporary culture matters a lot politically, 2.) how people came to the US determined how they and their family were treated, and 3.) the contemporary job culture determined their social class.

(Slavs, as a note, are the origin of the English word “slave”, something that Western Europeans historically liked to propagate.)

I’m not going to go into the details of everything the US has to offer in terms of cultural diversity aside from a nudge in the direction of Santería. What you pick up to research is up to you.

Scandinavian folk magic is known as “trolldom” (Swedish-language Wikipedia), and the region was known for their cunningfolk. Please note that klok/-a, klog/-e, and related words relates to the English word cloak, and these people are so named because wearing one was an integral part of how they interacted with the supernatural.

The InternetArchive has a book (albeit in Swedish) about the history of magic in Sweden, which is available in multiple formats. If you’d prefer to have something in English, you can either buy this book, or inform your library you’d like to them to buy it for you.

I’m a little surprised you hadn’t mentioned either the völva (Swedish Wikipedia, English Wikipedia) or seiðr (Wikipedia), as they’re quite a well-known part of Scandinavian folk culture. Fjörn, as always, is my first stop for this area of research, with the post “Lesson 7 - Viking Spirituality”, the Víkingabók Database, the tag of Old Norse words, and the post “Norðurbók: A List of the Tales and Sagas of Icelanders” as incredibly good starting points. I encourage you to peruse them, especially because the words you learn will help you be more precise during research.

The Scythian culture is quite far reaching, as they had occupied most of the Eurasian Steppe during the Iron Age, and much of this area can be found in modern-day countries such as Russia, Iran, and China, among others. Because of how far their peoples spread out, the Scythians intermixed with their neighbors, and as such there are sub-groups to the culture.

The Sarmatians were more Russian, as that’s where a large amount of their territory laid, and were absorbed into early Slavic culture. Both their and the overall Scythian language group is eastern Iranian.

In order to help you orient yourself, here’s a map from Wikipedia:

Description: Historical spread of Iranian peoples/languages: Scythia, Sarmatia, Bactria and the Parthian Empire in about 170 BC (evidently before the Yuezhi invaded Bactria). Modern political boundaries are shown to facilitate orientation.

Japanese magical culture is intrinsically tied to their religion, and as such it would be beneficial to read about Shintoism and Japanese Buddhism. The wiki for Japanese mythology is a thorough primer, though if you get stuck, then I’m sure @scriptmyth would be glad to help you on not only this culture, but others.

As for the jobs you’ve proposed - I’m going to jump right into scribes because the irony of that is it’s historically a male-dominated job, and is the progenitor of jobs such as “public servants, journalists, accountants, bookkeepers, typists, and lawyers”. It is, with even greater irony, European women that are noted in Wikipedia, and that medieval women are increasingly thought to have played an integral part in manuscript writing (New Scientist, Science Advances).

I’m not the best person to ask for medieval culture, unfortunately, so you’ll need someone more knowledgeable than me on the subject to direct you to the finer points.

The wiki for women in war links to a lot of lists, so I would suggest poking around for historical references by era (that will likely lead to by culture) to orient yourself on how women have participated in war in the past. There’s quite a bit of mythology to be found there, as well, so if you pick up some specific goddesses you get stuck on, then pop over to @scriptmyth.

Likewise, the wiki for women in government is an interesting read, as is women in positions of power. Since both are primarily modern-times oriented, I would suggest looking at the list of queens regnant for a more historical perspective. I would have difficulty giving you more than that, as you would need to pinpoint your reference cultures first.

As history often neglects women’s contributions to society if they weren’t a ruler or similarly powerful ruler - and, frankly, that frequently applied to men as well the further back you go - I’m going to toss a couple of starting points at you for the area of medicine:

Women in medicine § Ancient medicine - Wikipedia

Women in medicine - Science Museum: History of Medicine

One thing to keep in mind is that as goalposts changed for medicine - the standardization of knowledge and the need to attend a medical school to be legally allowed to perform medicine - the availability of women to participate went down.

Another is that medicine, historically, relied upon herbal medicine, and Wikipedia itself notes that there’s a heavy overlap with food history - something that’s traditionally a domain of women. This abstract by Marcia Ramos‐e‐Silva MD, PhD, talks about Saint Hildegard von Bingen, and the first page available tells you that medieval women were in charge of quite a lot despite not being allowed to participate in the male-dominated sphere of war. The Herbal Academy dips briefly into not only the saint, but other historical aspects of herbalism that might interest you.

The wiki of women in the Middle Ages, along with that of Hildegard of Bingen, nicely rounds out this particular topic.

I need to bring out the fact that Ancient Egypt was and is well-known for the equality and respect afforded to their women - in the interest of staying on subject, particularly in the field of medicine (Ancient History Encyclopedia). Isis was well-known as a goddess of healing (Wikipedia), an aspect she has in common with goddesses in many other cultures (Wikipedia). As an added side-note, Merit Ptah in her popularly-known context has been concluded to be an inflated misunderstanding - and misconstrued interpretation - of a historical figure with significant fabrication (LiveScience, Oxford).

The presence of women in medicine fluctuated in every culture, an in ancient times often shared some correlation with the use of magic (Citation 16). Healing, historically, has a high correlation with the supernatural - and if you care to look, women are usually responsible for the domain of the supernatural. (Or at least the feminine part, which was complementary and complemented by the masculine part.)

I’m going to hop back to politics real quick to bring up abbesses, particularly the social power they exercised as women heading religious orders. An article by Alixe Bovey for the British Library gives the TL;DR of medieval women and abbeys, though if you’d like something with a bit more detail, Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 by Eileen Edna Power is also available.

Abbeys, with their rise and fall, are important to modern American culture. Midwives, to be even more particular, have the most direct impact. In Western Europe, a midwife may under certain circumstances perform baptisms. This was a debated topic of its time, as baptisms were rituals of the Church, and the Church had strict regulations allowing only men to perform their rituals.

During the 1500s - and up to the 1800s, in some cases - midwives were defamed to be witches. You’ll notice that this corresponds to a standardization of medical knowledge, with its corresponding legal restrictions on who may practice medicine. For the Church, the politics playing behind the scenes of midwifery and female physicians fluctuated with their observations about women’s power relative to their own (Citation 16).

Malta is an excellent case study of this phenomenon (Citation 17), and encapsulates the movement of witchcraft accusations that took place throughout this period - something historians noted as corresponding to the rise of Protestantism (ThoughtCo). There’s some debate that the increasing orientation to wages in contemporary economy facilitated this adverse behaviour against women, as well as various other social pressures as politically mitigated by the Catholic Church (Wikipedia).

As the practice of medicine was segregated according to sex - male patients to male physicians, female patients to female physicians - there were proportionally fewer men in trades such as midwifery than women despite the medieval shift toward male encroachment of territory (Wikipedia). This corresponding money- and thus male-oriented intrusion into the female sphere of medicine can be seen with the invention of the obstetric forceps (JSTOR). The rising culture of appropriation constituted the witchcraft trials that, incidentally, influenced American culture during their colonization years.

A pertinent name to remember for American history of the witchcraft trials is Margaret Jones, a Puritan midwife and the first person to be accused of witchcraft in the trails taking place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Wikipedia).

The Salem Witch Trials, as an offhand note, could well be an anomaly due to ergotism (Citation 18).

One thing I’m willing to bend on - a little bit - is manual labor, but mostly because you’re describing something very similar to what’s already been invented: corvée labor. There’s plenty of other forms depending on what culture you’re going for, though unlike what you’re proposing, does not necessarily imply the direct and permanent subjugation of people.

I will absolutely quibble with the idea of “uneducated” labor equating to “less valuable” labor - universities offer non-vocational degrees, typically in the areas of research and/or religion, and guilds were created as a means of quality control (that unfortunately got out of hand and committed crimes such as rent-seeking). Women in guilds were a thing, vulnerable to the same fluctuations as their other occupations outside the house.

If we are defining “uneducated” labour as “menial” labour, then this set of occupations inherently varies by culture, as does its relative weight of importance. One example of this would be writing; it may be menial but important, whereas holding negotiations could be a “major” role but wouldn’t exist without the support of workers “less than” them.

Correspondingly, gender divisions may not necessarily mean an assignation of “lesser” or “greater” when compared against each other. In medieval Europe, at least, the creation of textiles was split along the general lines of spinning and weaving. Women held the former (hence “spinster”), and men held the latter. Spinning was often not formalized into guilds then, but it was an important cornerstone of the economy that could support entire families. A guest post on The Freelance History Writer’s blog seems to indicate that this gender division was due to influence by the Bible, which seems to corroborate with the history of both professions as detailed on Wikipedia - the further back we go, and also the less connected to Christianity, the more textile work women presided over. This granted them greater control over their presence in society, since the selling of textiles was useful leverage to support themselves and others.

A similar discrepancy can be found with agriculture. Hamer women in Ethiopia are traditionally the one to cultivate sorghum, a cornerstone crop to their diet, and they exhibit preferences in which varieties they grow according to criteria such as which is easiest to grind and long-term storage feasibility (Citation 19). Accordingly, there’s been an increasing orientation around the growing of crops rather than the pastoralist habits of their men, with trading standards occuring at one goat for one Dore (“pile of maize or sorghum”) (Citation 19).

A study examining the male sphere of hunting within a society discusses the various cultural implications of defendable vs non-defendable meat sharing, with respect to how the meat is distributed and its corresponding social range (e.g. immediate social circle vs entire community), something I find interesting given that the kilocalories obtained from meat is roughly equal to that of the female sphere-acquired agriculture/gathering (Citation 20). The division of labour along gender lines when it comes to food flow in a community seems, historically, to be both comparable and compatible to each other - a recurring theme with many of the topics I’ve already covered.

Gender roles in their historical perspective - especially the further back you go - are often complimentary to each other, and are an economical way to divide up the burden of maintaining a society to a functional level. There are plenty of exceptions to this (see: third genders), as well, and many cultures exhibit the idea that a productive person is good for society; their roles may look a little different from the person next to them, and not only is the work considered equal in terms of importance, but also with a bit of poking around, you’ll find that few cultures have harsh punishments for anyone “stepping outside” their predicted roles.

Men are already objectified plenty. That their treatment by society looks different than women’s, or other genders, is by no means an excuse to sweep things under the room and pretend that they have it best - or worse, purposefully ostracize them in a fictional work to further mock, ridicule, and isolate them. This contributes to the societal issues in your culture that you wish to address, and stems from a uniquely pervasive perspective from modern American culture that differs from many other cultures in the world.

TL;DR - The way you wish to objectify men is already being done, especially in American culture. It is harmful, and will have an impact that will reach further than you might anticipate. This approach is counterproductive to your goals, and the cultures/media you cite either directly contradict your beliefs of said sources or otherwise undermine your beliefs. It is vastly more productive to take a deeper look at the origins of the issues you wish to address in your writing, as well as the reference material that you wish to use. Learning perspectives outside your native culture will benefit you immensely, and the results could surprise you.

Citations

Citation 1 - PDF - Doepke, M., Tertilt, M., Voena, A.. (2012). “The Economics and Politics of Women’s Rights,” Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 339-372, 07.

Citation 2 - PDF - Fernández, R.. (2014). “Women’s rights and development,” Journal of Economic Growth, vol 19(1), pages 37-80.

Citation 3 - PDF - Duflo, E. (2012). “Women’s Empowerment and Economic Development”, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 50, No. 4: 1051-79.

Citation 4 - PDF - Crenshaw J. T. (2014). “Healthy Birth Practice #6: Keep Mother and Baby Together- It’s Best for Mother, Baby, and Breastfeeding.” The Journal of perinatal education, 23(4), 211–217. doi:10.1891/1058-1243.23.4.211

Citation 5 - Faisal-Cury, A., Bertazzi Levy, R., Kontos, A., Tabb, K., & Matijasevich, A. (2019). “Postpartum bonding at the beginning of the second year of child’s life: the role of postpartum depression and early bonding impairment.” Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, 1-7.

Citation 6 - PDF - Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., Rigo, P., Esposito, G., Swain, J. E., Suwalsky, J. T., … & De Pisapia, N. (2017). “Neurobiology of culturally common maternal responses to infant cry.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(45), E9465-E9473.

Citation 7 - PDF - Webb, A. R., Heller, H. T., Benson, C. B., & Lahav, A. (2015). “Mother’s voice and heartbeat sounds elicit auditory plasticity in the human brain before full gestation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(10), 3152-3157.

Citation 8 - PDF - Pan, Y., Zhang, D., Liu, Y., Ran, G., & Teng, Z. (2016). “Different effects of paternal and maternal attachment on psychological health among Chinese secondary school students.” Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(10), 2998-3008.

Citation 9 - PDF - Brown, G. L., Mangelsdorf, S. C., & Neff, C. (2012). “Father involvement, paternal sensitivity, and father-child attachment security in the first 3 years.” Journal of family psychology : JFP : journal of the Division of Family Psychology of the American Psychological Association (Division 43), 26(3), 421–430. doi:10.1037/a0027836

Citation 10 - PDF - Lee T Gettler, Mallika S Sarma, Rieti G Gengo, Rahul C Oka, James J McKenna, Adiposity, CVD risk factors and testosterone: Variation by partnering status and residence with children in US men, Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Volume 2017, Issue 1, January 2017, Pages 67–80, https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eox005

Citation 11 - PDF - Snowdon, C. T., & Ziegler, T. E. (2015). “Variation in prolactin is related to variation in sexual behavior and contact affiliation.” PloS one, 10(3), e0120650.

Citation 12 - Hashemian, F., Shafigh, F., & Roohi, E. (2016). “Regulatory role of prolactin in paternal behavior in male parents: A narrative review.” Journal of postgraduate medicine, 62(3), 182–187. doi:10.4103/0022-3859.186389

Citation 13 - PDF - Eddy, B., Poll, V., Whiting, J., & Clevesy, M. (2019). “Forgotten Fathers: Postpartum Depression in Men.” Journal of Family Issues, 40(8), 1001-1017.

Citation 14 - PDF - Psouni, E., Agebjörn, J., & Linder, H. (2017). “Symptoms of depression in Swedish fathers in the postnatal period and development of a screening tool.” Scandinavian journal of psychology, 58(6), 485-496.

Citation 15 - Pappas, S. (2018, January). “APA issues first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys.” Monitor on Psychology, 50(1).

Citation 16 - PDF - Kontoyannis, M., & Katsetos, C. (2011). “Midwives in early modern Europe (1400-1800).” Health Science Journal, 5(1), 31.

Citation 17 - PDF - Savona-Ventura, C. (1995). “The influence of the Roman Catholic Church on midwifery practice in Malta.” Medical history, 39(1), 18-34.

Citation 18 - PDF - Woolf, Alan. (2000). “Witchcraft or Mycotoxin? The Salem Witch Trials. Journal of toxicology.” Clinical toxicology. 38. 457-60. 10.1081/CLT-100100958.

Citation 19 - PDF - Samuel, T. (2013). “From cattle herding to sedentary agriculture: the role of hamer women in the transition.” African Study Monographs, Suppl. 46: 121–133. [Alternate PDF link]

Citation 20 - PDF - Gurven, Michael & Hill, Kim. (2009). “Why Do Men Hunt?.” Current Anthropology. 50. 51-74. 10.1086/595620.

Further Reading

Harry S Truman § Domestic Affairs - Wikipedia

Marshall Plan - Wikipedia

Interstate Highway System - Wikipedia

Medieval Icelandic Law (The Grágás) – Women’s Rights: On Reclaiming Property during Separation. By @fjorn-the-skald

Fjörn’s Library

“Notes on Valkyries and the like?” by @fjorn-the-skald

Fjörn’s chronological tag on women

Epigenetic correlates of neonatal contact in humans - Development and Psychopathology

Feral: So, obviously, everything Tex just said- round of effing applause!

I do want to hone in on one specific part of your ask, “since part of my goal is to use the swap to highlight some inequalities that still exist in our gender expectations today by flipping them” and direct you to this blog post on Mythcreants specifically addressing the Persecution Flip Story and why it’s not a great idea from a social justice perspective.

Happy reading!

#pylons #matriarchal society #gender dynamics #deseretgear

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rallamajoop · 6 years ago

Text

On the history of the airline stewardess (and why she deserves so much more credit than you probably realise)

So, to recap: in the name of producing one short fanfic, I have now spent far too many months researching the history of the airline stewardess. It's safe to say I came to the subject primed to get sucked in hard (in brief: I hail from an RAF family on my dad's side, and there is a definite vein of aviation nerdery running throuth us all to this day). But as not more than a fraction of that material was ever going to make it into the fic, it seemed the least I could do to give a quick summary of some of the cool things I got to read while getting horribly sidetracked er, writing this thing, and why others might find them interesting too.

If it wasn't obvious from all those quotes in the opening paragraphs (most only-slightly-paraphrased from real news items), I have borrowed heavily from my sources in writing this fic. The bit about Heather's former roommate who kept her uniform pressed every day for months after her marriage, for example, comes direct from the life of stewardess Connie Bosza, whereas most of the rest of the anecdotes about Heather's housemates and homelife actually happened to Sherry Waterman. Usually I'd have worked harder to remix and reinvent, but here I found myself getting so attached to the subject that not sharing as much of these real women's stories as possible felt like the greater betrayal. But I'll skip citing every article I saved in the process (ask if you're really that curious) and skip to the meatier sources.

My own gateway to the subject came from Victoria Vantoch's book The Jet Sex: Airline Stewardesses and the Making of an American Icon, where, in an introductory spiel about the life of her own mother, she lays out the profession as a mass of contradictions. Not only does she cover the subject from the very first stewardess of the 1930's to the equal rights challenges of the 1970's which transformed the industry, the work serves as a fascinating insight (and sometimes horrifically so) into the realities of Cold War gender politics. Vantoch deliberately underlines the case that, just because this is a story about a lot of pretty women doesn't mean it doesn't deserve to be treated as serious history. Though there are places I wish she'd gone into more depth, it's an excellent introduction to the topic (and available as an ebook if you want a copy).

For real inspiration, however, I got far more out of From Another Island: Adventures and Misadventures of an Airline Stewardess—the personal account of Sherry Waterman, one of few real stewardesses ever to get around to publishing a memoir (Flying Mary O'Connor is another, but it's out of print, not available at my mainstay of BookDepository.com, and cost somewhat more than I felt justified in spending on ebay). Beginning around 1950, she worked for American Airlines for 6 years, and when she had exhausted the possibilities of domestic air travel, she transferred to Transocean Air Lines and spent another 3 years flying the Pacific. The result is remarkably readable and captures the scope, the joy and the absurdities of the profession with gusto. (Waterman really did, for example, recognise a surprised-but-flattered Dr. Edward Teller on one of her flights, and has stories to share about passengers getting stuck in aircraft toilets—though in reality, the size of the passenger was apparently the primary issue).

By contrast, though equally well-written, Sex objects in the sky: A personal account of the stewardess rebellion, by Paula Kane, was a much harder read. Like Waterman, Kane spent 5 years with American Airlines, beginning in the late 60's, but she describes an experience of growing disillusionment punctuated by incidents of sexual harassment so unpleasant that my rec for this book probably warrants a content warning. The rebellion Kane chronicles would not have been possible without the prior civil rights victories of the 60's, but the sexual revolution and changing nature of the industry had plainly produced an attitude of entitlement to women's bodies that would become infinitely worse before it got better (and this is one of few subjects I only wish The Jet Sex had covered in more detail). In the process, she captures a moment in her profession's battle not only for their own rights, but to make air travel safer for everyone on board.

I owe a particular debt to Kane's book for underlining something which had gone understated in my last two sources—namely the vital importance flight attendants may play in managing an evacuation from the plane in the event of a crash. And thus it is, of course, that my story obtained its set piece. (For the record, Sex objects in the sky is available to borrow from OpenLibraries online, and thus one of the most accessible sources on this list.)

For more on key role flight attendants can genuinely play in saving lives, I'd also recommend the Angels of the Sky series as the Confessions of a Trolley Dolly website, and the Air Crash Investigations episode Getting Out Alive. For one last great online source I discovered in the middle of writing the story, we have Winged Women: Stewardesses, Sexism, and American Society—a Master's thesis by Michele Martin, which is freely available online, and built around interviews with several retired stewardesses. Don't let the fact it's a thesis put you off this one—it's written in very accessible fashion, and works as a much-abbreviated version of The Jet Sex for a good overview of the history of the subject. It even includes an account of a plane crash where two quick-thinking stewardesses really were instrumental in getting every last person of the plane in the nick of time (most other real-life examples I'd managed to uncover to this point, the heroism of the stewardess was underlined by the fact that a great many people did not make it out).

I would love to say more on the subject, but I don't think I could better explain how this subject grabbed me the way it did than to quote from the sources themselves. So if, by some miracle, you still want to hear more, below you will find quotes from the introduction of each of those three key sources. I'd like to thienk they all, in their different ways, really speak for themselves.

Jet Sex: Airline Stewardesses and the Making of an American Icon Victoria Vantoch

In 1956, when my mother was in eighth grade, she dreamed of becoming the first female astronaut. She went on to become the salutatorian of her high-school class and won first prize in a model UN speech contest that awarded her a month-long, all-expense-paid trip to historical sites around the country. She subsequently earned a B.A. in Slavic languages from UCLA. The Library of Congress Aerospace Technology Division recruited her for her Russian language skills and she moved to Washington, D.C., where she translated Russian aerospace articles on everything from Alexey Leonov, the first person to walk in space, to metallurgy—all of which bored her to the core. She considered graduate school for international studies but did not have much savings and could not stomach the prospect of living on peanut-butter sandwiches for four years, so, in 1968, she brushed up on her Russian and interviewed for a stewardess position with Pan Am, which had just started flying to Moscow. She was devastated when the airline rejected her, but she managed to win a position with Eastern Airlines and her hometown newspaper chronicled her success. As a stewardess, she moved into a boarding house with Alice Paul, one of the twentieth century’s most famous women’s rights activists. While living with Paul, her life was a collage of contradictions. She lobbied on Capitol Hill for the Equal Rights Amendment at the same time that she went to work as a stewardess wearing pale blue hot pants. In 1969, she gave a speech to Congress in honor of the early women’s rights activist Lucretia Mott. The topic: gender equality in the workforce. That same year she also competed in two beauty pageants. She got married, had my sister and me, continued to fly, and spent much of her adult life feeling guilty about being an absent parent. Flying was never really about the money for my mother. It meant freedom from suburban life and office monotony, and participation in a public realm that was usually reserved for men. I rode on flights with her and felt proud—my mother was the stewardess. And since airlines allowed employees to bring their families on flights for free, by the time I was twelve I had traveled to twenty-five countries. Some of my mother’s early stewardess friends went on to get doctorates in chemistry, to work at the Department of Defense, to manage large households of their own, and to become successful attorneys. My mother, however, continued to fly until Eastern went out of business. Without a job at the age of forty-eight, she desperately campaigned for a stewardess position with other airlines. She created a colorful posterboard presentation that read, “I will die if I don’t fly” (along with—I’m serious—a song she wrote about her love of flying) and sent it to the American Airlines personnel department, which, after a series of interviews, hired her.

But this was the early 1990s and, by now, being a stewardess had lost its cachet. Around that time, in my early teens, I was interviewing for admission to exclusive New England boarding schools. During one interview that wasn’t going particularly well, the pompous interviewer in a tweed jacket suggested that I become a stewardess like my mother—“ because of my smile.” I knew then I would be rejected. My face burned. I stopped mentioning my mother’s profession. It was no longer something to be proud of. It had become an insult. My fascination with airline stewardesses began with my mother. It began with curiosity about how a talented public speaker who was nearly fluent in Russian and committed to women’s rights chose a career that ultimately allowed her to be written off as a vapid sex object and, ultimately, as a low-status service worker.

From Another Island Sherry Waterman

I was aware even then of so many little things commonplace to us, and yet so significant. These things were most evident in San Francisco, one of the crossroads of the airline world. A lei of wilted pikake blossoms tossed across a copy of the New York Times – both had been fresh that morning; two roommates had returned from Honolulu and New York. A pair of Alaskan mukluks and an aloha shirt crammed together in a suitcase; another roommate was leaving for Tokyo and returning via the Aleutians. Two stewardesses, chattering on the phone about their forthcoming vacations; each was going around the world in a different direction, and one was saying, impatiently, "Well, okay then. I’ll meet you in Egypt." Six roommates gathered around the table for a spaghetti dinner, pleased by the rarity of their all being at home together, and no one bothering to comment that at dinner the night before, all had been thousands of miles away, in different directions.

This was our way of life and it was natural to us. It was the way most of our friends lived and we often lost sight of the fact that it was not the way everybody lived. We were impatient with people who expected us to make dentist appointments three weeks in advance— who could know where she would be three weeks hence?—and we regarded a six months' lease on an apartment as signing up for eternity. We lived from city to city and felt at home in all of them, but we also lived from day to day, and never felt truly at home anywhere. During the first week in June, Dallas was our home and we loved it. Our roommates were among the best we'd ever had. Then the Texas summer hit with fierce intensity, and we raced to the airport with transfer requests clutched in our perspiring hands. Two weeks later we were settled by the sea in Los Angeles, and we spent the summer on the beaches. But the summer waned and the chilly fogs became more frequent, and it was time to move back to Dallas. So the transfer requests were filled out again. It was October, and one of us was playing Autumn in New York on the record player, and another one of us said, "Did you notice that tree on the corner has some leaves that are turning brown —just like the leaves back East?" So we changed the course of our lives with the eraser on a pencil.

We could follow the sun or the seasons with less planning than most girls give to a two-week vacation. We packed ice skates and swim suits in the same suitcase and used them both within 48 hours.

All of this was in the days before jets, but we still got around pretty fast, and we always measured distance in terms of time rather than miles. "How far is it to Dallas from here?" "Oh, four hours in a DC-7. Or were you speaking about a Six?" Short distances were figured that way too. A girl who lived in the beach area of Los Angeles would have her hair done and her shoes repaired in Washington, D.C., because it was "closer" —a ten-minute walk from her layover hotel. We were familiar with so many cities that sometimes we got them confused. I dropped a token in the fare box of a San Francisco bus and the driver stopped me as I started toward the back. "What's the matter," I inquired, "isn't that token for this bus line?' "Lady," he said, squinting at it, "that token isn't even for this country."

Sex Objects in the Sky Paula Kane

Almost lost in all the sexual innuendo of the Madison Avenue imagery is the primary reason why stewardesses are on board a plane, which is to enforce safety regulations and supervise the immediate evacuation of the plane in the event of a crash. And in crash after crash, the efficiency and courage of the stewardesses have meant the difference between passengers' lives and deaths.

Forty passengers and three crew members were killed in the December 8, 1972, crash of a United Airlines jet at Chicago's Midway Airport. But fifteen passengers survived, many of them because of the heroic efforts of the two stewardesses, Kathleen S. Duret and D. Jeanne Griffin.

The plane crashed into a block of houses one and a half miles southeast of the runway while attempting an instrument landing in scattered fog. Almost the entire front end of the plane was demolished on impact. The two stewardesses, who had been seated in jump seats at the back of the plane, rushed to open an emergency exit, but were driven back by raging flames. They worked their way along the right side of the burning cabin, clearing away the debris of galley equipment blocking the aisle. Then, one by one, they assisted nine surviving passengers to the exit and out of the plane, pausing each time to take gasps of fresh air before returning to the dark, burning, smoke-filled cabin. Six passengers found their own way out through breaks in the plane's fuselage.

The National Transportation Safety Board found in its investigation of the accident that most of the passengers in the cabin section died after impact as a result of inhaling carbon monoxide and other poisonous fumes from the fire. Those nine passengers lived because of the experience, the expertise, and the courage of Ms. Griffin, a stewardess for ten years prior to the accident, and Ms. Duret, a stewardess for seven years.

Yet their actions earned just one sentence in the sixty-one-page NTSB report: '"Nine passengers who exited through the rear service door were assisted by the two flight attendants; these attendants were the last to leave the aircraft."

Their exceptional bravery in carrying out their legal role on the plane, as stated in Federal Aviation Regulation 121391, "to provide the most effective egress of passengers in the event of an emergency evacuation," earned them no citations or awards from the airline.

Stewardesses who please customers, who receive complimentary letters, and provide exceptional "service," receive awards of merit from the airline. But apparently not stewardesses who save human lives. You have entered the weird, upside down, Alice-in-Wonderland world of the airlines. Presumably the companies are very concerned about safety, since the public's concern for safety on planes has been a major problem in attracting more customers. Yet in several areas the airlines display an incredible disregard for elemental safety. Hazardous materials are illegally shipped in cargo bins below the passengers' seats. Cabins are constructed with materials that in accidents emit a deadly, cyanide-filled smoke.

The stewardesses, in charge of safety in the cabin, are dolled up in miniskirts and coonskin caps, "hot pants," and other bizarre costumes. They are seated in unsafe jump seats, in unsafe corners of the plane, are always called "girls," and are treated like children by the company. And when they "grow up," they are encouraged to leave, even forced out after flying a few years, because they are no longer considered girlish enough. The tightly written script they are ordered to act out in the air, including the constant smiles, the constant engaging of each customer's eyes, the constant subserviance, makes it difficult and sometimes impossible for them to enforce even rudimentary discipline during the flight.

The sexual stewardess fantasy has a direct effect on the safety of flying. It also takes its toll on the psyches of the women who play the role. Stewardesses tend to have serious identity problems as a result of being treated like pieces of fluffy assembline line equipment by the airlines. We tend to move in regular stages from romantic idealism to disillusionment to frustration and anger and self-doubt.

[...] But in the past few years stewardesses have finally started to fight back. They have won a series of rulings by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that have stopped the airlines from forcing women to retire from flying at an early age and from banning married flight attendants.

#aviation #flight attendants #history #feminism #stewardesses #research

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warehouse13pod · 6 years ago

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Show Notes 103 "Magnetism"

Agents, you are getting sleepy… Very sleepy…

Click play on the player above to listen to this week’s episode while you read, if you so choose.

Wow! We covered so much this week! Where to start… Where to start…

Well, first of all, we had a lovely Warehouse Agent from our Patreon page where people can be Patrons for our show (Hey, did I mention we have a Patreon) introduce us!

This week’s Warehouse Agent was a representative from Emp-RSS.com, an online presence dedicated to empowering women to find their voice and providing mentors for young women entering the workforce. I can’t think of a Patron more appropriate to Myka’s arc this episode.

So, the first thing we had questions about was what all the jurisdictions were for the Secret Service, CIA, FBI, and NSA. I linked the answers above, They’re pretty dry, BUT—

The interesting thing I found—as a person who is decidedly NOT a law enforcement agent or a lawyer—is that basically the Secret Service’s jurisdiction is basically whatever protects presidents, vice presidents, former presidents and their spouses and children. Unlike other agencies that have geologically defined jurisdictions, the Secret Service’s jurisdiction seems pretty vague. I can definitely see how that could be exploited by the Warehouse. Pete and Myka are technically protecting those people but also protecting, like, literally everyone else in the world. LOL.

The episode opened with Pete and Myka in France taking the blade of the guillotine that took the life (and head!) of Marie Antoinette. Want to know more about Marie Antoinette and her grizzly end? Boy, oh boy do the History Chicks have you covered! They have an amazingly detailed and informative two part episode dedicated to her fascinating life—there was much more to her than a beheading and a misquote about some cake (Part 1, Part 2). The link to each part links to the audio for each episode as well as the show notes for each respective section. Don’t worry about the fact that the episode is called a “reboot.” You’re not missing something. The first episode of the History Chicks ever recorded was about Marie Antoinette, and it was very poor audio quality. They deleted the original file, re-recorded the episode, and included new information the second time around—hence, reboot.

Still not enough Marie? Don’t worry! There’s more! On the History Chicks’ side podcast, The Recappery, they recap the 2006 film, Marie Antoinette. That episode is also a two-parter (Part 1, Part 2).

There are so many emotional moments in Marie Antoinette’s life that could have led to the creation of artifacts. The History Chicks cover those and anything else you want to know, too! They did a series of Biography Channel mini-documentaries on famous historical women. Three(!) of them focused on Marie Antoinette: a general one about her life, one about the scandalous but rarely discussed affair of the diamond necklace, and one about her small house called the Petit Trianon on the grounds of Versailles.

Moving on, we talked about the famous Mission Impossible scene that Pete was attempting to imitate with perhaps, ahem, a tad less grace. This is the image we were talking about:

Miranda brilliantly discussed the importance of Affect Theory to the Warehouse and its artifacts. Here’s a very brief overview about that.

Miranda made a reference to the purple goo shower that Artie inflicted on Myka and Pete being like slime. For those who didn’t grow up watching the American television network, Nickelodeon, here’s what you need to know about getting slimed. It was a huge thing when we were growing up. On kid/family game shows on Nick (the affectionate slang name for Nickelodeon Network), contestants who lost or got a wrong answer or who won a prize were punished/rewarded with being slimed—i.e. having green goo rained down upon you from above. Why were punishments and rewards both related to slime??? 1) Because it’s always funny to see adults have copious amounts of green goop poured onto adults heads. 2) It supposedly tasted like vanilla pudding!

To this day, adults attending or presenting at the Kids Choice Awards (presented by Nick) should be wary…anybody can be slimed.

We also mentioned that Myka and Jill share a love of True Religion flap-pocket jeans. Here’s what those are.

We talked about the collaborative involvement between M.C. Escher, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison in the early days of the Warehouse.

Tesla and Edison didn’t like each other very much. And the internet is full of links that can fill you in as to why. I wouldn’t even know where to start. So, instead, please enjoy this rap battle between Tesla and Edison from the legendary Epic Rap Battles of History YouTube channel. (I can’t speak for Miranda, but I am totally #TeamTesla).

We also went into a little more detail on M.C. Escher. In particular, we discussed his art works, Relativity and Drawing Hands.

We also discussed his vital contributions to science and to mathematics (Math Link 1, Math Link 2).

Jill also talked about how much second-hand embarrassment she felt when Myka started talking about how much she hated men to Father Braid. Here’s actual footage of Jillian watching that scene.

That scene and earlier discussions of Myka’s feminist rage led to a discussion about the Bechdel Test. The test is a huge part of feminist theory, media studies, and film studies. And, honestly, it’s a super low bar that you’d be astounded how few pieces of media even reach. Want to see if your favorite movie passes the test? Click here! There’s actually a film festival dedicated to celebrating films that pass the test. The theory is not without its critics, however. Many people think that the bar of the Bechdel Test is not high enough and we need to expect more of female representation in media than their mere existence in scenes together and the absence of discussions about men. I’m inclined to agree that we should expect more, but I also think that the Bechdel Test is still a great way to assess if a piece of media is able to do a basic job of representing women on screen. Interested in the criticism? There’s an op-ed from The Washington Post and The Verge that might pique your interest.

When discussing magnetism, with Jill and with our incredible and intelligent guest, Kameron Sanzo, Miranda mentioned her (not really) favorite song (LOL). Here’s that song that asks the ever important question, “Fuckin’ Magnets. How do they work?!”

If you’re actually interested, this is how magnets work.

Anyway…

Other things Miranda discussed with our guest, Kameron Sanzo, include animal magnetism and mesmerism as well as hypnosis. Some cursory information about the founder of Mesmerism, Anton Mesmer, can be found here. A fun exploration of mesmerism can be found in the eleventh episode of the Audible original podcast, Stephen Fry’s Victorian Secrets, which has been linked before in a previous episode’s show notes, because of its relevance to Spiritualism. You can purchase the podcast from Amazon or with an Audible subscription.

Of course, this episode would not be complete without addressing the creator of this week’s artifact, James Braid. There was some discussion of the similarities and differences between hypnosis and mesmerism especially before and after the development of the scientific method.

Now, I’m not a doctor.

(And yes, I know that fans of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Parks and Recreation just said “Not a doctor” in the voice from the end credits. Don’t worry, Internet. I’ve provided a clip of that for you, also)

Now that we’ve got that out of the way…

I’m not a doctor and don’t want to seem like I know too much about the evolution and modern usage of hypnosis/hypnotherapy in a medical sense. But what I can say is that—while mesmerism is widely understood by scientists to not be a real thing—hypnotherapy is actually still quite relevant to modern medicine. Its origin may share the outlandish nature of mesmerism. However, there is apparently a difference between traditional and modern hypnosis. There is also a difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy. The Mayo Clinic goes into more detail on the topic as does Psychology Today.

Kameron Sanzo also compared mesmerism and hypnosis with Reiki. Here’s a couple links that provide more information on what Reiki is (Link 1, Link 2).

Finally, we also discussed the use of filmic language and angles and how they can induce feelings of fear and anxiety. No one was better at this than Alfred Hitchcock. Here’s some information on the filmic language he created (high-angle shots, other techniques).

Now, let’s delve into some ~Heavy Themes~

We gave a shout-out to Eddie McClintock to celebrate his 18 years of sobriety! A monumental achievement!

Addiction is a serious issue and if the themes covered in this episode of the podcast or show regarding addiction affected you in any way and you need or want help, here are some links that may provide what you’re looking for.

For substance abuse, please consult Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. If you are a loved one of someone who struggles with alcoholism, there are resources for you, too! Please check out Al-Anon—not to be confused with Alcoholics Anonymous.

The episode also with issues of suicide, abuse, and gun violence. Please, please reach out if you are struggling with trauma or mental wellness as a result of abuse, mental illness, or any other reason.

Some resources that may help (where possible, phone numbers are listed beside links to resources in case your web usage is monitored and you don’t feel safe clicking links):

The Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: 1-800-622-HELP (1-800-622-4357)

For LGBTQIA+ listeners who are struggling, here is a whole list of resources.

The Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233

Finally, if you are non-verbal or are deaf/hard of hearing/unable to use a phone for any reason: THERE ARE STILL RESOURCES FOR YOU!!!!

Please, don’t give up hope.

Check out the Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741

We love you. Stay safe, Agents.

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jamespaterak · 3 years ago

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The Importance of Human Capital Development in Education

The historical origins of the concept of human capital are unclear. The term is often misused in the context of economics. The idea is to define a specific asset by its economic value, such as labor. It is used in business to describe a type of commodity. This commodity is not always readily available, but there are some resources that can be easily procured from a surplus. These resources are called human capital. These are also called human assets.

According to James Paterek in the first half of this book, the authors present a broad overview of the economics of human capital. In the second half, they provide a detailed history of how companies have utilized this asset over time. The authors focus on the role of technology and education in advancing economic growth, the experience of women in the workforce, and the trends in marriage and family. Ultimately, this analysis provides new insights into how these forces influence the overall economic performance of a business.

In the first half of the 20th century, G. Becker's Economic Theory of Human Capital analyzed the economic efficiency of education by subtracting the lifetime earnings of employees with less than a high school education. In other words, a worker was both embodied "human" capital and simple labor. Using a monetary value of each component, the income generated by the worker was the combination of the market price for that simple labor and the investments that a person's education and training have yielded.

As per James Paterek this theory of human capital is rooted in the premise that businesses are only as good as the people who work for them. In the context of capitalism, all employees, regardless of position, contribute to the human capital of a company. Ultimately, all employees contribute to the success of a business. And it is a valuable resource in the competitive world. So the historical development of human capital can help businesses to achieve higher goals and more profit in the long run.

The term "human capital" was first used by Adam Smith in his 17th-century book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. This concept was later used to describe human capital as a social property. In the 1980s, the term "human capital" was coined. And it became widely known as the human capital of nations. There are three types of human capital: tangible monetary capital, and intangible monetary capital. The former is based on economic values.

Claudia Goldin's work in the history of labor in the United States has resulted in the concept of human capital. This theory explains the impact of education and technological advancements on economic growth. In addition, this theory identifies the differences between general and firm-specific human capital, and highlights the importance of organizational-specific social capital. Throughout the history of labor, the concept of human capital has been used as a proxy for social and economic value.

James Paterek said that human capital in organizations is a term that has been used since the 18th century. It is a form of economic value that refers to the knowledge and skills of workers. The term "human capital" was first used by Arthur Cecil Pigou in 1928 but was later used by Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker in the 1960s. It has been renamed to distinguish between firms and individuals. A person's skill and knowledge are their most valuable asset, so the concept of human capital is very important for the development of nations.

Several economists have contributed to the evolution of the concept of human capital. The Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker and the University of Chicago economist Theodore Schultz made it clear that investment in workers could be as valuable as investments in capital equipment. This idea also led to the formation of two types of human capital: general and cosmopolitan. This definition explains why firms are increasingly interested in investing in local human capital.

The term "human capital" became a prominent concept during the late 1950s. This concept was quickly accepted by economists and politicians. It is now considered an important component of economic development. It has a wide range of applications and is used in business and industry. Some of these economists define human capital as a human resource that is used for a variety of purposes, including the production of goods. Others believe that this concept has the potential to influence the development of a country.

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ayemanolld · 3 years ago

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Ask Me Anything: 10 Answers to Your Questions About study nursing in usa cost

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Study Abroad for African Students

Study abroad experience can have a profound effect on the individual: by transforming one's career path and social circles to improving global engagement.

Students from Africa, for several years, have been at the pursuit of high quality education provided all around the world. Motivated by strong ambitions and livelihood opportunities, the African pupils are looking beyond what their home nation can offer.

Study abroad experience could have a profound impact on the person: from transforming one's career route and social circles to enhancing international engagement. A recent study conducted at the University of Minnesota has demonstrated that international students become civically involved and, despite the expectations, are somewhat likely to return to their home states.

Why Does African Students Search Education Abroad?

Based on the budget of an individual and their career goals, international students from Africa can study in prestigious African American universities or venture to proceed further and go to the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Ireland, Turkey, Dubai or even a number of different destinations in Europe or Asia.

In the last decade, South Africa has witnessed that the 2nd biggest number of students in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Libya, and other African countries.

Below is a brief overview of the entry statistics printed in 2018.

What motivates African Study abroad students?

As the next graph reflects, pupils from the region are strongly inspired by career aspirations and the prospect of enhanced career opportunities. The responses reflected in the graph are for prospective undergraduate students, but the exact same patterns hold for master's and PhD students as well.

Nearly three in four respondents indicate that progressing into a higher level qualification is an important element in their interest in pursuing an undergraduate degree abroad. Nearly half see a foreign undergraduate degree as a method of progressing in their current career path, and a comparable percentage see a foreign degree as a requirement to enter their intended career. Finally, nearly a third (29 percent ) see study abroad as a way of improving their career prospects.

The graph illustrates how weighted the poll answer is to those variables, relative to private or cultural motivators for example chances for exchange or personal interest.

Where to study abroad?

According to the Newest QS Applicant Survey, the US and Canada are the top destinations for African students to proceed with their studies. Around 36 percent of students refer going to colleges in both the US and Canada for undergraduate and master courses.

China is another popular destination which has witnessed a stride in the circulation of African students to their top universities. The number of pupils from Africa took a whopping spike of 95,000 in 2014, and the nation has since pledged 30,000 more scholarships to encourage more freedom from Africa. France has also been bringing students from French-speaking countries such as Algeria and Cameroon.

The reasons for pupils from Africa to opt for these states is highly affected by the standard of instruction and over all the Financial Aid. Most universities in Europe also need less or no tuition fees.

The investment in a diploma from a US establishment has been viewed positively by global companies for decades. The width of the program encourages students to explore topics much beyond their own major. This gives a broader comprehension of the world along with a more open view.

Such abilities and strategies are much valued by companies and have also developed a powerful entrepreneurial spirit among US graduates. The rapid development of Silicon Valley in California is one particularly shining example of the benefits of a US Higher Education. Study in the USA and follow your own American dream.

Canada offers a exceptional chance to research entirely in English, completely in French or on a bilingual program. With a population of roughly 10 percent of its southern neighbor, the USA, Canada has plenty of space.

These things have made Canada an ever more popular destination for studies among international students generally. Approximately 20 percent of the Canadian people speak French as their native language. English, at 56%, is undoubtedly the predominant language across the nation. This is important to bear in mind if you're out of a French-speaking nation.

Study Abroad agencies mostly work with associations in the English-speaking portion of Canada. This is only because we consider proficiency in English is now a vital skill for the globally mobile workforce. If your plan is to operate in Canada after graduation that a strong understanding of English will be essential. However, for people who do prefer to study from French, Seed can offer extremely affordable options also.

Study In UK

At all levels the British schooling system has an excellent worldwide reputation for academic accomplishment. The UK is home to a number of the most well-known schools, universities and colleges in the world.

It is the accomplishments of pupils of the UK higher education system that created the country's academic standing. Many renowned Africans have graduated from UK universities.

Germany is the economic powerhouse of Europe with the continent's biggest economy. Once called the"Land of Poets and Thinkers", Germany has played an historic role in education. The earliest research universities on the planet were in Germany and many are still open today.

The United Nations Development Programme places Germany as 6th about the Human Development Index. This is forward of more popular study abroad destinations that the USA, United Kingdom, and Canada.

The German Government reports that there are approximately 375,000 international students enrolled at university there. That's over 12% of the total amount of college students in the country. Approximately 18,000 African students, each year choose Germany for college overseas.

The German education system is especially strong in the STEM Subjects -- Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. No surprise as the nation is home to famous engineering and manufacturing brands. STEM subjects are popular class choices with African study abroad students.

Turkey is not only a beautiful destination for travelers but also attractive to a lot of foreign students. Research in Turkey is also relatively cheap compared with many other nations overseas. There has been huge investment in universities there in recent years. As a result, Turkish universities provide high-quality education and top-of-the-range facilities, but in a really affordable rate, to equip their students with the necessary knowledge and skills required to excel in the world.

Public universities mostly offer applications delivered entirely in Turkish, even though it's also likely to find some bilingual (Turkish and English ) applications as well as some programs delivered in French at select institutions. There are no programs taught entirely in English in public colleges and so any African American student looking to study in public universities need to study the Turkish language first and successfully pass the Tomer Exam (the Turkish equivalent to the TOEFL Assessment ).

We'll mostly focus our attention on private universities in this manual as we can strongly believe in the global work opportunities which will be open to you in the event that you study in English.

Study Abroad in Dubai

Dubai is situated in one of the seven United Arab Emirates and is currently home to specialists from all over the world. Dubai has a famously fast-growing market and is famous for innovation. Obviously, the luxury shopping adventures also make it a dream destination for many foreign students.

Study in Ireland

Ireland is a European country famous for its culture all over the world. It's admittedly a less known study destination for African pupils than its close neighbour, the United Kingdom. However, as we hope to reveal in this guide, there are tons of great reasons to consider Ireland for your research.

The Irish men and women are proud of their culture and thus work hard to maintain it. Ireland is a Anglophone country that makes it appealing for both African students who already speak English and people who wish to improve theirs. Ireland is home to students from different areas of the planet too.

Ireland has a younger population than most Western European nations and a highly educated people. The country is often known as the Celtic Tiger for its strong economic performance over the previous 30 years.

Ireland includes a pioneering and can-do soul. Through innovation a nation with a population of about 5 million people produces enough food to feed 60 million! Irish experience in agriculture has helped develop arid lands in Africa into abundant farming. As well as an upstart Irish airline company, Ryanair, revolutionised air travel within Europe, getting the biggest European airline in terms of passenger numbers pre-COVID.

Unlike the united kingdom, Ireland is a part of the European Union (though it isn't a part of the Schengen visa zone). In the past several years, thanks to its highly educated work force, Ireland has drawn multinationals, such as Amazon and Microsoft, to install European HQs here. Since 1st February 2020 it is the biggest Anglophone state over the European Union, which will be likely to make it an attractive base for additional foreign companies seeking to set up hubs inside the European Union's Single Market.

Ireland is a very safe and beautiful country with great places to go to. With this kind of rich history it was no surprise Capital Dublin was designated a UNESCO City of Literature at 2010.

African Students in the U.S.

Nownot all those students listed previously are visiting the U.S., of course, next week we'll talk more about where else these students might be studying and how to compete with the other destinations African students are considering and picking.

Source Country

Students Studying in the US

(2018 IIE Data)

Nigeria

12,693

Egypt

3,701

Kenya

3,322

Ghana

3,213

Ethiopia

2,118

South Africa

2,040

Morocco

1,563

Nigeria leading the pack is no surprise, as it has the highest GDP of all African markets, and thus has more students that can manage a U.S. education. The rest of the record all have economies in the Top 8 across the continent, except for Ghana, that is not much behind at 11th.

While the other 47 countries in Africa are not listed above, virtually all them are sending pupils to the U.S. and other nations for tertiary education.

It might appear, by taking a look at the above record, that Fulton Montgomery Community College Seed educational consulting Nigeria is the clear place to invest your recruiting efforts. But remember, with higher pupil numbers comes more competition from other schools abroad.

Don't discount the rest of the countries with fewer students already traveling to the U.S., as those may be untapped markets which would provide you more bang for your recruiting dollar. As we mentioned in a prior blog post about Africa, the less traveled route represents the competitive path. Consider how nice it would be to be one of the top-ranked universities at a college fair.

According to this 2018 report from IIE only 4% of foreign students in the U.S. were from sub-Saharan African countries. (The data for people from northern African countries is united with those from the Middle East, which accounts for two percent.)

African students bring an invaluable perspective and drive to campus, says WENR in this slightly older article. WENR talked to The University of Rochester's vice provost and dean of admissions Jonathan Burdick, noting,"These students, most of them engineers working to tackle quite concrete challenges, have an outsize effect in their branches and on campus"

According to Africa.com, the occupations with the most growth in Africa's expanding markets are such in agricultural technology, agricultural management, telecommunications, structural engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, architecture, actuary science, and geophysics. Tourism and healthcare will also be on the rise.

If your organization has a strong program in these fields, there are a number of frequent flyer miles to be got and students to be recruited.

Can they afford it, however?

But while the language barrier may not be a significant challenge, a financial one definitely is. The price for one year at an American college greatly exceeds the average annual household income for many African American nations.

What incentive is there for universities to supply bigger financial aid packages to those international students? Word of mouth for you personally. Remember that college-aged population boom? That is a good deal of mouths and the subsequent generations will probably be learning about schooling options from those who went ahead of them.

Research in World Education Services (WES) shows that 93 percent of U.S.-enrolled pupils from sub-Saharan Africa were likely or very likely to recommend their university to coworkers in their home nations. WES forecasts that,"Given the price of effective recruitment efforts and the need to deploy both recruiters and dollars , these networks of alumni can provide a wealth of rewards with relatively few risks."

Requirements to Study Abroad

The needs to study abroad for many international students would depend on the country, the university, and also the program. However, there is a typical set of files necessary to apply to all universities.

Transcripts from Schools

Recommendation Letters

Statement of Purpose

For Undergraduate applications, students would need to pass the standard global entrance exams like SAT depending on the nation you're applying to. The African matric qualification alone might not qualify you to the required degree.

For postgraduate programs, you would need completion of diploma certification and would be required to write the country and course-specific entry exams.

The minimum standard requirements for Faculties will vary across the nations. Also depending upon the medium of instruction, students will need to take language tests to show the amount of proficiency.

Apart from this, to receive a student loan, you would also have to reveal Confirmation of enrollment, proof of sufficient funds and fulfill the health insurance requirements.

Composing an extensive admission essay or personal statement puzzles many international applicants. The vast majority of non-native English applicants do not feel confident in their application papers. That is why many of them utilize this platform to order informative article online:

Scholarships for Students from Africa

All the countries mentioned previously are focusing on widening their educational prospects by welcoming more international students. As part of it, many scholarships are offered by many organizations to inspire students. Listed below are a couple of notables ones for students from Africa.

Mastercard Foundation Scholarship: Canadian and American Universities have partnered up the Mastercard to offer a $500 million initiative to provide scholarships for 15,000 pupils, especially from Africa. The University of Toronto, McGill University, the University of British Columbia are one of the best colleges offering the scholarship applications.

Australian Development Scholarships (ADS) for African American Students: An initiative from the Australian Government to offer fellowships and financial help for 1,000 postgraduate students from Africa.

The Beijing Government Scholarship (BGS): Provided by the Beijing Municipal Government that supplies a full tuition fee for international students studying in Beijing.

French authorities (Eiffel Excellence) Masters and Ph.D.. Scholarships: Scholarships of Masters and Ph.D. students from developing countries majoring in technology, economics, science, law, and science.

VLIR-UOS Training Scholarships in Belgium: Offered for students from African countries with preference given to women who take available master and training applications in English.

Language Language Proficiency

Students will need to give proof that they have achieved a particular level of English language proficiency.

All these will be the commonly accepted evaluations.

IELTS Academic Module

TOEFL

University of Cambridge Advanced

VU English EAP

These evaluations should be obtained no less than two years prior to beginning the program.

The majority of African students prefer to settle on a degree in engineering or business studies. In European nations especially languages, art, and human sciences are also popular subjects followed by legislation and political science.

Pupils from African countries are wanting to go abroad to countries offering them better standards of living. The ability to stay in the nation after completing the training course will be also becoming a significant deciding factor. But it is also common for students to be back their expertise to their home countries and contribute to strengthening their economy.

Every nation has something to give, and it is best to choose the course based on academic and individual preferences.

Information sources and financing for Study Abroad

Almost six in ten prospective students look to education agents for assistance in identifying and exploring alternatives for study abroad. However, the QS survey clearly indicates that most students make heavy use of online stations as well, particularly organic research, institutional websites, school selection websites, and social websites. Between 80% and 100% of survey respondents said that they make extensive use of all of these online tools.

Another striking feature of student mobility from the region is the prominent role played by third-party funders, especially in the kind of government or company scholarships. As the following picture reflects, personal or household funding plays a lesser role for many students from the region.

The standing of funding sources illustrated here reflects the prominent role of third party funders (and also the significance of affordability variables ) that we have observed elsewhere for key markets in the area, notably Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana.

The Agent Network in Africa

The broker recruiting channel is still growing in Africa. They are determined and eager to sign up new contracts -- unlike many of their colleagues in China and India who have become exceptionally discerning about which universities they will support. We have fulfilled a variety of agents from African countries in the ICEF Miami workshop and highly recommend this opportunity to meet and assess the options.

Unlike the recruiting agent systems in China and India that are highly developed and have matured to a challenging community of super bureaus which have many unstructured

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sandeep-health-care · 1 year ago

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leonfrancisblog · 3 years ago

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Healthcare mobility solutions market is expected to witness market growth at a rate of 25.3% in the forecast period of 2021 to 2028|Major Players Like healthcare mobility solutions market are Omron Healthcare, Inc., McKesson Corporation, Apple Inc., Wipro, Cerner Corporation., Oracle, Cisco Systems India Pvt. Ltd,

Healthcare mobility solutions market is expected to witness market growth at a rate of 25.3% in the forecast period of 2021 to 2028. Data Bridge Market Research report on healthcare mobility solutions market provides analysis and insights regarding the various factors expected to be prevalent throughout the forecast period while providing their impacts on the market’s growth. The increase in demand for advanced healthcare systems is escalating the growth of healthcare mobility solutions market. Healthcare mobility solutions make the use of mobile applications to offer the best healthcare services to the patients. They assist the patients in exchanging their healthcare reports and data easily with the healthcare providers, hence receive treatment for their problems easily. This reduces the overall healthcare cost and also saves time. They help in tracking the patient’s blood sugar level, heart rate and other health related activities.

The increase in use of smartphones among population acts as one of the major factors driving the growth of healthcare mobility solutions market. The rise in focus on patient-centric mobility applications, and growth in adoption of advanced connectivity to enhance the quality of healthcare solutions accelerate the healthcare mobility solutions market growth. The rise in demand for these solutions owning to their cost efficiency and ease of use, resulting in streamlined workflow and doctors encouraging the adoption of mobility solutions further influences the healthcare mobility solutions market. Additionally, shortage of nursing staff, rapid digitization in healthcare sector, and penetration of wireless networks, improving healthcare infrastructure and surge in healthcare expenditure positively affect the healthcare mobility solutions market. Furthermore, technological advancements extend profitable opportunities to the healthcare mobility solutions market players in the forecast period of 2021 to 2028. On the other hand, raise in concerns with data security issues and lack of standard communication protocols and reimbursement policies are factors expected to obstruct the healthcare mobility solutions market growth. The infrastructural and cost issues and short battery life of mobile computers are projected to challenge the healthcare mobility solutions market in the forecast period of 2021-2028.

Global Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market, By Products & Services (Mobile Devices, Mobile Applications, Enterprise Mobility Platforms), Application (Enterprise Solutions, Mhealth Applications), End-User (Payers, Providers, Patients), Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Italy, U.K., France, Spain, Netherland, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Rest of Europe, Japan, China, India, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Israel, Rest of Middle East & Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2028This healthcare mobility solutions market report provides details of new recent developments, trade regulations, import export analysis, production analysis, value chain optimization, market share, impact of domestic and localized market players, analyses opportunities in terms of emerging revenue pockets, changes in market regulations, strategic market growth analysis, market size, category market growths, application niches and dominance, product approvals, product launches, geographic expansions, technological innovations in the market. To gain more info on healthcare mobility solutions market contact Data Bridge Market Research for an Analyst Brief, our team will help you take an informed market decision to achieve market growth.

Get Sample PDF of Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Report (including COVID19 Impact Analysis)@https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=global-healthcare-mobility-solutions-market

Healthcare Infrastructure growth Installed base and New Technology Penetration:

The healthcare mobility solutions market also provides you with detailed market analysis for every country growth in healthcare expenditure for capital equipment, installed base of different kind of products for healthcare mobility solutions market, impact of technology using life line curves and changes in healthcare regulatory scenarios and their impact on the healthcare mobility solutions market. The data is available for historic period 2010-2019.

Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Scope and Market Size:

The healthcare mobility solutions market is segmented on the basis of products & services, application and end- user. The growth amongst these segments will help you analyze meagre growth segments in the industries, and provide the users with valuable market overview and market insights to help them in making strategic decisions for identification of core market applications.

On the basis of products & services, the healthcare mobility solutions market is segmented into mobile devices, mobile applications and enterprise mobility platforms. Mobile Devices are further segmented into mobile computers, RFID scanners, barcode scanners and others.

On the basis of application, the healthcare mobility solutions market is segmented into enterprise solutions and mhealth applications. Enterprise Solutions are further segmented into patient care management, operations management and workforce management. Patient care management is further sub-segmented into patient monitoring, case management, medication administration, patient Id (PPID)/patient tracking, specimen collection and tracking, dietary and nutrition, infectious disease monitoring/field data collection and other patient care management solutions. Operations management is further sub-segmented into patient admissions/discharge, revenue management/billing, claims processing, asset and facilities management, materials management and others. Workforce management is further sub-segmented into scheduling, time and attendance management and other operations management solutions. Mhealth applications are further segmented into chronic care management, exercise, weight loss, women’s health, sleep monitoring, medication management and other mhealth applications.

On the basis of end- user, the healthcare mobility solutions market is segmented into payers, providers and patients. Providers are further segmented into hospitals, laboratories and others.

Major Market Competitors/Players:

The major players covered in the healthcare mobility solutions market report are Omron Healthcare, Inc., McKesson Corporation, Apple Inc., Wipro, Cerner Corporation, Oracle, Cisco Systems India Pvt. Ltd, Zebra Technologies Corp., AirStrip Technologies, Microsoft, Koninklijke Philips N.V., GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY, AT&T Intellectual Property, Express Scripts Holding Company, Netsmart Technologies, Inc. among other domestic and global players. Market share data is available for global, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America separately. DBMR analysts understand competitive strengths and provide competitive analysis for each competitor separately.

MAJOR TOC OF THE REPORT:

Chapter One: Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Overview

Chapter Two: Manufacturers Profiles

Chapter Three: Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Competition, by Players

Chapter Four: Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Size by Regions

Chapter Five: Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Revenue by Countries

Chapter Six: Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Revenue by Type

Chapter Seven: Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Revenue by Application

Chapter Eight: Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Revenue by Industries

Chapter Nine: Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Revenue by Deployment Model

Chapter Ten: Healthcare Mobility Solutions Market Revenue by End User

Get Table Of Content Instantly @

https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=global-healthcare-mobility-solutions-market

Reasons to Purchase this Report:

Current and future of global healthcare mobility solutions market outlook in the developed and emerging markets

The segment that is expected to dominate the market as well as the segment which holds highest CAGR in the forecast period

Regions/Countries that are expected to witness the fastest growth rates during the forecast period

The latest developments, market shares, and strategies that are employed by the major market players

Customization of the Report:

All segmentation provided above in this report is represented at country level

All products covered in the market, product volume and average selling prices will be included as customizable options which may incur no or minimal additional cost (depends on customization)

Access Full Report:https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-healthcare-mobility-solutions-market

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